Attention. You're listening to the top Huff Radio show, America's home for a
conservative not bitter talk radio. Be advised. The content of this program has
been documented to prevents and even cure liberalism, and listening may cause you to
lean to the right. Here's your conservative but not Bitter host, Tod Huff.
Well, all right, my friends, I hope you had a wonderful
weekend. It is good to be here. I should tell you here off
the top a little bit of housekeeping that this will be this will be our
last week. Well, we'll be out next week, is what I'm saying,
back the first week of March. So I just wanted to let you
know that here off the top, we've got to line up of some special
guest hosts. Next week again, what is that the twenty sixth, the
February. This is a leap year, so we've got the twenty ninth of
February this year, and then of course March first, I believe his next
Friday, So twenty sixth of February through the first of March we will be
out. We'll be having Chris Dunham, who's been behind the microphone to fill
in a few times. He will be in a couple of days. We've
got Senator John Crane who's also filled in. And also for the first time,
we've got a friend of mine, political cartoonist Gary Varvill, who will
be filling in again next week as well. If you followed Gary, which
he has some really good, really good work, by the way, his
cartoons. All three of these guys are top notch people. And the dull
you're in good hands next week. But Gary has upset some folks in the
world of the well political cartoon world, getting himself in trouble a couple of
times. I don't know if he'll talk about that or not, but regardless,
that is what is in store for next week. For next week.
Also, also I wanted to tell you that we wrapped up our regular season.
I've filled you in a couple of times. I didn't get any texts
this weekend, but we won both of our games yesterday. We finished just
one game below five hundred, so not great, but we've gotten a whole
lot better, a whole lot better. So it's been a good season.
Coaching the fourth grade girls basketball team. As we play other schools around I
wouldn't even say Central Indiana it's around mostly central Indiana, but some of it
gets out into eastern Indiana. So anyway, it was a fun season.
Have a tournament next we can, but I don't think we can be there
because of our schedule. So the other thing I wanted to tell you is
here off the top, we are this what is it? Thursday? I
think I'm speaking to a group of students at the University of Indianapolis. And
in my preparations for this, and as I've thought about what I want to
talk about, there's just some things that have popped up in my mind that
I want to share with you, things that we've talked about here before.
But as you know, we've got new stations that were on We picked up
what was it thirteen new stations about six weeks ago, first of the year,
and so there's a couple of things I just want to hit on that
I think are important, especially as we reach new people. I don't know
if some people have even heard this sort of I don't know, articula,
articulation of the conservative ideology, maybe a little bit about what it means to
be conservative, not bitter. Why these things matter. I want to talk
about this today because as I've been thinking about my time before the students here
on on Thursday. I've just I've hit some of the basics, and i
just think that it's an appropriate time, especially especially now that we're in an
election season. It is incredibly volidile out there politically. You have people who
are I mean, it's just a charged environment, right. People have strong
opinions about a lot of these individuals, and I would say in many cases
deservedly so. But sometimes those opinions, those opinions of individuals are what rule,
are what dominate the way that some people think about who they're going to
support as candidate for say, president of the United States. And there's a
reason that this is by the people that create narratives. If they can demonize
an individual and destroy or attack or malign his integrity, question his personality,
whatever, and you can drive people to hate them, then it's awfully hard
for a lot of people to see past that, even if their ideas and
policies and so forth are clearly better, which is absolutely what's the case here
today with President briberies, policies and so forth. The way that he's been
running things since he walked into the White House in January of twenty one have
been markedly worse than what we've seen from President Trump. But if you can
stir people into a frenzy, if you can make them just so fearful of
the name, or just make it about the politics of personality, that cold
personality, the coolness factor. Right, what Hollywood says is the acceptable term
or political party belief of the day. A lot of people fall victim to
that. Now I don't think free thinkers fall victim to that, but a
lot of people fall victim to that. And I understand that to a point,
and I just want to talk about it because I've just been thinking about
these things a little bit, especially as I again prepare to go speak at
you Indy this week, and just as we approach the political campaign. Well
we're in the political campaign, but as we continue to move more to the
well the peak of this campaign, it's important that we talk about these things.
So I want to talk about why I'm a conservative today, why that
matters, what's really at stake, what the real fight is over in our
country today, and I want to go through through that. So let me
start by saying a fundamental thing that I think all Americans need to accept for
what I would consider obvious reasons, though I will explain them. Our rights,
my friend, come from our creator. Now, I know that not
everybody that I'm speaking with in this audience today is a believer in God,
not even specifically just the Christian, the Biblical God, the one that I
believe is the one true God. We're not even talking, you know,
one God versus another. Where some people simply don't believe that there is a
God at all, and so that concept may seem may seem a little hard
to accept, hard to get behind, because of course, if there's no
creator, then our rights could not come from said creator. And I understand
that I do. But here's the problem. Now, I would say to
you, even if you're an atheist, an agnostic, whatever, it is
important to understand that our rights come from something natural. Now I would say
that's specifically a creator. I think that that is logically the only explanation for
this. But if you need some other way to think about it, then
that's okay. But it's dangerous. It is truly dangerous if you don't say
that these rights come from something that is greater than greater than our government.
Because if our rights come from our government. Then of course, if they
grant certain rights, they can take those rights, take those rights away,
and that is a dangerous precedent, that is a dangerous way to live.
What we are saying when we say our rights come from our creator, we're
saying we have a certain we have certain powers, certain well, the rights,
but just a certain and it's not even just it's not privileges. We
have autonomy. We have personal authority over our lives that no other person,
even if he or she goes along and forms a large group of people,
even a majority of people, and they get together and say we have asserted
ourselves as the ruling authority overall people, we still do not have to be
subjected to that, because, my friends, we have a creator who has
given us the rights, and among those, as our founders so eloquently wrote
about all these years ago, among those are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. And so we have to come to grips with this first and
foremost, because again, if we don't and we agree that our rights come
from another human being, which, by the way, why would they,
Where's the logic in that? Where is the logic that says what I can
do with my life is predicated upon what someone else thinks I should be able
to do with my life. Now, I understand that my freedom to swing
my arm ends where your metaphor knows begins. I understand that someone should not
be allowed to exercise exercise liberty to directly harm, legitimately and literally harm another
person. That's not a true exercise of liberty, that is actually infringing upon
someone else's liberty to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And so
there is a balance there that must be struck. But this idea that rights
come from God is paramount. Once we establish that, and once we begin
to understand what those rights are, it's not just enough, although it's a
great start to say, to recognize that our rights come from a creator.
Now we have begin to begin to identify what those are. And the Founders
did that to a certain degree when they wrote the Bill of Rights. Now,
the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution were
not intended to be an exclusive list of what rights we have as human beings.
It was really kind of an example, a series of examples, a
series of maybe important or critical rights perspective, here, of course plays a
role, but it's really saying. These are some of the examples. For
example, in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. So Congress
cannot say, we are going to make a law that says everyone must live
their lives according to a certain denomination a certain religion. And likewise, Congress
cannot make a law that restricts the free exercise of a religion. Again unless
there is direct, direct harm caused by the religion, and then, of
course Congress has a role and a responsibility to make laws to protect the life,
liberty, and property of other people. You go on down the freedom
of speech, the freedom of press, the freedom of assembly, the freedom
to you know, to protest, basically to protest and to tell your government
you do not appreciate, you do not agree with something that they that they
are doing, the right of association. These are the sorts of things that
are respected or enumerated specifically in the First Amendment. The second Amendment, of
course, we know, is the right of the people to keep and bear
arms right, and so the list of the ten the first ten amendments is
not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it is beginning to paint the
picture that says, I as a human being, You, as a human
being, have the right to live your life according to your own conscience,
to your own preferences. You can have your own goals, ambitions, dreams,
desires. You can have all these things. You can pursue them.
It doesn't guarantee that you're going to have them, nor does it say someone
else has to fund them, nor does it say someone else has to listen
to you or make your goals and objectives of priority. It simply says you
have the right to live your life. I mean, I'm parafraid, but
that the concept is here, right, the concept is here. You can
believe what you want to believe. You can say what you want to say,
you can think what you want to think. You can live your life.
You have liberty, You have freedom. You have choice up to the
point where, of course, your freedom to swing your arm ends where some
other person knows begins, and then you can no longer exercise that because you
are causing direct and I'm talking director, and I'm talking about some sort of
symbolic harm. I'm not talking about some sort of an emotional harm. I'm
talking about legitimate harm. This is why, for example, someone like me
cannot believe that people really think that the idea of having the right, so
called the right to choose to have an abortion is talked about as though it's
some true choice when it is directly directly impacting another person's life, it ends
another person's life. In fact, that is why someone like me opposes this
concept of abortion. And so the concept again why I'm a conservative. First,
our rights come from God, not from government. Secondly, we've enumerated
what some of those rights are. Number Three, we have to understand that
it is the nature of all things. The nature of all things is to
grow. This is the nature. This is human nature. And you can
find this in the Bible. You can find this in your day to day
life. And I will tell you that most times, growth is a good
thing. If you get married and you want to start a family, you
grow your family. That is a good thing. If you start a business
and you invest in that business and you try to serve more people, try
to deliver more people your product or service. You find ways to maybe drive
down the cost of certain things that didn't even in some cases even exist prior
to your product or your service. That is a good thing. Right,
These are good things if you want to If you start a church and the
purposes to tell people about Jesus, and more people are coming and hearing about
Jesus. No, I'm not talking about as you know, to the degree
that you know, some churches as they grow might water it down. I'm
not saying that they all do, but some might. I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying the concept of growing to serve more people is generally a
good thing. Right, These are good things. The problem is when we
talk about growing the government, and this is the nature of government. It's
just like anything else. When we grow the government, there is a direct
correlation to how much liberty you have. More government means less liberty, and
so in order for us to manage that properly, to manage the proper relationship
that we have with our government, we have to get out the pruning shares
and we have to proactively reduce and cut back the size and scope of government
because it is going to grow by nature. But the more that it grows
by nature, we have to proactively say no, This is not where you're
supposed to be. This is not what you're supposed to be doing. This
is way much, way too much money. Why are you concerning yourself with
X, Y, and Z. These are not your areas of operation.
You have gotten outside of your lane when you start to tell us what the
sea levels are going to be in one hundred years and that you can take
care of that and save us from worldwide catastrophe if we only give you more
of our liberty, give you more power, give you more of our hard
earned dollars. That, my friends, is an indication that government has gotten
too big for its bruches, as my family, as my family would say.
But anyway, more things to say about this. But the nature of
government is to grow. That's where I want to pause this. That's where
I want to pause this. I think these are important things to understand.
And as I said, I've been thinking about this prior to going to you,
Indy. I've been thinking about this as we're in an election year.
Some folks that are new listening to this program. I just want to explain
this because I don't know how often this sort of thing is even explained.
Oftentimes it's explained in terms of I like Trump, I hate Biden, whatever
the case may be. But sometimes these core important principles are not understood because
they're not being properly articulated. Time outs in order a little bit long in
this segment, my friends, sit tight back here in just a minute.
Welcome back, my friends. So where we left off last segment was that
we talked about the role the role of government, and we talk specifically about
the nature of government. The nature of government is to grow. If you're
just nowt joining us, we're kind of laying out some of the reasons in
rationale why I am a conservative. You know, a lot of people look
at look at politics as kind of like the preference of being a New York
Yankees or a Boston Red Sox fan. That's not at all the way that
I look at in fact, in fact, it's hard to like particular players
on the team, sometimes on the Republican side of the aisle, and I
mean the Democrats as well. But the point is this is about ideas,
and we're laying out those ideas. I'm explaining these ideas why it matters.
Again, I said that I'm going to be speaking at a with a group
of students at the University of Indianapolis sometime later this week. That's got me
thinking about this, And as I've just thought about it, I've also thought,
you know, we haven't done this in a while. We've got new
listeners. This is an electioneer, maybe this is an important thing to do.
So I'm just going through some of the rationale of being a being a
conservative, and I guess I should pause there. I should pause there because
when I say conservative, what I mean is someone who believes what we've talked
about thus far, someone who believes that rights come from God. Government has
a role. We have given government certain powers and authority, but that is
not a limitless list of powers and so forth. It's a very defined group
of powers that have been set forth in the United States Constitution. Of course,
no one really cares about that. You and I do, But the
government wants to trample on that all the time. Because again, the nature
of government, just as the nature of everything else, is to grow,
just as it's the nature of people when they start a business, to grow
the business when they started, when they get them married, to start a
family. For those that decide to have family, they want to expand the
family. For those who maybe start a church or some other organization. I
mentioned a little bit about my experience coaching this fourth grade girls basketball team.
It's I mean, you know these things. If you start these things,
you want to grow. You want to develop the program, you want to
make your team better, you want to get I mean all these things.
Or if you if you own or manage the league, you want to make
it. You want to get more teams, you want to make it more
competitive, all these sorts of things. That's the nature of things I mentioned
earlier. It's it's it's even a biblical thing. I mean, we are
created to do things. That's not the only reason. We're to love our
neighbor and take care of people. But still to do things. Those those
things imply some level of doing, not just sitting back and just taking it
all in and not participating or being as the Bible or as Christians would say,
the hands and feet of the of the body of Christ. But the
point is is that we have to actively we as the citizenry, we have
an obligation to actively keep the size and scope of government down. It is
going to grow, that is the default. Think of it like weeds going
in and taking over your flower garden, or when we get to springtime here
in a couple of months and you maybe plant some tomatoes and beans in a
garden or whatever you plant, you think about what happens. You've got to
you've got a weed, You've got to protect the plant. You might have
to fertilize, you might have to water, you have to protect that which
is good, and you have to continually pull out by the roots, I
might add, those things that are not supposed to be there. And that
is the nature of government. And so we have fallen asleep in that department.
I would say, we have been so prosperous for so long. You
know, when you look at the grand scheme of things, when you look
at humanity as a whole, the history of humanity, and you look at
I'm talking materialistically, I'm even talking a little bit just from a freedom and
opportunity perspective, But when you look at this United States of America and the
history that we've had, I mean, folks, the vast majority of people
who have walked this planet would have been absolutely thrilled to have the things that
we have. Now that again, I always say this, this is not
you may be personally going through tragedy right now, difficulty. Right You may
be going through the loss of a loved one. You might be dealing with
an illness, a sickness, a disease yourself or someone near and dear to
you. You might be dealing with divorce or bankruptcy, or financial problems or
problems with your children or whatever. I'm not talking about those things. Those
things are the condition that humanity finds itself in since the Fall. I'm talking
about just the type of system or the type of society that we have because
of how this nation has been structured and built, because of the people that
went before us to defend these things, to advance these ideas, to stand
on the side of liberty. Even when people were exercising their liberty in ways
that the people defending it may have personally disagreed with, they still defended the
concept of liberty. Because when people are allowed to live as God created them
to live, and to be free, and to have choices and to be
able to set priorities, have their own dreams and ambitions, good things happen.
Yes, there are people that will fail along the way, but there
are people who will succeed immensely. Things that have happened, that have improved
the quality of life for untold millions of people have happened because we have the
freedom to pursue those dreams, implement those ideas, and there's an association of
reward. If you're successful, you will reap benefits of that, and that
motivates and encourages people to do that. And we live in that society.
And I hear people criticizing this system. And look, as I've said before,
William F. Buckley once said, and I'm going to take a break
here way M. F. Buckley said, the great conservative thinker from decades
ago, said that, look, the problem with capitalism is capitalists, individual
capitalists. The problem with socialism is socialism itself, meaning that the problem with
the ideology of socialism was in the very ideas of the ideology of socialism itself.
The problems that we have in capitalism are not with the ideas of capitalism.
It comes from the abuse of the freedoms that come along with free market
capitalism. So it's individual freedom. Are individual people exercising their freedom in ways
that can be very harmful at times because they directly don't care. They don't
care. They directly again individual capitalists. I'm not saying all capitalists because that
it's not necessarily these things are. They don't go hand in hand, right,
You don't have to just because you're a capitalist. You can be a
capitalist who acts with integrity and character. But even if you're a socialist who
acts with character and integrity, your ideas are broken. To begin with.
The system is unsustainable, untenable, It cannot survive, It cannot produce the
things that we have seen produced by free market capitalism. So another timeouts in
order, going through here the reasons that I am a conservative because I think
it matters. It matters as I prepare to talk to students that you endy.
It also matters as we embark upon a very important election. So that
being said, I'm taking a time out, my friends, sit tight back
in just a minute, my friends, just going through the reasons, and
I think these are important, the reasons that I am a conservative, and
candidly the reasons I think that you should be too. Notice I haven't talked
about a single issue yet. These are all philosophical, fundamental, foundational components
of what it means to be a conservative. So what it means to be
someone who adheres and respects the Constitution and the thinking that went behind that document.
But before we do that, I want to tell you a little bit
about my friend Eric Wilson at I Sell Health. Eric has been serving clients
throughout this great nation, throughout the whole United States, Folks, just about
any state Eric can help me. There's a couple of states that he's that
well because of laws, candidly some difficulties with insurance law and so forth,
he's not able to help. But the vast, vast majority of states he
can help you in. And that's if you need help in the areas of
individual health, group health, or even Medicare. He's also Eric Wilson is
an expert in the Affordable Care Act, and he's here to help navigate that
complex issue. He's here to help you. As I've said before, twenty
twenty four is supposed to show to be a year that has five to eight
percent increase in health care costs, the most I think I read the most
in a decade. Don't hold me to that. It's been the biggest single
year jump in quite some time. And so Eric's here to help you navigate
that. I've known Eric, he's been a supporter of this program for several
years. He's been invited on as an expert as a guest to talk about
health insurance and so forth, especially when Obamacare or other government regulated healthcare sort
of stuff pops up and is being debated in a presidential election year or whatever.
He's been on this program as well. He knows a lot about the
subject. He knows a lot about the subject, and he's here to help
you with a free, no cost consultation. You can call Eric at eight
one five three seven two thirteen sixty three again eight one five three seven two
thirteen sixty three, or just visit his website online at isellhealth dot com.
That's the letter iisell health dot com Eric Wilson. He will take good care
of you, my friends. So again, what we're talking about here today,
and I'm gonna take a break here in just a moment, but we
are talking about just the importance of understanding the reason, the reason that the
conservative ideology matters, why we should all be, why we should all be
conservatives, and basically why the ultimate reason is that we have rights from God
and growing government takes those rights away, so we should be very territorial when
it comes to the infringement of our liberties, and we should be willing and
able. My friends, I know that this is actually what I'm about to
say maybe the most unpopular thing amongst people in twenty twenty four. But this
used to be the test when I was in school, when I was in
college talking about these sorts of issues. The test as to whether or not
you are a person that believed in liberty basically was do you defend Do you
stand by the person who wants to use their liberty to do something that you
disagree with, even vehemently? So do you defend their rights to do that?
And so if you can't do that, then there's a problem, because,
my friends, you've heard the whole that the stories or the analogies.
You know, at first they came for this group of people, Then they
came for this group of people. This is why divide and conquerors so effective,
and it's why it's so dangerous. That's why I hate, well,
one of the many reasons why I hate identity politics. Pitting one group of
people against another group of people. That's not how I look at it,
and I don't think that's how the vast majority of you look at it either.
In fact, I don't think that's how anybody should look at it.
We are human beings first and foremost created in the image of God. Secondly,
we are Americans who had better find a way to hang together. Was
it Benjamin Franklin? Was he the one that said we? Is he the
one that said that we better hang together? If not, we'll hang separately?
Right? I mean, of course the British, the British monarchy was
coming for these guys, and he was saying, look, we better stick
together and fight this out collectively, because if we try to separate and go
our own ways and don't fight this battle shoulder to shoulder, they are going
to they're going to eventually run us all down and take us all out.
Not metaphorically, of course. Heck, in their case it was quite literal
in the sense that they had signed their death warrant whenever they signed the Declaration
of independence, And so it's critically important that we stand beside one another,
even people. This is why, you know, when I think about people
who have different worldview and I don't know religion, worldview, ideology preferences,
they want to live their lives anesthetically to how I live mine. There still
should be common ground that says, look, I don't agree with that personally.
I might try to persuade you as an individual can tell me to go
fly a kite, and that's your prerogative, and maybe you would never listen
to me, but I'm still going to defend your right to have your own
to live your life in accordance with your conscience. And these things matter because
again, the bigger government gets. Bigger government means less freedom, and this
comes in the form of some sort of mandate, some sort of executive action,
some sort of a law that infringes upon the true freedom of an individual
to live his or her life as he or she wants to live it,
and we have examples of this. Of course, they act like Trump is
the one who is taking away or attacking the rights of people and so forth.
But the reality is, the reality is is that this government we have
been asleep at the wheel for a long time. People are waking up.
Many of you have been awake the whole time, probably screaming at the top
of your lungs to get people to pay attention to what's going on. But
we've lived in relative comfort, right, We've eaten, we've drank, we've
been merry, and we've let these jokers and clowns run them up in Washington,
d C. And our state capitals and our seats of county, the
county seat, right, We've allowed this to happen. We have allowed this
to happen. And I do think, I do think one of the good
byproducts of all this turmoil and controversy and tension is that it forces people to
see that we only have these liberties if we are the ones again I mentioned
earlier, like holding the pruning shares. I don't know if you've ever pruned
a tree before, my friends, a fruit tree, but sometimes I mean,
you have to cut way more back. You have to cut the branches,
much further back than you ever dreamed necessary. My mother, my mom
has a a butterfly bush that every year she trims back, I say trims
back. She cuts this thing down basically to the ground, and this thing
grows. I don't know how tall it is, but I'm guessing six I
don't know, six maybe more than that, six maybe seven feet from the
ground, and it grows up and out and it's a beautiful it's a beautiful
bush in the summertime butterfly bush. But when you prune this thing back,
you think, my goodness, that thing's not going to be able to survive.
We, my friends, have to prune back the government. We have
to prune back where their tentacles go, because it's going in all sorts of
directions. They've grown the government, the administrative state, the bureaucratic state,
the swamp, whatever you want to call it. They've grown it to levels
that are so far beyond, so far beyond what we would call a legitimate,
limited sized government, and it's dangerous. It's dangerous to liberty. Now,
of course, it's appealing to people because it sounds so good. Oh,
they're gonna promise me this. They're gonna promise me that, they're gonna
promise me more prosperity. They're gonna promise to give me some sort of an
entitlement. But my friends, there's no such thing as a freebie. Someone
has to pay for it. It always costs more than the governing officials tell
us. And it's never quite as good. Sometimes it's not even remotely as
good as their utopian promises guarantee us. When they're selling us this bill of
goods, so timeouts in order a little bit long this segment, still just
going through these things because I think it's important. Quick time out back in
just a minute, Welcome back to my friends. Excuse me, I am
not gonna be able to continue this right now because we have really just out
of time here, so but I do want to tell you that we are
going to We're going to continue this at least part of this on tomorrow's program
because I think it's important. I think it's important that we understand the reasons
that we are conservative, why it matters, and why our approach matters,
which might lend a little bit to the discussion on conservative not bitter. But
unfortunately I miss out of time here, a little bit long on previous segments.
My friends, sit tight, come back and wrap up here in just
a minute, and welcome back to my friends. You know, when we
think about discussing these things, these issues, the worldview, ideology and so
forth, to people, I think fall into the trap of going through issue
by issue, and when you have a position on an issue without articulating,
or let's just say someone you're talking with has a position on an issue without
thinking it through. I can't tell you the number of people that I've spoken
with, and you probably have had this too, that actually, when you
explain the rationale behind your belief or position on an issue, it makes it
stronger. Too many people just have an opinion based upon nothing, just a
personal preference. It needs to be rooted in understanding of the Constitution of liberty
of well, I would say, the conservative ideology. So this is important
stuff, and I want to get to a little bit more of this tomorrow
as well, but I'm simply out of time today. Folks. Thank you
so much for listening. Have a wonderful day. SDG.