How The Founding Fathers Built A Nation Of Virtue

The Fourth of July gets reduced to fireworks, burgers, and noise, but I want to treat it like what it is: a public act of separation rooted in claims about God, rights, judgment, and providence. We walk through why July 4th matters, what the Declaration of Independence actually says, and why the founders kept tying liberty to duty and moral discipline instead of pretending freedom is moral neutrality.

Then I put real names and real stories on the table. George Washington’s leadership is forged in early defeat and sustained through uncertainty, Valley Forge, and the temptation of military power. Patrick Henry shows the courage to speak first, Samuel Adams shows the grit of organization, John Witherspoon brings the doctrine of providence into public life, John Jay proves independence still has to be defended in diplomacy, Roger Sherman builds durable constitutional structure, and John Adams delivers the blunt warning that a constitution can’t hold if the people won’t govern themselves.

The second hour turns to modern headlines and the same old questions: a court case involving Satanism evidence and future dangerousness, what religious liberty was designed to protect, and why beliefs and worship are never “just private” in their effects. We also confront violent gang crime and ask what makes “evil” more than a personal opinion.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:08

The voice of reason.

Why The Fourth Of July Matters

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Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. And hey, it's the 4th of July. Not really, not technically, but, but, hang on, but the reality is that I also will uh will not have a show on the 4th of July. And so my only real option here is uh is to ultimately, you know, have a uh 3rd of July show that we call the 4th of July. So for the sake of argument, we're going to pretend that today is the 4th of July, um, in the t in the sense that I'm gonna be talking a little bit about the 4th of July. Given that it is my second favorite holiday, the only holiday that will get more attention than this one is probably Christmas. Thanksgiving's up there. Thanksgiving might come in at third. Uh and then you start getting into like the B tier holidays. You got Halloween and Easter. And I'm not saying I know people have heard me say that Easter is a B tier holiday. I don't mean that, of course, the resurrection of Christ is a B tier holiday. I just mean in terms of the cultural celebratory methodologies for those holidays. So Christmas number one, Fourth of July, number two, Thanksgiving number three. So today we're celebrating the number two holiday. And every year, for each individual holiday, I usually do some sort, if at all possible, of a holiday special. And each year I also want to make it a little different. Uh even if you listen to my show for a couple of years, I don't want you to hear the same thing. In ten years from now, I'd still prefer that if you've been listening since the beginning, that you don't hear just the same thing. And so even though we're doing a Fourth of July special today, I do want it to be that we don't have the exact same thing that we've done in years past. Uh last year, I believe, we went over uh even further back in the history of America, uh, to the colonies and and really even before uh you know you get back to Jamestown and we got we went through the actual pattern of where the English and where these other groups of people came from and what they were setting up. So we went a little extra historical last year. This year, I actually want to I actually want to do something specific, and that is I actually want to look at some specific founding fathers, their story, how they were going about everything in in the midst of things like the Fourth of July, what their lives looked like, and kind of use that as a stepping stone toward what we want this country to look like. I I want to ultimately I want to create a show today that can be a very helpful tool for everyone that listens to realize that what we're what we're dealing with today is not new. It may look new, it may feel new, but the virtues that were demanded of our founders, the virtues that they were called to have by God in order to succeed are uh just they are the same virtues that we need today. They're the exact they're they're no different. We need the virtues of grit and determination. We we need we need the virtues of courage, but of discernment, right? You know, be be innocent as doves, but wise as serpents, kind of that sort of thing. We of course need courage. We also need discernment, we need wisdom, right? We need to display uh reasonableness in general. And all this stuff kind of has to come together, and there's a lot of men in history can look to, but since we're celebrating the 4th of July, I think the best men to look to and to kind of get an idea of where we came from, so we get an idea of where we're going is to do a little quick highlight for the first hour of the show. I do actually expect this to take the the first hour of the show, if I'm being completely honest. So for the first hour of the show, I actually I think you guys might like this better than just a regular show. Yeah, don't worry, second hour, I'll get to some of the big news if

Seven Founders And One Goal

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I have time. But I I I specifically want to cover the founders. And I'm only covering, I think we're I think I'm doing seven of them that I put specific research into. Um I want to do, I want to get into George Washington. Of course. George Washington is kind of the founding father. I mean, if you really think about it. I I know, I know there were very important men who served under Washington and around Washington, and Washington couldn't have done it by himself. We all know that. But George Washington, when you think about America, is like the guy. He's the guy that started ever like we all understand that. And so George Washington, of course, has to make the list, but he was not alone. And so I also want to talk about men like Patrick Henry, I want to talk about Samuel Adams and John Witherspoon, I want to talk about John Jay, and I want to talk about Roger Sherman and John Adams. And I think all of those men highlight different kinds of facets of the virtues that were on display that that I think are crucial if we want to talk about a surviving country, a country that is good, a country that succeeds. So let's let's let's start here. If you think back July 4th, 1776, uh that was the date that Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. And and one you know, thing, and everybody this was one of those little factoids that people didn't know 15 years ago, but then was one of those cool factoids to learn. And so then everybody learned it. Now it's not cool to know. Uh but that's that the the actual parchment copy of the declaration with everybody's signature on it wasn't actually signed until August 2nd. Right? It wasn't until a couple months, it was it wasn't until about a month later that they actually all all, you know, the big the one that we have in our museum that has all of the actual signatures, that wasn't actually signed until August. But and there was a couple of reasons for that because of location and timing, but the country did officially adopt the country, became a country on July 4th. That was, it was, it was adopted before it was actually completely finished and signed. And so even though not all the men that would sign it had signed it, it was adopted as our declaration before August 2nd, July 4th of 1776. And so that was the day that Americans remembered the public act of separation from the British, uh, the 13 colonies that said, hey, we are actually free and independent states. We we are not actually under the crown at all. And it appeals to, of course, the laws of nature and of nature's God. It says that men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Of course, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It also closes by appealing to the supreme judge of the world and by relying on the protection of divine providence. And that language is not just, well, they, of course, they believed in a God back then, a god of random, you know, with a there was no, it wasn't Christian, right? Because we have religious liberty here. Uh they were just appealing to some, you know, whatever was out there in the e in the ether. No clue what. Uh, but that's not true. This this even the even the language that was used, when you read a lot of these letters and journals and documents, even the language that was used came from a people very clearly who understood a lot more than people seem to understand now about rights and about law and about liberty, but further past even just the policy stuff, uh, to to moral duty, right? And to national life in a world they truly believed was governed by God. And not just a God, but by God with a capital G, God of the Bible. And the men that were doing in this story, um the men were were not all the same, right? They were, I know again, people have a tendency, and I don't know why this is, people have a tendency to kind of just talk about the old days like the old days. They just say, well, that was a long time ago. And they don't realize that the people from a long time ago are the same people as today. It it really is. You know, they were just people, and so they had flaws and they made jokes and they laughed with their friends and they had a couple drinks, right? They they were the same as us, right? They may have talked a little differently because language evolves. They may have been more into more intelligent because they studied more and they cared about the pursuit of knowledge and of wisdom. But these were just men. And so reading their story is so fascinating because you can put yourself in those shoes and say, What would I do? Would I have this courage? And if the answer is no, it's not because these men were just a different breed from 200 years ago. No, actually. It's because we don't push ourselves. We don't desire to be. We're not willing to be the men that God's called us to be. But these men were.

unknown 9:21

Right?

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Washington was, of course, the commander-in-chief, first president of the United States of America. Patrick Henry was basically the voice of the resistance, kicking everything off. Uh Samuel Adams was very much the organizer of the group. Uh John Witherspoon, minister, educator. Uh John Jay was the jurist and the and the Christian statesman. Roger Sherman was this sort of steady but in the background constitutional builder. And John Adams uh was was the voice of warning about what this country needed moving forward. And so these, again, a lot of these stories that we're going to go over here in the first hour do not start on the 4th of July. The 4th of July, I know that we kind of say that's the start, but that that was that was actually closer to the end of the founding of America than the start of it. Maybe, maybe more like the middle. Because you had, of course, years leading up to this, and we did a lot on the colonies last year and where they came from. But this year, I want to talk about these men, their lives leading up to July 4th, and in the wake of July 4th, and how we got this glorious country here for the 250th celebration of the greatest country in the history

George Washington And Providential Survival

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of the world. There's no better place to start than George Washington. So let's kick it off here in the first hour, George Washington. He was 23 years old during Braddock's campaign back in 1755. So this would have been 21 years before the Declaration of Independence was signed. George Washington was only 23. Uh, this was during the French and Ending War, uh, which, though he was a scapegoat, um, he was sort of he was sort of the the start of the French and Ending War in the first place. But nevertheless, he was not at this time like the commander of the Continental Army or anything like that. Uh he was not the president. He was just a young officer of Virginia. Who couldn't even get a royal commission, by the way. Uh by the there's also a new movie out in theaters, just completely random tangent, called Young Washington. I went and saw it. Of course, there's dramatizations as they have to do to make a movie, uh, but the movie is relatively historically accurate. There's some things that don't quite line up, and some things that I the order's a little out of place, but the movie itself is excellent. And if you're willing to study history and not just watch a movie and say, well, that that's true, then it's a great movie. If you if you watch movies and you go, you watch historical films and you say that that's true, and you start quoting the movie as if everything that happened is in order and completely correct and there's no added verbiage, uh, you not the movie for you, but if you're a kind of person who wants to know more about history, studies history, and enjoys good films, great movie. So that was 1755. If you go a year back, uh in 1754, George Washington was involved in the in what was called Fort Necessity. Uh that campaign did not end well, by the way. The French and Indian War uh did not begin for George Washington with clean and clear victories. It actually began uh for this man who would have been 22 at the time with confusion and danger and actually defeat. Uh in 1755, British General Edward Braddock led an expedition against uh Fort Dequestney. I don't know how to pronounce that, but near present-day Pittsburgh. Washington served as a volunteer aide on Braddock's staff. Braddock's force included British regulars, colonial troops, artillery, supply wagons, and a long military column moving through what was, again, at the time a very difficult country. It was not, you know, the Pittsburgh you know today with all the roads. These were trails and woods and forests and difficult, harsh conditions. And so on July 9th of 1755, near the Monga uh Monangala River, the British force was attacked by French troops and Indian allies. The fighting, of course, was very chaotic. Uh, the French and their Indian allies, uh the the scope of war had changed drastically because up to this point in Europe, most of the war that had happened were on battlefields, designated battlefields, uh, with open open areas and two groups coming to fight honorably in the middle. That did not happen here in the New World. No, no, no. The French and the Indians were firing from the woods and from the ravines. And of course, British regulars, who were preparing to participate in a normal battle, had very, very, very much difficulty responding to the terrain and the new style of fighting. Uh, the officer corps was hit especially hard, and General Braddock himself was actually killed. Washington, after that point, was in the middle, now carrying out orders. He was just supposed to be an aide, uh, but with Braddock out, you know, kind of there there weren't a lot of options. And back then, you know, leadership was very aristocratic. And so there wasn't a great understanding of what do we do? Our generals down. Do we just retreat? Do we just run? We we don't really know what to do. But keep in mind, George Washington said, well, somebody's got to lead. And no one else seems to be doing it, and we're in the middle of a battle, so punish me later, I guess, if I'm not supposed to do this. Uh, but uh and keep in mind he also had been sick during the campaign. He wasn't in full health. Um, but when the fighting started, he rode across the field while other officers were being killed or wounded. And I want to reference that that worldly failure is is not always total failure, even though that tech that that battle was technically one of defeat as well. You keep in mind that what happened on that battlefield, the way the number of men that were saved by the courage of George Washington uh is is its own sort of success. It could have been a just a slaughter. Uh but George Washington, in the wake of Brad's death, actually saved uh countless men, countless lives. And he did it through through immense courage. After the defeat, Washington wrote to his brother, uh John Augustine, on July eighteenth. So this has been nine days later, he said, By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectation. For I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was re- leveling my companions on every side. Again, his coat had four bullet holes in it. Two different horses have been shot while he was riding them and fallen. And this guy walks away while sick, basically unscathed. And again, he described his survival in terms of providence, not that I just I got lucky. I don't know how that happened. No, I do know how that happened. God protected me specifically. And so Braddock, of course, died from his wounds. The expedition ultimately failed, but Washington survived the disaster, saved countless men, and came out of it with a reputation for immense courage in the midst of just untold fire. And so that's very important because Washington's actual public life began way before the Fourth of July, right? With actual defeat, is how this kind of all started. Um he saw war long before the revolution. He'd seen the limits of British military confidence in American terrain. He had seen officers die, he'd seen armies break down, he'd seen all these plans sort of collapse. And so when the colonies reached the point of independence, something like 20 years later, Washington was already carrying lessons that he had had for 20 years. And so in June of 1775, the second Continental Congress chose Washington to command the army gathering around Boston. He took command at Cambridge in July of 1775. The Siege of Boston was already underway after election and Concord in April and Bunker Hill in June. And so he was not, again, we have a hard time looking back and understanding because of how we perceive things today. George Washington was not handed, you know, a professional national army as we would look at one today. The American forces had colonial troops and militia, volunteers, short-term enlistments that ran out during the war. Uh supplies were inconsistent, and money was even more inconsistent. Congress did not have either the power or the resources of the modern federal government. And so Washington had to work with Congress and state governments and local interests and poor discipline and shortages, alongside all this political pressure to win. And so in March of 1776, the British evacuated Boston after Henry Knox brought artillery from Fort Ticonderoga and Washington placed guns on Dorchester Heights. And then, of course, came the summer of 1776. July 4th happened while the war was they didn't know how it was going to go. It wasn't the Fourth of July said, All right, we're winning, we're good. Time to declare our independence, right? Uh the declaration was not coming after victory. It actually came while the outcome was still incredibly uncertain. Uh in New York, for instance, Washington faced one of the hardest periods of the war. The British defeated the Americans at Long Island in August of 1776. Washington had to evacuate his entire army, and the British drove the Americans out of Manhattan and across New Jersey. By late 1776, the American army was was shrinking. Enlistments were inspired were expiring. The morale of the Army in general was very low because of the losses. And so there were a bunch of people doubting whether the war, whether the war would even survive, whether the cause for American liberty would survive. And so on the night of December 25th of Christmas, leading into the morning of December 26th of 1776, of course, we know that Washington crossed the Delaware River and attacked Trenton. The weather was not good. The river crossing was incredibly difficult. The movement was quite risky, but the attack succeeded. And Washington's army captured Hessian forces at Trenton, and then he had success in Princeton in January of 1777. Those victories did not win the war, but they did help keep the cause alive after independence had been declared. In September of 1777, the British captured Philadelphia. Congress had to flee. The capital of the revolution was in British hands. And so that winter, Washington's army went into camp at Valley Forge, which lasted from December of 1777 to June of 1778. So again, now we're a couple years later. The army was suffering, again, from survive uh supply problems and death and cold and hunger, all of the things, poor clothing, poor shelter, D, all of the above. Many soldiers lacked proper shoes, proper clothing. Many men were dying from disease at the time. Desertion was a major problem because, again, there was a lot of uncertainty about how the war was going to go. So men were fleeing. Congress and the states were all struggling to give the army any supplies. And so Washington basically had to keep his army functioning through all of that. As men are dying and deserting, and it's winter and it's cold and they didn't have proper shoes and they weren't getting the right funding. Washington had to keep all these men, hey, we have to stand our ground. We have to fight. And so Valley Forge became a place of improvement. Uh Baron von Steuben arrived, helped train the army. Discipline got better. And so the army that left Valley Forge is actually much better than the army that had arrived there. In, you know, there and he, of course,

Winning After Independence Is Declared

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continued as commander through a lot of a lot of years of uncertainty, victories and defeats and uh stalemates' frustration, internal threats in his own army. In 1783, after the major fighting was over, but before the final settlement, officers in the army were angry over unpaid wages and pensions. You probably remember that, which led to the Newburgh conspiracy. Uh some officers were considering pressure against Congress. And so Washington, of course, addressed them at Newburgh in 1783 and he urged them not to abandon the principles they had fought for, everything they had sacrificed up to that point. Um and so that movement from Washington kind of put an end to all of that. Of course, there were issues, you know, past that point, but a lot of that was was put to a stop right there. Uh because and that's that's actually very important because I think again, we see that the period of the revolution think it was just against the British. Uh, but that was just basically step one. You also had to keep the army from then becoming a political movement against the government. And so later in 1783, Washington wrote his circular letter to the states, dated June 8th of 1783, and in it, he reflected on the success of the revolution and then the forward responsibilities of the states. And I want to read a quote from that letter that he wrote to the states. He said, I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the state over which you preside in his holy protection. He prayed that God would incline the citizens to, quote, cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, to show brotherly affection and love for one another, and to practice justice, mercy, and the pacific temper of mind, which marked the divine author of our blessed religion. So, of course, he he he directly connected in his letters the success of the country with things like providence and religion and virtue, brotherly affection and humility, peaceable conduct. So late in December of 1783, he resigned his commission as the commander in chief at Annapolis. He appeared before Congress. Returned the commission that he'd received. He was like, I don't need it. And went home to Mount Vernon. And again, usually in in England at least, if you had a very successful general, there was no world where he was giving up authority. That was just never going to happen. But George Washington did. Though everyone knows his retirement certainly did not last. The Articles of Confederation kind of created a weak national government. The Confederation government struggled to raise revenue, regulate commerce, enforce treaties, any of those sorts of things. You guys might remember Shea's rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787, which added to fears that the national government didn't have at least some of the authority it needed. They wanted to protect against tyranny, but it didn't even have the basic authority to do the very minimum that they needed to do. And so in 1787, you had George Washington attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he was unanimously chosen. It was just completely unanimous, that he would preside over the convention. Of course, at this point you have to remember, George Washington was already sort of a legend. I know he is today, but even back then, he was already he was the guy, he was the man who, for everybody, had largely been the pinnacle of winning the revolution and giving the states their freedom. And so he was unanimously chosen to preside over that constitutional convention. And so after the Constitution was ratified, he was then unanimously elected as the first president. He took the oath of office on April 30th of 1789 in New York City. And as president, of course, he had to establish precedents for the new office. This is brand new. They weren't even sure. He he even created the first cabinet. His administration dealt with national debt, foreign policy during the French Revolution, relations with Britain and France, uh conflicts, of course, you had between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson disagreements there, and of course, continued unrest inside the U.S. He had and so like in 1794, for instance, during the whiskey rebellion, Washington used federal authority to enforce the law. He called up militia forces and reviewed troops. So that kind of collapsed without needing a major battle. Washington also issued the neutrality proclamation in 1793, keeping the United States from being pulled into the war between Britain and France, which was controversial at the time because French had France had supported the U.S., but Washington believed the young country was not ready for a major European war. We had our own issues. And so in 1796, Washington chose not to seek a third term. His farewell address, warned against factionalism, permanent foreign attachments, and the weakening of religion and morality, said of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Of course, Washington died at Mount Vernon on December 14th of 1799. And so for this special Fourth of July episode, Washington kind of connects several parts of the American story. Right, he survived Braddock's defeat back all the way in 1755 and of course credited Providence with his survival. He understood frontier war and what failure actually meant. He commanded the Continental Army for what, eight years? He held that army together after the declaration. He prevented military anger from turning against civilian government. He resigned his command. He helped give legitimacy to the Constitution. People trusted him. And he served as the first president. He enforced federal law. And of through all of this, of course, Washington's main plea was that men be religious and moral and good and follow the divine author of our blessed religion, which I don't know if you guys know this, but the blessed religion, the divine author of our blessed religion, of which George Washington was referring, was none other than the God of the Old and New Testament. The God of the Bible, Jesus Christ. And so I think Washington shows that that our freedom as Americans was more than just defeating the traditional war. That actually governing a new country, and any country at all, is just as dangerous, just as ravenous, just as difficult as winning a war. That to come out of the trenches and still have to govern a country is not necessarily that much easier. That it's a different kind of fight, but it is a fight nonetheless. One that Washington um won and showed us what humility looks like in that office. Shows us what power is supposed to be in representative government by being willing to give it up and refusing to continue as some sort of career politician, and but to say I'm I'm here for the needs of the people.

Patrick Henry And The Courage To Begin

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Now, let's turn over to Patrick Henry. Um he belongs in this because he also shows the steps before the Fourth of July. He was born in Virginia in 1736, became a lawyer, a member of the House of Burgesses back before the revolution, and one of the most forceful voices against British overreach before the revolution. In 1765, he introduced the Virginia Resolves Against the Stamp Act, which placed a direct tax on printed materials in the colonies. Henry argued that Virginians had the right to be taxed only by their own representatives, which of course became one of the very early arguments over whether the colonies were self-governing political societies or subordinate possessions to be managed by the Parliament over in England. And so in 1775, in March, Henry spoke at the second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church in Richmond, which was debating whether Virginia should prepare a militia. Now, the versions of Henry's speech we have today were reconstructed decades later by William Wirt, based on recollection, so it's not like a stenographic transcript, but it is the standard historical version of Henry's argument. And so Henry argued that the colonies had already tried peaceful means. He said, We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne. But he argued that those results had not produced safety or liberty. And so he said, three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. And so that resolution actually helped push Virginia toward military preparation. Less than a month later, on April 19th of 1775, Lexington Concord took place in Massachusetts, and that kind of kicked off the war. Henry's connection again to July 4th is very direct, even though he wasn't sitting in Philadelphia signing the Declaration. He was a part of the movement that made the Fourth of July possible. The declaration came after years of arguments over taxation and representation and colonial rights and military force. And so he served, of course, as Virginia's first governor after independence. He also served multiple terms as governor and remained a major voice in Virginia politics. He also became an anti-federalist critic of the Constitution, arguing that the proposed federal government could become too powerful without stronger protections for the rights of the people, which of course led to the Bill of Rights. And so Henry, I think, gives the argument for courage even before there's independence. Then, of course, once a war really breaks out, right? I don't want to say that it's easy to be courageous, but you're joining something that's existent. But to set the foundation for that is a different kind of courage. To stand up when you're the only one, when you're when you're the one that's really gonna kick things off, that is a different kind of courage. When when I don't want to say you're standing alone, but when you have to call for things rather than just join them, there's a special kind of bravery in that. And so again, his language connected the right of the people with God, again, with providence and with courage, and the willingness to act when they'd already tried. Again, he wasn't just saying we need to we need to fight, right? It was the same thing I'm saying today. I I don't want a civil war. As Patrick Henry would say, let's try everything we possibly can here. But in the end, give me liberty or give me death. I hope that liberty is the answer. I hope that we can make this happen, but if not, then it must be war.

Samuel Adams And The Machinery Of Resistance

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Now, Samuel Adams. Samuel Adams was sort of the organizing side of all this. He was born in Boston back in 1722. Uh, he, of course, got involved in local politics and colonial resistance. He was this sort of organizer who was very good with committees and correspondence and town meetings. He also opposed the Stamp Act in 1765. He was involved in the political environment that produced the Boston Massacre controversy in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773. One of the most useful documents for this episode of the show is Adams' 1772 essay called The Rights of the Colonist, which was written as part of the Boston Committees of Correspondence's work. He said, Among the natural rights of the colonies are these. First, a right to life, secondly, to liberty, thirdly, to property, together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. And again, that's really important because this was, again, four years before the Declaration of Independence, which would later say that men were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. He was using already that same moral worldview before the Declaration was ever written or adopted. He said the rights of the colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great lawgiver and head of the Christian church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the Bible. And so Adams helped build the machinery of resistance. In 1774, he attended the first Continental Congress. In 1775, he attended the second continental Congress. He supported independence and later, of course, signed the Declaration of Independence. By July 4th, Adams was one of the men who had spent years already preparing the ground. And so the colonies, of course, arrived at independence through years of arguments and writings and protests. He later served in the Massachusetts government. He was lieutenant governor and then governor of Massachusetts in the 1790s. And so again, Samuel Adams very clearly showing that you need organization and you need to have a worldview before you actually sign anything. Before there's ever any sort of independence granted at all, you have to believe those things and you have to fight for them in advance. Now,

Witherspoon On Providence And Liberty

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John Witherspoon, um, one of the less known actually, but I think gives very, very clear biblical language to this. He was born in Scotland in 1723, came from the same place my family did. He was a Presbyterian minister before he ever became an American statesman. In 1768, he came to America to become president of the College of New Jersey, which is now known as, you guessed it, Princeton. The founding generation was not only shaped by legislatures and battlefields, it was also shaped by churches and schools and sermons and moral instruction. Witherspoon was training future leaders. Among his students were men who later served in Congress and state governments and the judiciary. And so on May 17, 1776, less than two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted, Witherspoon preached a sermon titled The Dominion of Providence over the passions of men. It was preached at Princeton during a fast appointed by Congress. This was again in the weeks before Congress adopted the declaration. The colonies were already at war. And so the sermon was based on Psalm 76, 10, which says, Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, the remainder of wrath shall thou restrain. And so his subject was providence. He argued that God rules over the passions of men, including their anger, their pride, their ambition, and violence. Human passions can be sinful, but they don't escape God's government. He said there is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved entirely. That line, of course, connects back to civil liberty and religious liberty. Witherspoon also warned against trusting in human strength alone. His sermon placed political events under divine rule, and he warned his hearers to understand that the crisis in 1776 was not outside of God's decree. And so in June of 1776, he was elected to the Continental Congress. On July 2nd, Congress voted for independence, and then on July 4th, they adopted the declaration. He signed it as a delegate from New Jersey. He was the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. There's a story often told, though not verified, but I like it anyway, that some delegates hesitated and said the country was not yet ripe for independence. Witherspoon responded that it was not only ripe, but it was in danger of rotting. The exact phrasing, again, is part of later recollection, so you know, paraphrase at at best. The larger point is very important. Witherspoon supported independence and signed the Declaration despite a lot of the misgivings of others. And so for the Fourth of July, Witherspoon, I think, provides the sort of theological background in all of this that independence was understood by many of the founders with the doctrine of providence. And so his role helps explain why the Declaration could speak of the creator and the Supreme Judge and Divine Providence in language that made sense to everybody in the country because these were the men leading

John Jay And Securing Independence Abroad

SPEAKER_11 34:56

it. Now, John Jay gives the section on Christian statesmanship, law, diplomacy, and governing. Jay was born in New York in 1745, became a lawyer, and entered public life during the Imperial Crisis. He served in the Continental Congress and became one of the key American diplomats during the revolution. Now, John Jay did not sign the Declaration because he was not serving in Congress when it was adopted, but he belongs in this story because the Declaration had to be defended in diplomacy and secured by peace treaties. After the Fourth of July, after the United States had already declared independence, uh Britain had not accepted it, as you might all know, because war was still going on. The war had to be won. And so Jay served as president of the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1779. He then served as minister to Spain. Later he joined Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in negotiating the Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1783, which Britain recognized the independence of the United States. And so Jay's role shows that July 4th was not complete on July 4th. The Declaration announced independence, but you still had to fight for it. Diplomats had to secure it, and they had to make other nations recognize it. And so Jay served as Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the Confederation, and he later supported the Constitution, wrote several of the Federalist papers. George Washington appointed Jay the first Chief Justice of the United States. Jay later served as governor of New York from 1795 to 1801. And he also connects it all directly back to the theme of a Christian nation. In an 1816 letter to John Murray Jr., he said, Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. Huh. We're not a Christian nation. I know he said that we should just have Christians serve as we have the duty to elect Christians, but he didn't mean that. Yes, he did, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, he did. Right? He also served as president of the American Bible Society after Elias Boudenot. The American Bible Society was founded in 1816 by Protestants, including men with founding era public service. And so again, Jay makes a very crucial point that independence had to become recognized sovereignty and sovereignty lawful government under God. Now,

Roger Sherman And Constitutional Structure

SPEAKER_11 37:17

Roger Sherman, which by the way was one of the most useful men for the governing section after the Fourth of July, he was born in Massachusetts in 1721 and later became very closely associated with Connecticut. He didn't have much formal education. He worked as a shoemaker. Sherman is often overlooked because he his story is not nearly as dramatic or as as sort of popular as Washington or or Patrick Henry, but his record is one of the most important. He was the only man to sign four major founding documents: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Right? That alone, signing all four of those, being one of the only men to do so. Um I believe the only man to do so puts him right in the middle of the spotlight here. He was there for the resistance, he was there for the declaration of that resistance, he was there for the first national frame of government, and he was there for the constitution that became the constitution that we have today. He served in the Continental Congress. He wrote the main draft. Jefferson wrote the main draft, but but Sherman's place on the committee and his involvement deeply in writing it shows that he was involved in that central document. After independence, the country had to govern itself. The Articles of Confederation proved too weak in several ways. We don't have time to get into them. But in 1787, he attended the Constitutional Convention. One of the biggest disputes was representation. Large states wanted representation based on population, and of course, small states wanted equal representation by state. Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut helped propose the compromise that became known as the Connecticut Compromise or the Great Compromise, which created a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate in which states had equal representation, which was not a minor procedural detail. As we know, that still stands strong against tyranny or is supposed to today. Sherman signed the Constitution September 17, 1787. After ratification, he served in the first Congress, the first House of Representatives, and later in the Senate. And so again, it has in order to have a successful country, you can't just win a single war. You have to be able to govern yourself for generations. And Roger Sherman played a direct part in making that happen and doing so in a way that was fair to statesmanship and was fair to the rights of the people.

John Adams On Morality And Freedom

SPEAKER_11 39:24

Now, John Adams, uh, which we're gonna use as sort of, let's say, closing here as we're getting close to the wrap-up of the first hour of the show. John Adams was born in Massachusetts in 1735. He became a lawyer, a public writer, a delegate to the Constitutional Congress, or the Continental Congress, a diplomat, a vice president, and of course the second president of the United States. He was one of the strongest advocates for independence in Congress. On June 7th, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution that the colonies were and of right ought to be free and independent states. Adams supported the resolution and helped argue the case for independence. Congress, of course, voted for independence on July 2nd, 1776, and he believed that July 2nd would be remembered by future generations. In a letter to his wife Abigail on July 3rd, so this was before the declaration was ever signed, he wrote that the day would be celebrated with solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other. Can you imagine the level of prophecy there? You're writing to your wife the day before it would become one of the biggest holidays in America. It was nowhere near that back then. This is the middle of war. This is before it's the Declaration of Independence has even been signed. And even once it's signed, we have years and years of war ahead. And then years and years of governing difficulties. Yet, in the midst of all of that, on July 3rd of 1776, he writes a letter to his wife where he says, one day, this day will be celebrated with illuminations from one side of the continent to the other, that all men will remember this day. And he was very close because today is July 3rd. He was one day off from what became the official celebration of the founding of this great nation. But they they knew what they were doing. Of course, again, July 4th was the day because that was the day that we officially adopted the declaration. But he understood from the very beginning that the decision for independence would become a national anniversary. He understood the importance of what they were doing. Adams served on a committee of five that drafted the declaration along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Jefferson, of course, wrote again, wrote the main draft, but Adams defended independence and helped press the case in Congress. During the war, Adams served as a diplomat in Europe. He helped secure Dutch recognition as well as loans. He later joined Benjamin Franklin and John Jay in negotiating the Treaty of Paris in 1783. After the war, Adams served as a diplomat in Europe. He also served as the first vice president under George Washington. In 1796, he was elected the second president of the United States. And his presidency was actually very difficult if you look back. He dealt with conflict with France, divisions inside the U.S., divisions inside the even his own party in the U.S., and public anger over the Alien and Sedition Acts, which remained one of the serious failures of his administration, by the way. The failures is worth acknowledging because, again, John Adams was not a perfect man, and the founding generation did not produce government by magic. I think failures are actually very good. We talked before about how the public schools want failure to teach shame and embarrassment for our country's history. And I adamantly refuse to allow that to be the case on my show. I actually think that failure is a very important teacher, one of the most important teachers that we have, ladies and gentlemen, because failure teaches us often more than success does. Failure allows us to recognize who we are and what we're capable of. And it allows us to learn things that we couldn't learn any other way. It also teaches us that these men, it's and it's very important, these men were not just magically entitled to do these things. That they didn't just stumble upon them and boom, it worked. Uh, that there were massive failures. There were lots of problems, there were logical inconsistencies in some of what they said. There were certain issues with things they did. They had to govern under immense pressure, and sometimes they made mistakes. But Adams also understood one of the deepest truths of the American system. A constitution cannot make an immoral people free. Because if you're slave to your sin, then you're not a free man. On October eleventh of seventeen ninety-eight, Adams wrote to the officers of the first brigade of the third division of the militia of Massachusetts. In that letter, he said, Because we have no government with power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion, avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. For for those that Don't understand what just happened. John Adams basically said that our constitution is essentially useless for a men, for men that are not good. That it's it's phenomenal for good free men, but it doesn't work for the slaves of sin. He said our constitution was made. This is where this famous statement comes from. This this is where he says, our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. The declaration speaks of rights from the Creator. The Constitution creates a system of ordered liberty, but Adams warned that that system depends entirely on the character of the people. If the people cannot govern their passions, the government will not be able to do it for them without becoming something different from a republic. Adams also helped create the president of peaceful transfer of power. In 1800, he lost the presidential election to Thomas Jefferson. The political divisions at that time were very serious, but power transferred under the Constitution. Adams left office and Jefferson became president. And so again, Adams directly connects the Fourth of July back to memory, to celebration, to moral discipline and to constitutional limits, and the danger really of a people unfit for liberty. He understood that it was made for a moral and religious people, as did all the other founders. That this constitution was not suitable for enslaved men of their passions, but that it was only fit for a Christian nation. That this constitution was written and acceptable only for a Christian nation. Now I

The Revolution On The Kentucky Frontier

SPEAKER_11 45:28

don't want to go too much and talk about myself, but I do want to say that this especially hits hard for me because, of course, my family was fighting here. Um my own Wilson line, as as best as I can trace it, uh runs back through Kentucky and Missouri. When you're working backward, the line reaches into the same world that again helped shape a lot of the frontier during the revolutionary period, Virginia, Kentucky, militia service, and stations and forts. Uh the declaration was adopted, of course, on July 4th, 1776. That's the date we marked, but the war was not only fought in even these men's stories in these continental congresses and these rooms, but there were families who moved to the Western Frontier. Uh Kentucky was still part of Virginia, and they were moving into what was heavily contested ground. Um and so you you have one of my ancestors, Henry Wilson, who connected with Wilson Station near Harrodsburg, uh, which was one of the frontier stations tied to the early settlement of Kentucky. These were not decorative stations, by the way, they were fortified settlements. Uh families gathered there because the frontier was so dangerous. And so he filed a pension request in 1832. In that declaration, he said that his he was in his 72nd year, 72 years old, born in Augusta County, Virginia, and then in 1779, he had moved to Kentucky and settled with his father at Wilson Station. And so he laid out a service. He said that in the fall of 1778, he volunteered as a guard in Colonel Fleming's regiment at Fincastle Courthouse. Um after he moved to Kentucky, he was described as serving as a sergeant in Captain George Scott's company of Indian spies in the Virginia militia. He was stationed much of the time at McAfee Station on Salt River. He also served under Colonel George Rogers Clark, marching first to the falls of the Ohio and then toward the bat the mouth of the Licking River. From there, they marched against the Pequa people, burning towns, destroying corn, things they had to do during times of war. And this was the Western side of the Revolution. It was not only formal armies, as we saw with the Continental Army over on the other side, uh, but it was also militia and rangers and spies and Indian towns and British influence from Detroit. And so Wilson said that he served at Bryan Station as a sergeant. He later described service as an Indian spy under Daniel Boone and Benjamin Logan. He said he was appointed captain of a company to pursue Indians up the Kentucky River. And then came August of 1782, which was after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. In the East, many Americans think of the war as basically over by 1782 after that surrender in Yorkstown. But that was not the end for the Kentucky frontier. In August of 1782, British Allied forces and Indian warriors attacked Bryan Station near present-day Lexington. Kentucky militia pursued them to the lower Blue Licks. On August 19th of 1782, the militia was ambushed and defeated. The Battle of Blue Licks became one of the worst defeats for the Kentuckians during the Revolutionary War, and one of the last major battles of the war on the frontier. Henry Wilson said, We pursued the Indians to the lower Blue Licks, and I was engaged in that fatal battle when the Indians defeated us with great slaughter, and we were compelled to retreat. James Ray, one of the men uh who had also been stationed there, said he knew Henry Wilson well and knew the expedition as well as his involvement in the Battle of Blue Licks. James Anderson also supported those claims. And so Henry himself summarized the whole period this way: From the time I came to Kentucky in the fall of 1779 until the close of the Revolutionary War, I was constantly engaged as a soldier in the militia of Virginia as an Indian spy. And he said that when he was even permitted to be at home, he was still under constant preparation because the people were constantly in forts or stations. And basically the whole business was are we going to survive? You have Philadelphia giving us the Declaration, Washington giving us the army of Hit Adams and Henry and Witherspoon and Jay and Sherman and others giving us these speeches and theology and law and diplomacy. But families like mine and like many of our listeners show what the revolution looked like far from all those famous rooms and famous signatures. In Kentucky during the revolution, the fight was literally daily life, guarding stations and scouting and war parties and planting and trying to raise children and hold land. And this is all on, again, the frontier where it's just wild and untamed land. And so this is why when I talk about Fourth of July, I'm not talking about a random national holiday. I'm talking about my heritage. I'm talking about something that matters to me. My line runs through men and families who are part of the same frontier world that the revolution opened and then required. And so we inherited a country that men fought for all across the nation. Some men signed, some preached, some governed, some stood guard, some rode after raiders. And the Fourth of July belongs to all of those men. It belongs to the Declaration, it belongs to the Continental Army, it belongs to the state militias, to the frontier forts, to families who crossed in a dangerous country because they believed there was a future here. And so I don't want to treat independence day like background noise. I want to treat it like something that was handed down to us because it was. The Declaration was adopted on July 4th, 1776. It was announced that the 13 colonies were free and independent states. The announcement rested on claims about God and rights and law and judgment, and most importantly on providence. Washington had to fight after it was adopted. Henry helped prepare men for the break before it came. Samuel Adams organized resistance and wrote of freedom as the gift of God Almighty. Witherspoon, of course, was uh was the the writing about the duty of a Christian statesman. Jay was helping secure independence and diplomacy. Sherman signed the declaration and helped build the constitutional structure. John Adams pushed for independence, foresaw national celebration, and warned that the Constitution was made only for a Christian people. And so the Fourth of July is the anniversary of a public act rooted not really even in rebellion, but in a very specific understanding of God, man, of rights, of law, and of self-government. The founders declared independence. They had to preserve it, they had to defend it, they had to negotiate it, they had to govern it, and they had to hand it down. And even though we're not founding, even though we're not founding a country today, we are we are still, right, preserving it, defending it, negotiating it, governing it, and continuing to hand it down today. And so the 4th of July is not some random disconnected holiday. It is part of our history, but it isn't just historical. We're celebrating today. We're celebrating the men who are still willing to stand up and fight. On the Fourth of July, which is tomorrow, I would encourage you to think about that. These men were just men. They had catastrophic failures. They had defeats, and we will too. But we must be like them. We must fight for truth. We must fight for our country and say, I'm not, I'm not giving this up. I'm not turning a blind eye to the sin in our country. I'm not turning a blind eye to the evil because our constitution will fall if we allow that to happen. I just want to thank you guys all for tuning in with me this morning. That's the first hour of the show. We're gonna jump over to some local and state news after the break. As always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. As always, if you would like to uh be part of the show, just text in and let us know. In the meantime, you're listening to Lunch Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and the Lord willing, I'll be right back with the rest of our stories after the top of the next hour.

SPEAKER_05 52:55

From deep in the heart of Texas, it's Houston's God-loving patriot and the voice of reason. This is the Lestar Conservative, Michael Wilson.

Young Washington And Learning From Failure

SPEAKER_11 53:22

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative here on Patriot Talk 920. So we got a couple decks in. I apologize for not getting to them sooner. I we didn't take a break during the show, so I wasn't checking my phone, and I was just kind of going through and talking about all the things I wanted to get through in the first hour. But it's a new hour, it's a new day. So now we can get into this. The first says, Good morning, Michael. I missed the first part of your show, but I hear you're talking about George Washington. My son and I got to enjoy the movie Young Washington last night. It was a great movie. Have a blessed day and Independence Day weekend, my friend. You as well, you as well. That is, by the way, that's Dave from Itchcock. You guys might remember Dave from Itchcock. I think now, Texas City. Uh Dave from Texas City, Itchcock, Santa Fe, all these, all these, these great Dave. Dave is uh met him at a gun show. He's been a longtime listener who I want to give special props to because he's been around really since the beginning of the show. And I greatly appreciate uh getting to hear from you. But yeah, I went and saw Young Washington as well last night, and it was it was uh an incredible film. Uh it really was very well done. Um as I as I've said before, the same whenever you make a movie that is not a documentary, and even in documentaries, this still happens, but especially in these sort of uh period dramas, there's drama, right? And so there is the the order of events will be slightly altered uh to move the plot. Things will be a little bit out of order. Uh some of the things that a character says may not have been a direct quote or even something that we know of them saying. But but with that being said, if you're willing to study the history, as I mentioned before, if you're willing to study the history of George Washington and of the stories of the revolution, then it's a great movie to complement your historical knowledge. You should not go and watch it with the expectation that you're gonna walk away historically rooted, because again, things are done as a as a drama, but it is a phenomenal film. I think they did a great job with the cinematography. The acting is is actually very well done. And uh I I I thoroughly enjoyed it. I I'm it's it's so far one of my top movies of the year. I won't say my number one, because there's a movie that is my number one. And Young Washington while good does not does not beat that film. But Young Washington was a very good movie. Um I would encourage all of you to take your sons to go see it. I i it is it is a lesson. Uh and there's moments that even if they didn't happen are still very good teaching moments. Uh there's a scene, I don't want to spoil spoil the movie. Spoil the movie like we haven't known about George Washington for 250 years. Come on, you can't spoil the George Washington movie. You've had, sorry, you've had a couple hundred years to have seen it. I know that this movie's new, but if you don't already know the story, I'm not spoiling anything. Okay, this is a historical truth. But there's uh a good scene in the movie, and I'm not gonna spoil the rest of it, but there's a good scene in the movie where he's kind of he he lost uh at Fort Necessity, uh, which happened, and he gave up his post, which happened. That's how he ended up as an aide later uh to General Braddock of the Royal Commission of of England uh in the 1750s. When he lost, when he gave that up, there's a scene, and uh, and I didn't have time to go into the historical accuracy, but it doesn't really matter because of what the story tells, where he goes to his mother. Well, he doesn't really, he goes home uh in in frustration and in despair over these losses and says, I guess I'm not fit to lead.

unknown 56:47

Right?

SPEAKER_11 56:47

That that sort of I think we all get that, right? I I certainly get that, right? I I I all the time. And I say, God, am I really equipped to do a radio show? Do I do I really have the wisdom to be saying these things? Do I have any level of authority to do any of this? I I I don't I don't know if I'm equipped. I don't know if I'm I'm good enough. I don't know if I'm capable enough. I I don't know if if what I'm saying is is persuasive, if it's like all of these things that of course you question about yourself. Um and that's uh I mean by nature of of just being a human being. That that we wonder, are we are we good enough? Are we capable? And in the movie, his mother, and this is a good lesson for men of all ages, by the way, his mother says, Listen, son, and I'm gonna paraphrase because I actually I've only seen the movie once so far. So I don't have it memorized yet, uh, the script. But his mother essentially comes in and she she tells him through this this kind of like miniature lecture she's giving to George Washington as a young man in his twenties. She says, Listen, George, you know, if you if you fail, if you lose and then you give up, if you lose and you walk away, then you've actually failed twice. You failed by failing, and then you failed by refusing to learn from it and to be better. And she says, What you need to do is you need to get back on your horse and you need to go fight. I don't want you to be a soldier. That's not the life that I had envisioned for you, but it's the one that God has for you. That's your path that God in his providence has given you for better or for worse, for your better, actually. And I would encourage you to learn from mistakes, to not let them become some moment where you say, Oh man, I guess, I guess I failed and I lose. Right? I've I've and I've I've had to learn that myself. I I've been in debates, even, even relatively recently where I've said things that I look back and I say, ah, I didn't worry that the way that I should have, or I didn't go the proper route with that, and I made myself look like a fool. And then I remember that my job is is not just about me. In fact, it's not even primarily about me, but I'm actually very down low on the list of what I'm supposed to be about. My job is to glorify God. And if I'm gonna do that, just resolving myself to to drop my head in shame over mistakes that I've made is not a recipe for success, ladies and gentlemen. It's a recipe for for more than one failure. Failure is a phenomenal teacher, one that teaches us how to be better, how to move forward. And that's why I wanted to highlight them the stories of specific men of our founding era. The reason that I felt like that was so important this year is because I do think that there are so many men among us who feel themselves or not perfect, who believe that they're not equipped. That I I'm not like George Washington, I'm not, I'm not like John Jay, I'm not like John Adams, I'm not like Thomas Jefferson, I'm not like Benjamin Franklin, I'm not like um Witherspoon or Patrick Henry, I'm not a I'm not an orator, I'm not, I'm not a genius, I'm not discovering, I'm not pioneering. Let me tell you something. These were just men. And they may have been imitators of Christ. Right? They they were certainly Christian. But I would remind everybody that they were just men. Men who had countless failures, who made countless mistakes, the same as all of us. But what separated the men of the founding era from us is that those men persevered. They were persistent, and they did so because they were driven by something deeper than their own need for secular success. They did what they did not because of some sort of self-aggrandizement, not because they sat around in a room and said, Oh man, this will make us famous. Oh man, I guess we're the best. We're on top of the world. No, countless letters of I don't know if I can do this. But it always ended with, but God in his providence has called me to this place and this time. And how how can I do any less than what God is calling me to do? That that needs that needs to be a part of what we believe today. It has to be. Because if we look back on the past 250 years, we walk away and saying, wow, those are great men, and uh, I guess that era's gone. No. What why are we called to any less than greatness? And that's not some prosperity gospel. We all have the power. You can be great, my friend. But it but it is. That is the truth. God has called you to do great and mighty things in his name. God has called you to a life of service and of sacrifice and of dedication to principles. God has called you to be good and to be virtuous, to be to be humble, but courageous, to be discerning, but to be to be ambitious. And who are we as a people or even as an individual person if we're not willing to do the same things that those who came before us did for this great country? How how can we even how can we how can it's almost blade hypocrisy to celebrate the Fourth of July as we hide out and say, well, I I guess I'm just not equipped for this? Neither were they. You think you think George Washington or I mean, literally any of these men were just by nature of birth just great men? You think just any of them just stumbled magically upon greatness? They just out of nowhere they said, okay, I got this. No. They all knew what drove greatness. It was one word, it was providence. And if you think that providence expired in 1776 or in 1783 or in 1799, you are heavily mistaken. Providence did not expire, it did not leave this great nation. But providence is given to the men who are willing to fight. That God uses in his providence men. He raises them up. But we have to we have to rise up, right? That's that's kind of a a part of this equation. You can't really leave out if you want success. We have to be men who are willing to stand up and say whatever may come. You know, though, yea, though I walk the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me. The Lord my God is is beside me in in sickness and in health, right? In in times of great adversity and in times of peace, in times of war and and in times where there is no war. That God is still there, ever present. And we have to acknowledge that and we have to be willing to do something about it. We can't just sit idly by as our country is thrown to the wasteland, to the invaders, to the crazy leftists and the radicals. No. We we have a country to preserve. And Fourth of July, especially for the 250th anniversary, the 250th celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, there is no greater a time to be reminded that we are all men. We are all sinful, we all fail, we all make mistakes, but the reality is that we are all called to be greater than ourselves, than what we are today. We are called to be better, we are called to be stronger, we are called to persist in the midst of adversity and suffering and danger and difficulty. In in seasons of treachery and of lies and of deceit, we are called to be bearers of the truth. Uh, whatever that may cost us, right? Because again, you know, the there are many times in the war where there was there was a high level of uncertainty as to the success, as to what would come. And these men knew if they lost that things would not go well for them, right? We talked before. If you ever watched the uh movie National Treasure, which if you've not, another, by the way, very great Fourth of July movie, National Treasure, that movie is a national treasure. Young Washington and National Treasure, I put them in the same category. One is was is modern, but it goes through a lot of the history. It's it's it's a lot of fun. But in that movie, right, one of the things that you that you I don't want to say learn if you're studying history separately, but one of the things that's that's great about national treasure is the way that it paints the danger of what those men did. And then says, How can I do any less than them? They knew that if they lost, they could be tarred and feathered and burned, tortured, and killed before they believed that their farms and their houses would be burned down, that their their their their legacy would be destroyed. And they said, But we must fight. And who are we to do any less than that? They can destroy my reputation, they can come after me, they can do whatever they want to me. It doesn't matter. Because God upholds me until he decides that he that it's my time to go. That's that's up to God, it's not up to me. And what I'm not gonna be is a coward afraid of. That time. What I'm not gonna do is sit around and say, oh well, uh it's scary out there. It's dangerous, man. I I can't do this. No. What? No. No, that's cowardice. That's pure and simple cowardice. It's justification, and it's very different from what our founders did and what that demands of us. They could have done they could have even more easily than us, they could have done that, right? Their war was actually much more dangerous than ours. I know that there's civil unrest and there's the willingness to to hurt other people and to call for violence, but there was already violence going on. They were in a war against a global superpower across the sea. It would have been so easy to say, man, I can't I can't fight this. No, we're I'm gonna die if I go, I can't go. But they didn't do that. They said, if if it is the Lord's will, then send me. And when he did, they went. And we have to do the same thing. Now, we don't have a lot of time left in this segment. Um by the way, thanks for the text and I greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thanks for engaging, being a part of the show.

Heat Safety For Independence Day

SPEAKER_11 1:07:02

Let's go ahead and give you guys the weather report. We were supposed to do it at the bottom of the hour every every day, but uh, of course, we were talking about some pretty important guys in our history. So we'll go ahead and give it to you now. Southeast Texas today is gonna expect another day of peak heat index values reaching 100 to 110 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. Houston today is gonna be sunny with afternoon temperatures hitting 95 degrees. The Weather Service said in a forecast bulletin heat continues to be the main talking point for the region. Forecasters are especially focused on this weekend, which they noted would be drawing unusually or not unusually, usually large crowds outdoors, because it's doubling as a milestone, both for the Fourth of July hot and for Americans, and it's also a World Cup match day. And so the Weather Service said consideration for a heat advisory will need to be maintained. If you plan to spend the day outdoors, make sure you wear light clothes, apply sunscreen, and stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water, also take plenty of breaks from the heat by seeking shade. So on hot days, we rely on this thing called the evaporation of sweat to cool us off. The heat index value takes into account how high humidity makes that evaporation less efficient and in turn gives a more accurate description of the heat the body experiences, because the higher the humidity, the less your your sweat is going to evaporate because the air is already moist. Because your body's ability to cool down is compromised by the high heat, by the high humidity, the potent combination of excessive humidity and extreme heat can raise your core body temperatures to higher levels, hence where we get the heatiness values or the feels like temperatures, since your sweat cannot evaporate. Now, the 4th of July, Independence Day, that's tomorrow, is shaping up to be sunny, with temperatures inching closer to 100 with a high near 96. Meanwhile, humidity will make that temperature feel about 10 degrees hotter and more like 106. At night, fireworks shows across Southeast Texas are or should be good to go without any weather-related interference, as mostly clear skies are expected. They're putting resulting heat stress on the human body's forecast to be high, level three out of four, reaching extreme level four out of four in a few isolated spots. In layman's terms, it'll feel warmer than the typical summer days as of recent, though not dramatically different. Rain chances return to the forecast as early as Sunday, when Houston has a slight 20% chance of showers in the afternoon. Now, although Houston Monday has a roughly 30% rain chance on an otherwise mostly sunny day, temperatures are still expected to reach ninety-four with the heat mix near 105. The weather service said regardless of whether or not a heat advisory is issued, it would still be wise to practice heat safety. Forecasters uh added that despite heat being the top weather-related killer in the US, it is often underestimated as a public health threat. It said even if the heat advice even if the heat isn't advisory strength, more people outside means more case of heat analysis will likely emerge as a result. And so just again, the same thing. Be cautious, be watchful. But on the good, on the good side, on the bright side, it does look like our 4th of July should go off without a hitch. You never know, right? Things can change in a 24-hour period. Actually, more than that, because of course it's tomorrow evening when a lot of these fireworks shows will be going on. So things can change uh from now until tomorrow night. But as of now, we're expecting basically no chance of rain, mostly clear skies, should be an absolutely gorgeous day to be outside, uh, to celebrate the 4th of July, to spend time with your family. And again, to think back on what it is that we're celebrating. It's not just, oh yeah, fireworks, boom, boom, burgers, hot dogs, food trucks, yeah, we're good. No, country music, and no, no, no, no. Those are all parts of a celebration, but they're not what we're celebrating. They are the ways that we celebrate. And the thing that we're celebrating is independence. And not just independence from Britain or independence from weak government or tyranny, but more than that, it is independence from slavery. That is the slavery to Britain, the slavery to tyranny, and the slavery to her own passions and desires. We are we can be freed from all of those things. And that's why when we talk about the founders saying, hey, we're a Christian government, we should elect Christian leaders, you know, this is God's providence. This constitution is only made for a moral and religious Christian people. The reason that those things are so important is that that's part of freedom. You're not actually free if you're a slave to your sin. You're not actually a free man at all. You're as enslaved as anybody else. And so on this 4th of July, let's actually celebrate freedom, let's actually celebrate liberty and Christian government. What we're really celebrating is the really the first time in a very long time, if you know, you know, you think back to very, very old testament, for the first time in a very, very long time, having a country that is a Christian republic. Unheard of in the modern age. And we're still doing it, we're still trudging along. We have to fight for it every day. We cannot allow ourselves to grow complacent, but what we're celebrating is this country, the men who made this country, and where this country can still go and what it needs to be today. With that being said, we get back from the record and jump over. Speaking of being a Christian nation and the importance of that, the court has now ruled that the admission of evidence tied to a criminal's Satanism does not violate religious liberty. We'll talk all about what that means because this guy, Irving Alvin Davis, is now on death row for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. Talk about the court's delineation in this case. When you get back, as always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. One more time. That is 713-779-KYST. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative, and Lord willing to be right back with the rest of that story after this break. So hang tight and we'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:49

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SPEAKER_11 1:14:06

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SPEAKER_07 1:14:36

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SPEAKER_07 1:16:06

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SPEAKER_11 1:16:58

So let's kick it off talking about the case itself.

Satanism Evidence And Future Dangerousness

SPEAKER_11 1:17:02

So a federal appellate court has ruled that evidence of an individual being a Satanist may be presented during trial when it is relevant to future dangerousness. The defendant had claimed that any consideration of his religious beliefs violated his religious freedom. Irving Alvin Davis was sentenced to death in 2002 after raping and murdering a minor in El Paso. In 2001, Davis was invited to a party that his friend was hosting. At the time he was 19 years old and had not graduated from high school, which is just wild. Also at the party was a 15-year-old Melissa Medina and her friends. Davis reportedly approached Medina whilst dancing and began grinding on her, though she tried to move away because that's creepy, a 19-year-old, you know, doing weird things. The group left the house to walk Medina home in the dark, but she asserted she could make it the rest of the way once reaching an elementary school yard. Davis ran after her, telling the group he would walk her to her house. Those living adjacent to the school reported hearing low growls, followed by thumping noises and moaning. Davis met back up with the group later that night with scratches all over his face, which he attributed to an altercation with his mother. The next morning she was found this 15-year-old girl was found dead and unclosed in the school parking lot with clear signs of strangulation and blunt force trauma. Her fingertips had been cut off to prevent the discovery of DNA evidence, and her wrist showed signs of attempted severance. In 2002, Davis was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. The Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas's highest criminal court, granted a retrial. At resentencing, the state introduced evidence of David Davis' affiliation with Satanism, alongside personal writings and drawings from his jail cell, asserting that he presented a future danger. The state also called an expert on Satanism who justified that various satanic texts advocated for destroying or sacrificing humans, which meant causing their death. Davis's defense, of course, argued that his belief in Satan was symbolic and that Satanism advocated for nonviolence. The court subsequently sentenced him to death again in the retrial. Davis claimed that his First Amendment rights were violated when the state introduced evidence of his affiliation with Satanism, citing the establishment and free exercise clause as well as the freedom of association. And so last week, the Fifth Circuit, I guess earlier this week, the Fifth Circuit upheld Davis's conviction, ruling that his First Amendment rights were not violated by the inclusion of evidence of his Satanism. The court agreed with the CCA that the state produced plausible evidence of Davis presenting a future danger. The specific Satanist literature that Davis owned reportedly endorsed violence. Quote, his writings show a frequent preoccupation and antipathy toward humanity in general, including several instances in which he wishes to enact some level of physical violence on others. The discussion of Satanism is also invariably commingled with other content, and among his writings are handwritten reproductions of the satanic rules, which include the noted issue of destroying someone. Some of his drawings reportedly displayed violent and sexually explicit content. However, the court did not rule that a defendant's associated with the religion of Satanism is always appropriate to consider. To the contrary, it may allow defendants a justification for otherwise troubling behavior. Smith wrote that Davis's drawings and writings given a preoccupation with rape, violence, and death. Because those materials were admissible in their own, the bare fact of days associated with Satanism would likely be beneficial, not prejudicial to Davis, providing him an opportunity to explain the metaphorical nature of his writings. Nonetheless, the fact that those things were associated with his religion, quote unquote, was not enough to have those materials thrown out as evidence according to the Fifth Circuit. Now, this case gets something much bigger.

Religious Liberty And Moral Limits

SPEAKER_11 1:20:21

I wanted to go over this case so we understand religious liberty and that argument, but it gets at the question that we America seems to want to avoid. What exactly did our founders mean by religious liberty? Does anyone know? Because we've been trained, like talking monkeys, to pretend that liberty uh was was moral neutrality. Uh the Constitution requires America to treat Christians and Satanists and secularists and pagans and every anti-Christian ideology as equally valid expressions of our public life. Well, they're all equal. They're all the same. You all are afforded the same rights. But that's not the country that we build, actually. That's just a complete rejection of the historical record. Religious liberty in America was was not designed as a suicide pact, which is what we treat it like today. Well we can't violate their religious liberty, so I guess if they're gonna destroy us and our ideology and be un-American, I mean, even if it wasn't violent, even if it wasn't, even if it didn't result in the murder of people, it could still be a suicide pact by nature of the destruction of American ideology and Western civilization. Right? It was not designed, religious liberty, to make the state blind to evil and blind to the spiritual commitments that shape our conduct. Religious liberty was meant to protect Christian denominations from being crushed by one another or by the state. It was meant to keep Baptists from being persecuted by Anglicans, Presbyterians being you know, persecuted by congregationalists, and Christians from being forced into a certain kind of church. It was not written with the assumption that a nation could survive while openly elevating rebellion against God in the same moral category as Christianity. He was never saying, well, I guess we all are the same, really. I mean, if you're a Baptist or a Presbyterian or a Satanist, uh no. Again, as we highlighted John Adams talking about a moral and religious people, he did not say that because it was written for a people with no moral foundation, made for people who celebrate darkness and disorder and sexual violence and death and hatred. He said it was made for a moral and religious people. And in the context of the founding generation, that was not some vague spirituality, like some new age thing. Uh it was not expressive individualism. It was not whatever private symbolism you wanted to attach to whatever. It was a people broadly formed by Christianity, by biblical morality, and by the fear of God. And by the understanding that liberty cannot exist without virtue. Those two things are inherently connected. Which is the part uh that modern America does not want to talk about. The left wants liberty without virtue. They want rules without any sort of duties and rights without duties, they want freedom without any sort of repentance, uh, and they want tolerance without limits. They want what they want, I'll tell you what they want. They want the benefits of Christian civilization while attacking the structure that made those benefits possible. Do you want to know why America was great? We talk about a variety of things that made us great. You know, we used to have a level of high trust. I'll give you an example of this. Whenever I go somewhere on my motorcycle, I always take my helmet inside. You know why? It used to be that you could just leave your helmet outside, and maybe you could sometimes, but in a lot of cases, you know how many thefts you hear of of motorcycle helmets going missing? Of people's motorcycles going missing, people's cars? It used to not be a concern. And now it is. Do you know why? Because the benefits of a Christian society, of course, you still had laws against theft, right, as you do today, but that you you weren't nearly as worried about it because the men were good men. And you still had to have rules that enforce that because of course there would still be evil, and of course you still want to bind the actions of men. But it was predicated on the belief that the men at the time were virtuous or or or fought for virtue. If a nation if a nation's theologies become visible, it becomes visible in their laws, in their art, and in their treatment of everyone, right? And so no, I'm not gonna pretend that Satanism is just another harmless private belief system that should be treated with the same public reverence as Christianity. I'm not gonna pretend uh that that open fascination with evil and the rejection and rebellion of God has no connection to the way that people think about good and evil. Uh and look, legally, the court was very careful in their wording, right? They did not say that being a Satanist automatically proves future danger, or that being a Satanist is reason for a conviction, or that being a Satanist is reason alone for you not being able to participate in in the rights. Um They said that the writings and drawings and literature and beliefs are tied to these sort of violent things, that that evidence can matter. But what I want to tie that back into from a non-modern court standpoint is that beliefs are not irrelevant. Who and what you worship is incredibly important. What you glorify is important. What you write and you draw and you study and obsess over, those things are incredibly important and they are not neutral. The modern mind of secularality wants to say, no, no, no, no, no. That's that's all private, it's all protected, it has nothing to do with anything. That's not that's not true. It's not just not true, it's just nonsense. Ideas, of course, have consequences. Religion has consequences, worship has consequences. A civilization that worships the living God will produce a different kind of people than a civilization that mocks God and and creates rebellion and caters and even celebrates it. Right? The country's going to look different if you have anti-sodomy laws uh than what happened with the case of Lawrence v. Texas back in what 2003, when the courts decided that Texas had no right to uh have laws against sodomy. Well, wouldn't you know it? We removed all the sodomy laws, and the country doesn't actually look any better. In fact, it looks inarguably much, much worse. Right? Go back to 1973, for instance. I saw Seth Gruber talking about this the other day. Incredible segment on it. Seth Gruber, if you've never seen Seth Gruber, you should go look him up. Seth Gruber is a pro-life activist, been around a while, but he's he's just an incredible speaker. And Seth Gruber was talking about 1973. That was, of course, uh the year that we really said that child sacrifice was okay. And it's not coincidental that that is the same time, that is the same time in which we also removed all obscenity laws under the First Amendment. Essentially arguing uh ultimately that those things are all fine, which ultimately means that things like pornography, that was when pornography was allowed. That that was when pornography uh became legal all across the US. And so it's it's very important that you you understand what was happening. In fact, you know what? I found the video, so I'm actually gonna play the video for you guys before we go to the break here. I'm gonna play this video from Seth Gruber where he kind of highlights all of this from 1973. So uh let's let's listen let's listen into this and uh we'll see what you guys think.

SPEAKER_10 1:27:12

Abortion, molok, animal worship, bail, orgiastic delights, ashtareth. George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights, said as nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, so they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, providence punishes national sins by national calamities. The same year that we declared open season on pre-born humans, we gave more legal protections to sea turtles and porpoises, which by the way, fulfilled G.K. Chesterton's prophetic warning that wherever there is animal worship, there will be human sacrifice. Wow. Happened in the same year, Josh.

SPEAKER_15 1:27:46

Gosh, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_10 1:27:47

I've never Supreme Court removed their obscenity laws, thereby allowing the widespread legal distribution of pornography for the first time in American history. That all happened in

SPEAKER_11 1:28:03

So you see, right, this is this is very evident. This is all connected. What we worship is directly resulting in the things that happen in this country. We can sit around all day and pontificate about well rights and religious liberty, and that means that everybody gets open season on whatever they want to do, and everybody should be happy and worship whatever they want, and that's all good. No, actually, that's not all good. Not with me, not with the founders, not with God. Then of course you're punished for sin. There are there are there are physical consequences of the things that you do. This is why the more we learn about science, it's very interesting because it coincides with what we already know. And when they say, well, man, pornography addictions, that's pretty wild. Pornography addictions uh create changes in the brain that result in the mistreatment of women, that result in the misunderstanding of sex and sexual relations that result in men who look different, who act different, who are depressed, who are anxious, who have lower testosterone, who are less manly, less productive. Why do you think that is? Because it's sin. And an individual sin creates gluttony, for instance. I mean, it's the natural flowing consequence of these things. What does the sin of glutton produce? Oh, yeah, that's right. Uh we're over we're an obese culture where obesity is one of the number one cause of death in the U.S., over 50% of adult males are obese. And what is the result? Oh, yeah, that's right, that the men are unfit. And that of course has impacts again on the brain and how you think and how you perform, how you're able to move and and and and be productive and be a contributing member of society. Sins have consequences. And the the founders understood that very well, hence why they didn't they didn't put it in the Constitution that you must be a Christian, right? But they all said it. They didn't expect it to be any different because they were all Christian. That was the expectation. That was the societal understanding. Hey, we are a nation of Christians, by Christians, for Christians. And of course we don't have to regulate that. We can't force it, but we don't need to because that's what we are. And now you look around the world today and you go, oh man, you know what's crazy is uh now that now that we've just said, oh no, that meant that anybody of any religion can worship, now we're dealing with the impacts of uh having to fight against Sharia law and having to fight against Islamic influence and terrorist attacks, we're having to fight against pornography and and addiction and and rampant homelessness and socialism. Why do you think that is? It's not just because we just changed all of a sudden, it's because we stopped understanding that we were a nation of Christians and that we were a Christian nation by extent. That that's what we were. And when you reject that, then the Constitution isn't so much of a defense anymore. Because it was designed for a moral and religious Christian people. With that being said, when we get back from the break, we are going to jump over and we're going to talk about some uh trend Aragua members who've been charged in connection to kidnapping and a murder of a Dallas family. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the indictment of eight trend Aragua members in connection with two separate cases of kidnapping and murder. So we'll talk about all of that when we get back from the break. As always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. One more time. That is 713-779-KYST. You are listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and we're going to be right back in the next segment with the rest of that story. So hang tight, and we'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:27

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SPEAKER_03 1:31:43

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SPEAKER_11 1:36:39

Before

Gratitude That Comes With Duty

SPEAKER_11 1:36:40

we get into this story, we got a text in that I want to read on air. It's a little long, but it's worth it, I promise. It says, I love our republic. Happy fourth, everyone. I appreciate our religious Christian liberty. A friend of mine travels, and many in this world have to sneak around to be able to worship God and are persecuted if caught doing so. Many take advantage of those liberties that men have fought for throughout time. We need to get back to a truly free republic, get back to morals, and where there is no self-government, then laws need to be made. We don't really get how blessed we are to live where we do and what our founders created for us. We take so much for granted instead of being grateful and thankful. It's a day to look back and praise God and thank him for his providence for these many years. And uh I couldn't have said it any better myself. Today is a day to be grateful. But gratefulness the driver behind gratefulness is that the thing the thing is, this is very difficult to kind of put into words, but I I hope that this makes sense. Gratefulness without work is meaningless.

unknown 1:37:39

Right?

SPEAKER_11 1:37:39

If I say, hey, I'm so I'll give you a great analogy. Your dad, when you're 17, 16 years old, decides to help you buy a car. Or buys you a car, whatever the case may be. Helps you buy it, helps you find it, does the research, all these sorts of things, helps you get it. And he buys you the car or helps you buy the car, and after you get it, you say, I'm so grateful. Thank you so much. And then you treat the car like trash. You you don't do the oil changes nearly as frequently as you need to, you don't do any maintenance, you don't check on it, you you drive it hard all the time, you don't take care of it, you don't wash it, it becomes a dirty mess that dies in two years. Would it be fair for someone to look at you and say, maybe you're not very grateful for your dad's your dad's help here? Maybe you're not very grateful for the thing that your dad helped get you or got you. Maybe, maybe it's true. It's fair to say that you're not actually very grateful at all. That you said you were. You said you were grateful, but you don't actually seem to be very grateful at all. We we we must understand that gratefulness also comes with obligation and with duty. Yes, today is a day for gratefulness to the providence of God, to the men who founded this country, and to the men who kept this country going for centuries. But that gratefulness must also be accompanied by another part of the celebration, which is the understanding of what obligations God has given us in this day and age. It is an understanding of what we are called to do as conservatives, as Christians, and as Americans. That we have an obligation before God, before our families, and before our country to stand in staunch defense of the the morals, the principles, and the virtues of which the founders stood for. We should be very grateful for it. And we should use that gratefulness as an opportunity to be good men as well. To fight the fight, fight the good fight, to finish the race that God has set before us, to be virtuous, to be good, to pursue that which is that which is positive, that which is what God has called us to be and to do. That must come with the gratefulness. Now, with that being said, we're getting very close to wrapping up the morning show, and I want to do it real quickly with this last story.

Gang Violence And The Need For Justice

SPEAKER_11 1:40:00

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanch announced uh this week, just a couple days ago, that authorities have charged eight alleged members of the Venezuelan gang, Trend de Aragua, with the murder and kidnapping of a Dallas family and a separate murder in Chicago. The Trump administration designated Trend Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization in 2025. The gang is a multinational criminal enterprise that operates similarly to MS-13. Trendy Aragua has been connected to multiple high-level cases, including drug and weapons trafficking, kidnapping, and murder. Authorities filed charges against five gang members in the Dallas area, according to U.S. Attorney Ryan Rabold of the Northern District of Texas. Back in 2024 in August, four alleged TDA members, Trendargua members, broke into the home of a Dallas resident to bind his wrists and feet and demand ransom money. They also kidnapped his 13-year-old daughter and 12-year-old nephew. When the father refused to pay, the Trendargua members drove him to a bridge and told him to jump. When he refused and attempted to flee, they recaptured him and executed him. And so Raybold said, When violence enters a community, that's when freedom leaves. He noted one member of charge that connection with the case was the was a leader in Trendaraguas. The second case involved three members of Trendargua kidnapping a man and executing him in Chicago, Illinois. They later told his mother where she could recover her son's body. Blanche said, None of these men should have been in this country. The father in Texas should be alive today. His daughter and nephew should never have been kidnapped. FBI director praised the Trump administration and law enforcement agencies around the country. He said that law enforcement arrested over 29,000 gang members since 2025 and dismantled 2,700 gangs. He also doubted a 519% increase in convictions of members connected with Trend Aragua. Bland said the current administration is systematically dismantling Trend Aragua. Since January of 2025, law enforcement agencies nationwide have arrested 350 members of Trend Aragua specifically and are investigating many more to come. Does anyone think that what Trend Aragua did was evil? I'm asking a genuine question. Does anyone believe that the kidnapping and the murder that those things are wrong? And that we as people should say, hey, that's really evil, that's really wrong, and you should be held accountable for it and never be allowed to do these things again. Does anyone believe that? I I I'm I'm saying it a little rhetorically because I would assume that anyone listening to this show, that most even even left-wing Americans would say, of course. Of course that's wrong. Of course that's evil. And then I would ask the next question, why? And people who are not believers will of course try to do everything they can to perform what we call mental gymnastics to justify why they could call it evil. They would say, Well, evolution would teach us that me that that the number one instinct demand is survival, right? If we want to survive, we have to do so through order, not chaos. And so they would pull on evolutionary biology. Others will pull on utilitarianism as their political philosophy. But what all of these secular philosophies have in common and have as a critical failure of their belief system is that they're not pulling on anything objective, any sort of real standard. They're all just making random claims of why they think that. That that is their opinion. Because if I come out and I say, okay, utilitarianism's great, uh, what if I just don't believe that though? What if what if I think that it's better utility to just I I mean things like eugenics and execution of anyone I disagree with? What if we just like eliminate anybody who I think is just not good? They say, well, you can't do that. I say, why not? And then they'll turn to the legal argument, well, because that's not legal. I said, what if what if I make it legal? What if you go to another country where it is? Are they good? They're like, well, in their country, and they're forced to do that. They're forced to say, well, over there, I guess it's fine. It's not fine, actually. And the problem is, the reason that we all know that it's wrong is because we actually live in a Christian nation that is determined by Christian ethics and laws, the law of God. That is the objective standard outside of space and time, outside of human understanding and reason greater than political philosophy, is the God of the Bible who decrees in his sovereign decree what is right and what is wrong through his holy decree. And the reality is that when you import people who don't believe in that decree, and you allow them essentially free access to this country, you know what you get? You get kidnapping and rape and murder and drug trafficking and weapons trafficking. You get really bad things. And that's because this country cannot survive a lack of Christianity.

A Fourth Of July Challenge

SPEAKER_11 1:44:44

And so that'll do it for the show. I wanted to tie all that back in again to the common theme of today, which is that the Fourth of July is, of course, a moment for gratefulness, for celebration, for fireworks and food, and hanging out with family and having a good time and watching the boom booms go boom. But it's also time to remember what we're what it is that we're celebrating. We are celebrating a Christian government and a history that has been handed to us and that we are called to maintain and to defend and to be willing to sacrifice and to die for. I am. Are you? Thanks everyone for tuning in for Texan for being a part of the show. Lord will be back bright and early Monday at 6 a.m. In the meantime, please enjoy this great 4th of July weekend. Enjoy your the rest of your weekend with the heat. Get outside, enjoy it with your family, enjoy the fireworks, and Godspeed.