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Local governments should vote for flags,
Local governments should have opinions about stuff.

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Whenever a local Republican anyway is running
for a local office, and that local

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Republican is uncomfortable with social issues,
as so many of them are one of

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the big complaints I will I will
somehow here, they somehow think that I

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would be a sympathetic ear to this
complaint. One of the things I will

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hear is, well, I'm running
for the city council seat, and all

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these people I'm talking to, like
you know, knocking on doors and stuff,

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all they want to ask is what
I think about abortion and another like

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a local government rate. So I
don't. I won't have anything to do

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with abortion. And this is the
way that local policy titians get angry at

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having to be dragged into the abortion
question. And these people who don't really

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have much of a moral compass when
it comes to abortion or other social issues.

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How these kinds of people get elected
Republicans. They get elected Republicans at

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a local level, they get elected
Republicans at a city level, then at

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a state level, and then all
of a sudden you've got people who are

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openly just members of Congress who just
don't really care about social issues. For

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whom social issues are were, have
always been, will always be secondary to

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some other thing. I think a
lot of Republicans become Republicans not because of

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a lot of elected Republicans, rather
become elected officials, not because of the

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abortion question, not because of social
conservative issues. They become Republican politicians usually

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because of something else, some kind
of fiscal concern issue that animates them,

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maybe in their business, maybe in
their professional lives, that exercises them and

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results in them running for office,
or there's some kind of a prominent person,

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and because they decide, for one
reason or another to run as a

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Republican, they therefore sheepishly follow along
with the pro life stance without having much

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conviction, and therefore always ready and
always willing to compromise on it. And

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we've seen this phenomenon has taken place
so many times that it resulted in you

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know how many times did Republican presidents
have a hard time getting Supreme Court justices

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confirmed because they were deemed to be
too conservative, deemed to be too conservative,

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And basically, Republican presidents and Republican
senators just didn't care enough about the

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abortion question to be sure that they
got this right. Meanwhile, Democrats are

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sure. Democrats are sure and certain
about their stance on social issues from every

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level of government. Every single person
is equally committed, from the local Democrat

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county dogcatcher all the way up to
Joe Biden, completely utterly convicted and convinced

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of the rightness of what they believe
on social issues. And we see this

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example of it in a piece in
the Fresno Bet. I just want you

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to think, let's, as you
read this mentally try to replace ceasefire in

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Gaza with support for Israeli military.
What are the chances Fresno follows Madera in

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approving a Gaza ceasefire resolution. For
four months of the boy, the Fresno

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Bee can't even write a story correctly. You can't use proper grammar just for

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the start of the story. For
four months, members of local Palestinian community,

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members of the local Palestinian community have
turned out at Fresno City council meetings

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to cajole, demand and plea for
and plead for city leaders. It's plea,

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isn't it not? Plead for city
leaders to adopt a resolution supporting a

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ceasefire in the war between the Nation
of Israel and Hamas, the Islamist organization

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that governs part of the contested territory
of Gaza. Supporters have renewed hope that

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they're Pleas could gain traction in Fresno
following the Madera City Council's unanimous vote on

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Wednesday for a resolution calling for a
Gaza ceasefire. The idea is that we

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want the war to stop, said
Yazir Amiree, a Fresno businessman and representative

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of the Palestinian Liberation Group. People
are dying, not just civilians, but

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army people who are still young and
have not lived their lives. We need

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a permanent peace and we need all
hostages to be released. But whether a

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majority of Fresno City Council members will
have any appetite for a similar measure over

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a war in the Middle East on
the far side of the globe is uncertain

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at the very least. Miguel Aarius, who represents Southwest Fresno, said he

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is open to the idea of introducing
a ceasefire resolution if it's in a balanced

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way that obtains support for both Jewish
and Palestinian members of our community. Blah

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blah blah. All right, So, for those of you who don't really

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follow what goes on at the Fresno
City Council, for really, since the

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war started in October, there has
been this constant presence at Fresno City Council

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meetings of local left wing slash local
Palestinian activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza

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and wanting the Fresno City Council to
apply prove a resolution calling for a ceasefire

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in Gaza. Movements like that,
Now, this is not a particular,

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a particularized Bizarro Fresno thing. This
is happening literally all over America. Left

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wing activists are going to city councils
all over America to try to get the

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city council to approve a city resolution
calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I

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remember, earlier this year I saw
a video where Chicago's City council or Council

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of Aldermen's whatever they have, which
is much larger they Fresno only has six

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city council members. Chicago has something
like, I don't know, something like

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twenty something or twenty or thirty something. And the vote was exactly split fifty

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to fifty. You know, it
was exactly fifty to fifty four and against

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the resolution, and so the Mayor
of Chicago casts the tie breaking vote in

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favor of a resolution calling for a
Gaza ceasefire, which all the left wing

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activists we're calling for that were,
you know, ecstatic. So this is

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not just an isolated Fresno deal.
This is something that is happening all over

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the country at city councils all over
America. People are trying to introduce ceasefire

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resolutions. Now, the response that
most conservatives would have to this, there's

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two kinds of responses. The one
response is this doesn't have anything to do

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with the business of our city government. Well, how does wasting time on

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this at city council meetings, How
does this do anything to build a road

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or fixed potholes or do any of
the business that the city is supposed to

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do. Blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah. The other answer is the

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one Gary Brettefeld has taken, where
Gary Brettefeld has taken the response of no,

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I am not calling for a ceasefire
in Gaza because I think the attacks

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on Israel were unjustified. I think
the taking of hostages was unjustified, and

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I think that the ceasefire is a
cynical ploy. The ceasefire demands are a

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cynical ploy on the part of Hamas
to try to give them a breather in

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order to dig themselves in so that
they can enact more terrorist attacks against Israel.

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And council Member Brettefeld made the point
of plastering on sort of the portion

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of the dais in front of his
chair, So the city council sits at

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this dais where all seven of them
sit at sort of a big desk that's

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sort of elevated up. So the
portion of the front of the desk in

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front of where he sits he plastered
with pictures of the Palestinian hostages who had

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been taken by Hamas, and he
sort of tried to make the protesters look

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at it so that they couldn't get
around the fact of hey, like,

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there can be a ceasefire when all
the Israeli hostages are released and Hamas stops

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engaging in terrorist violence against Israel.
So I commend Brettefeld for this. I

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think his response is a better kind
of response. Now I'm my own thoughts

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on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and Israel's
activity during the conflict versus their justification and

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going to war. I think they
were clearly justified in going to war.

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You know, we can talk about
their in wartime conduct, which I think

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is difficult to assess given the news
sources we have, much of which is

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Palestinian propaganda stuff. Regardless, also
my thoughts on I've expressed skepticism on this

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show of Okay, Yes, Israel
was unjustly attacked on October seventh. Yes,

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they have the right to defend themselves. Why does America have to pay

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for it? Like all these Republicans
are like, we need to fund military

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aid to Israel. Oh, yes, And then the Republicans are agitating about

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military aid for Israel, Democrats are
agitating for military aid for Ukraine. I

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would say, regardless of the rightness
or wrongness of their causes, and I

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think both the Ukrainians and the Israelis
are right in their cause in acting in

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self defense against unprovoked attacks. I
don't know why we need to fund them

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necessarily, or why we need to
why MA America needs to be engaged in

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a proxy war. That's kind of
what we're ultimately saying when we give them

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money, we are now in a
proxy war. That's what it is,

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someone else fighting a war that we
don't want to dirty our hands with us

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giving money so someone else can fight
a war for us. I don't know

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that I want to be that engaged
with Russia or with more more Islamic terrorists

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now. Regardless. The big difference
between how council Member Brettefeld answers this question

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when it's brought to the city Council
and most conservatives is most conservatives take what

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I think is a fairy tale view
that local government is something isolated from deeper

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questions of right and wrong, political
right and political wrong, political truth and

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political falsehood, fundamental moral questions.
I think we've had generations of Republican politicians

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who've graduated from the levels of local
government to state government to the federal government

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who have tried to skirt as best
they could any sort of deeper moral concern

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in favor of economic questions. He's
just a fiscal conservative, no apologies.

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I'm a fiscal concern I just want
to get things done. I'm not going

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to get and that's a constant critique
of Gary Brettefeld is that he's a culture

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warrior that gets drawn into these irrelevant
controversies, to which I ask, if

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they're so irrelevant, why do the
left wing activists so fiercely agitate for them

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all the time everywhere? Why year
after year did the liberals on the president

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City Council agitate for resolutions ton of
the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

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Why year after year all over the
country do liberal activists agitate for that?

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Why do they agitate insist on the
Pride flag being flown? Pride flag doesn't

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do anything. It's a flag.
It's literally a symbolic gesture. It's the

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whole point of it is a symbolic
gesture. And yet that is thought to

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be this hugely important thing. Meanwhile, the best that and conservatives who take

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this sort of functionalist view of government
are completely incapable of resisting it. Case

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in point, Jerry Dyer, he's
constantly offering these, well, I just

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don't know that this is the business
of government. I just don't know.

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I just don't know. I just
don't know. And then in the face

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of that, he doesn't really have
a coherent explanation for opposing gay marriage,

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because he hasn't really I don't know
that he's really thought all that deeply about

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these things. And he would say, yes, I have thought deeply about

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I've met all these people who have
felt alienated. Okay, sure, but

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you haven't thought through the actual light. What are the implications of our ethical

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beliefs on governance. Do you just
blindly accept the premises of modern day liberalism

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that that should govern No. So
I think that this story about is the

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Fresno City Council going to approve a
resolution calling for you know, you know,

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calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
On the one hand, I think

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the response is, well, what
on earth is the city council resolution of

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Fresno, California're gonna make or break
this thing? In a sense if every

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city council in America is debating it, in every city council in America,

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or e every major cities city council
approves such a thing, Yeah, that

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does influence public opinion because liberals understand
symbols matter, flags matter. When we

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return, I just want to talk
about how I guess in my thoughts on

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modernity not caring about symbols enough.
That's nexcellent the John Girardi Show, It's

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this hatred of symbols and this impoverishing
of our lives symbolically, let me kind

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of explain to what I'm talking about. And this seems to afflict conservatives almost

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more than liberals in some quarters.
I've talked so many times on the show

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about my thoughts about flags and the
two responses to the gay Pride flag being

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flown at Fresno City Hall or the
symbolic resolutions that the city council considers.

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Right now, there's you know,
Madera's City council has approved a resolution calling

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for a ceasefire in Gaza. Activist
cer in front of the Presno City Council

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every single week calling for a ceasefire
in Gaza, ceasefire and Gaza, you

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know, as if a resolution by
the Fresnow City Council is going to make

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one whit of difference to a war
that's happening on the other side of the

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world. But on a certain level, yeah, I do actually think that

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this kind of stuff is important,
and most conservatives don't. I think a

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lot of conservatives will hear about this
and say, what business says it of

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the city to say anything one way
or another about abortion? To begin with,

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what business is it of the city
to say one way, say anything

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one way or another about the war
in Gaza to begin with? What business

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is it of the city to say
anything about gay marriage? To begin with?

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Shouldn't the city be more focused on
fixing roads and fixing potholes and blah

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blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Okay, those are understandable critiques, but

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it's also this, symbols and symbolic
gestures and resolutions matter. They are educative.

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They are extremely educative, including for
they are educative for the citizenry within

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a polity, the citizens within a
city. Every year, local governments,

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I'm sure, all up and down
the valley in I think it's usually in

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April do commemorations for the Armenian genocide. We all do it, and we

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talk about how horrible the Armenian genocide
is, and that's important. It's symbolic.

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It's just it doesn't have any tangible
impact necessarily, but it's an important

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thing to do. We acknowledge how
many people are here in the San Joaquin

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Valley because of the Armenian genocide in
the first place, how many people lost

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family members, loved ones in the
Armenian Genocide, including some people who are

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still alive who have family members that
they know of who died there. You

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know, it was one hundred plus
years ago, about one hundred and ten

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years ago now so. But nonetheless, if you have the older folks,

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some of them have grandparents or older
relatives who may have died in the genocide,

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whose families came to the San Joaquin
Valley because of it. We commemorate

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it, even though he can't do
anything about it, even though what we

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say doesn't change anything about the Armenian
genocide. Why because it has a formative

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impact. It's an important thing.
It communicates what we believe and value and

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care for and whom we love as
a community. Symbols matter. I even

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think about this in the context of
Catholicism, how in the nineteen fifties and

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sixties and seventies, these movements in
church architecture towards well, we need to

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have something that's more simple, you
know Jesus. Jesus liked simplicity. And

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then they come up with some lame, you know, excuses like that,

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you know, bypassed, they would
completely bypass the story. It's as if

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they read the story of the woman
who anointed Jesus's head, and Judas was

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complaining about it, and Jesus said, no, what she did was a

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beautiful thing for me. She's preparing
me for my burial. But people,

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oh, well, you could have
sold the money to the port. It's

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as if liberal Catholics read that story
from the Gospel and completely got the wrong

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ung got the exact opposite interpretation of
what you're supposed to have immediately thought,

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well, we shouldn't have fancy looking
churches. We should have churches that are

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characterized by simplicity. And so for
decades now Catholics have built ugly, dumb

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looking churches, bereft of classical symbolism, bereft of representative art, going away

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from any artistic styles that actually depict
the human figure in a meaningful fashion.

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And by the way, the churches
were not any cheaper than the fancy schmancy

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ones built with fancy schmancy art for
the most part. Why because there's this

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sense, well, you know,
there's no need for all these symbolism,

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there's no need for all this art
and symbolism and stuff. What really matters

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is love, And no, that's
not how human beings work. Flags are

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important. Public monuments are important.
Having a statue of George Washington somewhere in

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America, several statues of George Washington
in high schools named after George Washington is

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important. It's important for indicating the
important things he did while he was President

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of the United States, the critical
things that George Washington did to set this

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country on the road to what it
has become, in spite of, yes,

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fully acknowledging the fact that he owned
slaves and how terrible that is and

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how wrong that is, but nonetheless
all the other incredible things he did do

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that made America into the country it
is. Human beings need symbols, and

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apparently the only people who don't understand
that. The only people who think that

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the role of city government should just
purely nope, it's just or just here

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to fix potholes and fix wrote.
The only people who think that are local

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Republicans. Are people who want to
get elected to local government as Republicans and

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who are uncomfortable with the abortion issue. That's all it is, and thereby

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they just want to skirt away from
that kind of stuff as best they can.

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And this is why the kinds of
people who get elected to the right

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are compromisers. They're compromisers when it
comes to social conservatism time and time again.

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So many people on the right,
that's what they are because they don't

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ultimately really care about these underlying questions. When we return, I want to

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talk about parents posting stuff on social
media about their kids next on the John

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Girardi Show. Everyone agrees that social
media is bad and bad for you,

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except for this little part of social
media that I like that I'm using all

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the time. So my wife and
I are similarly of a mind that social

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media is bad and bad for you, although we do have parts of it

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that we use. I think my
wife's use of social media is probably the

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healthiest out of anybody. She uses
pretty much just Instagram and that's it,

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and a little bit of Facebook just
for posting pictures of the kids and posting

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pictures of artistic stuff that she has
made, and stuff that she knits and

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sews and paints and stuff our kids
do. And it's very good and pure

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and wonderful and wholesome. The problem
is by using such apps to post nice

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good things. And I'm mostly using
social media for Twitter just to talk smack

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about people politically and do you know
get grist for this show. That's mostly

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what I'm using Twitter for. The
thing that I the problem is when you

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use social media for sending nice,
positive things out, you are nonetheless able

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to see all the crap that people
send in. And one of the things

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my wife and I see often are
creepy ways in which parents post about their

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children, creepy and non great ways
about which parents post about their kids.

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And I was sort of prompted to
do this today by this video that sort

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of went viral of this young woman
who looks like she's probably in her early

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twenties, who has become some sort
of TikTok influencer type. She posts different

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kinds of social media videos, and
she posted a video talking about what is

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your childhood trauma that still resonates with
you? What is it? Or no,

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what is a bit of childhood trauma
that is actually legitimately funny? And

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this is a constant, by the
way gen zers on social media for those

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who are older, so much of
gen Z has been diagnosed with mental illnesses

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or gone to therapy, or been
prescribed prescription drugs for various kinds of mental

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health disorders. That basically gen Z
now can talk in this lingo of like

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psychology. Lingo is almost like second
nature for these people, and the spread

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of that kind of lingo on social
media has been wild to the point where

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now I think half of gen Z
thinks that they have some sort of mental

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illness because they've just been influenced into
thinking that way. It's just sort of

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the concept of so contagion. Once
the idea is out in the either,

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people think about themselves. Oh,
maybe that's the problem with me. So

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she gives this post about what's the
piece of childhood trauma that legitimately that makes

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you laugh. And this young woman
who's like in her I don't know how

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old. She looks like she's I
don't know, looks like she's in her

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twenties, looks like she's twenty three, twenty four years old. She starts

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talking about her dad and the fact
that her dad divorced her mom and their

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four children to pursue, in his
mid to late forties, a career as

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a breakdancer, his passion of breakdancing. And she's laughing by as she describes,

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I'm actually on her side for this, by the way, So buckle

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up, like I'm not you're thinking, probably this is the setup. John

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Gerardy's gonna slam this stupid joy three
year old. No, actually, I'm

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gonna slam her dad. Okay,
so buckle up. She describes how he

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abandoned his wife and his four kids
to go pursue his passion of breakdancing,

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and she's laughing as she describes he
actually was really good and became somewhat famous

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as a result. He was on
Good Morning America. He like it,

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was prominently featured in all these different
things. There were news articles written about

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and blah blah blah blah blah.
And meanwhile she's like, yeah, he

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didn't like pay for my medical bills
or anything, but he did send me

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merch. So she's honestly, it's
kind of funny what she's doing. And

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then, so what then happens is
the dad goes on his social media and

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by the way he as he's doing
it, he's wearing a like a sweater

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jacket that has the bitcoin logo printed
all over it, so he's himself some

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kind of bitcoin influencer. And he
starts like poking holes in her story and

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critiquing how selfish she's being, and
is slamming his daughter on social media for

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being so mean to him. Now
there's a portion of this where even for

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the daughter, is this the best
place to be trying to air dirty laundry?

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And are you really telling the whole
story? Is your dad really quite

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the monster you make him out to
be. Maybe the thing that dad never

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disputes though, is that he abandoned
his wife and four kids, that he

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divorced his wife in four kids,
and the gaping, horrible hole that divorce

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inflicts on a family. And there's
this kind of fundamental selfishness to the dad,

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and the whole thing just makes me
think of the dad, like,

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did you really need to do this
at all? Think about the choices you

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made? Maybe that made your daughter
turn out to be the sort of person

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who's going to go on social media
and blast her father for his life choices.

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Are you then doing something? Is
this some great epic own of your

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daughter to go on social media and
blast her back and try to rationalize what

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seemingly was a pretty crappy decision to
divorce the wife and leave four kids to

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become a breakdancer. And I see
this, I remember this. This was

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a good life lesson my parents taught
me. I remember I was like fourteen

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or so and blogs were first becoming
a thing, and I wrote some blog

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Like I was very young and stupid. I wrote some kind of blog griping

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about something, and my parents saw
it and they got really mad at me,

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and I got in trouble, and
they said, no, you don't

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air your dirty laundry out in public
like that. That's just wrong. And

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that lesson stuck with me, and
ever since then, I've been much more

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Since I was fourteen, I feel
like every fourteen year old who uses social

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media probably needs a lesson like that
to be more circumspect, because this is

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out in the public. Anyone can
see it. This stuff lives on the

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internet forever, and everyone can see
it. I was fortunate to have parents

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like that. Unfortunately, what I
also see, and I think this afflicted

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more that this was more common in
conservative spaces. I would see conservative parents

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in their forties with teenagers posting about
something bad that their teenager did and the

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punishment or penalty that they were assessing
on there. My daughter went online and

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was saying such and such. So
as a result, here's what's gonna happen

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to her. She's gonna be you
know, without her phone for two months,

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and here's her here's her new you
know, here's her iPhone that she

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just bought, and now I'm going
to smash it with a sledgehammer. And

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these parents would do these dramatic,
intending to go viral themselves, demonstrations of

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parental judgment against their parents, where
they'd like, you know, destroy some

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piece of property of their kids,
you know, demonstratively lighting their son's xbox

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on fire, you know, doing
stuff like that. It's this bizarre thing

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where and maybe this is my Catholic
sense of this coming out. We all

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have this sense of wanting to share, wanting to share flaws, share peccadillos.

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We can't just bottle up what's going
on that's wrong inside forever. And

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social media has given us so many
new and inappropriate ways to share that whatever's

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going on with us, our pain, our happiness, our worries, whatever,

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with the general public, so many
ways to do that in an inappropriate

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fashion. And I feel like social
media, the constant presence of social media

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in our lives, seeing so many
people sharing so much, leads us to

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not have a proper sense of the
stuff that my parents rightly got mad at

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me at when I was fourteen years
old, that no, you shouldn't be

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sharing everything you think with the broader
society. My Catholic sense of this is

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that confession, the Catholic sacrament of
confession, which the Orthodox have in their

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form, and you know, uh, the idea of confessing your sins,

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it's actually something that we all.
It's like a kind of very natural thing.

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We want to get things off of
our chest, we want to share

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what is wrong, and I think
I think the Catholic sacrament of confession is

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like a healthy outlet for that.
People who don't go to confession very much

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have this bizarre sense of confession,
as if it's this horrible like like they're

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there, it's a very it's I
don't know, the people who have the

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most normal sense of you have to
actually go to confession to understand how not

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bizarre it is. That it's actually
very similar to talking with your lawyer about

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your problems, or talking with your
doctor about your problems, or talking with

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a therapist about your problem. You
talk with all of them professionals about problems

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you have in these various spheres,
and a priest to talk with him about

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the struggles you have in the spiritual
life, and to ask forgiveness from God

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is actually a kind of very natural
thing. I would say. It's why

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some of the legal privileges that exist
for you know, doctor patient confidentiality is

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very similar to the kinds of legal
protections that exist for you know, clergy

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penitent confidentiality. These are professionals who
are helping you with a certain thing.

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Anyway, there, I don't know
that I have a big central thesis here

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other than this, parents monitor what
your kids are doing on social media if

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you let them have social media at
all as children, which I don't think

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is a great idea, and you
yourselves don't fall victim to this massive oversharing

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mentality that social media fosters so much. To close out the show, just

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a little thing, how the media
hilariously gets the concept of natural law wrong.

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That's next on the John Girardi Show. There's this piece in Politico criticizing

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the Trump administration for this, that, and the other, and it talks

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about natural law. Now, I
studied natural law as part of jurisprudence quite

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a bit when I was at Notre
Dame, and I very firmly believe in

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it, and I suspect probably deep
down if you really question yourselves. A

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lot of you do too. Natural
law is basically the ethical theory that undergirds

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a lot of Western thinkers in different
degree is into different formats. You can

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see this especially in Catholic authors like
Saint Thomas Aquinas, but it's a very

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prominent philosophical idea for how to ground
ethics the study of what is right and

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what is wrong, and it doesn't
necessarily have to be religious. The idea

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of natural law is that human beings
have a certain nature, human beings have

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ends towards which they are ordered,
and that we can learn what is good,

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what is right, and what is
wrong on the basis of those goods

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towards which human beings are ordered.
Human beings talk. Speech is ordered towards

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communicating the truth. Lying is a
perversion of that. Lying twists the actual

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purpose of speech. Therefore lying is
wrong. Okay, you can do those

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kinds of deductions. And I think
natural law is very as a philosophy,

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is very coherent and consistent with Christianity, and Saint Paul himself talks about the

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concept that there's a law that's written
on the heart that even gentiles know without

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the aid of the Jewish law,
or even you know, without the aid

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of revelation that gentiles know. Anyone
who studied this would know that natural law

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theory has been around for thousands of
years. But Politico rights Mike Pompeo set

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up a Human Rights Commission to be
based on natural law and natural rights for

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looking at violations of human rights around
the world. Natural law, this political

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peace rights, is the belief that
there are universal rules derived from God that

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can't be superseded by government or judges. While it is a core of Catholicism,

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in recent decades it's been used to
oppose abortion, LGBTQ rights, and

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contraception in recent decades, it's been
around for two thousand plus years. So

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basically, don't believe the media on
anything because ninety percent of the time they

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just don't know even remotely what they're
talking about. I'll do it John Girardi

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Show, See you next time,
Power Talk