A Christian Perspective on the 2024 Election

Knight & Rose Show — Wintery Knight and Desert Rose

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A Christian Perspective on the 2024 Election

September 15, 2024

Knight & Rose ShowWintery Knight and Desert Rose

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss the upcoming 2024 election. How can you measure whether an economy is socialist or free enterprise? Are Scandinavian countries an example of socialism? Does the Bible teach that Christians should support socialism? Which economic system is better for individual prosperity? We also discuss inflation, price controls, moral issues, crime, immigration, energy and health care.

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Show notes and transcript: https://winteryknight.com/2024/09/15/knight-and-rose-show-53-a-christian-perspective-on-the-2024-election

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Transcript

Welcome to the Knight & Rose Show, where we discuss practical ways of living out an authentic Christian worldview. I'm Wintery Knight. And I'm Desert Rose.

Welcome, Rose. So today we wanted to talk about the American election that is scheduled for November 2024. Right now we're about two months away from Election Day, so we're all thinking about the candidates and what sorts of policies that they support.

We recently recorded a couple of episodes with Frank Turek for his American Family Radio show and his Cross-Examine podcast, where we talked about those policies and candidates, but we didn't get to everything that we wanted to get to. So we thought we would record our own episode. I think a good place for us to begin is the Democrat Party platform, where a lot of the policies I see seem to overlap with socialism.

Right, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, so I guess we should start by defining socialism. Socialism is the government control of industry and the means of production.

So when the government controls things like healthcare, energy, transportation, postal service, things like that, that is full socialism. There are socialist policies that lean in that direction. So for example, high taxes on productivity rather than consumption.

When the government redistributes wealth from the most productive to the least productive people, that's a socialist-like policy. Price controls are socialist in nature when the government decides how much people can charge for goods and services versus supply and demand and free exchange. Minimum wage and rent control.

Exactly, yeah, and one we've been hearing a lot about lately is taxing unrealized gains. Yeah, the grocery prices. Yes, yes, exactly.

Yes, price controls on grocery prices and heavy regulation of business, massive welfare spending. All of this is very socialist. It's giving more and more power and control to the government and taking away more and more freedom from businesses and individuals.

Exactly. So I think something that's worth mentioning about socialism is that it really does not take the reality of human nature seriously. It assumes that people are content to work hard and do their best even when they're going to see most of what they produce controlled by other human beings.

They're going to see their income dispersed out to everybody else who didn't do that hard work. They're going to see the government making so many decisions, having so many regulations that they just don't have the freedom to run their business in a way that they know it would thrive and it would benefit them and their families and their communities personally. So this is a huge problem with socialism.

Keep that in mind as we talk about it. Yes, that's great. Let me talk a little bit about the free market system or the free enterprise system or capitalism.

Those are all interchangeable. So here are some characteristics of it. So they have something called the rule of law, which means that nobody is above the law.

The law is enforced fairly for everyone. So the courts have integrity. They're not corrupt.

They respect your property rights. And the government also has low corruption as well. The second part of that system is the size of government.

So the government is small. You pay a lot less in taxes. The government doesn't spend a lot of money.

And there's also something called fiscal health, which is where the government, they're responsible with how they spend money, they budget properly. And so they don't have a situation where they owe a whole ton of money for something, but they don't have a way of getting that. The third characteristic of free market systems is regulatory efficiency.

So that just means things like how easy it is to start a business, how easy it is to hire and fire employees, how easy it is to open a bank account and do banking transactions. And the last one is market freedom, which is just the ease of being able to make trades, make investments, and how much financial freedom you have. So can you open a bank account? Can you make withdrawals and deposits? Can you buy stocks? All that stuff is market freedom.

So if a country is really good on rule of law, size of government, regulatory efficiency, and market freedom, then they rank highly in this thing that Heritage Foundation puts out called the index of economic freedom. So countries that have those things are like Switzerland, Ireland, and Singapore, and countries that don't have those things are like North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. Yeah.

You mentioned North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. I often hear a lot of people saying, well, that's not the kind of socialism I want. I want the kind of socialism that Scandinavian countries have.

Well, the problem with that is the Scandinavian countries are not socialist. Their prices are not regulated, as Kamala Harris is proposing doing. They have no minimum wage laws.

Our minimum wage laws have been going up and up and up, especially in certain states like California. Over the last few years, we're seeing the ramifications of that. The Scandinavian countries have a free open stock market.

In the Scandinavian countries, private property is guaranteed by law and citizen savings are fully private, free of government control. And so if you look at the index of economic freedom that you mentioned, these countries are very, very high up as some of the absolute freest countries, economically speaking, in the world. So Denmark is number nine, Sweden is number 10, Finland is number 11, and Norway is number 12.

So by contrast or comparison, the US is actually 25th. So all of the Scandinavian countries are far freer, economically speaking, than the United States is right now. So what the Scandinavian countries do, though, is they have very high taxes, especially on the lower and middle class.

We hear people talking all the time about tax the rich, make the rich pay their fair share. Well, Johan Norberg of the Cato Institute, who's a Cato fellow from Sweden, he says this, I want to read this quote from him. He says, yes, we have a bigger welfare state with more public services than the US, but it's not paid for by the rich.

They are far too few and too important for the economy. The dirty little secret of the Swedish tax system is that we don't squeeze the rich, we squeeze the poor. Right.

So they have like a fully free, fully private economy, it sounds like, but then they just tax you 45 percent. And that's how they pay for all this generous welfare spending. And people are thinking, oh, I want those welfare programs, but they're not thinking of the fact that the economy is free and the taxes are just really high.

Right, exactly. And they're also not thinking that they're going to be the ones who are paying these huge, huge high taxes. They think that Elon Musk is going to cover a huge welfare state for them.

Well, that is exactly the opposite of how it works in the Scandinavian countries, because it doesn't work any other way. Yeah, that's an excellent start to define socialism in the free enterprise system. But which one is more biblical, do you think? Well, people often bring up acts to to me as evidence that that it's more biblical to have a socialist system.

But in reality, acts to and acts for which is similar is evidence of a free market economy, because they hear what we see as voluntary giving. Private property is assumed that the Christians are free to sell their property, to give to other Christians. It is not extracted by the government for the government to do with it, whatever they've decided.

It is the Christians own the property. And here what we see is them giving to other Christians in a community of tremendous accountability. We read in Second Thessalonians 3 10, Paul saying, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

And First Corinthians 5, Paul says that essentially if anyone is putting their own sexual preferences and desires above the commands of the Lord, then put him out of the church. And so we're seeing a Christian community with tremendous accountability in which people are not making the types of terrible decisions that lead to greater and greater and greater need for welfare. For making non-Christian decisions.

Exactly. Good point. Good point.

Exactly. What else? Well, and also we see private property is in the acts to and acts for passages, we see that private property is assumed. And in acts five, we actually see private property very clearly affirmed, not just assumed, but affirmed as good and right.

And so we have the account of Ananias and Sapphira. They sold their property in order to give to the church. They gave a part of it to the church, but they said to the Christians that they had given all of the money that they made from their property to the church and they lied.

And so Peter calls them out on this and he says, didn't the property belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? Okay. So he's affirming. You could have done with this, whatever you wanted.

Nobody was forcing you to give all of the money to the church, to the fellowship, to other believers. You could have done whatever you wanted with it. And yet you lied.

Peter's only problem with what they did was they lied. So yeah, we also see that Jesus and throughout the rest of the scriptures is just not concerned with equal outcomes of wealth and status in this life. As socialists are claiming, abolishing wealth inequality.

Right. Exactly. In fact, we have a passage that I think is actually a pretty good parallel to modern day socialism to some degree in Luke 12, when Jesus is teaching his disciples and somebody from the crowds says, Jesus, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

So he's basically saying, you know, my brother got this money, tell him just to share it, and Jesus declines to do that. He says, that's not what I'm here for. That's not what I'm about.

And then Jesus goes on to respond to that man with warnings about greed and about the obsession with mere material things. It's very clear. He's not concerned at all with dividing the wealth.

So the one who has the money isn't greedy or the one who wants the money is greedy. Right. Exactly.

That's exactly right. Yeah. We also see that Jesus only warned and condemned people about money when he was in areas where people gained wealth by extraction through government power.

We talked about that extensively, actually, in an earlier episode from June, 2023. But what we see is that the, that when Jesus is in Jerusalem, he's very tough on the government bureaucrats, the religious leaders, the people who are extracting wealth from those who earned it by their own hard work. When he's in Judea, the closer he gets to Jerusalem, the further away he gets, the farther away he gets from people who, who usually earn their wealth through their own hard work.

The more he is, he challenges people on money. So he, he, it seems that he actually had no issue at all with people becoming wealthy from hard work, even from investment. But we see that he, he's really concerned with people who have stolen with the backing of the government, with people who have extracted wealth from others, using their political power and the religious power to take from others.

Yeah. So he's not going to like, like President Obama, who gave a bunch of taxpayer money to green energy corporations like Solyndra that were run by his biggest donors. He wouldn't like that.

Right. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. We, yeah. We also see the scriptures are absolutely opposed to greed from beginning to end.

Right. And as people are talking about, Oh, tax the rich, take what they have, give it to the rest of us. And I, I point out, well, you know, we do need to be careful about greed.

They're like, Oh, it's not great. It's compassion. Well, the Cato Institute found recently in a very carefully worded and, you know, I think an excellent study by all measures, they found that resentment of the successful resentment of other people who have more than they do actually has twice the effect as compassion has in predicting support for things like top marginal tax rates, wealth redistribution, hostility to capitalism, the belief that billionaires shouldn't exist.

So really excellent study and significant for seeing that. Wow. Yeah.

Jesus, Jesus knows the heart rate of those who are saying tax the rich and give it to the rest of us. Yeah, that's excellent. Excellent point.

It reminds me of something Thomas Sowell said. He said this about greed. He goes, I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.

Exactly. I love that quote. I see, I see it a lot on social media lately, and it's an excellent, excellent quote.

We also see the scriptures oppose envy, of course, right? No big shock there. And so if, if people are, are driven in any way, shape or form by envy, and that's the heart out of which they're calling for the redistribution of wealth, that's a problem that the scripture is also opposed theft. Okay.

So just because the something is that's wrong is carried out by a member of the government that doesn't make it right all of a sudden. And so taking the money from those who have earned it to give it to those who didn't earn it, I would argue that is, that is theft. The scriptures also oppose the inherent goodness of man.

That's absolute foolishness to assume that everyone has great intentions, great hard work ethic, great morality, great selflessness, even without any incentive to do so, whereas socialism does assume that very unwise presumption of man. Yeah, excellent. We did some episodes on this.

People want to check it out. We had a whole series called Was Jesus a Socialist? And I think it was episode 30, 31, and 32. So let's talk about whether socialism, so we know it's not biblical, does it work in the real world? Yeah, that's, that's the other really important question, right? Because if something repeatedly has horrible, horrible outcomes, and we think that the idea is biblical, it's possible we might be reading scripture wrong, right? But yeah, so socialism assumes that everyone is entitled to equal outcomes in this life, right? And despite any differences in their work ethic, their education, their morality, their risk taking, and anything else, just assumes everyone's entitled to what anybody else has.

Well, we don't, as we've talked about, we don't find that in scripture, but we also find that in the real world, when people have incentives to create and to thrive and to work harder and to make personal decisions about what is the best course for them and for their families, everybody ends up benefiting. But when the focus is on, I'm entitled to what you have, actually, everybody is harmed. Yeah, I think socialists also make this assumption that the wealth brackets are fixed.

So if you're in the wealthy, then you're going to stay there forever. But actually, people are moving between brackets all the time, especially when you're younger, you start at the lower brackets, and then as you get older, you move up. Yeah, that's a great point.

It also assumes socialism assumes that, you know, as I mentioned, everyone will do their best without any set incentives to do so. We talked about that already. But another big one is that socialism seems to assume, and socialists seem to assume when I'm talking to them, that the world's wealth is a fixed amount, that there is a certain amount of wealth in the world, and that if one person gains more, then it must be because it was taken from somebody else.

And so socialists think the best course of action is to punish the most productive people to distribute their earnings rather than encouraging the creation of new wealth. What we see in reality, in the real world, is that wealth is always being created. We've talked about the smartphone as an example, the plastic and the glass and the copper and everything else that makes up a smartphone individually on its own.

It's really not worth anything. But when engineers use their minds and their education and their free time and their work ethic and maybe their personal ambition even to put it together, put these parts together to form a smartphone, we all become capable of being far more effective, more efficient and benefiting greatly and wealthier. Sounds like what socialists want to do is like, oh no, Apple has too much copper and plastic and glass.

Let me smash up all their phones and give it to everybody so now everyone's equal. That's not what we want to do. We want innovators to solve problems for us and that we can buy their stuff and become much more efficient and productive ourselves.

Right, exactly. Socialism also assumes that a small group of elites can predict how much of every good and service people need or want rather than letting producers and consumers decide through voluntary trading. That's absolutely ridiculous to think that Joe Biden or Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and their little group of elites or elitists would be capable of knowing how much of every good and service 330 million people want or need.

That's insane and that's why we see things like shortages in socialist countries and bread lines and skyrocketing prices for what is there and all of that. Yeah, the free enterprise system is serious. Like it says, okay, so there's a bunch of humans and those humans, they want more, they want to grow, they want to have children and provide for their children.

So let's make an economic system where the way that they get wealthier is that they invent things and then sell it to their neighbors and their neighbors aren't forced to buy it. They buy it only if it helps them and they decide whether it helps them or not. And when you're competing with a whole bunch of other product makers and service providers, you better be good.

You better be giving the best quality at the lowest price and that's why we become more wealthy by encouraging this kind of competition. Yeah, exactly. So what is the best way to show people? Would you say that the free market actually works because people are often saying things like, well, that's just your opinion and you don't know what you're talking about.

I think this is really important. I want everybody to pay attention. So I mentioned the index of economic freedom.

The best way to show somebody that the free market system works is to show that the countries who are at the top of the index of economic freedom, the freest economies, they also have the highest GDP per capita. What that means is that if you look at the top countries like Switzerland, Ireland, and Singapore, you find that people who live there have the highest GDP. That means they're the most productive and people who are more productive, that almost always translates into higher earnings.

So if you think about even American states, states that are the most free would be states like with zero taxes like Texas. And so Texas would be up at the top because the people who live there have high production, high productivity, and they make lots of money. But in Mississippi, they don't match all of these free market qualities and their citizens are quite poor.

Yeah, so let's talk about Harrison Walls. People ask, well, why would you think that they're going to introduce socialism? And I think that it's important to look at their past records in addition to what they've been doing in addition to what they're saying. They're actually not saying a whole lot lately.

It seems that they're recognizing people are not happy with some of the policies that Harris has been a part of. Yeah. Well, we have a record for her though.

She's been in there for three and a half years with Biden. So they're spending a ton of money. We're running huge trillion dollar deficits and inflation has gone up as a result of this government spending.

Inflation has also gone up as a result of them attacking energy developers, you know, canceling pipelines. Well, look, whenever you spend a ton of money on hiring thousands of IRS agents to go after the middle class, that spending causes inflation. Government spending causes inflation.

And whenever you go after energy producers, they have to charge more for their gas and electricity. So that means everything that you make in an office building that you need the lights on for, you need air conditioning, it's going to cost you more to make that because energy to heat and cool and light that building costs more. Anything you need to ship to a consumer, that's going to cost you more in gas.

So there's a good article from the Wall Street Journal in April 11, 2024, where they had a headline, Biden's green energy price shock. The cost of electricity has climbed by 29.4% since January 2021. So that higher electricity cost means everything you're buying is going to cost more because everything you're buying has to be built or it's got to be shipped or both.

Right. Exactly. Yeah.

And when we're talking about the prices of things going up, you know, Harris, who has been an integral part of that and, you know, casting the final vote for multi-trillion dollar controls. Now, now she, yeah, exactly. Now she's talking about price control.

She's like, she, so she, she was a big part of causing all of this inflation. And now she's like, oh, all this price gouging is going on. Don't worry.

If you elect me, I'll take care of it. So in other words, she's going to put price controls on things. Well, first of all, price gouging is not happening.

Okay. She's, she's specifically mentioned this with regard to the cost of groceries. Well, in the grocery industry, profit margins are well below 2%.

Price gouging is just not going on. Inflation caused by the government is what is happening. And, and this is absolutely going to cause all kinds of shortages, a black market, probably and higher prices because, you know, people don't continue to just produce things that they can't make a living producing.

They're not just going to work for free because the government has said, well, keep producing, but you know, you can't charge enough to make a living. As the government told me, okay, you have to, you can only charge $25,000 a year for being a senior software engineer. I would quit and I go find something else to do.

And that's exactly what's going to happen with these food suppliers and these food retailers. And then it's going to cause a shortage. And in fact, you can see that not only do Democrat economists agree with this, but you can actually see it.

Yeah. And we've heard, I mean, we've heard from, you know, far left Washington post columnist, Catherine Rampell, you know, slamming Harris for these price controls saying, Oh, this is such a disaster. Oh my goodness.

Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Washington would. We would see shortages, black markets and hoarding worse.

So this is an important point. I think she says worse. It would require public companies to publish detailed internal data about costs, margins, contracts, and their future pricing strategies.

Posting cost and pricing plans publicly is a fantastic way for companies to collude, to keep prices higher, all facilitated by the government. So, you know, this far left, Catherine Rampell is saying terrible, terrible idea, Kamala Jason Furman is another, he was the top economist for president Obama. And he, I read the full quote from him recently.

He was saying, Oh, I really hope that, that she doesn't plan to do this. And this is just some sort of way to get elected. But goodness, I mean, the worst case scenario he said is if she's actually serious, that would be horrible.

He says, he says, quote, you will end up with bigger shortages, less supply and ultimately risk higher prices and worse outcomes for consumers if you try to enforce this in a real way. Yeah, this isn't a situation where people go, well, it might work if Kamala smiles nicely or if she has good swagger. This is a known thing.

It's her personal charisma is not going to make this work everywhere. This has been tried in every country and every time it doesn't work. So take a look at Venezuela right now.

These guys were like super wealthy at one point. And then they started going communist in 2003 with the election of Chavez. So he imposed price controls on food and basic necessities.

And then his successor Maduro made even more price controls. And what is the result? The result is shortages, because again, the suppliers go, Oh, so if you sell the food in Venezuela, we're not going to make any money. Let's get it out of here, you know, or let's start making food and do something else.

Yeah. And when there are food shortages, what what little food remains is going to be priced much, much higher, right? Because it's in huge demand now all of a sudden, then there's a very little supply. I actually have I've talked about this before, but I have I collect higher on the black market, you know.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I've talked about before that I have I collect inflation art and I have a paper swan from Venezuela that is made up of their currency.

These huge, huge bills that before 2003 would have been able to buy the people all kinds of food for, you know, for for months on end. And yet now I've got these these five hundred two hundred five thousand Bolivar bills that are that are being used folded up and used to make art out of because they're just worthless as money. Yeah, exactly.

They're only good as paper for making art. Yeah. This business of price controls, whether you're talking about rental properties or oil or housing or food or medical care, you're always going to get a shortage.

And you know what happens when the government sees that there's a shortage or something and they need to they need to start fixing it. They'll do things like in Argentina where they nationalize 30 billion dollars of private pension funds. So you're thinking your 401k is safe.

Look, when these guys get desperate for money, they will take it from you and it will be too late then to vote them out. Exactly. There's this common saying that you can vote socialism in, but you have to fight your way out.

Yeah, definitely. OK, let's talk about specific policies from Harrison Walls. So Walls, he's let's talk about abortion.

OK, people are Christians are concerned about that. We did a whole show on that when we gave a great argument for pro-life that used, you know, mainstream science. So Walls has in the past as governor of Minnesota, he signed the Protect Reproductive Options Act.

This allows ending unborn children from conception all the way to birth. Yes, yeah, exactly. Harris has voted for similar policies.

So as VP, she supported the Women's Health Protection Act, which removes all federal and state restrictions on abortion. It forces taxpayers to fund abortion. So it not only allows abortion, but it requires the rest of us to pay for it.

Voted against the no taxpayer funding for abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act. She voted for taxpayer funding of it. She's against the no taxpayer funding of it.

Exactly, exactly. Yep. Yeah, she voted against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

So she's against saving babies who were actually born alive during an abortion. Yes, exactly. She voted against the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

Yeah. And then, of course, there's the story that probably a lot of people by now have heard of Kamala Harris prosecuting and raiding David the Layton's home after he exposed Planned Parenthood for selling the baby parts of babies that had been aborted by, you know, tearing limb from limb. Yeah, she didn't go after the Planned Parenthood.

She went after the people who exposed them. So this is what you're going to get. You're not going to get something different, people like when you're considering who to vote for.

If you're pro-life, you should expect this kind of treatment, you know, your house being raided, you know, being dragged into court and all that. So how about on LGBT legislation? So let me do that one. So Wallace has actions.

He has signed a bill that makes Minnesota a sanctuary state for child sex changes. So that means people who want to have pursued this in a state that bans it, they can come to Minnesota and they can have this done to their children. So that's pretty extreme.

And he also signed another bill that guarantees that all health insurance plans have to cover gender transition. So if you're on an insurance plan, you're paying for this. You're paying for other people to do this, whether you like it or not.

Exactly. And Harris is the same thing. So she's a co-sponsor of the Senate Equality Act when she was a senator in 2019 and 2020.

And I read an article to prepare for the show called The Dangers of the Equality Act, which was published by Heritage Foundation on May 15th, 2020. And this is what the Equality Act does. It creates a national SOGI law that stands for sexual orientation and gender identity law.

That would allow the prosecution of Christian individuals, Christian businesses, Christian adoption agencies, Christian homeless shelters, Christian schools, and other Christian organizations who just disagree with LGBT. They'll go after you in court, just like they went after the florists, the photographers, the bakers, you know, everything like that. Exactly.

I mean, this bill would also allow male prisoners in women only prisons talk about making a vulnerable population more vulnerable. Wow. I mean, this would include, you know, male prisoners who were convicted of sexually assaulting women.

Now all they have to do is claim to be women and or to identify as women, and they're going to be put in prisons with women to sexually assault them all they want. Yeah. And there's cases where this has actually happened.

Okay. Right. Exactly.

People have to understand that they're condemning female prisoners to to suffer under under these kinds of actions by going for this ticket. It doesn't matter how you feel. This is what this is what the law is going to be.

Right. So in addition to that, the Equality Act also pays for sex change surgeries for transgender inmates in prisons. It makes health insurance cover hormone treatments and sex change surgeries.

So your insurance is going to go up, even if you don't use these things, you're going to be paying premiums that will be redistributed to people who who make claims for these kinds of treatments, even if you disagree with it. Exactly. It also allows transgender students to access the bathrooms, locker rooms of of the opposite sex.

It allows men to participate in women's sports, which is, you know, it's kind of close to my heart because the only way I was able to go to college was on a full tennis scholarship. And if I, you know, I had made the decision basically at age eight or nine, you know, to to give up all these other areas, all like, you know, fun and social life and other other activities and such to wholeheartedly pursue tennis and academics so that I could get a tennis scholarship to a really great academic school. If they had introduced this at, you know, when I was 16, 17, 15, 16, 17, all of that would have been just, you know, for nothing because there's no way I could compete with there's no way women can compete with men in in sports that that require, you know, definitely that are based on strength and speed and all of these things.

Yeah. All right. So one last point about the Equality Act.

It also bans therapy for children who are who want to improve their experience of having unwanted same sex attraction. So you can't, they can't go to a therapist and try to fix this. Unreal.

Let's move on to law enforcement and immigration policy. So we have, again, whenever we're looking at these kinds of questions, I want people to go back and look at what candidates have done. When you look at what they've done, then that's a predictor of what they're going to do.

It's just like a job interview, you know, you'd say, tell me what you've done when you're working for these other companies. So let me tell you what waltz has done working from Minnesota. He allowed $500 million in damages from the George Floyd riots when he was governor and he delayed calling out the National Guard to stop it.

As of yesterday, a new polling came out that shows that ever since Harris chose walls as her running mate, her polling in Minnesota has gone down by five percentage points. So the people of Minnesota are like, if you're going to, if you're going to have walls on the ticket, nevermind. We won't vote for you after all because he's destroyed our state and we don't want him to destroy the whole country.

Right. Right. So what about Harris? Bad decision there.

And when those George Floyd riots happened, she went on Twitter and she asked all her Twitter followers to send money to an organization that was bailing out the George Floyd rioters. And that organization was bailing out, I don't know how to say this, rapists. I don't want to say the real word.

Murderers and violent repeat offenders. And supports abolishing ICE. She supports decriminalizing the act of entering the U.S. illegally.

Exactly. As the borders are, she never visited the border for for a couple of years. And then when she basically couldn't get away with not visiting it any longer, she only visited one time and she went to an area where it's really not the biggest problem.

She didn't even go to the Rio Grand Valley where the biggest problem is. And, you know, I was reading on I've interacted with a few people about this immigration issue. There are so many reasons why it's such a bad idea.

But when I mentioned cost as one of them, people will say, oh, I don't feel like it costs all that much money to have, you know, anybody who wants to come to this country. Well, there was an article from the Daily Wire not too long ago about the state of Mississippi. Their auditors estimated that the cost of illegal immigration in Mississippi alone is at about 100 million dollars per year.

And that's only for the 22,000 or so illegal immigrants that are in Mississippi right now. OK, there are an estimated 22 million illegals in the United States. So if you're going to if 22000 people cost 100 million dollars, then 22 million people doing the math, if my math is correct, that would cost about 100 billion dollars.

OK, I mean, and this and people are like, oh, you just are you guys where are you getting that? What is that for? What do they even have to do? We're just letting them in the country. Well, about for Mississippi, that hundred million dollars, approximately 77 million is for their health care. About four million is for new births.

About 25 million is for their public education. About one point seven million is for incarceration. So far of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes here that are worthy of imprisonment.

And this doesn't even count. It doesn't even account for the illegal immigrants children who are being put on Medicaid. It doesn't account for the drug problem that's been introduced and worsening.

It doesn't account for the sexual assault by traffickers, which I don't even know how you would put a number on that. But that's become a massive, massive problem among immigrant communities, not to mention all the language and cultural challenges that come with just bringing people from all over the world, different cultural values, religions, et cetera, to try to live in the same place without any sort of culture training or expectations or requirements or anything else. But I think even possibly a bigger issue to people's hearts than the money causing causing so many of us to go from thriving middle class or upper middle class or lower middle class to poverty level, perhaps even bigger to a lot of people than that, is that they need to take into consideration what is happening to these unaccompanied minors.

And so the Daily Wire also had, they've actually had a couple of articles recently on unaccompanied minors who have gone missing because the Biden-Harris administration just puts them with different families that haven't vetted properly. 85,000 unaccompanied minors are missing right now. And it is believed that most or all of these have been sold into the sex trade.

So if you don't like children being sold into sex trafficking, you don't want illegal immigration. You don't want open borders. You want a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system so that people can come here legally as you have WK and not just walk over the border.

Yeah. Make sure they're paying more in taxes than they take in services. By the way, if you're concerned about poverty in other countries, nothing is stopping you from giving to charities in those countries.

But what else you can do? You can vote for governments that will put pressure on those companies to move up the index of economic freedom. So push rule of law, courts with integrity, low taxes, small government in these other places. And then those people who are living there will become prosperous.

So we have a way of solving this problem. It's just not the kind of immediate, cheap, quick fix that feels good. But we do have a way of making countries more wealthy.

And it's called trade. And using the bully pulpit to say, hey, you guys got to clean up your act. And it works.

You can see countries like Chile. And Argentina has just elected an amazing leader. Oh, my goodness, I feel like I may have to like leave America and go there the more I see.

Anyway, that's another topic for another show. So let's talk about green energy policies or energy policies in general. So let me lead off with that.

So walls, he signed something called Senate file for in Minnesota, which targets 100% carbon free energy in Minnesota by 2040. And that's excluding nuclear power, which you know, conservatives like, which is zero emission, he says, Nope, we're going carbon free without nuclear power. Well, I was just gonna say, I mean, that's one way you might know that that something suspicious is going on is when when people are calling for green energy and they don't want nuclear.

Anyway, go ahead. Yeah. So Harris is similar.

She has she was the co-sponsor of Senate Resolution 59, which is known as the Green New Deal. And that calls for a ban on fossil fuels at the national level, all 50 states, you think you're safe in your red state, you better be careful with how your neighbors are voting. Because what she's trying to do is she's basically trying to make America like California, okay, California, they are the American leader in green energy mandates, they started in 2002.

And now their new goal is carbon 100% carbon free by 2045, which isn't even as aggressive as waltz's goal for Minnesota. But this is how they went about doing it. They shut down coal plants, they shut down nuclear power plants.

And listen carefully, because here is what happened next. According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, which is eia.gov, they say California electricity prices increased by 98.2% over the last 15 years, the highest rise in the nation. And during that time, electricity prices in the rest of the US, the average increase was 30.6% in that same period.

So this is going to be your future, if you elect people who have these positions on energy policy. Exactly. Something else that Harris walls are in favor of Harris has repeatedly said this over the last five years, she's in favor of Medicaid for all.

So she supported Medicaid for all during her first presidential campaign. The Heritage Foundation published a paper showing that this would actually leave about 75% of Americans worse off financially. That's because, you know, as we've talked about many times here, monopolies are bad when there's only one game in town, they can charge whatever they want, right? They have no incentive to try to save money, or to make wise decisions, because or to give excellent service because they're the only game in town.

And removing competition, you know, also leads to inferior care, because patients can't just go to a competitor. It also leads to long waiting lists for treatment. I mean, you know, we talked about that before, that's what's going on in Canada right now.

And Canadians, a lot of them have been very fortunate to just be able to drive right over the border and get care in the United States. But if Harris is elected, that's not going to be an option for very long if she gets her way with met with this. Yeah, we're all going to be flying to like India or something.

Yeah, exactly. Get immediate care. So you go ahead and then I'll talk about Canada.

Okay. Well, yeah. And also, I mean, when the government is in charge of healthcare, they get to prioritize needs rather than supply and demand.

So if they think that transgender surgeries are more important than treating cancer patients because they want to win the votes of, you know, 18 year olds, 21 year olds, whatever they with, you know, by doing trans surgeries and breast enlargements and these sort of things, and then they don't really care about the 50 year olds and the 60 year olds with cancer. That's what they're going to prioritize. All you listeners, you're probably thinking we're joking, but this is literally what socialist systems like the NHS in the UK and Canada offer IVF, breast enlargements, sex changes that, oh, you don't have to wait a minute to get that.

But if you got a problem like brain cancer or something like that, you're going to be waiting two years. They won't be able to operate on you by the time that you get your appointment. Let me let me talk a little bit about that.

So let's talk about Canadian healthcare. Okay. I love the Fraser Institute.

This is a think tank based in British Columbia. They keep putting out reports on the Canadian healthcare every year and the newest reports just came out. So this is according to their article called the price of public healthcare insurance, which is August 20th, 2024.

They say in 2024, an average Canadian family consisting of two adults and two children will pay about $17,713 Canadian in taxes, which is about 13,000 US at time of recording for public healthcare insurance. Wow. For their free insurance.

So their free insurance is $17,713. Yeah, it's free to walk in the building and take a number. You're paying for it when you pay your taxes and the people who work the hardest, they pay and they get behind refugees who just arrived five minutes ago.

So, but let's talk about that wait time. So they have another article. This one is a little older.

It's from December 7th, 2023. And the article is called waiting your turn, wait times for healthcare in Canada. And this is what they say.

In 2023, physicians report a median wait time of 27.7 weeks between a referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment. That's insane. 27.7 weeks.

That's, that's insane. Sorry, go ahead. No, you're good.

This represents the longest delay in the survey's history and is 198% longer than the 9.3 weeks that Canadian patients could expect to wait in 1993. Now why? Well, I'll just quickly say they have open borders in Canada. Trudeau has been letting in tons of refugees and illegal immigrants and people who are unskilled who use more benefits than they pay in taxes.

And so they're just lining up for healthcare and they're not doctors. So the supply of medical care is going down. The demand for medical care is going up.

What happens? Well, we know from Thomas Sowell and basic economics, you created a shortage of healthcare. Now you're going to have less quality, more waiting time. Yeah, exactly.

I, I've worked in a refugee community for several years and I saw that people who don't know the system who come from other countries will oftentimes go to the ER, the emergency room for, for headaches or a cold or one time for bad breath for one of the children. Because you can just walk right into the ER. You can just say, I don't know, I don't have any money.

And, and you, you know, they'll, they'll just treat you. And so there are these very, very long lines in certain cities in the U S for people who are actually at the ER because they have an emergency. Their life is on the line.

They don't know if they're going to make it. Yeah. And there are people there because, you know, all my daughter's been sneezing for two days and we knew we could get into the ER right away.

We didn't want to have to wait a day or two to see our doctor. People need to understand why is healthcare so expensive in America? Well, there's a lot of reasons. And this is actually one of the things I love to read about.

But one of the reasons is because you're paying for healthcare of people who don't have health insurance. That's why when you go to the hospital, it's $200 or something for an aspirin because you're paying for all the people who don't have any health insurance, but are showing up for treatment and they get treatment, but you pay for it through your insurance. Yeah.

Good point. Good. All right.

Why don't you we're getting near the end. So why don't you tell us what you want our listeners to take away from all this material? Well, something that I think is really big is that socialism is sold as something that's compassionate and that therefore all Christians need to buy into. But the evidence shows that it does not help the poor.

It does not help even the immigrants. It certainly doesn't help citizens of a nation. It doesn't help those who are willing and able to work.

It is not compassionate. It just gives the government far, far, far more power. And a secular government does not have your best interests in mind.

It's very dangerous for everybody. It's a big problem. It's not going to help.

It is not compassionate. I think it's also important to mention something you and I talk about a lot is that politics is not about feeling good. It's not about virtue signaling saying, oh, I wouldn't vote for that horrible person because he has such a bad personality.

And he he does mean tweets and things like this. Policies make a difference in lives and in real human lives, in the lives of image bearers of God and in everyday families. And so we need to look at the policies that people are advocating.

I don't I couldn't care less, really, honestly, about their their personality, about the way they they dress or the way they tweet. I want to see what their policies are because that is what's going to affect all of our lives. We cannot choose a candidate based on skin pigmentation, appearance or or vibe or what tribe they're from or what gender they are.

That is so ridiculous. As a woman, I implore you women out there, please, please do not vote for someone based on their gender. Just because we want the first female president of the United States.

What difference does that make? I'll tell you, we've been talking for almost an hour now about what difference policy makes. It makes no difference to your life whether the person sitting in the White House is a female or a male. We need the best policies possible.

We also as Christians have a responsibility to think about what God wants us to be doing and which policies help us to do those things, which candidate, which policies give us religious freedom versus government mandated secularism, which which policies incentivize us to live the way God wants us to live. I would rather give my my hard earned money to my Christian friends who are in need, who maybe were fired from their jobs for being Christians to my church where my pastor is amazing. I love my pastor so much.

I'm so thankful for him. I'm so thankful for my my fellowship of believers. But my church is having real financial struggles for speaking the truth.

And so I want to be able to give to my church, not to the government, to give out single mother welfare to women who don't think it's important to have a father in the home and things like that. I want to be able to give to Christian organizations and not to some big green energy company run by a wealthy Democrat. So these things matter for our ability to live as Christians.

Yeah, take a look at the candidate's records. That's probably what they're going to do if elected. And you just need to choose the results that, you know, are best for your life plan.

I just want to remind everybody listening that we've done shows. We did a three part series on what's Jesus a socialist. We've done a show on abortion.

We've done a show on LGBT. We've done two shows on LGBT. We had Frank Tarragon.

We did a show on race and Bravo Lima Mike. I don't want to say the word. And we had a whole show on politics and how Christians should think about politics.

That was one of my favorite of our episodes. And what I really like is for Christians to be the smartest people in the room, you know, to say, oh, if you do that, this is what's going to happen. You know, we need to be like the car mechanics and the software engineers and the medical doctors.

You just come in and say, hey, so and so said price controls are great and she's got a great smile. And you say, hey, I've read 20 books on this. You know, let me tell you what has happened in this country and this time and that country and that time.

Let's take a look at the index of economic freedom. Let's take a look at the chart on GDP per capita. Let me show you how this really works, how it's worked.

That's what I want Christians to be like. So listen to those shows. You might want to check out two Frank Tarrack shows that we recorded with Frank.

That'll be on his cross-examine podcast webpage. We'll put it in the show notes. And, you know, I'd love for us to be the best.

It's fun to know how to talk about things with your friends and your coworkers. It is. And then you're you tend to be bolder and more confident and more willing to have these conversations instead of shrinking back in fear, because you know, the truth, you know, that you have reasons for what you're saying.

Yeah. They'll ask you, did you approach your your truth quest with religion that way? And you go, oh, yeah, that's exactly what I did. And they go, well, talk to me about Jesus.

Then if you know what you're talking about, you better tell me what you did. Exactly. Yeah.

I have these kind of conversations just about every day of the year. And I think it's just because I know I read a lot. And so I'm confident and I don't shrink back from the conversations.

I think they're really fun. I think everyone they're really important. And so they tend to they come up all the time.

And we have a lot of fun, even when when people disagree with me. You know, we have great conversations. And even if I don't convince them, they walk away saying, oh, wow, that's a really interesting person to talk to.

Definitely, definitely. All right, listeners, I think that's a good place for us to stop for today. So if you enjoy the episode, please consider helping us out by sharing this podcast with your friends, writing us a five star review on Apple or Spotify, subscribing and commenting on YouTube.

That helps us a lot with the algorithm and hitting the like button wherever you listen to the podcast. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and we'll see you again in the next one.