A Show of Faith
Millennial, Priest, Minister, and Rabbi walk into a radio station...
A Show of Faith
May 18, 2025 Holy Rules or School Fools? The Texas Ten Commandments Debate
The boundary between religious tradition and indoctrination takes center stage as we tackle Texas Senate Bill 10—a controversial measure requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom across the state.
Our conversation begins with a delightful detour as Rudy shares the publication of his new book, "Lasting Scars," giving us a glimpse into the challenges of writing and publishing. But soon we dive into deeper waters, examining the fundamental question: when does teaching become indoctrination, and who has the right to shape young minds?
The Ten Commandments debate proves to be a fascinating lens through which to view larger cultural tensions. While these ancient precepts have undeniably influenced Western law and ethics, our panel questions whether simply posting them without context serves any real educational purpose. As Rabbi Federow pointedly observes, "Putting up a nice little sign, no matter how vitally important the verses are, is not going to change anything. It's virtue signaling."
We explore thorny questions of implementation: Which translation would be used? How would explicitly religious commandments be presented in secular schools? Would teachers have the knowledge or training to facilitate meaningful discussions?
One of our panelists suggests that perhaps the ideal outcome would be sparking conversations between parents and children, creating opportunities for families to discuss these profound moral issues together.
The discussion broadens to examine Project 2025 and the larger pattern of competing worldviews struggling to shape American culture. Whether from religious conservatives or secular progressives, these efforts reflect a more profound anxiety about who gets to define our shared values. One panelist wisely notes, "When dialogue ends, so does peace"—a reminder that thoughtful conversation across differences remains our best hope for navigating these complex waters.
What might seem like a simple matter of putting moral principles on a wall reveals itself to be a profound question about the future of American pluralism. Join us for this thought-provoking exploration of faith in the public square.
There's something happening here.
Speaker 2:What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there.
Speaker 3:Telling me what I got to beware.
Speaker 1:I think it's time we stop. Children what's that?
Speaker 2:sound Everybody. Look what's going down. There's bad lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speak in their minds Getting so much resistance from behind Every time we stop.
Speaker 1:hey, what's that sound?
Speaker 4:Everybody look what's going down?
Speaker 5:Welcome to A Show of Faith where a professor, priest, millennial and rabbi discuss theology, philosophy, morality, ethics and anything else of interest in religion. If you have any response to our topics or any comments regarding what we say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at ashowoffaith1070 at gmailcom. Ashowoffaith1070 at gmailcom. You can hear our shows again and again by listening. Pretty much everywhere podcasts are heard. Professor David Capes is our Baptist minister, director of academic programming for the Lanier Theological Library.
Speaker 1:Stuart, good to have you back, man.
Speaker 5:Great to be back. Our priest is Father Mario Arroyo, retired pastor of St Cyril of Alexandria, the 10,000 block of Westheimer, but he can't be with us tonight. Rudy Kohn is our millennial. He's a systems engineer, master's degree in theology from the University of St Thomas and a published author.
Speaker 1:Arthur yes.
Speaker 5:David, you've got what 20, 30 books out. You should know I are a published Arthur.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations to Rudolph Kong. I saw his book earlier today.
Speaker 5:I haven't had a chance to take a look at it, but it looked really quite delightful.
Speaker 1:It's a romance. It looked really quite delightful.
Speaker 3:It's a romance it's, I guess. So it's kind of a bit of romance, sort of family fiction, but based on it's not like you know, aliens and this kind of stuff. It's a fiction based on real life, if you will.
Speaker 5:Historical novel, would you call it.
Speaker 3:No, not so much.
Speaker 5:No.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:Is it based on your family, Rudy? I mean, what's this?
Speaker 3:No, it's not. Well, it's interesting because I read a book a while ago and the book is pretty straightforward. It's called how to Write and one of the things it talks about is that some of the best writing comes about from even fictional writing comes about from personal stories or personal experiences, if you will, that you can kind of mold and shape accordingly. So, for example, if I wanted to describe to you a unicorn, I could tell you what a horse looks like by describing a horse, because I've seen a horse, and then let your imagination imagine the horn, and then that's where you kind of let the fiction kind of come in. And that's where you kind of let the fiction kind of come in.
Speaker 3:But I did a lot of work with youth and I know Father Mario would be my backup here to confirming this. But at St Cyril we had a program for essentially youth ministry and young adult ministry and I was very blessed and I got to share with a lot of teenagers and one of the things that was actually one of the most difficult things to hear was their testimonies where they would share oh, rabbi and David, just all kinds of, just great things but also terrible things, but also terribly great things. I don't know if I'm making sense, but you just heard everything. So some of it is personal experience, some of it is things I mean. At the end of the day, it's all kind of personal experience, things that I've listened to, I've heard, I've participated in, but it's not necessarily anything particular that happened to me.
Speaker 5:But, rudy truly, the best writing is what a person is most familiar with, something you know well and therefore your book is probably great.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, ravel. Thank you, yeah, I appreciate it and and I mean I I wouldn't say, you guys are necessarily my audience you know, but probably not no, no, well, that would be just three books, I mean, would be for you.
Speaker 5:So rudy, what's a?
Speaker 1:bigger, bigger audience than that man.
Speaker 5:Rudy, what's the name of your book?
Speaker 3:The book is called Lasting Scars. Lasting Scars.
Speaker 5:Lasting Scars.
Speaker 3:Scars, right? Okay, it's available on Amazon on Kindle and paperback and you can search it by my name, my full name, rodolfo O'Kong, or Lasting Stars. It'll pull up. And it's actually quite interesting because people I mean writing is difficult and you guys have authored books too. I mean you is difficult and you guys have authored books too. You kind of have to be in a zone, you have to be kind of in the mood. I would say Sometimes you're not, but you still write. But I would also say a lot of what I learned too is the entire publishing process. I mean, there's a manuscript. You have to develop one format for the e-book, one format for the for for the print book. You got to look at covers, the sizing, the like it's a whole world. It's a whole world. So one challenge really is is the writing, and you guys could talk infinitely more about this too.
Speaker 3:But, um, yeah, the other aspect is the actual publishing yeah, the first stage of it is writing the manuscript and then after that there's a lot.
Speaker 1:But the other aspect is the actual publishing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first stage of it is writing the manuscript and then after that there's a lot of work that has to go into it. So the manuscript might be done. In one case of one of my books it was one year and then two years later it was published because there was still two years worth of work after the manuscript was complete. But yeah, it's a long process, both for you and the publisher as well. Congratulations, rudy. That's great and I look forward to seeing a copy, a signed copy, from you and my team oh Lord In your hands.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, in my hands, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, the next time you go to texas, you got to bring, bring a copy at that point now now father mario is. I hear he's on a place called rogue island right now. Is that correct, rogue island? He's some island that's gone, rogue. I'm not sure what that's about, stuart, do you know?
Speaker 5:Actually I'm not sure, no, Okay.
Speaker 1:You said you were rogue because it was your former stomping ground.
Speaker 5:Oh, yes, it's my stomping ground, but I don't know what he's doing up there.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. I was just kidding, by the way, about rogue island. It was road island. No, no, rogue was just kidding, by the way, about Rogue Island. It was Road.
Speaker 5:Island. No, no, Rogue is probably more accurate, but yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's great to be with you guys tonight. Now, tonight, rudy, you're the show director all the way from Guatemala All the way from. Guatemala. You're still in Guatemala, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm still here. I'm still working on this project. It's a multi-year project. So, yeah, we actually I'm hoping to be in the States soon. I'm really waiting. If anybody of our audience know anybody in the USCIS office of the United States, and if you can help my wife's case along to get a visa, I'd appreciate it. But it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing getting all this done. But, yeah, hopefully that'll be be in soon and we can go visit you guys, that'll be great.
Speaker 1:So what are we? What are we discussing tonight? Rudy, kind of introduce it. I know you're going to break in just a few minutes, but uh, yeah yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:So, um, not sure if you guys have a lot of stuff going on in the news, and I came across this article that talks about something that has been happening in the Texas house, and Texas is an interesting state, it's a great state. I love Texas and for a long time including I went to public school when I was younger there has been, as of late, if you will, a great push to take out a lot of the sort of dod language from anything and everything that is in schools. And I came across this article that talks about a particular bill. It's a Texas Senate bill right now where it is trying to mandate SB 10, which is trying to mandate the 10 commandments in public schools, so it's going to require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, and so I found that.
Speaker 3:You know, I found that interesting because we've had a lot of discussions, I think, about this right and sort of the role in government, especially back when Biden and the transition to Trump, and I wanted to essentially bring up two articles the Texas Senate bill and another another sort of project, and this other article that talks about Project 2025. Now, this isn't something relatively new, but it's something that's been heavily criticized, especially by Democrats, especially by atheists, in probably the last year, year and a half, as something that looks to essentially restructure the federal government and emphasize what they call Christian nationalist principles. Right, so for this show I wanted to talk about, look fundamentally and really I've been kind of spending the day working this out in my head and this is kind of what I want to talk to you guys about is I'm a cradle Catholic, okay, and when I sit down and I think about this Rago, I mean you were born into a Jewish household.
Speaker 5:Yes, I guess you'd call me a cradle Jew.
Speaker 3:A cradle Jew David, you're a cradle Baptist right or a cradle?
Speaker 1:Protestant, if you will. I mean no, not really.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, maybe we could talk a little bit about each of us, because I mean, in Protestantism it's understood that a person makes a decision, and this is kind of the key thing is that a person makes a decision of faith, makes a profession of faith. So even though your family may be a Christian family, a Christian origin, that doesn't mean your family in a sense, that you were brought up that way. I mean, it could well be that that's the case, but not everybody is Some people, but the focus is not so much on were you born into this.
Speaker 1:It's more a matter of have you professed your faith.
Speaker 3:Right, and as Catholics and Jews, there is particular ceremonies too that we go through, where we publicly profess our faith too. But I would say, at least for my experience, I was—I mean, when I look at what essentially indoctrination—so it refers to the process of teaching individuals to accept a set of beliefs. Right, so it involves imparting specific ideologies. Now, that, to me, is exactly what my parents did, especially my mom when I was younger. Right, when I was younger, my mother wasn't asking me when I had a fever oh, do you want to take Tylenol? She just gave me the Tylenol, right, she didn't ask me, do you?
Speaker 3:want to go to church, you know, you just go to church and this is what you do. She didn't ask me, you know, do you want to steal that? No, you're not going to steal this right. You're not going to take from somebody else, you're not going to act unjustly right to a certain belief principle. So I think there's a line and, of course, indoctrination it's been manipulated, but I think to a large degree there is a type of let's call it traditional indoctrination that happens and that can happen in a loving way that I think still respects the sort of the truth of that ideology and when you can engage it critically, especially with your children and between parents.
Speaker 3:And so I want to kind of extrapolate that a little bit too to what's going on in the Senate House. And see, you know, fundamentally and this country is, look, the Ten Commandments are ingrained, ingrained into our law, into our civil law and criminal law, right, I mean, it's just how this entire country and for a long time across the entire really history of humanity, has worked right. So to have these Ten Commandments. And one of the things that I think I have the most, or people have the most issue with, is maybe the First Commandment, because a lot of the Ten Commandments, if you look. I know we have to go to a break, but, for example, no atheist is going to tell you is going to want to live in a society where people are free to steal, or people are free to commit murder, or people are free to cover each other's wives, and and so I think we take a lot of things for granted. But but again, to what degree does that entail us to? Let's call it indoctrinated or push that even at public schools, right?
Speaker 5:We're supposed to maintain the issue, I think and we'll have to talk about this when we come back but it's who's doing the educating, who's doing the tradition, and if the people doing it don't really have the right to do it, that's when it becomes indoctrination. You know the act is the same trying to get people to you know, believe and follow your way of thinking. You know, parents do it to children, thank God. Usually. You know, everybody tries to do it during the election period. But the people doing it have the right and they're not overextending their power. But we're going to have to come back and talk about this. This is a show of faith on AM 1070. The answer will be right back.
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Speaker 5:On am 10, 7 the answer. So I think it's. I think it's who does the teaching? Who who does the uh? In this case, you know who's responsible for putting up the Ten Commandments. I think that's what determines if it's indoctrination or not. By the way, part of me believes this is nothing but virtue signaling, because I'm not quite sure that a thing on the wall, even if it's the Ten Commandments, is going to have a great effect on the students and make them more moral is going to have a great effect on the students and make them more moral.
Speaker 3:I would probably agree with that right, Just putting that up there without any type of instruction or discussion, or discussion or comparison, or you know.
Speaker 5:There are so many problems with it but they're so moot because it's going to be a plaque on the wall that nobody really does anything with. You know what translation they're going to use, in some ways, the Ten Commandments I would call the most mistranslated, misrepresented, misunderstood collection of verses in the Bible.
Speaker 1:Wow Okay.
Speaker 5:I mean, you know there.
Speaker 1:No, and Rudy, I think you're right. You know nobody's going to say, hey, let's everybody advocate for stealing and murdering and these kinds of things bearing false witness. But the first four of the commandments are expressly religious. I mean, but tickling on pretending, excuse me, depending upon how they're translated and depending upon how they're numbered, the first four or five are very, very religious in their, in their affect, because it begins by in the Jewish reckoning, I am the Lord, your God, I am the God of your ancestors.
Speaker 5:right, yeah, it's a very specific name of a very specific God to a very specific people. You know people neglect that the, even if they call it the preamble. What sets up the Ten Commandments as the Ten Commandments is who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage? I think that's an explicit, limited expression to the Jews. It's not talking about I don't know what Europeans or Christians, or it's the first line verse 2 of Exodus 20, is. Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, is a reference to a specific people who were in Egypt in bondage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you make a good point. Go ahead, Rob.
Speaker 1:When you get to honor your father and your mother. You know, I mean, some people might want to question that, exactly what that means and how it's supposed to be interpreted. But by and large I think people are going to, you know, think that parental honoring of children, both in the prime of life and old age, makes plenty of sense. But I do think that the barriers, the first four commandments, at least, you know when it says remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy. And how do you do that?
Speaker 1:by doing no work on the Sabbath.
Speaker 5:And define work, and who exactly? That's why I call it virtue signaling. Oh, look at us, we're putting the Ten Commandments on the wall. We'll make the whole world much more holy and religious. No, we won't.
Speaker 3:You know, this kind of. One of the points that I want to talk to as well and I know we have to throw another quick break is look, to a large degree, I think. I think it's important that all of us play by the same rules, right? So what does that mean? Is that we can all adhere to what what I would at least understand is is a natural law. Okay, now, the derivation of that natural law we can. You know, that's probably a discussion for a different show, but we can all sort of agree, like David was saying, do not murder, do not commit, do not steal.
Speaker 3:Now there's a big push, and has always been a big push, for these.
Speaker 3:Let's call them cultural values, and I would say, especially within Christians, right, and we can talk about this more, but even to some degree right, with all religions.
Speaker 3:You look at Islam now and what it's kind of trying to push forward and ingrain culturally, and what it's kind of trying to push forward and ingrain culturally, every sort of culture wants to in some way be. How do you say? I don't want to say dominant, but if you believe that you have a pill that can cure, that can help with your fever, I want everybody to be able. You know that can help with your fever. I want everybody to be able. You know, if I genuinely believe that, then I want everybody to at least know that this pill exists so that you can take it right. And I think, culturally we find that people trying to push that let's call it pill, the red pill, in all different aspects of our culture, which we see, just like you're doing now, and I do agree with what you're saying it is a bit of a virtue signaling by some people, right, maybe it's even just a way to get media attention right. It's just kind of.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's the virtue, signaling part of it. All right, we do have to go to a break. This is the Show of Faith.
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Speaker 5:Welcome back to A Show of Faith. On AM1070 Answer.
Speaker 3:So, rudy, you were saying Okay, so there's been culturally and we're talking about sort of this Texas state bill right that looks to put the Ten Commandments on a wall in every school, and I agree with you, rabbi, that it is showboating. But historically, this sort of cultural push right to enact the Ten Commandments, I mean, for God's sake, it's what essentially did away with the, with the slave trade Right. It wasn't until the British started bombing the. What was it?
Speaker 3:Lagos and Algiers and literally had to bomb the slave trade out because of this belief, that this belief that is derived from these commandments right. So there's been, and historically, a lot of very tangible actions that have led to the betterment and an improvement of the quality of life of people.
Speaker 5:And there's no question of it, although I'm not quite sure those specific ten, how they would directly relate to slavery. There are other characteristics, other verses that would. But the issue becomes who's doing the teaching, who's passing down the morals and ethics and traditions, and what ulterior purpose might they have? You know, parents are supposed to be doing this, schools Not so sure. And just putting it up on the wall, as we said, I'm not sure how effective that'll be.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things, rudy, that you shared had to do with the difference between indoctrination and tradition. Right, and there was an interesting definition there that you had. I don't have it right in front of me, but essentially it meant that teaching people to accept something in an uncritical way, and so I think that's where you could escape the charge of indoctrination by saying, okay, we're going to be putting these Ten Commandments up in school houses, school rooms across the country sorry, across the state of Texas and then we are going to be discussing them and we're going to ask people. We're going to bring in some experts that can help us understand these from a Christian perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, I'm saying from a Jewish perspective.
Speaker 1:You know, bring in a rabbi, bring in a Christian professor, bring in somebody from a completely different religious tradition and talk about these and don't ask them to accept them uncritically. Ask them to think about these things and to wonder and to ponder whether culture is better off with them or without them, and I think you could ask those kinds of questions and you could move it from being just a simple matter of indoctrination. We're going to show both this and signal virtue. Signal, as Rabbi has said, or we're going to let these ideas percolate and we're going to see how they have informed us historically, socially, religiously, etc.
Speaker 5:I think there are ways of moving it from just a simple indoctrination to a truly good educational benefit for people, and David, I would agree with you, but there's a lot that has to precede that, Like I don't know a good translation If they're going to start out with thou shalt not kill, that's a problem.
Speaker 1:Well, I realize that that's a problem. Well, I realize that, and so you would need to come up with, and make use of, a translation of those.
Speaker 5:That would be a good, solid translation from the Hebrew text into English and acceptable to a wide variety of denominations and faiths, but the bill but here's the thing You're not going to get equanimity of translation on that. Even for the.
Speaker 1:Ten Commandments. Well, even for the Ten Commandments, you might get 80% of the people who would agree on something like that, but there may be some people that would quibble over this or that. I think you just have to give a good solid English translation or Spanish translation in some cases for the class.
Speaker 3:You know, I like that where, if it was set up in a way, for example, where, okay, we're going to put up the Ten Commandments and if the state with that maybe gave a packet, for example, for kids, because these are public schools, right, but you're going to put it up where a kindergartner sees this, somebody in first grade versus somebody in high school, right? I mean, you're talking very different, very different sort of aspects of an educational capacity too, right. So to just kind of make a blade sense, now, part of me and this is kind of where I wanted to play a little bit of devil's advocate but sometimes these difficult conversations or these conversations are better had, if you will, if my kid sees this and he says, mom, you know what I saw in school today, somebody put up the Ten Commandments. So that provides an opening in their space and hopefully this is the outcome. Right is where parents can step in and do some of this work. Right, where they're teaching and where they're talking about this.
Speaker 3:So you know, I want to be an optimist about it and say that it's opening up space culturally within kids themselves too. Right, because it's important the sort of peer-to-peer relationships that a lot of these high schools, middle schools, elementary school kids have with each other, and the stuff that these kids learn, especially from each other, especially with their cell phones, is absolutely insane. I mean, look, I grew up in a school, in a public school system, that didn't have. I mean, if you wanted to look up something, you had to go to the library reserve. Some time, go look for a book, go look at the index cards Right.
Speaker 5:learn how to use the card catalog.
Speaker 3:Right, I mean, it was a whole thing, you know, so researching and doing this, but now we've opened up this entire world, so I mean, hopefully it looks kind of in this, in this, in trying to open up this space for these cultural conversations to happen and and I think they're sorely lacking, especially nowadays, right, I mean, so many people are at each other's throats over just about everything and I just keep them reminded of this conversation, of this saying it's just when dialogue ends, peace stops, right, and I think it starts with that. It starts with teaching that you can't talk about these things. You know that it's not taboo, that it's okay to talk about religion. I think you're right, brad, 100%. Who's teaching it? Right, because everybody sort of has an agenda right. Even as a Catholic, I could say I would love for everybody to be Catholic, an authentic Catholic.
Speaker 5:That would be. You know, that's the worldview, rudy. To me, it's more than that. You know, there are, in fact, some very evangelical Protestant communities, communities. I can only imagine what they would do, explicitly regarding Catholicism, with no idolatry, and how are they going to teach it? Are they going to teach it generically or very pointedly? I just think. I just worry about in whose hands, uh, these classes will be taught. You know what? Like you said, they're gonna. Everybody has an agenda. What's their agenda? And is that an agenda that I would want my kids or grandkids exposed to, if they're going to teach it? On the other hand, you know, it might be a very good lesson for the students. You know one question what is the difference, if there is any, between thou shalt not murder and thou shalt not kill? And let them argue and discuss it.
Speaker 3:That would be a good discussion.
Speaker 5:I think it would be a great discussion, but again, who's leading the discussion? What's?
Speaker 4:their agenda.
Speaker 5:What's their background?
Speaker 1:Well, here's the problem with discussion having discussion among people that aren't informed. It could be just sharing of ignorance.
Speaker 1:Yep of ignorance, and that's what often happens, even in college classrooms, where people who aren't prepared and haven't read anything and haven't thought anything about a question say well, what do you think about this? What do you think? It doesn't really matter, it really. I mean, first of all, let's not just share our ignorance about something. Let's learn something first, and then, after we have done so, let's then begin to discuss it. So there is a point for having someone to teach and not just a point of discussion.
Speaker 5:No, no Discussions have to be led have to be led.
Speaker 1:It has to be led. But even if you lead a discussion among people who don't know anything, they're just sharing ignorance. They're sharing what they don't know. They need to first of all go learn something and then they have. You're going to have a much better discussion at the end of the day by people who've actually invested some time and learned something about each of these ideas.
Speaker 5:All right, this is a show of faith. On AM 1070, the Answer We'll be right back.
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Speaker 3:Okay. So I think that and I know we're coming close to the end here but the United States Christians have a strong tradition, okay, of going out and doing evangelization, and what we find today with these two things that I've talked about SB10 and the Project 2025, these are initiatives of sort of this, what I would call the same tradition, if you will. Now, to me, the question is, when does it actually, when does this tradition stop serving the community and when does it actually start becoming harmful? Is this something that could potentially become more harmful than what they think is actually serving, right? I mean, it's kind of like giving a young kid a loaded gun without teaching him how to use it, right? It's just, it's insane, it's insane.
Speaker 3:So this I would call it in some sort an imposition, right, but I think it sort of falls into the kind of the same tradition that I've seen that the United States engages and I'm not just talking from a sort of religious perspective. A sort of religious perspective, I'm talking culturally and everything from going out, going to other countries, participating in multiple wars and government changes. I mean this constant sort of going out and trying to mold ideology and trying to mold things. I mean, is this just kind of more fundamentally human or is it particular of what kind of more fundamentally human or is it particular of what kind of America is and has been doing? And I mean, I kind of wanted to kind of end a little bit about on that is how do you guys see this?
Speaker 3:I mean, is this and I know it's just kind of one instance right, but I don't think it's going to stop anytime soon, whether it's left or right, because on the left we have certainly extreme people want to remove everything, everything you know about everything, and on the right we want to, and of course I think they kind of get unfairly and this is my opinion, of course, but a lot of this narrative gets kind of pushed into this sort of right-wing nationalist Christians and then they depict these kind of weird Christians that are yelling at you with a microphone and it's just like I don't know. It's just kind of so fringe you know, they show you the fringes.
Speaker 1:I mean part of the challenge. You brought up, project 2025, which is a 900-page document that has been proffered by the Heritage Foundation, and it's kind of the directions. As I understand it is directions for the next administration. Now, that was back in 2024 when it came out, so it was in anticipation of perhaps a Republican win in the 2024 elections, which happened, of course. So almost everything you read about it, though, unless you read the document itself and this is the challenge unless you read the document itself, you really don't know what it says, because what you're reading about it often is opinion that is, either strongly for it or strongly against it what to make of the Project 2025, because almost everything you're going to read about it, on the Internet at least, is going to be an advocacy against it.
Speaker 5:Right, it's going to be about it instead of.
Speaker 1:of it Right. So it's very difficult to say so. I think we ought to try to leave that for another daily conversation, to try to read up about it, but frankly, I don't have time to read 900 pages, no, and try to digest it on a normal basis. But what I am suggesting is that we are just in a very strange cultural moment, that is, maybe it is typical of what will be, but it's not necessarily typical of what has been in the past 20, 30, 40 years. David.
Speaker 5:I was just going to say that I worry about what it's going to be. I worry about our culture and the direction it seems to be heading. I think that there's more desire on both sides of the aisle for what we would normally be calling censorship, what goes by the other name of cancellation being canceled. I think that people are more violent now. You know when. The head of the FBI, you know 86-47, I just I think we are heading down a road and putting up a nice little sign, no matter how vitally important the verses are, that they put up is not going to do anything, it's not going to change anything. It's, you know, virtue signaling. And I'm very worried about the I don't know next 25, 35 years. I tell my children please just remember how wonderful the United States has been.
Speaker 3:I think I think, rob, I think you're exactly right and I think that's kind of my point. And nobody has really I mean 0.01 of the population has read the entire thing. I've skimmed through it, but I think my point is that there's always going to be this Project 2025 or Project 2030 or Project. There's always going to be a push from all sides to essentially I don't want to say to some degree indoctrinate right or to push their ideological points. I mean, this is what's going to continually happen and, to some degree, has largely happened across all history.
Speaker 5:But see, rudy, here's the difference when I do it, it's merely teaching, when somebody else does it, it's indoctrination does it.
Speaker 1:It's indoctrination Stop indoctrinating us.
Speaker 5:Right. See, I don't indoctrinate, I merely teach. Other people indoctrinate, and seriously. I think that that's when both sides of the aisle, that's how they both view the other side. They're the ones indoctrinating, we're the ones teaching.
Speaker 3:So let me ask you, let me ask you guys point blank Do you think that this is something that is going to lead to something good?
Speaker 1:You're talking about the Texas initiative.
Speaker 3:The Texas initiative. Yeah, sb 10. Yeah, the Texas Initiative. Yeah, just SB 10,. Yeah, which is really just to put a sign of the Ten Commandments in public schools. That's what it says, right? It doesn't talk about teaching them. It's just like you would put an American flag, right you?
Speaker 5:would put this somewhere on public school grounds. I think that it's okay. I just think it's rather I don't know. I've said that repeatedly tonight.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's in and of itself. It's sufficient if they were to put together some sort of a program that allowed there to be discussion, intelligent discussion, informed by people who are experts in various, and it wouldn't have to be necessarily religious people, because, as you mentioned, rudy, much of our American-British law, british, roman and even Western law is based upon a number of these ideas and ideals, and not just the Ten Commandments but what you were talking about earlier the image of God, the idea of the Imago Dei that every individual carries within him or her a very image of God.
Speaker 1:So those kinds of things without some teaching, without some context, without some explanation, could be just a faint way to gather dust. So I think it will depend to a large degree on each school and on each principal, each school district, on what they decide to do with that. And it would not necessarily have to be a religious thing, although religious experts might be called to testify, as it were, and explaining what these things meant and the significance of them along the way, so that people and you could ask them say look, we're not suggesting that you live by this, but we think it's worth exploring and you can accept these and you can accept these, you can accept these ideas. We hope that you will, because we think it'll lead to a greater good and a greater society. But we hope that you will do so. So I don't know.
Speaker 5:Again, I agree with you, David. I just want to know, as a matter of fact, there's a part of me not all of me, but there's a part of me who would almost prefer it was taught by the secular community, Because when you have somebody who's religious, they're going to let their agendas come out.
Speaker 1:I'm not suggesting you have a single religion represented to it. I'm suggesting that you be the designated rabbi to go around to all these places.
Speaker 5:I'm ready. I'd be happy to. I don't think they'd be happy to, but I'd be happy to.
Speaker 1:And then Rudy can be the designated Catholic voice and go around to all of these and I'm going to retire and I'll let you guys take this stuff. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding retire and not let you guys take this stuff. So I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, of course, but I don't think it should be a single particular religious tradition. I think it should be Catholic, I think it should be Protestant, I think it should be Jewish, I think it could be even a Muslim or another religious community that would engage these ideas.
Speaker 5:About 15 seconds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, stuart, take it away.
Speaker 5:All right, this is a show of faith. On AM 1070, the Answer Miranda, thank you for being our board op and Valerie, thank you also. This is a show of faith. Hey, everybody, keep us in your prayers, because you are definitely going to be in our prayers.