This week, Kim welcomes Judge Phil Ginn to the show to discuss the importance of religious freedom in contemporary America. As the world changes dramatically, the relevance of America’s founding principles comes to the forefront. Judge Ginn, with his rich background as a senior judge and now as the President of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, provides an intriguing perspective on how young generations are increasingly discerning the truths of the Christian faith, particularly on college campuses that are witnessing a unique revival. Their conversation weaves through the layers of historical context and present-day challenges, offering listeners clarity on why
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It’s the Kim Monson Show, analyzing the most important stories.
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That seems to me like government is establishing a religion.
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If you give people rights, women’s rights, gay rights, whatever, there can’t be equal rights if there are special rights.
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Today’s current opinions and ideas.
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Surveys show that people still really prefer freedom over government force.
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Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
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And welcome to The Kim Monson Show. I’m Kim Monson. We’re going to have a conversation. Thank you so much for listening. Each of you are treasured and valued and have purpose. Today, strive for excellence. Take care of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body. My friends, we were made for this moment in history. And thank you to the team that I get to work with. That’s Producer Joe, Luke, Rachel, Zach, Echo, Charlie, Mike, Teresa, Amanda, and all the people here at Crawford Broadcasting. Greatly appreciate each and every one of them. Check out our website. That is Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter while you’re over at the website. And that way you’ll get first look at our upcoming guests as well as our most recent essays that goes out on Sundays. You can email me at Kim at Kim Monson dot com as well. And thank you to all of you who support us. We’re an independent voice on an independent station searching for truth and clarity by looking at these issues through this lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom. If something’s a good idea, you should not have to use force to implement it. And remember that socialism ultimately comes down to force. It’s not about free stuff. The free stuff is just the carrot to get people to vote for it. And I’m very pleased this week of Independence Week, we have pre-recorded these shows with very special guests. And I’m pleased to have on the line with me Judge Phil Ginn. He is the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. And Judge Ginn, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, Kim. It’s my pleasure to be with you.
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Well, and let’s begin. First of all, how is it that I call you Judge Ginn? Good.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, you know, I tell folks that if you ever decide what you want to be when you grow up, you have to, by definition, grow up. And so I’m in about my fourth or fifth ideation of what I’m going to be when I grow up. But I’ve been probably… In two different settings, the judge in North Carolina, the last ranking I had was as a senior resident superior court judge here in North Carolina, which is the highest trial level of court in North Carolina.
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Okay, and how long did you do that, Judge Ginn?
SPEAKER 08 :
22 years total.
SPEAKER 14 :
Wow. And if we have time, we’ll talk a little bit about what’s happening over in the judiciary here in America. But we’ve got a pressing question that we want to talk about, particularly since you’re president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. And just tell us a little bit about the work of the seminary.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thanks, Kim. Seminary is about 33, 34 years old, somewhere in that neighborhood, founded by a fellow by the name of Norm Geisler, who probably is well-known to some of your listeners, who more than likely, I would say, is the foremost Christian apologist, certainly in our era. He died about five years ago. and was a great mentor to me and so many other folks in this regard. So it is a seminary that is based on defending the Christian faith, which is apologetics, doing so in a winsome way. We use philosophy in that regard to help people, as I indicate, help folks wrap their minds around what their hearts want to believe. And so we do a really good job of that. And we’re very focused on evangelism and discipleship because that’s how we say we train teachers. We train the trainers, we teach the teachers, and we disciple the disciples at our school.
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Well, I love that. And as a Christian apologetics, defender of the faith, there are a lot of young people, millennials, that I think that they’re having a tugging on their heart. Many of the things that they’ve been taught in this culture, they have some things uncomfortable. I’m seeing more and more young people that are questioning and I think they’re pursuing this relationship with Jesus. Some of them don’t quite understand it yet, but I think that that is occurring. So what would you say to a young person that is searching here for their real meaning of life?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, first of all, Kim, I thoroughly agree with your observations. And I’ve even described it, anecdotally at least, as pre-tremors to a major earthquake that I believe is coming in America and around the world. I think we’re going to see a revival. And it is one of those things where it’s going to come perhaps even despite of the church. If you look around, these anecdotes are, for the most part, happening in places that you wouldn’t expect it to occur. For instance, college campuses. And we’re seeing that at SES all over our nation. You just go down the list, and I’ll leave many of them out, but Auburn University, Florida State University, Ohio State University, that one up there was led by the football team of all people. Clemson University, I’m well familiar and live very close to Appalachian State University, which may not be as well known as some of them, but it has 22,000 kids on it. Probably two years ago, we would have said that five or six percent were believers out of that 22,000. And all of a sudden, my little church up there is feeding two or three hundred of them on Wednesday nights because they are hungry for the message. Let me tell you one other thing that is exciting about that, Kim, is that George Barna is reflecting that that’s the segment of the population that is really seeking the most right now. is Gen Z males. And what an opportunity we have as the church in America to raise a generation of Bible-believing, God-fearing men. What a wonderful thing that would be. So going to your exact question of what would I say to these young people, I would say to them, You know, the admonition of Scripture, give God all of your heart and all of your mind and all of your soul. And that means pursuing knowledge. And I had this one thing. I came to God as a believer in Jesus Christ at the age of five years old and certainly didn’t have anywhere near a complete understanding of what that meant at five. But there came a time in my life where I really had to decide whether or not I was going to be a follower of Christ or not, and had some issues that, is the Bible inerrant and infallible? And part of me wanted not to believe that, and part of me wanted to believe that. And so that’s when I came to SES to take one course, and Norm Geisler took me back into his office, and I walked out to… having signed up for the doctor of ministry program at SES. But again, we are a friend of skeptics. I don’t think God minds us asking sincere questions. And he provides those answers to us if we simply seek them. I’ve spent many years now really digging into the Scripture. In fact, I will tell your listeners, the first class I took at SES, they had to look at cultural issues, various ones, and go into the Scripture and determine what the Scripture had to say about those particular issues. And then we had to argue the biblical position without ever referencing the Bible. That’s the kind of thing we teach at SES. And what I discovered was that the Bible makes a lot of sense. And that’s what I want these young people and anyone who comes to Christ. I want it to be an understanding, not only for you to understand it, but for you to be able to defend your faith in the face of a culture that sometimes is not open to that.
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So, Judge Ginn, the interesting thing about connecting a dot with our American founding, and then, as you were saying, the answers to sincere questions. is that Christ never used force to bring people to him. And the founders, and we’ll get to the subject probably in the next segment, regarding religious freedom in America, is the founders did not want to use force regarding religion either. They felt that the Christian faith could stand on its own two feet. It didn’t need to have force. And, of course, Christ never forced anybody to believe in him.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, you know, first of all, my dad used to, who’s a Baptist preacher, told me on many occasions he’d never seen anybody bludgeoned into the kingdom of heaven. And I think that’s very true. And I think that’s counterproductive. That’s essentially what Islam wants to do. If you don’t voluntarily commit your life to Islam, then you face dire consequences until you do, or death if you don’t. But the reality is, as we look at these things, we want to fully understand where we are. And ironically, it was attacks on Christianity from within Christianity that the Founding Fathers wanted to protect. You had theocracies that, you know, Massachusetts, of all places, was a theocracy at the time of the American Revolution. In Rhode Island, the state of Rhode Island came to be because of religious persecution within Christianity. These folks left Massachusetts and formed Rhode Island. I’m proud to say that my state, North Carolina, was one of the two states that refused to sign the Constitution until we had the Bill of Rights, which allowed us to worship God in any way that we see fit, and not only that, but to serve God in any way that we see fit. And America was never intended to be a theocracy at all. And so now what’s changed is that we’re no longer trying to protect Christianity from Christianity. We’re trying to protect Christianity from all of the other would-be assassins out there of our faith.
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Well, and we are in a really interesting time in America right now. And so we’re going to really ask this pressing question of why is religious freedom important in America today? And so we’ll talk about that when we come back from break. But did want to mention the Roger Mangan State Farm Insurance Team. They are a great sponsor of the show. As you all know, I am an independent broadcaster on an independent station, and it’s because of these great sponsors and, of course, all of your support. And the Roger Mangan Insurance Team wants you to feel safe and well served to understand your insurance coverage and know that their office will respond to your caller text 24 hours a day. So for that 24-hour peace of mind, call Roger Mangan at 303-795-8855. Like a good neighbor, the Roger Mangan team is there.
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And welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is KimMonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter. You can email me at Kim at KimMonson.com as well. And do you want more freedom and confidence with your money? Well, Mint Financial Strategies can help. They’re an independent firm with over 25 years of experience. And as an accredited investment fiduciary, they put your best interests first, always. With a strategy-first approach, they’ll help you build a plan that fits your life perfectly. Call Mint Financial Strategies today at 303-285-3080. That’s 303-285-3080. Pleased to be talking with Judge Phil Ginn. He is the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary based in North Carolina. Judge, again, question on the table. Religious freedom was very important. In fact, it was put into the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights by our founders. But why is religious freedom important in America today?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, Kim, not only is it in the First Amendment, it is the first protection in the First Amendment. It is before freedom of speech. But in reality, those two go together. You know, what we ask for, certainly at Southern Evangelical Seminary and Christianity as a whole, I think, is free access to the marketplace. And by that, I mean we want to be considered along with every other item that is to be considered, because I believe firmly in my heart that if you look at Christianity with an open mind, that it is far more palatable to the human brain than is any other system of faith. And Norm Geisler co-authored a book with my good friend Frank Turek entitled I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. And Frank has just rewritten that book. It will probably be out in the next few months. I certainly urge your listeners to get a hold of that because it is the essence of what we teach at SES. And that is a thoughtful approach to Christianity and to its defense, and this understanding that Let me just put it to you this way. I don’t think the radical left or whatever you want to call the sinister part of our populace and our culture really totally wants to eradicate Christianity. They just want to confine us so that they will say to us, you can worship God any way you want within the confines of your stained glass windows. But don’t bring it outside of that. And that’s the compromise that they’re trying to get us to adhere to. But that is certainly in contravention of the Great Commission where Jesus said, go and make disciples and go into all the world and make disciples. So we’re seeking access. We should be seeking access to the marketplace so that we can proclaim the gospel. practicality of Christianity. Certainly don’t want to take away from the part of the Holy Spirit within this, but we’ve got so many Christians out there, at least so-called Christians, who don’t think and have not thought through their faith, and who have their faith simply based on maybe what mom and dad said to them, or maybe on something they’ve read somewhere, or maybe it’s just a cultural Christianity that they’ve put by their name to maybe help their business or whatever it may be. And it has no roots. It’s like the seed that fell on hard ground. It may take a little bit of a root and then dies out because there’s not fertile soil for it to be there. And I think that our freedom… should extend to the point where we practice our freedom, our religion, our faith, because Christianity I don’t think is a religion. It’s a relationship. But we practice what we believe in public and in a way that honors our faith. I just don’t think Christianity was created to be quiet.
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Well, not at all. In Acts, you can see when people hear the word that thousands would come to faith sometimes on a specific day. So hearing truth is what is so important. And when Pilate was talking to Christ, when he says, what is truth? I’ve always thought there’s a potential… interesting point regarding what was the inflection that he had. He said, what is truth? As you mentioned, a sincere question, or he could have been very skeptical. What is truth? I don’t know for sure what that is, but Christ is the truth and the way, the truth and the life. And I think that, that we need to, as you say, we need to be talking about this and out in the public, not within the confines, just be in between the stained glass windows.
SPEAKER 08 :
I absolutely agree with you, Kim, that we need to do this in a loving way. But, you know, in a world out there that tells you that there are no absolutes, Christianity certainly believes that there are. You just made an absolute statement that Jesus Christ is the truth, and I believe that. He is the way. He’s the only way of salvation that’s given to us. But at the same time, you know, sometimes the truth hurts, Ken. And When it goes up against, truth is not tolerant of that which is not true. And we just need to understand that as a people, and we need to portray that as a culture. Charles Spurgeon, I love him. I’ve got a lot of his quotes. And he said this one time. He said, men are perishing. And if it be unpolite to tell them so, it can only be so where the devil is the master of ceremonies. Out upon your soul-destroying politeness, the Lord gives us a little honest love to souls, and this superficial gentility will soon vanish. We’ve got to be verbal, and we have to also portray the truth of Christ through our lives and how we treat other people, but we have to tell the truth.
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We do. So let’s talk a little bit about the founders, because they realized religious freedom was so important. I think they felt that Christianity could stand on its own in the battle of ideas. But there are those that have said that the founders, that they weren’t Christians. How do you address that narrative out there?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, you know, it’s not original with me. Very little is original with me. I’m a good editor, but I’m not very original. And one of my friends put it this way, Kim. He said, if God trusted you with breath today, don’t insult him by acting like your presence is optional. If you’re alive, act like it. Fight like it. laugh like it, and serve like it. And we have to, again, go back to the point where we give Christ all of our hearts, all of our souls, and all of our mind, and we have to focus on Him, and then we have to carry that message to those people we love. Barry McGuire, I recommend trying to think what his book is, Ignite America, I believe is the name of his book that he’s written. And the point he makes is that we ought to be living our lives so that we move people one step closer to God in every interaction with us. And it’s a very practical application of sharing our faith. and that’s what we need to be about. Paul wrote in Ephesians 5, he said, redeem the time, and the time that he talked about is a business, it’s like a commodity, it’s a business term, and that we are supposed to utilize our time for the kingdom of God, and it’s an intentional act, and so many of us, Kim, and I do this, I’m not I’m not an angel by any means, and I do this. We are unintentional as we go through our daily activities. We just exist. And that’s why I say we need to act like it, we need to fight like it, we need to laugh like it, and we need to serve like it, that we are Christians and that God has something for us to do today.
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Well, he certainly does. As I open my show, I say that we were made for this moment. And I really do believe that we were made for this moment in history. We’re in a really historical time. And Judge Phil Ginn, I… I broach the suggestion that I think that we are in the third founding of America. And I think this revival that you’re talking about is a big part of that as well. But, of course, the founding, the initial, was the Revolutionary War, Declaration, the Constitution. The second was the Civil War to… You know, answer this question, can one man be property of another? That doesn’t match up with the vision of the Declaration that all men are created equal with these rights from God of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. And so we had to answer that question. Now I think that we are in this big question of who are we as America? And it’s an exciting time, and I do think that we were made for this moment.
SPEAKER 08 :
It is an Esther moment. And I don’t know that a lot of Christians are completely understanding that. And Kim, I would say to you, I agree with you. But the issue this time may be whether or not a child in the womb is a person. And that’s just as big an issue for me as slavery was, because we’re not doing that. We’re not treating that person in the womb as a full human being. You know, we’re God’s workmanship. Ephesians 2 tells us we’re God’s workmanship. We’re created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we ought to walk in them. And that’s what Christianity is all about. Now, I would take it one step further from you, Kim, and I do think that we may be in a reconstruction period, if you want me to phrase it that way. But there are also factors out there that align with what happened in Germany. post the beginning of the Great Depression and prior to the rise and fall of the Third Reich. And what happened there was there came to be a fight between the far right and the far left, as exemplified in fascism versus communism. And the great group in the middle was silent. or they aligned with one of the radical groups or the other. And what ended up was that Germany was either going to be communist or fascist, and they chose fascism, obviously. But it’s the same animal under different stripes. Both of them are autocratic, elitist governments. And so we see that happening in America today. There is a fight over the very soul and the heart of America. And not only from a religious or a spiritual standpoint, that certainly is their fight there. But democracy is in peril in America because it’s being fought over between two potentially radical groups. Right now, the group that’s more focused on that is, as I noticed in the entrance to your show, you talked about socialism. And that’s the group that is most active right now. But there ultimately will be a reaction from the far right if all of this chaos is not checked in some way.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and that’s why we have these discussions to engage in this battle of ideas that is raging in America at this time. I did want to mention one of the nonprofits that I dearly love is the USMC Memorial Foundation. And the official Marine Memorial is located right here in Colorado in Golden. It was dedicated in 1977. It’s time for a facelift. And a way that you can help them is go to USMCMemorialFoundation.org and make a contribution. And what a great time, particularly Independence Week. A great way to honor those that have given their lives or been willing to give their lives for our liberty. So be sure and check that out. And as I mentioned, the show comes to you because of great sponsors. For everything residential real estate, reach out to Karen Levine.
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SPEAKER 14 :
And welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. Thank you so much for joining us. Check out our website. That is KimMonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. We are pre-recording these shows for Independence Week. And very pleased to have on the line with me Judge Phil Ginn. He was a judge in North Carolina for 22 years. He’s now the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. And religious freedom… is, as you mentioned, the very first thing in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And it is under attack, but in some ways I think it’s very overt, and in some ways it’s very under the radar. And Donald Trump is making some strides in assuring religious freedom, yes or no?
SPEAKER 08 :
Absolutely. I’m very pleased with some of the things that he’s doing. But I would hasten to add that Mr. Trump is not the savior of us or even our nation. I certainly am thrilled with some of the actions he’s taken to protect religious liberty. But even in the big, beautiful bill, there’s some things in there that are not very helpful to Christianity and other faiths. You know, what’s what our problem is, is that and Mr. Trump has certainly ran into this in his first term. He’s doing better with this in the second term. But we’ve got a bureaucracy that literally is running our nation in so many ways. And you saw saw Elon Musk and and make an attempt to to change that and how difficult it is to change that because they’re so embedded in that. It’s kind of like cancer. It’s hard to get it all out, and if you don’t get it all out, it eventually will kill you.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and our founders knew that we did not want to have this. Bureaucracy has become what people were afraid of. This entity, it’s unelected, it’s unaccountable, and we see that it has this insatiable appetite for more and more of the fruits of our labor and our property. And the founders knew that that was not what America should be. They said, what could happen if people could own property and have liberty? And what could happen? Well, America happened. We had this amazing, robust middle class where everyday people could thrive and prosper. This bureaucratic state really wants to have, I think, total control over everyday people, over Americans.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I don’t know if you guys have anything like kudzu out in your neck of the woods. Here in the South, the railways imported a van from Japan known as kudzu. And that was to stabilize the banks. They were having a lot of trouble with erosion, so they thought this vine would help with erosion. Well, it certainly helped with erosion, but it takes over everything. It is a parasitic vine that grows everywhere, will grow over a tree and kill the tree. Essentially, it’s been a battle ever since that in the South to keep this vine beaten back long enough to preserve the natural plant species that are here. And I think that this creeping concept that you and I mentioned offline of the ends justifying the means, that mentality… is present in so many segments of our American culture. And to these people, anarchy is preferable to order if you happen to disagree with the norm, regardless of whether it’s legitimate or not. And so we find a system that really is rigged in an unethical way Because the accepted methodology in order to get what you want is to do whatever it takes to get what you want. And you find that there is this segment, socialism, the anarchists that are out there, they would say that any action is justifiable based on the personal importance of that which they seek. And You even are seeing the justification of murder to make some sort of statement about a perceived grievance. That’s what happened with the UnitedHealthcare CEO. And here’s the deal. If the church wants to be left alone and if it wants to be secured, all we have to do is to go inside the stained glass windows, close the door, and keep our faith to ourselves. And sadly, many churches are willing to do that. While others have chosen, Kim, to take the path of easy compliance with social mores that are completely inconsistent with biblical teaching. So this is certainly the picture of an apostate church in America. And they’re kind of like the old song. They’re part of the dead and dying in terms of their faith. But, you know, this easy path of compliance and or silence… is not the journey of Christ, Ken. And I’m so thankful that there are many fine examples of churches that are being led by fearless and faithful shepherds out there who are leading the way and facing the giants of a counterculture toward Christianity, at least. And just to give you a couple, Jack Hibbs and Alan Jackson, not the singer Alan, but Pastor Alan Jackson, they’re really speaking into the culture. And I know that if I look at it, I urge your listeners to look at this. As we see these no kings protests, look at the theology behind them. There’s theology in everything that they’re doing. And there’s biblical references for everything that’s going on in our country right now. If you read the scriptures, none of this is new or should be new to us. You even go back to the Old Testament, and it talks about in the time when there were no kings, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Go back to Isaiah 56. All of us have gone astray, each to his own way. And so that’s where we are in America. They’re pushing this concept of truth is not absolute. It’s relevant. And so therefore, we don’t have a guideline in America as we once did for you and me to back our opinions up to so that as you and I backed our opinions up to the guideline, we actually got closer together because we got closer to the guideline. And What’s happening is we’ve erased that guideline in America. Then you’ve got your opinion, Kim, and I’ve got mine. And I’m going to try to get in power to enforce my opinion on you before you can get in power to enforce your opinion on me. And you see that in Washington, D.C. all the time. You see it in all of these protests that are going around all over the country.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and you mentioned this No Kings protests slash riots, and I’ve done some research on it. We’re going to be getting more information on it on a regular basis. But as you mentioned, some of the language that they use, they have pulled words from our Constitution. They’ve pulled words that people have learned about that it seems like it makes sense. You said that there’s biblical references. And America was founded on this idea that we the people would govern ourselves, but within those Christian principles as well. Now, that wasn’t in the Constitution, but these principles that were part of our founding, which I think— Well, it certainly was.
SPEAKER 08 :
It certainly was indirectly, Kim.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, indirectly, yes. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 08 :
And again, the whole idea of democracy is based upon the concept of a moral and God-fearing people. If you look at the Declaration of Independence, if you look at the preamble to the Constitution, it is dependent upon people who fear God. and who revere the morality that goes with God and that belief in God. And we’re veering away from that. And we’re being attacked in two ways. We’re being attacked racially, and we’re being attacked sexually. Those are the two ways that we’re being attacked in America. That’s what they’re using. They can’t use the money part. You know, when communism came to power in Russia, it was economics that they used to build their case upon. And here it is not that, because everybody’s doing pretty well in America. So they had to base it on race, and they based it on all of these deviant and… concept of sex up to and including abortion, which is nothing more than a protection of some misguided concept of sexual freedom.
SPEAKER 14 :
Right. Okay. Judge Ginn, you mentioned fear of God. Does that mean to be afraid of God, or what does that term mean?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I think it’s got that dual meaning. In fact, if you go to, I believe it’s 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says that we serve God based on two things. One is the fear of God. And, you know, we hear so much in churches about love these days, but we forget that judgment has been given to Christ. He says that. He said, the Father is not going to be judging. He’s given judgment to me. And so there’s not only a God who is loved, there is a God who is righteous. And we can’t attain that righteousness without coming to Christ and obtaining his righteousness. But there’s more to it than that, because this fear is understanding the awesomeness of God. I’ve sometimes described it as an amoeba trying to understand the world of the scientist on the other end of the microscope. That’s a poor analogy, but that’s the best I can come up with. God is so much greater than you and I are that we don’t really begin, even when we seek him, to understand him. It’s too much. And then we’re also governed by the love of God. which is different than a lot of people would understand in today’s market. But Paul says we are compelled because of the love of God, and it’s the same idea of centrifugal force where you put a bucket full. The water in the bucket slung it around your head and the water’s held to the bottom of the bucket. It’s that same concept that we are held to the bottom of the bucket because of our of our love for God, which is merely reflection of his love for us. But yeah, there’s there needs to be a greater fear of God in this nation.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay. Thank you for the clarification on that, Judge Ginn. And I have so many questions in my brain.
SPEAKER 08 :
I do, too. I do, too. We figure out the answer. Maybe you can explain it to me.
SPEAKER 14 :
I’ll do my best. We have one more segment, which I’m really excited about. A couple of things. I did want to mention the Center for American Values, which is located right here in Pueblo, Colorado. Pueblo is known as the home of heroes because there are four Medal of Honor recipients that grew up in Pueblo. And Medal of Honor recipient Drew Dix and Emmy award-winning… documentary maker brad padula are the co-founders of the center for american values it’s focused on these foundational principles of honor integrity and patriotism the center is non-political it’s non-partisan more information go to americanvaluecenter.org that’s americanvaluecenter.org and if you have been injured you certainly want to reach out as soon as possible to john boson and boson law
SPEAKER 16 :
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SPEAKER 14 :
and check out our website. That is Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter while you’re at the website. You’ll get first look at our upcoming guests as well as our most recent essays. It is Independence Week. We are pre-recording the shows for this week with very special guests. And I am talking with Judge Phil Ginn. He was a judge for 22 years in North Carolina. He’s the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. And We were talking about religious freedom and also Christianity, why religious freedom is important in America to today. Is there real discrimination occurring in America against Christians and Christianity?
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, absolutely. It is not framed that way. But even in Colorado, there were the bill was meandering through the House and the Senate regarding parents who have children. Maybe a child who is seeking some sort of clarity on their gender and the parents cannot espouse biblical worldview for fear of losing custody of the child. And that that’s happening all over down in Florida just a week or so ago, the Florida I think she was Miss North Florida, Miss American Paget. I’m not exactly sure what her title was, but she had her crown removed because she was not willing to acknowledge transgenderism as a norm. And so we see that, and a lot of it has to do with major issues that I talked about earlier, which is abortion. If you are pro-life for the child in the womb, then our culture will attack you vehemently. And if you are in any way opposed to the deviancy of sexuality that is out there that is foreign to the Word of God, then you’re going to be labeled and you’re going to be attacked. And it’s going to be based on you’re not tolerant of other people.
SPEAKER 14 :
That’s what they’re going to say. Well, and we are all sinners. And that is why it is so important to have this relationship with Jesus Christ, because His blood wipes all of that away. So with that, understanding that we are all sinners… And that Christ wants us to all come to Him. We can all be forgiven for what we have done. Correct, Judge Ginn?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I say, and I get a little pushback from this, but I tell people that nobody goes to hell because they’re sinners. They go to hell because they have rejected Christ. I didn’t want to take away the idea that we have to repent of our sins. That’s not what I’m saying. But that’s part of accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior. You come to Christ and you repent of your sins. I think in that order. But if sin were the only criteria, then hell would be filled up because we all are sinners. And heaven would be empty. Right. but the person of Christ is that belief, and it’s not just… And if you’ll notice in the Bible, Kim, every time belief regard to Christ is mentioned, it is followed by a preposition. Belief in, believe on. Except that over in James where it says the demons believe… And they tremble. If you notice, there’s not a preposition after that. And so it’s more than this head concept. And certainly I don’t want to detract from that because I’ve said before that we need to believe God with all of our mind. And we do. Because Paul says we need the mind that is in Christ Jesus. We’ve got to turn our whole life over to him. But this lordship of Christ is something that we have issues with sometimes in our own personal life.
SPEAKER 14 :
Right. So, Judge Ginn, somebody said to me one time that the story of the Bible, because there are some things in the Old Testament, as I’ve read them, I’m like, whew, that’s a little wild. And if you pull those things out in just that particular context… It can make things hard to understand, but somebody said that the Bible, from beginning to end, as you read it, is this story of God continually pursuing man, to have a relationship with man. What would you say to that, Judge Ginn?
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, absolutely. You know, I’ve often said the Old Testament is the promise, and the New Testament is the fulfillment of that promise. But as you go, even if you study the book of Revelation, you go back and it’s chock full of things that you find in Ezekiel and Daniel and even Genesis. And so it’s so important to see that. Now, there are parts of the Bible that I don’t understand. I never will understand them. And Billy Graham was the one, I think, who said, it’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that worry me. It’s the part that I do understand that worries me. And so the Bible does tell a story, and certainly it doesn’t leave out those things which are difficult. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the proofs of the gospel. If I were one of the founders of our faith in terms of the early church fathers, I would not have written the gospels that included things that were negative about me. if I had been Peter, I would have made sure that I had left out the fact that I denied Christ three times.
SPEAKER 09 :
Interesting.
SPEAKER 08 :
And so that’s one of the proofs, and that is that they put in those things which were negative. You look at the Koran, and any of these would be gods, and there’s no negatives about it. But, you know, Christianity is honest. In fact, Jesus said to us, in this world you will have trouble. He didn’t hide that promise. He didn’t say to us, everything’s going to be hunky-dory. It’s going to be tough if you really are my follower.
SPEAKER 14 :
And, and that is, that’s so true. And so to be a follower, let’s, we have just a few minutes left to be a follower in this time. And we’ve talked, I think we’ve hit on this quite a bit here in America. Just condense this in to just about three minutes.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Uh, well, you know, I, I think that, um, um, What we were talking about earlier, let me just give you a Barna statistic. Less than 5% of the people sitting in a church pew on Sunday morning in America has a biblical worldview. And so if you don’t have a biblical worldview as a Christian, you’re in trouble. Your faith is already in trouble. Now, couple that with another statistic that says only 5% or 6% of our churches in America have an effective discipleship program. So we’re not teaching the tenets of our faith. We’re not coming alongside of people and teaching them the Great Commission of go ye therefore and make disciples. It doesn’t even say to go and do evangelism. It says go and make disciples. And so that’s one of the things that I want us to understand. The other thing that is a soft… concept of God’s a loving God and he’s going to accept you the way you are and you know it’s just so good for you to come and we’re going to let you in but I believe it was Sinclair Ferguson he’s a pastor who wrote that it’s wrong to say that God accepts us the way we are in fact it is God accepts us through Christ despite the way we are, and he doesn’t intend to leave us that way. And so we need to remember that in the American church. We need a return to biblically-based understanding of our faith, and we need to return to a discipling of individual Christians and not leaving them out there open and unprotected in a culture that will devour them if it’s possible.
SPEAKER 14 :
And we are making progress, I think, as we are shedding more and more light on what’s happening in this culture and that Christ is the answer to what we need to do. And people that believe in Christ engaging in the public square, in this battle of ideas, equipped with an understanding of our Christian faith. That’s what you do. at the Southern Evangelical Seminary, and I greatly appreciate this interview. It’s created a lot of things going through my brain. I will be ruminating on this interview quite a bit, Judge Phil Ginn.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, let me, Kim, very quickly, let me just say, I urge people to go to ses.edu. There is help there for you if you want to defend your faith, if you want to do nothing more than understand your faith better. there’s practical help going to be available for you. So go there, take a look at it, contact me. We’ll help you, anybody that wants help.
SPEAKER 14 :
And again, what’s that website?
SPEAKER 08 :
S-E-S, S-E-S dot E-D-U.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, and that stands for Southern Evangelical Seminary. Judge Filgin, thank you so much. I greatly appreciate this interview.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you, Ken. My pleasure. Let’s do it again.
SPEAKER 14 :
Let’s do it again. Our quote for the end of the show is from Charles Spurgeon, and he said this, My entire theology can be condensed into four words. Jesus died for me. And my friends, today be grateful, read great books, think good thoughts, listen to beautiful music, communicate and listen well, live honestly and authentically, strive for high ideals, and like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way. My friends, you are not alone. God bless you, and God bless America.
SPEAKER 06 :
Talking about freedom I’m talking about freedom I will fight
SPEAKER 12 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s the Kim Monson Show, analyzing the most important stories.
SPEAKER 14 :
The socialization of transportation, education, energy, housing, and water, what it means is the government controls it through rules and regulations.
SPEAKER 03 :
The latest in politics and world affairs.
SPEAKER 14 :
Under the guise of bipartisanship and nonpartisanship, it’s actually tapping down the truth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Today’s current opinions and ideas.
SPEAKER 14 :
On an equal field in the battle of ideas, mistruths and misconceptions is getting us into a world of hurt.
SPEAKER 03 :
Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
SPEAKER 14 :
Indeed, and welcome to the Kim Monson Show. Thank you so much for joining us. You’re each treasured, you’re valued, you have purpose. Today’s drive for excellence, take care of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body. My friends, we were made for this moment. And I get to work with an amazing team. That is producer Joe, producer Nicole. And Luke, Rachel, Zach, Echo, Charlie, all the people here at Crawford Broadcasting, we are an independent voice on an independent station and we search for truth and clarity by looking at these issues through the lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom. If something’s a good idea, you should not have to force people to do it. And I am so pleased and honored to have on the line with me Dr. Alan Gelso. He’s an American historian, and he serves as senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. And he formerly was a professor at the History of Gettysburg College. Dr. Gelso, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, thank you, Kim.
SPEAKER 14 :
And it’s so appropriate to have you as our first guest. The battle, which was in July, let’s see, July 1 through July 3. Now the year 1863. Am I remembering it right?
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s still 1863, yes.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay. The battle was in the summer. And I guess, first of all, let’s talk about the significance of the battle. And I guess that’s a great segue into your most recent book, Robert E. Lee, A Life. And Robert E. Lee, after the Battle of Gettysburg, can you imagine getting up and what was going through his mind on July 4 in 1863 after this battle?
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, I think it could be boiled down to one sentence, and that is, how do I get out of here? True. Because the great battle that occurs at Gettysburg on July 1, 2, and 3 of 1863 was really a major initiative of Lee’s. This was really Lee’s idea about how the Southern Confederacy, which had been carrying on this war now for a little bit more than two years, This was a piece in what Lee thought was the only really workable strategy for the Confederacy to achieve independence from the United States. Now, he reasoned this way. The Southern Confederacy, which at this point is composed effectively of 11 states of the American South that have tried to secede from the Union, Lee understood this. The South didn’t have the heft, economically, industrially, and otherwise, that the northern states had. So going into this civil war, the odds were all against the Confederacy. If the Confederacy was going to win, it was going to have to go into this heavyweight bout, trying to score a surprise knockout in the first round or two. Because if the war ground on after that, then the Confederacy would simply be worn down and worn away and would lose the war. So Lee’s reasoning is, we have to take the initiative. This Confederate Army, which he called the Army of Northern Virginia, has to jump from Virginia across the Potomac into Maryland, into Pennsylvania. And in the summer of 1863, it has to get loose in Pennsylvania, because if it does, if it can do that successfully, in fact, if it can find some way to fight a battle with the major United States forces, opposing and which is the army of the potomac his reasoning was that more than public opinion would be so fatigued at this it would be so revolted by it that they would demand of the lincoln administration better negotiations with the confederates at that point once once negotiations began really understood no one was going to go back into this this horrible fratricidal war so it leaves gambling but it’s a good gamble it’s an intelligent gamble and had a lot going for it because not only Not only is he looking at the state of mind of Northerners, he’s also looking at what’s happened at election time. Back in the preceding November, Abraham Lincoln’s party, the Republicans, had lost something like 35 seats in the House of Representatives and two key governorships in the North. Governorship of New York, the governorship of New Jersey. Well, the governorships of Pennsylvania and Ohio were up for election in the fall of 1863. Lee knows if he can show that the Lincoln administration is helpless and impotent and can’t deal with the Confederates who are invading Pennsylvania, then voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio are going to go to the polls. They’re going to elect anti-administration governors. And that means you’re going to have this central chunk of the northern states in opposition to Lincoln. And they can just fold their arms and say to President Lincoln, we’re not cooperating with this war any longer. You’re going to have to open negotiations with the Confederacy. And at that moment, really, it’s inevitable. The Confederates are going to obtain their independence. So Lee launches this invasion of Pennsylvania. And yes, there’s an element of a gamble to it, but it’s a shrewd gamble. And the really terrifying thing about this, Kim, is how very close he came to winning that gamble. Because if Lee’s army had been victorious at Gettysburg, as for two of the three days of the battle, it really was, or even if it had just been able to run willy-nilly around the Pennsylvania countryside without the Union doing very much to stump them, it would have had an incredibly destructive effect. And perhaps we would be looking at a very different kind of America today than we were looking at in 1863, or that we look at today as it really exists.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, Dr. Kelso, the Civil War, many people think that it was really a war about slavery, which ultimately that question, and it was really the question of would slavery be expanded into the new territories? That’s my understanding. That was the initial question. kind of question on that. But what Lincoln looked at it as he wanted to keep the union together. And was Lee looking more at like a states’ rights issue? Or how would you frame that?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, the causes of the American Civil War are always a lively subject of debate. And I like to get philosophical at moments like that and say, all right, let’s talk about what causes something. There’s a real sense in which sectionalism is one cause. Because if slavery had been legal, let’s say, in Minnesota and Maine and Florida and Louisiana, there would never have been a civil war, because they’re not in a position to support each other. But the states where slavery was legal were all contiguous. They all shared common borders. You could look at a map and look at those slave states, and you could say, hey, I could see that would be a functioning, viable, independent nation. So sectionalism is one. There’s another cause here, too, and that is federalism. Ours is a federal system of government. It’s states in a union under a federal constitution. But the habit of federalism led a lot of people to think that the states somehow possessed a sovereignty of their own, which, if you read the Constitution with any kind of care, you realize that’s really not the case. But many people talked themselves into believing that states had that kind of sovereignty. And so it was easy in those days then to conclude, well, if states have that kind of sovereignty, then they can walk away from the Union. I mean, if that’s not sovereignty, we don’t know what is. But then, ultimately, there’s slavery. Slavery is the one item in this equation which, if you take it out, there’s no civil war. I don’t care what the circumstances are. But put slavery back into the equation, that’s when you get civil war. So at the end of the day, if people ask me to put my finger on one thing and call it the cause of the Civil War, there’s simply no question. It was slavery. And you know the people who tell us that are the Southerners themselves. In the resolutions that their state conventions and legislatures passed at the very beginning of the Civil War in 1861, they’re all very candid about this. We’re doing this to protect slavery. Afterwards, in the years after the war, a lot of Southerners who were embarrassed by that would try to insist, well, no, no, no, no, it was about these other things. Well, yeah, to a certain degree, but not to a degree that put the issue of slavery in the shadow. If you’ve got to put your finger on one thing, it’s slavery.
SPEAKER 14 :
But many of those that fought on the southern side did not own slaves. How did they get co-opted into that?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, part of it was because you have to look carefully at what we mean by slave ownership. If you look at the southern population right on the eve of the Civil War, probably slave ownership amounts to no more than one-third of the white population of the South. That’s quite a bit, though. Yeah, that’s a But it’s actually more widespread than that, because you have to remember that slaves are not just owned by individuals. They’re also owned by families. So, in fact, you can have someone who is a junior member of a family. I’ll tell you, someone who is an 18-year-old. All right, they may not be owning slaves in their own right, but they might be part of a family that does. At that moment, suddenly the percentage of Southerners who are involved in the slave system gets a lot bigger, just in mathematical terms. And then if you look at the composition of the Southern armies, especially at Robert E. Lee’s army of Northern Virginia, a very fine analysis of this was done by a colleague of mine, Joseph Glathar, at the University of North Carolina. He analyzed the slave ownership patterns of the soldiers of Lee’s army. There, the patterns of slave ownership were actually larger than at the than the percentages in the southern population as a whole, so that the Confederate army actually had an even clearer investment in protecting slavery than you might say the population of the South as a whole. So don’t underestimate, just by doing simple numerical calculations, don’t underestimate the pervasiveness of the slave system, because many people who might not actually own a slave were involved in the slave system in a variety of ways.
SPEAKER 14 :
Wow, fascinating. We have just a couple of minutes before we go to break. Let’s just talk a little bit about your books. I mean, you’ve written a number of different books. The most recent was Robert E. Lee. But you also did a book on Gettysburg that I think is very important. And many of these books, I really highly recommend that people have them in hardback copy in their freedom libraries. Would you say that there is one book that you’ve written that stands out among the others, or would you say they’re all equal in importance?
SPEAKER 07 :
Kim, that’s like asking me which is my favorite child. I get in a lot of trouble that way. Of course, what I’m tempted to say is, oh, no, no, I regard them all equally. Therefore, your listeners should all go out and buy all of them. But the Gettysburg book is a significant book in a lot of ways. It’s a very big book. It’s about eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list when it came out back in 2013. And I would say I’m a little bit fond of it. I’m also fond of some of the stuff that I’ve done on the subject of Abraham Lincoln and my early book on Lincoln from 1999, Abraham Lincoln, Redeemer President. I suppose if I had to pick one off the line and say, That one’s my favorite. It might very likely be Redeemer President. But I have to say that right in Gettysburg was a tremendous amount of fun because I was doing it right there in Gettysburg itself. So I was talking about this great battle while being able to walk out my door and walk around over the very battlefield I was describing. And I think that gave me something of an advantage in the sense that when I was talking about the battle, I wasn’t just talking about a map and rectangles and squares moving across the map. I was actually looking at the lay of the land itself and seeing the ground as the participants in the battle had very much seen it. So that gave a particularly important attraction to the writing of that book.
SPEAKER 14 :
Fascinating. And that book is Gettysburg, The Last Invasion by Dr. Alan Gelso. And we’re having a great conversation about the Gettysburg Address. This is being broadcast on the 20th, the day after the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. And just such important conversations. We get to do this. I want to say thank you to the Harris family for their gold sponsorship of the show. And also thank you to the National Shooting Sports Foundation for their gold sponsorship of the show as well. And I am blessed to work with great people as sponsors of our show. I know each and every one of them personally and highly recommend them. And if you’ve been injured, you certainly should reach out to John Bozen and Bozen Law. You can have a complimentary phone call or appointment, initial consultation, and really appreciate what they do. But John Bozen is on the line. John, welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Good morning, Kim. And, yeah, as we celebrate our nation’s birthday, we’ve got a lot to be thankful for.
SPEAKER 14 :
We do have a lot to be thankful for. We’re in very interesting times. 250 years ago at this time, 1775, a lot was going on. The army was created. Patrick Henry gave his give me liberty or give me death speech. The battles of Lexington and Concord. So a lot was happening. And so I just wanted to get your thoughts about our independence, the Declaration of Independence.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, we’ve got, again, as I said, we’ve got so much to be thankful for that the men and the women that founded this country put everything on the line for a vision that was unique at that time to the world. And they sacrificed almost everything. They didn’t know what was going to happen, but they had this vision. And they took bold action. And when they signed, the founding fathers signed that Declaration of Independence. uh… pretty much not just declaring that that we were going to do something different uh… but they put their literally the next on the line and uh… the sacrifices they made the wisdom that they exhibited in in the declaration of independence the constitution it just gives us i mean it just so unique so special and it makes me so proud to be an american And we’ve talked about this, Kim. Now it is this generation’s time to stand up to make sure that we preserve what our forefathers did and did so well so long ago.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and we do, John Bozen. We have a duty and a responsibility. As we look back over the last 250 years, and those that have given their lives, been willing to give their lives for our liberty, which is the responsible exercise of freedom, we have a duty to preserve, conserve that. It’s certainly under attack. I think the enemy of this is more… in many ways, overt its policy and taxation, although taxation was probably the thing that was the real catalyst for the colonists as well, but fees where government becomes the king instead of we the people being able to govern ourselves, John.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve done an incredible job, 250 years coming up here. And, again, something special, never seen in the world before. And we’re going to have to fight to keep what we’ve got, no questions about it.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and that’s why we engage in this battle of ideas on a regular basis, because ideas are so powerful. America was founded on this idea, and that had never, ever happened before in the history of mankind. And that idea that all men are created equal with these rights from God of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, it’s a pretty amazing thing where everyday people can thrive and flourish. Moving over to Bozen Law. If something has happened, an injury of some sort, it would be very important for people to reach out to Bozen Law as soon as possible. And so what is that phone number for people to reach you?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, that number is 303-999-9999. And, Kim, I talk to folks every day who’ve been involved in something, got injured, got hurt because of someone’s negligence, because someone did something, didn’t do something they should have done. And to wait is to really take a lot of unnecessary risk. There’s mistakes that people make because they just don’t know how the system works. And insurance carriers thrive on people putting off a phone call, never contacting an attorney, because then they can do pretty much what they want. So I encourage folks, anything that happens, It’s a free phone call. It’s a free consultation. And the advice I give on the front end can really and often make a huge difference in the eventual outcome of a case. Folks need to call 303-999-9999.
SPEAKER 14 :
And thank you, John Bozen. Have a very blessed Independence Day. We will talk with you next week.
SPEAKER 09 :
Back at you, Kim. Keep your voice loud.
SPEAKER 04 :
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SPEAKER 14 :
And welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter. And you can email me at Kim at KimMonson.com as well. And thank you to all of you who support us. We are an independent voice on an independent station. And we search for truth and clarity by looking at these issues through the lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom. If something’s a good idea, you should not have to force people to do it. And we have prerecorded these shows and have very special guests, and we’re kicking it off with Dr. Alan Gelso. He’s an American historian, and he serves as senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton. And he was a professor at Gettysburg College as well. And he is an amazing author. His most recent book is on Robert E. Lee. He has a very important book on Gettysburg, but you can get all of his books online. You can go to his website, and that is, let me get it, it’s allengelzo.com. So it’s allengelzo.com. Dr. Gelso, before we went to break, we were talking about the book Gettysburg and that you were there. that are going out onto the battlefield. And I’ve been to Gettysburg once, and it was too fast because I really would like to spend time there. But we actually ended up – I was with my daughter. She was moving from New York to Kansas City. And so we were driving from New York to Kansas City, obviously, and we stopped in Gettysburg, and it was during the summer. And we ended up at a farm-to-table event, and there were probably – I bet there were at least 30 people at this long table there at Gettysburg. And the home was an old… I think it was an old church. It was now a home. And there was actually a pew that they had there that had blood on it from when they were bringing in soldiers to operate on them. I guess it was a hospital. I think it was a church that became a hospital. And I kind of stood there and I’m like, this is… This is something that I’m experiencing. I couldn’t quite put my hand on it, Dr. Gelso.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, during the battle, Almost every building in Gettysburg was liable to be impressed as a hospital facility of some sort. This is a battle that involves something on the order of 180,000 people. I’m talking right now just about the soldiers. 180,000 people who are either in uniform or they’re working for the armies as civilian teamsters and whatnot. All of them compressed into a square of not more than 20 miles. Gettysburg, up to this point, had been a town whose population amounted to about 2,500 people. Suddenly, almost overnight, you have this stupendous influx. And, of course, it’s not only 180 or 190,000 human beings. It’s all the horses that have to pull wagons and pull artillery. All of this now has to get compressed into this small space. And then, of course, the fighting itself begins. And the fighting is deadly. This is 19th century warfare, when everyone understood that casualty lists were going to be high. And they were. Generally speaking, we could probably say that at the Battle of Gettysburg, from both sides, something like 9,000 were killed. Maybe we can guess, and it is a guesstimate, because in the 19th century they didn’t really have terribly accurate ways of totaling these things. Probably about 4,000 to 4,500 dead on each side after three days of fighting. Take that and multiply that by anywhere from three to five times, and then you start to get a sense of the wounded. Just take it as a whole, probably about a third of each army ended up as a casualty of some sort. Well, for the wounded, where do you put them? There are no easily available hospitals. There are no ready-made facilities. So what you have to do is you have to set things up wherever you can find shelter. That means you take over houses, you take over barns, you take over churches. You take over anything with a roof, and sometimes you take over things that don’t even have a roof. And the medicine of the 19th century, this is long before they had any understanding of germs or infection. The ways of dealing with casualties, with wounds, we would regard as being almost barbaric. Because if someone is wounded, let’s say, in the arms or the legs, the only really secure treatment for that is amputation. If someone is wounded in the chest or in the abdomen, for the most part, they have to be set aside. Because the wounds are going to be fatal. They’re really going to be fatal from loss of blood, or they’re going to be fatal over a longer and more painful period of several days just from infection. And that kind of situation is enough to make our jaws drop in horror at the prospect. And yet this is going on all through the town of Gettysburg. It has to be done quickly. It has to be done hurriedly. The amputations can’t be done with, in many cases, anesthetic of any sort.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 07 :
And the amputations themselves are being done by doctors who are quite literally using saws. We would look at it and say, well, that’s what a carpenter does to deal with wood. No, that is what doctors had to deal with in the middle of the 19th century in cases like the Battle of Gettysburg. So it’s not just that one building, Kim. There are a number of places scattered all around the Gettysburg area that were impressed for use as hospitals. which have stains like that. I’ve been in one house on the battlefield, for instance, that you can readily be taken to one part of the floor, the bloodstains. Bloodstains from the amputations, from the bleeding of the wounds. Stains still there on the floorboards. And my experience has been that that can be repeated and pointed to in place after place, location after location in the Gettysburg area.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, Dr. Galzo, I have to ask this question with these amputations. I mean, the loss of blood would be so significant. What did they do to stop that?
SPEAKER 07 :
You tied the limbs off like a tourniquet, you sutured them up, and you hoped for the best. And sometimes your hope was rewarded, and sometimes it wasn’t. The way that death stalked these armies occurs often. in a proportion that we would find simply unimaginable today. But yet in the 19th century, such was the nature of medicine and medical practice. They simply didn’t have any other way of dealing with these things.
SPEAKER 14 :
Goodness. It takes my breath away as I think about that. Okay, I’ve got the next question. And this last May, it was the first time that I’d made it to Virginia, to Monticello in Montpelier. And… You said that ultimately the war came down to slavery, and Lee’s army was the Army of Northern Virginia. How is it? So we have Thomas Jefferson, who writes these beautiful words in the Declaration that all men are created equal. And that can’t match up with slavery. So how did this, that Virginia is now at war regarding slavery? Because if all men are created equal, you can’t have slavery. How would you address that?
SPEAKER 07 :
You address it by understanding that human nature follows ideals, but it also follows self-interest. And these two voices are often in competition with each other. It’s almost like the good angel and the bad angel on your shoulder whispering in your ear. The ideal was the one captured by Jefferson in his words in the Declaration of Independence. And they are great ideals. And they are true. But self-interest said, owning slaves is what makes us money. Slave labor is cheap. You don’t have to pay wages to slaves. And you can work them for as long as you like and in as many ways as you like. Slaves never go on strike. There’s no union for slaves. So self-interest enters into it. And when self-interest collides with ideals, two things will happen. The ideals will win, and people will walk away from something like slavery. That’s what we hope will happen, and indeed it did in many places in America from the Revolution to the Civil War. But in many other places, people made the other choice. They made the choice of averting their eyes. They made the choice of denial. And sometimes that choice took the form of saying, well, these people who were enslaving, they’re not really people like us. Despite the fact that they’re born and they die, they get sick, they get healthy, they have children, they have two arms, they have two legs, they have a head, they have eyes, they have a nose, they’re human. But yet you look at them and you say, well, no, no, they’re not really human, at least not human like us. And therefore, it’s legitimate for us to enslave them. That becomes the excuse that people invent. And isn’t this always the way human beings do things? When we decide we want to dispose of someone we find inconvenient, whether it’s Jews in Germany, whether it’s populations that are not wanted by larger populations, what’s the first step towards genocide, dehumanization? Convince yourself, and convince others, that these people whom you plan to do something evil to really, really don’t deserve anything more than what they’re being given because they’re not really, again, like us. And when you start to think in those terms, that is when people start to give themselves permission to do all kinds of horrible things to each other. So there are two paths. There’s the paths of the ideal, and the ideal is the one Jefferson captures in his words. But then there’s the other path of self-interest, which Jefferson, alas, captures in his behavior. and which Southerners, despite their allegiance to a nation founded on that proposition that all men are created equal, nevertheless self-interest persuaded them that they could invent a fantasy that would allow them to get away with the exact opposite of what the principles in the Declaration described.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, I think what we’ll do is we’ll go to break because I want to talk about groups. Because I see in 2023 America, if you can, as you say, define a person as not like us, and you start to put into groupthink instead of the individual, I think that’s where we get into a lot of trouble where people, humans, can inflict a lot of harm on other humans. I’m talking with Dr. Alan Gelso. And a couple of things I wanted to mention. First of all, Hooters Restaurants is a sponsor of the show. It’s a really important story how I got to know them. And that is the story of freedom and free markets and capitalism. And PBIs, I call them PBIs, politicians, bureaucrats, and interested parties, they were trying to take away the freedom of people to be entrepreneurs. It’s a really important story. You can find that at my website. But Hooters Restaurants has five locations, Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster, and Colorado Springs. And they have great specials Monday through Friday for lunch and for dinner. And I also wanted to mention A Climate Conversation, which is a documentary that I’m involved in. It is the brainchild of Walt Johnson. He’s a geophysicist, a good friend. He and his wife are friends of mine. And it was on his heart to create a documentary to have just a real conversation about this whole climate issue out there. And you can find more information and see the movie at aclimateconversation.com. And it is just asking questions in the Socratic method about this particular issue. We get to do all this because of great sponsors.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 16 :
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SPEAKER 14 :
Welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is KimMonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter. You can email me at Kim at KimMonson.com as well. Thank you to all of you who support us. We are an independent voice and we search for truth and clarity by looking at these issues through the lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom. If something’s a good idea, you should not have to force people to do it. We have prerecorded these shows and I’m really pleased to have on the line with me Dr. Alan Gelso, who teaches at Princeton University. And before we get back into the conversation, I wanted to mention the Center for American Values. It is located right here in Pueblo, Colorado. Pueblo is known as a home of heroes because there are four Medal of Honor recipients that grew up in Pueblo, Colorado. And so the center… It was founded by Medal of Honor recipient Drew Dix and Brad Padula, who’s a award-winning documentary maker. And they realized that we need to do two things, honor our Medal of Honor recipients, and then also instill in ourselves and teach our children these values of America of honor, integrity, and patriotism. So they’re putting together some great educational programs as well. You can get more information by going to the Center for American Values, and that website is AmericanValueCenter.org. I’m talking with Dr. Alan Gelso, and you can find his books at alangelso.com. That’s A-L-L-E-N-G-U-E-L-Z-O.com. And you are working on a new book, correct, Dr. Gelso? Yes.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes, in fact, I’m working on several of them simultaneously, which I suppose represents a very bad habit on my part. I write books. Maybe I should apologize for it. Maybe I should be looking for a 12-step process. Do you think I can get over this?
SPEAKER 14 :
I don’t think so. The important thing is that you finish them, and you have a record of doing that. And so what is your most recent books? What are you writing on?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I will have coming out in February a new book on Lincoln entitled Our Ancient Faith, Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment. The title is drawn from a speech Lincoln gave in Peoria, Illinois, in October of 1854, where he talks about democracy as our ancient faith. He talks about the Declaration of Independence. capturing that ancient faith. So the book is really about what Lincoln had to say on the subject of democracy in its various aspects, like elections, like majority rule, like toleration, like natural law and morality, and the role that all of these play in the making and perpetuation of democracy.
SPEAKER 14 :
Fascinating. Wow. And so 1854, is that early in his political career? He’d been in politics for a few years? When was that exactly?
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, he’d been in politics for 20 years before that. And it hadn’t turned out all that particularly well for him either, because he gets into the state legislature in 1834, and he has four very fulfilling terms in the state legislature. But then he, in the 1840s, runs for the United States House of Representatives. He gets elected. But his term in office is a very disappointing one. He is a member of the Puig Party. That means, first of all, he’s in the minority. But secondly, it means he puts himself in opposition to President James Polk, who at that point was conducting the war in Mexico. And Lincoln has to stand up and criticize Polk, which means that brings out on his head a lot of criticism for not adequately supporting the Mexican war. And he doesn’t run for re-election. And he goes home to Illinois. And as he said in an autobiographical sketch that he wrote, he really had given up on politics. He didn’t really see much of a future for him after this in politics. And then suddenly in 1854, he gets back on the stage. It’s like Abraham Lincoln 2.0. And the reason he does it is because in 1854, Congress passed the so-called Kansas-Nebraska Act, which, for the first time in Lincoln’s political life, made possible the introduction of legalized slavery into the Western Territories. And he looked at that and said, if that’s going to be a possibility in the Western Territories, then that means eventually slavery is going to take over the whole country, including his own home state of Illinois, which at that point was a free state. There was no slavery in Illinois. And this is what propels Lincoln back into the political forefront. He gives the great speech at Peoria in October of 1854, and he talks about our ancient faith. And from that point, Kim, he follows a trajectory upwards which will, six years later, lead him to election as the 16th president of the United States.
SPEAKER 14 :
Wow. Remarkable. And the fact that he grew up in basically a cabin and read by candlelight, but he read important books. At the end of my show, I say, read great books. We have choices to make with what we do each day, each hour, each minute. We have choices. That’s a beautiful thing about living in America, that we’re free to make those choices. But we need to make choices now. I think that propel us to be our best selves. And the fact that he was just an avid reader. I run into people all the time and as avid readers of great books, I love conversations with them, Dr. Geldo.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, you would love a conversation with Lincoln then, because this was a man who, all right, on the one hand, he has next to nothing in the way of what you could call formal education. He once estimated that he went to school probably when he added it all up to not more than a year’s worth of basic education. And yet he has this voracious appetite for reading and for learning. And he said his best friend would be the person who would lend him a book. And he read tremendously. Years later, his law partner, William Henry Herndon, actually made up a list of books that Lincoln kept in his law office. You go down that list, Kim, and these are all the major writers of the 19th century. We’re talking here not just easy marquee names. We’re talking about the authors of books on political economy, of books on philosophy. And to a series of volumes that came out as an annual on new horizons in science in the 1850s. And he ate these things up. There was no subject on which he would not show a curiosity. Someone at one point challenged him. They said, well, we want to describe you in a political biography as someone who has read geometry. And Lincoln’s response was, well, I haven’t actually read all that much, so let me go up and get the book, and then I will read it. So all you had to do was challenge him. And if there was a book that people were reading or a book that he thought would be important and would expand his horizons, he would not only read it, but he would master the book because he had a terrific memory. Not perhaps quite what we’d call a photographic memory, but something very close to it. He would read things over once, twice, maybe three times. He’d have them. He could quote them. He could quote huge stretches of Shakespeare, of other English poets of the 18th century. And people were astonished at that because they would think, well, this man didn’t really have much in the way of education. He never went to college. Where did he learn all this? Well, he learned it on his own hook. And as I say, people would be amazed when, given a moment, he would simply launch into a long recitation from Shakespeare.
SPEAKER 14 :
My next question is, how did he learn to read? Because out here in Colorado, we just recently had an election, and I had a number of school board candidates on the show. And some of the percentages they were telling me of kids that were proficient in reading was like 30% of the kids are proficient in reading. That means that 70% are not. And we’re spending big bucks on this. I said, I want my money back. Every child… should be able to read. So how did he learn to read with no formal education?
SPEAKER 07 :
He probably was taught at home. Because on the other side of the Appalachians, when he was growing up on the western side of the Appalachians, which in those days, that was what people called the West. When we talk about the West today, we’re usually talking about, well, Pueblo, Colorado. But back in Lincoln’s day, the West was Kentucky. The West was Illinois. Growing up, there were no public school systems at all. So people learned, if they were going to learn anything, they were going to learn at home. And their parents were going to teach them how to read. And the neighborhood was going to afford them exposure to books. And it was going to happen in that fashion because it wasn’t until much later in Lincoln’s life that you begin to see the organization of public education in the states on the western side of the Appalachians. For Lincoln, it all has to begin at home. It has to begin at his mother’s knee. And starting from there, he moves ever relentlessly upwards in his mastery of books. And he has a very healthy respect for education and for reading, and he advises people. Everything that we know in the world can be understood by reading. Reading is what unlocks all the riches of the world. That, for him, was a rule he lived by.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and I really think that, I mean, we have so much that is thrown at us in the society now. And again, we need to make choices with what we do. And certainly reading for leisure is great. But there’s stuff out there now, Dr. Gelso, that is just junk. How would you address that with your students?
SPEAKER 07 :
By telling them that there is such a thing as junk in print. And actually, there is a great deal more of that junk on screens. And my advice to them, I can’t say that everyone takes it, but my advice to them would be, find the books. Not the screens. Find the books. Because the books are what open up the world to you. Someone who is looking at something on a screen is entirely passive. They can be nothing more than what is on the screen. A book, a book explodes the mind. A book gives you access to realities that you can’t touch. It gives you alternative universes you can inhabit. A book will move you to do things that a screen can never even come close to doing. So a book, well, Emily Dickinson, a contemporary of Lincoln’s, once wrote a poem about how a book was like a frigate that could take you all around the world, over lands, overseas. And I haven’t myself found anything to fault with. With that opinion, even though I’m a century and a half beyond both Dickinson and Lincoln, for me, books were what opened up the world. Reading was what opened up all kinds of opportunities, all kinds of vistas. Reading is, in some respects, the ultimate subversive activity. Because what else do tyrants want to do, first off? They want to control what people read. They want to control their media. They want to control their books. They want to burn books if they don’t particularly like them. Reading… Reading turns people’s minds to questioning. That’s why in Orwell’s 1984, it’s books which have to go down the memory hole because books are dangerous. I remember the publication in the 1970s of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. And when the volumes of it came out one by one in English, I would buy them. I was a college student then. And I would buy them. I would take them home. I would set myself up. Almost felt like I should put on a jacket and tie to read them. But you read them, and suddenly the whole fictitious world that had been created by the Soviets and the Soviet Union. All of that fell to pieces. I remember there was a comment that was made by Bernard-André Lévy, the French philosopher, a political philosopher, in which he said, Solzhenitsyn simply spoke and the scales fell from our eyes. And he was talking about reading Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. More even than weapons of war, bombs, economic strategies, it was Solzhenitsyn’s book that spelled the end of the Soviet Union. And reading that For me, that was a liberating experience. And reading has always been a liberating experience, as it was for Lincoln. He once described it in these terms. He was on his inaugural tour from Illinois to Washington. He stopped in Trenton, New Jersey, to speak to the New Jersey Senate. And being there in Trenton, he said, my mind is often revolved back. to the scene of the Battle of Trenton and the Revolution. And I’ve often asked myself, what those soldiers in the Revolution, what were they really fighting for? Was it just separation from the mother country? No, they were fighting for something more. They were fighting for an idea, for a principle. And it’s an idea and a principle which is common to everyone around the world. And he said, how did I learn about this? I learned about this because as a schoolboy, I read a biography of Washington describing the Battle of Trenton. Now picture this, Kim. Here is a boy way out in Kentucky or Indiana when he’s reading this. Here’s a boy reading about the Battle of Trenton. And that boy, years later, as president of the United States, is drawing a bright line from a book that he read as a boy to the principles that he would give his life defending as president of the United States. If that doesn’t illustrate the importance of reading, I have a hard time imagining what would.
SPEAKER 14 :
Dr. Gelso, I just got chills on that. I’m talking with Dr. Alan Gelso. We get to do these conversations because of great sponsors like Lauren Levy.
SPEAKER 15 :
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SPEAKER 14 :
Welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. Be sure and check out our website. That is KimMonson, M-O-N-S-O-N.com. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter, and you can email me at Kim at KimMonson.com as well. Thank you to all of you who support us. We are an independent voice on an independent station, and we search for truth and clarity by looking at these issues through the lens of freedom versus force, force versus freedom. If something’s a good idea, you should not have to force people to do it. I did want to mention Janssen Photography. Great entrepreneurs, Glenn and Mary Janssen, have been in business for a long time creating memories for people. whether or not it is portraits of families or of children, portraits of your senior student, or if you need that great photo for your business or political career, Jansen Photography is the place to go. That website is Jansen, J-A-N-S-S-E-N, photography.com. We’ve prerecorded the shows for this week with very special guests. I love it because then we have extra time. And we’re talking with Brad Miller, who is my instructor at IPAC-EDU.org on a great course, Literature as Resistance. Ultimately, how to resist totalitarianism is the bottom line on that. And it’s not too late to sign up. And so you can do that at IPAC-EDU.org. It’s super reasonable, and it is so great. It really gets, just like this interview, getting your brain working. And so that is so, so important. Brad Miller, this course is fascinating. And the stand that you took… as being in the Army as a colonel and actually resigning right before retirement is such an amazing story. And it’s a story that needs to be heard. And how can people find out more about you?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah, thanks for asking that, Kim. So, the two easiest places to find me are at my Substack, which is just my name, bradmiller10.substack.com. So, again, that’s bradmiller10.substack.com. And also, I’m on YouTube, you know, until they kick me off, which may happen at some point. But if you just go to YouTube and you search bradmiller10.substack, The videos that I’ve started making as well will come. Those will come up. So in either place, it’s BradMiller10, and it should come up on YouTube and Substack.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, and again, highly recommend that you check that out, and would love to have you join us in our course as well. We’ve been talking about, well, we went through the course offerings, the books that we’re reading, and the Hegelian dialectic, which basically can create a problem, and then there’s the reaction to the problem, and then the solution can many times be already determined, and how that’s relating to the Delphi technique. I’ve learned a lot, so I’m just trying to step back and be a person hearing this for the first time. This is the last segment on this. How do you want to unpack this so that people can understand it just as a little simpler as they’re thinking about it?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah, so what I would say is that whether it’s with the dialectic or the Delphi technique, both of these are legitimate in their own way. It’s just that when networks of powerful people have decided to use either the dialectic view or the use of the Delphi technique to manipulate people, that’s, of course, when it becomes problematic. So for us, what that means is important for us to do is realize when our mode of thinking and therefore our actions change. is being constrained to a very narrow set of viewpoints or a very narrow set of acceptable actions, that’s when we may have to ask ourselves, what kind of techniques are being used to manipulate my opinions and or my actions? And then how can I respond to be able to break out of this? So, for example, we were speaking about how the Delphi technique can be used a lot of times in these different types of meetings where some sort of, let’s say, some sort of city planning project has already been decided upon. However, the opinions of the public are solicited, and yet when you show up and you’re engaging in these discussions, you feel like you’re not being heard or you feel like your opinion is only acceptable as long as it’s within a narrow set of topics that you’re allowed to address.
SPEAKER 14 :
So I have an example that I was thinking when I was on city council. We had a little neighborhood library that the people in my community, we loved. People walked to it. Kids walked to it. But the library district and the city planners and the politicians wanted to have a big, big library that more people would – we’d have to drive to it. And, of course, there’s all the different arguments around driving, walking. There’s all that out there. But I suggested that perhaps we keep this library for this community and then have the other as well. But they would have none of that. And so they did a listening tour. They solicited from people. And what was amazing is down at the library, our community library, they put up a poster and said, what would you suggest that this building be used for? Because the city said they were going to purchase it from the library district. And what did you want it to be? And on that piece of paper, the number one answer was keep it as a library. But in the report given to us by staff, which was about 50-some pages long, that was not noted until like on page 45 or something like that. So as I was going through the packet, I’m like, oh, people want to keep this. So I asked that question of staff when they made the presentation, and they said, oh, well, that was not an option. I thought, oh, isn’t that interesting? Yeah.
SPEAKER 17 :
Right, yeah, imagine that. And the way in which a lot of that is done, so when you look at the way in which the Delphi technique is used, perhaps legitimately, as a decision-making or forecasting tool in the corporate world, the way in which it’s done is A group of experts are fed different questions to which they respond anonymously. And that’s so that they don’t bias each other or that one person’s opinion because of their position within the company is not necessarily ranked above the opinions of others. So there may be some legitimate reasons to do that in the corporate world when it’s used in a real way. But a lot of times in this type of industry, of situation a lot of times these questions are fed via these surveys and you answer again anonymously and you may be picking um a response that a lot of other people are picking as well and it may be the most popular response but then they will lead you to believe that your response which may have been the most popular was not the most popular or was an outlier opinion that’s what they may lead you to believe again because of the anonymous nature in which the questions are asked and the responses are noted so there are a lot of these different types of techniques that they can do If you have an undesirable opinion, they can kind of corral you in the direction that they want you to go while allowing you to believe that your input is valued.
SPEAKER 14 :
Brad Miller, this is so antithetical to the way our country is supposed to work, though. I mean, we got to our declaration, our Constitution, because of real debate. People really kicking tires on the ideas and real debate and with a real, I think, a virtuous goal in mind as well. And so this whole thing being used in government, I think it’s antithetical to our American idea.
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. The reason that we debate, even when debates get heated, is because whichever side you may find yourself on, or even if you don’t agree with either side in a particular debate, by debating, we expect… better position to emerge. In fact, that would actually be a completely legitimate use of the dialectic because the dialectic can be used legitimately in a debate or in a courtroom trial where you have two sides that are in opposition to one another. And then through the interplay of those two oppositional sides, the hope is that what emerges, what is the synthesis that emerges? Well, it’s the truth. So debate can absolutely be used. And when you engage in debate, When you’re arguing against someone else’s position, you are sharpening each other’s understanding, regardless of which position you may hold. So debates are completely legitimate. And whenever you feel like legitimate debate is not being held, you have to ask yourself if you believe that your opinions are being manipulated or if you believe that your thoughts are being shaped in a previously contrived direction.
SPEAKER 14 :
OK, fascinating. We’ve got probably about four minutes left and I know it’s not really enough time, but we’ve gone through the whole reaction to covid. And now we’re looking at that, hopefully in the rear view mirror. But what do you think we learned as a country? I mean, I’m seeing people that that, you know, kind of bought into the whole covid thing that first time. But now they’re like, no, no, no, no. So I think a lot of people are waking up. What do you think, Brad?
SPEAKER 17 :
I think yes and no. I think some people have woken up and they are not going to go back to sleep. And then I think, sadly, other people have woken up and they’re already starting to fall back asleep. And I would urge people, if COVID was what kind of pushed you to wake up, be in that first group. When you wake up now, don’t fall back asleep and start making other connections, because you’ve got to ask yourself, the government that is powerful enough to foist COVID and the reaction to COVID upon us, which very much followed the problem-reaction-solution model, They are power. This is not a one and done thing. They are going to continue to try and manipulate us in the moving directions they want society to go. And we’ve got to be awake to it. And we have to understand the tools and the techniques they use in order to manipulate us.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, that’s why your voice is so important. And again, where can people find you, Brad Miller?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yeah. So again, you can find me at my Substack, which again is bradmiller10.substack.com. And then you can also find me on my YouTube. If you just go to YouTube and search bradmiller10, then my videos will come up. And I write quite a bit, just my thoughts about anything and everything. And the same with the videos I’ve started to make as well.
SPEAKER 14 :
And again, you’re instructing this great course at IPAC-EDU.org, where we’re going through all of this dystopian literature. It’s a course that’s going to end up about 21 different meetings. And we’re in, gosh, what, number seven, probably close? Seven? Are we that far? That’s right.
SPEAKER 17 :
Go ahead. I was just going to say, yeah, the classes are held on Thursday nights via Zoom. But if you missed class or if you’re just joining in now, you can always catch up on the previous recordings.
SPEAKER 14 :
And absolutely. And we must remain vigilant and sharpen our brains and understand what’s going on. And Brad Miller is certainly doing that for many of us. And we’d love to have you all join us. So, Brad Miller, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. I thank you for joining us for this very important interview. And we’ll have more conversations.
SPEAKER 17 :
Thank you so much. I appreciate being on, Kim, and happy Thanksgiving to you as well.
SPEAKER 14 :
And my friends, these are such important conversations. And our quote for the end of the show is from JFK, talking about gratitude. He said, as we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. So my friends today, be grateful, read great books, think good thoughts, listen to beautiful music, communicate and listen well, if honestly and authentically strive for high ideals, and like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way. My friends, you are not alone. God bless you, and God bless America.
SPEAKER 12 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
