Speaker 1: I'm highly skeptical of Fresno Unified, really any public school district.
Speaker 1: I think they're all worthless. And I somewhat think that
Speaker 1: basically it's not even the fault of any of the
Speaker 1: school districts that I'm not saying I like Clovis Unified
Speaker 1: either or Central Unified or President. I dislike them all.
Speaker 1: Why well, I think because the general thrust of California
Speaker 1: public education is wrong. I think the general thrust of
Speaker 1: American public education in a lot of ways is wrong.
Speaker 1: I think there's this massive over focus that is a
Speaker 1: little anachronistic in our time on universal college for all,
Speaker 1: and that's the framework into which everyone is placed. We
Speaker 1: don't have enough focus on vocational training, on basic life skills, training,
Speaker 1: on all kinds of things that I think would be
Speaker 1: really valuable. And what we've seen is just because everyone
Speaker 1: in high school wants to go to college. And we've
Speaker 1: seen basically this dumbing down of every level of the
Speaker 1: education system in this country, where the kinds of jobs
Speaker 1: that you know, fifty years ago needed a high school
Speaker 1: diploma now need a college degree. The jobs that needed
Speaker 1: a college degree today need a master's degree. My father
Speaker 1: in law is this very rare bird. He is an
Speaker 1: engineer for Cummins, which makes you know, all kinds of
Speaker 1: engines and things like that. Who does not have a
Speaker 1: bachelor's degree. He just has an associate's degree. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: Cummins hasn't hired anyone without a bachelor's degree in decades.
Speaker 1: And he's a great engineer. He's got a ton of
Speaker 1: patents to his name. He's been working there consistently for
Speaker 1: the really really long time, does really great work. But
Speaker 1: you know, he learned to be an engineer, you know,
Speaker 1: taking tractors apart and putting them all back together, you know,
Speaker 1: on the farm in Minnesota. At any rate, the whole
Speaker 1: orientation of modern day California public education, California public high schools,
Speaker 1: is around college gaining access to college. And I think
Speaker 1: the paradigmatic tragedy of this was about that must have
Speaker 1: been about five or six years ago. I think it
Speaker 1: was just before COVID, or maybe in the thick of COVID,
Speaker 1: President Unified proudly announced that they were taking one of
Speaker 1: their junior high school shop class buildings and turning it
Speaker 1: into an e sports arena, like a professional video games arena.
Speaker 1: And what was the rationale. Well, all, there are colleges
Speaker 1: that offer scholarships for e sports. Great, that's great. Yes,
Speaker 1: more time glued to a screen playing video games doing
Speaker 1: something useless sounds good. Now I want to With that said,
Speaker 1: that is my baseline skepticism of public education. It seems
Speaker 1: like there's an effort by the Presdent Unified Board of
Speaker 1: Trustees to do something to turn the district around, and
Speaker 1: the district is a train wreck in a lot of respects.
Speaker 1: Academic scores are terrible, true, you know, not attending school
Speaker 1: is terribly high. We have not that there was a
Speaker 1: massive dip in academic performance all around following COVID, and
Speaker 1: it hasn't bumped back up yet. It seems like it's
Speaker 1: have not recovered from the loss of learning experience during
Speaker 1: the COVID no year two years of to you know,
Speaker 1: nightmare two year period. And in general Presney Unified. Most
Speaker 1: of the stories we read about Fresney Unified are stuff about,
Speaker 1: you know, arguments between the union and the Board of
Speaker 1: Trustees over money and this attitude that the point, this
Speaker 1: attitude that is very widespread throughout California, which is that
Speaker 1: the point of public schools is that it's a job.
Speaker 1: It's a jobs program for adults. And that's so much
Speaker 1: of the agenda of these public schools is driven by
Speaker 1: the teachers union, which the job of a teacher's union
Speaker 1: is not to teach kids. The job of a teacher's
Speaker 1: union the telos towards which it is ordered, its end goal,
Speaker 1: the purpose for which it exists. The purpose of the
Speaker 1: union is not really to educate kids. It's the purpose
Speaker 1: of the union is to get more money for adults.
Speaker 1: More money, more jobs, more members, better pay, better hours,
Speaker 1: better benefits. That's the job of Presney Unified, of the
Speaker 1: Presney Unified Teachers Union. That is its goal. That is
Speaker 1: the thing towards which it is ordered. So I don't
Speaker 1: find it to be and sometimes that interest is in
Speaker 1: conflict with academic achievement. So here's the Board of Trustees
Speaker 1: with kind of this very coming from the trustees side.
Speaker 1: Puff piece, sort of a puff piece. I guess it's
Speaker 1: in GV wire. I guess it shouldn't call it a
Speaker 1: puff piece, but it's definitely very pro trustees and actually
Speaker 1: takes some shots at Bob Nelson, the former superintendent at
Speaker 1: Fresney Unified, and kind of shade a lot of this.
Speaker 1: I mean. Gv wire is owned by Darius Semi, who's
Speaker 1: been a long relationship with Susan Wittrap, who's a member
Speaker 1: of the Fresne Unified School Board. Noneth All that being said,
Speaker 1: here's the piece written by Anya Anya Ellis at GV wire.
Speaker 1: Simplicity is in at Fresnew Unified. The twenty plus initiatives
Speaker 1: of the past to help struggling with students have been
Speaker 1: replaced with four goals. Meanwhile, expectations are way up for students, teachers,
Speaker 1: and administrators. And these goals and expectations must be embraced
Speaker 1: by the district's new superintendent, whether that is interim Superintendent
Speaker 1: Misty Hurr or someone else emerging from a national search.
Speaker 1: We're still hunting, still hunting for superintendent for Fresney Unified.
Speaker 1: We have to be great at a few things, and
Speaker 1: I think what the board has allowed us to do
Speaker 1: for the first time in Fresney Unified is to go
Speaker 1: from very big to now very narrow, said Misty Herr.
Speaker 1: These initial seeds of what could become an academic renaissance
Speaker 1: for the long struggling district. It could then again maybe
Speaker 1: it could not, were developed at community listening sessions. In December,
Speaker 1: trustees and the interim superintendent's team refined those ideas, which
Speaker 1: were approved at a recent school board meeting. Under a
Speaker 1: two year, one hundred thousand dollars contract, the school board
Speaker 1: receives guidance from the Council of Great City Schools, a
Speaker 1: group that strives to improve student outcomes at seventy eight
Speaker 1: of the nation's largest urban public school systems. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is the consultant that the President Unified hired. They're paying
Speaker 1: them one hundred thousand dollars to help them find their
Speaker 1: superintendent and help the board figure out how to do
Speaker 1: its job. You may ask yourself why did these people
Speaker 1: run for the school board when they didn't maybe have
Speaker 1: a clear sense of Why would these people run for
Speaker 1: the school board and then hire a consultant for how
Speaker 1: to do their jobs? Wouldn't you have hoped when they
Speaker 1: were running that hes I'm qualified to be on the
Speaker 1: school board? Yeah? Here we are. Recognizing a problem is
Speaker 1: the first step to solving a problem. And Misty Herr,
Speaker 1: unlike retired superintendent Bob Nelson, is confronting the challenges head on. Wow,
Speaker 1: just what a drive by at Bob Nelson. Hey GV wire,
Speaker 1: you realize you're what are your writers here? It's just
Speaker 1: absolutely assassinating poor Bob Nelson sitting in his office at Fresno,
Speaker 1: at Fresno State, in his little sinecure job that he
Speaker 1: abandoned Fresno Unified for. I was like, hey, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? I wasn't confronting the challenges head on. Her
Speaker 1: said quote, I will be the first to say that
Speaker 1: our academic game gains have been minimal, actually dismal, to
Speaker 1: say the least. At that meeting, the trustees adopted the
Speaker 1: district's four goals for student achievement and the so called
Speaker 1: guardrails to address community concerns and aid in realizing the goals.
Speaker 1: These are focused on community engagement, equitable access. Don't know
Speaker 1: what that means. Equitable access? Do we mean like actual
Speaker 1: equity or do we mean like DEI equity? Effective staff?
Speaker 1: And the health and wellness of students and staff. Why
Speaker 1: are we caring about the health and wellness? This is
Speaker 1: a school, It's not a hospital anyway. What are the
Speaker 1: goals there have been? Were those not the goals? Those
Speaker 1: are the guardrails? Okay, we have guardrails and we have goals.
Speaker 1: See how simple? This is see how effectively they're using
Speaker 1: their taxpayer dollars to organize themselves to teach your kids.
Speaker 1: All right, here are the goals. Three have been nailed
Speaker 1: down in the fourth awaits of benchmark, so we're not
Speaker 1: even done with all four goals, but here we go.
Speaker 1: First graders will be proficient in first Graders proficient in
Speaker 1: literacy will increase from forty eight percent in June of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four to eighty percent in June of twenty thirty. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have six years to bring the literacy rate
Speaker 1: among first graders up thirty two points. Students graduating from
Speaker 1: high school who are college and career ready will rise
Speaker 1: from forty three percent in June of twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: to sixty four percent by June of twenty thirty. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the idea is that's going to improve by twenty
Speaker 1: points over the next six years. I mean, I appreciate
Speaker 1: that they're setting a goal and trying to pursue it.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm a little skeptical if they're if it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen, but hey, good good for them. I guess
Speaker 1: third through eighth grade students more than one year behind
Speaker 1: in English Language Arts and who make more than one
Speaker 1: year's growth will increase from ten percent in June twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four to fifty percent by June of twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: and the district will track sixth eighth and the twelfth
Speaker 1: grade students for Portrait of a Learner competencies with a
Speaker 1: percentage goal set soon for June of twenty thirty. Okay,
Speaker 1: so those are I think the sixth eighth and twelfth
Speaker 1: grade thing. Those are like the standardized tests that sort
Speaker 1: of measure student achievement that are kind of the benchmark
Speaker 1: for a lot of California educational stats. Portrait of a
Speaker 1: learn Okay, Yeah, Portrait of a learner refers to traits
Speaker 1: and skills the district and parents want to see developed
Speaker 1: during a student's educational journey. Examples include critical thinking, problem solving,
Speaker 1: self control, and conflict resolution. Oh maybe this is something different.
Speaker 1: Many school districts are developing or have put in place
Speaker 1: Portrait of a Learner goals. The goal sets standards for
Speaker 1: academic achievement and provide the next superintendent with a clear
Speaker 1: vision of what the district wants to accomplish, said Trustee
Speaker 1: Susan Wittrup. This was a huge historical step for our district,
Speaker 1: said Wittrup. Now after the meeting, school board president Valerie
Speaker 1: Davis said, this is the first time we've done this
Speaker 1: type of work for our board in our community. We
Speaker 1: have to start from somewhere, and now comes the the
Speaker 1: fly in the ointment, the turd in the punch bowl,
Speaker 1: the Fresno Teachers Association. The Fresno Teachers Association appears far
Speaker 1: less enthusiastic about the adopted goals than district leadership. While
Speaker 1: setting gulls, I'm not gonna read the whole quote in
Speaker 1: that voice, but here we go. Just know that that's
Speaker 1: the mental attitude I'm giving to this quote. While setting
Speaker 1: goals is great, it's clear they're missing the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: What is the bigger picture? Nothing will change unless they're
Speaker 1: willing to shift the district's culture. I mean, this seems
Speaker 1: like it's shifting the culture. It's saying we were going
Speaker 1: to be free floating to now we're gonna have very defined,
Speaker 1: like performance based standards for student achievement. That means truly
Speaker 1: listening to educators. Yeah, the Teachers' union head is mad
Speaker 1: they're not truly listening to educators. Valuing all staff members.
Speaker 1: Do we have to value the janitor or the administrative assistant.
Speaker 1: I mean, we value them and will treat them nicely,
Speaker 1: But I don't know that they have too much to
Speaker 1: say about like academic benchmarks. Addressing the culture of fear
Speaker 1: slash retribution? What culture of fear or retribution? You guys
Speaker 1: have a collectively bargained contract. There's nobody who has better
Speaker 1: job security against retribution than a California public school unionized teacher.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? The culture of fear and retribution
Speaker 1: providing real support? You know how many gazillions of dollars
Speaker 1: President Unified is spending on like school psychologists and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and making decisions that reflect what's actually happening
Speaker 1: in our classrooms and school sites. Yeah, what's happening in
Speaker 1: the classrooms and school sites is these kids aren't learning
Speaker 1: a dang thing, and they're setting expectations that, hey, you
Speaker 1: better achieve better benchmarks. That was the quote from the
Speaker 1: teachers union president that will with my interstitial comments by
Speaker 1: Teachers Union president Manuel Benia said in a text to
Speaker 1: GV wire reporter Nancy Price, why is the teachers union upset? Well,
Speaker 1: this is why? Again, what is the goal of the
Speaker 1: teachers Union. The goal of the teachers Union is not
Speaker 1: to educate children. The goal of the teachers Union, which
Speaker 1: for some reason is like the major partner in all
Speaker 1: of this, rather than some kind of like I don't know, parent,
Speaker 1: like some kind of teacher senate or something like that.
Speaker 1: The goal of the union, the reason the union exists,
Speaker 1: is to negotiate with the Board of Trustees for the
Speaker 1: collectively bargained contract. That's the point it represents the union
Speaker 1: members for money. Money is the point of the union.
Speaker 1: The point of the union is to get more jobs,
Speaker 1: more pay, more jobs, more pay, better conditions, fewer hours,
Speaker 1: et cetera for union members. That that is the job
Speaker 1: of the Teachers Union. That that's the reason it exists.
Speaker 1: If you set performance metrics for teachers, then you could
Speaker 1: start holding teachers accountable if they don't hit those metrics,
Speaker 1: it could threaten those teachers' jobs. They don't want that.
Speaker 1: They don't want, I mean necessarily, if you're there to
Speaker 1: protect every teacher's job, you're going to feel threatened by
Speaker 1: something like a metric that's put in place for you know, hey,
Speaker 1: if you don't get your kids to achieve at this level,
Speaker 1: you know it could reflect poorly on your your performance review.
Speaker 1: It could lead to problems. They don't want that. They
Speaker 1: don't want their teachers to feel any sort of They
Speaker 1: don't want their teachers to have any kind of sweat
Speaker 1: about whether or not they're doing their job well enough
Speaker 1: to hold their job. So that's the that's the rub.
Speaker 1: They don't teachers' unions constantly are opposed to any kind
Speaker 1: of metric that's going to measure their performance as reflected
Speaker 1: in the scores of kids. When we return, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the fairness of such standards. I think
Speaker 1: there are ways in which it is fair. That is
Speaker 1: next on the John Drardy Show, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: brew haha emanating from Fresno Unified. The board of trustees
Speaker 1: is setting a couple of big time goals for improving
Speaker 1: student academic performance, and the union's response is they're just
Speaker 1: absolute sour grapes over it, just flying the ointment, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They want no part of this. And I think the
Speaker 1: basic thing is the point of a union, as I've said,
Speaker 1: is to protect jobs. To protect jobs, get better pay
Speaker 1: for jobs, get better conditions for jobs, fewer hours, more pay,
Speaker 1: more jobs, total et cetera, et cetera. That is the
Speaker 1: goal of a union, So a performance metric that union
Speaker 1: members could fail at and that might result in them
Speaker 1: getting fired or laid off or whatever. They don't like that.
Speaker 1: They don't want any part of that. Now, taking the
Speaker 1: union side for just a second, for the sake of argument,
Speaker 1: the retort could be this, listen, if you're going to
Speaker 1: tie our pay or our jobs to student performance, that's
Speaker 1: not fair. I can be the best teacher in the
Speaker 1: world if you give me a classroom full of kids
Speaker 1: who you know are from broken homes, who don't have
Speaker 1: supportive parents, who've got stuff going on in their personal
Speaker 1: lives that prevent them from effectively learning during the day
Speaker 1: in the classroom. That's not on me. If they don't achieve. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can be the best teacher in the world. If
Speaker 1: this kid individually his mom and dad. If this kid individually,
Speaker 1: his dad is out of the picture, his mom is
Speaker 1: smoking weed, and you know it's chaos home life, and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. I can be the best
Speaker 1: teacher in the world. And this kid could still perform terribly.
Speaker 1: And you got to look at, well, what is the
Speaker 1: standardized testing you're using for measuring this kid's outcomes? What
Speaker 1: is this that that that's not fair and this isn't fair,
Speaker 1: and this isn't fair. Bah bah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah buth it's not fair. It's not fair to judge
Speaker 1: teachers purely on the basis of student academic achievement. That's
Speaker 1: not fair, all right. I can get that on an
Speaker 1: individual level, But the assumption that's built into those arguments
Speaker 1: is that actually, student academic achievement is in no way,
Speaker 1: shape or form connected to teacher excellence. That teacher excellence
Speaker 1: basically has absolutely no outcome. There's no difference in outcome
Speaker 1: based on you know, the world's greatest teacher James Edward
Speaker 1: James almost from stand and Deliver versus you know, a
Speaker 1: glorified babysitter's who's popping in, you know the DVD of
Speaker 1: Gladiator and calling it, you know, ancient history. Like there's
Speaker 1: no difference, then clearly some outcome based difference is going
Speaker 1: to get churned out at the end between a really
Speaker 1: good teacher and a really crappy teacher. I refuse to believe,
Speaker 1: and again I'll acknowledge you could have a really good
Speaker 1: teacher and an individual student who's not going to respond
Speaker 1: well to that teacher, or because of chaos in their
Speaker 1: home life or whatever, blah blah blah, maybe that teacher
Speaker 1: is not going to get through to that kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Sure a great teacher can have individual students
Speaker 1: who don't really improve much as a result of that
Speaker 1: individual great teacher, but not the majority, not the plurality,
Speaker 1: not most of the kids. If you have a really
Speaker 1: excellent teacher who's a really really connects with kids and
Speaker 1: is really motivating that that's the point that that's how
Speaker 1: we measure teachers who are excellent. That all of us
Speaker 1: can remember our best teacher, the teacher who dragged the
Speaker 1: most good out of us. I remember my fifth grade teacher,
Speaker 1: Sister Olvito, is the best teacher I ever had. And
Speaker 1: you know, I remember my favorite college professors, you know,
Speaker 1: teachers who set high expectations for you and drew those
Speaker 1: expectations out of you. So I on the Teachers Union
Speaker 1: is of course going to feel threatened by anything that's
Speaker 1: measuring student achievement and tying in any way teacher performance
Speaker 1: to student achievement. Now they've got the security of knowing
Speaker 1: they've got their contract in place, which is already signed, sealed, delivered.
Speaker 1: They've got protections that most of us in the real
Speaker 1: world would love to have, and better pay than most
Speaker 1: of us in the real world, you know, who have
Speaker 1: equivalent levels of education or superior levels of education, would
Speaker 1: love to have. So they're nervous because they don't think.
Speaker 1: And this is the problem with our public education system
Speaker 1: in California. One of many problems is that so much
Speaker 1: of it is driven by teachers' unions who are measuring
Speaker 1: success based on how much money they make for adults.
Speaker 1: Teachers' unions view schools as jobs programs for adults. That is,
Speaker 1: that is the their bread and butter of what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do is to make this in affective jobs
Speaker 1: program for adults, and that interest is sometimes in direct
Speaker 1: conflict with student achievement and demanding excellence from students. When
Speaker 1: we return, Vice President Vance is driving liberal Christians nuts
Speaker 1: with his conception of, hey, do you know that there
Speaker 1: is an order in which we're supposed to love people?
Speaker 1: Next on the John Girardi Show, a bunch of liberal
Speaker 1: Christians are just having an absolute meltdown over JD. Vance
Speaker 1: daring to make a point about, in his case, kind
Speaker 1: of Catholic doctrine, but more generally Christian doctrine. So Vance
Speaker 1: has this tweet out where he's sort of dealing with
Speaker 1: these various forms of the immigration debate, and Vance is
Speaker 1: sort of pushing against this notion that theyasically. Advance's thesis
Speaker 1: is that a lot of government policy has been far
Speaker 1: more concerned with the plight of people far far away
Speaker 1: than for our own citizens. Laying out the red carpet
Speaker 1: for immigrants at the expense of our own citizens, whose
Speaker 1: jobs have been shipped overseas, having industries be dominated by
Speaker 1: foreign laborers rather than our own workers, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: is bad. And he talks he talked about he had
Speaker 1: this tweet out where he says, you're ampling up with
Speaker 1: the tweet Vance is. Vance was on Fox News and
Speaker 1: he's talking about like, you're having more compassion for unlawful
Speaker 1: aliens than you are for American citizens. And he says,
Speaker 1: there's a Christian concept that you love your family, and
Speaker 1: then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community,
Speaker 1: and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after
Speaker 1: that you prioritize the rest of the world. He was
Speaker 1: then criticized for this by this guy named Rory Stewart,
Speaker 1: this very posh, lefty British journalist, political talker guy, who said,
Speaker 1: that's a bizarre take on the Gospels. Less Christian and
Speaker 1: more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians.
Speaker 1: And Vance didn't just sit there and take it. Vance
Speaker 1: is this is the thing that I'm laughing about. Trump
Speaker 1: was probably the first politician to really use Twitter to
Speaker 1: his advantage and really utilize it. But Vance is a millennial.
Speaker 1: I mean he's only like forty forty one or something
Speaker 1: like that. He uses Twitter like I do, and Vance
Speaker 1: instead of being detached like, oh, I'm the vice president,
Speaker 1: I'm above this, and Van sas just like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna respond to this idiot. So he responds to this
Speaker 1: guy and says, google the words ordo, amorris. Aside from that,
Speaker 1: the idea that there isn't a hierarchy of obligations violates
Speaker 1: basic common sense. Does this guy Rory Stewart really think
Speaker 1: his moral duties to his own children are the same
Speaker 1: as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of
Speaker 1: miles away does anyone, and then he goes on to
Speaker 1: bury the guy. He says, I've said before and I'll
Speaker 1: say it again. The problem with Rory and people like
Speaker 1: him is that he has an IQ of one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten and thinks he has an IQ of one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty. This false arrogance drives so much elite
Speaker 1: failure over the last forty years. Oh geez, can imagine
Speaker 1: just getting buried like that by the vice president of
Speaker 1: the United States. Anyway, So what Vance is talking about
Speaker 1: is Vance mentions this Latin phrase ordo amorus, which means
Speaker 1: the order of love. And it's this concept that is
Speaker 1: embedded in a lot of Christian thinkers that our first obligations,
Speaker 1: that there is basically a hierarchy of our obligations, an
Speaker 1: ordering of our obligations. Basically, if you're a father and
Speaker 1: you just abandon your kids to go on a mission
Speaker 1: trip to South America and you leave your family in
Speaker 1: poverty and destitution, and your wife's like, where did our
Speaker 1: husband go? Why did he leave us? And they're eating
Speaker 1: beans out of a can because you just left your family.
Speaker 1: That's a massive dereliction of duty. Okay, we have ordering
Speaker 1: of obligations that are rooted in and ordering of our loves.
Speaker 1: We have certain kinds of loves towards certain kinds of
Speaker 1: things that impose greater and lesser degrees of obligation on us.
Speaker 1: A lot of Christian political theory built on the political
Speaker 1: theory of Aristotle, and you had writers like Thomas Aquinas
Speaker 1: and others who built on this. Aristotle was a for
Speaker 1: a lot of Christian thinkers. The philosophical reflections of Aristotle
Speaker 1: were something that had a lot of truth and a
Speaker 1: lot of wisdom to it. Aristotle's conception of political order
Speaker 1: was that political communities are actually natural things. And this
Speaker 1: can sometimes be foreign to us as Americans, because as
Speaker 1: Americans we think of government, or we think of the
Speaker 1: political community as sort of almost an artificial construct. A
Speaker 1: lot of American political thought is influenced by the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: which has this idea that, well, we have a social contract.
Speaker 1: There's nothing natural about us living together, but we all
Speaker 1: have kind of a shared agreement spoken or unspoken that
Speaker 1: you know, in our state of nature, we would just
Speaker 1: be ruthlessly, you know, fighting for our own self interest.
Speaker 1: But we have this social contract that says, okay, well
Speaker 1: I'm going to agree not to step on your toes
Speaker 1: and violate your rights as long as you agree not
Speaker 1: to step on my toes and violate my rights. And
Speaker 1: you know, well we will have arms length agreement for
Speaker 1: everything to sort of work together on stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: and that capitalism is built out of that that you know,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and that the political
Speaker 1: community is this sort of artificial thing Aristotle, and I
Speaker 1: think the earlier Christian pre Enlightenment Christian tradition says, no,
Speaker 1: that that's not actually the case. Living in communities is
Speaker 1: not unnatural. It's actually built into our nature as human beings.
Speaker 1: We're designed to live in communities. We are not all,
Speaker 1: at our core radically isolated individuals. First and foremost, we
Speaker 1: all arise from families. We seek to make family units
Speaker 1: and connections, men with women, producing children. Human beings live
Speaker 1: together in whether it's families to clans to cities. Aristotle
Speaker 1: was writing at the time about the polus, which was
Speaker 1: sort of the Greek The most common sort of unit
Speaker 1: of Greek political life was the polus, which was basically
Speaker 1: the word that was used for a city and its
Speaker 1: surrounding countryside and farms. The polis was sort of the
Speaker 1: unit that Aristotle the unit that Aristotle thought of as
Speaker 1: sort of the the individual political community. And Aristotle talks
Speaker 1: about how a political community is a natural thing. It's
Speaker 1: a group of people within a similar locale who are
Speaker 1: tied to each other by bonds of family, heritage, culture.
Speaker 1: You know. Aristotle would certainly heighten race and religion as
Speaker 1: being key cornerstones of that, and certainly, I think within
Speaker 1: in America we value those things a little bit less,
Speaker 1: and we're far more accommodating to immigrants and people with
Speaker 1: different religious backgrounds, different racial backgrounds. That not as much
Speaker 1: the case in Europe, where you know, within Europe, what
Speaker 1: does it mean to be from Poland? Well, it has
Speaker 1: something to do a little bit with being of Polish
Speaker 1: ancestry and Catholicism. You know, those are things that are important.
Speaker 1: And Poland has resisted ideas of hey, you should let in,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants from you know,
Speaker 1: from the Middle East. They've said, well, no, that would
Speaker 1: kind of alter our political community in a way that
Speaker 1: we're not exactly thrilled with. Yes, we will be kind
Speaker 1: and welcoming and accommoting to refugees, and certainly Poland's been
Speaker 1: incredibly kind and welcoming, especially to victims from Ukraine of
Speaker 1: the war in Ukraine. But there is a kind of
Speaker 1: ordering there that basically the political community is characterized by
Speaker 1: people who have commonality. I think we experience this here
Speaker 1: in the San Joaquin Valley. In America, we I think,
Speaker 1: in many cases, quite rightly, don't care so much about
Speaker 1: racial division. I am wonderfully good friends with people who
Speaker 1: are black and Hispanic and Asian and whatever. We don't
Speaker 1: make those things as important in America. There are certain
Speaker 1: kinds of American ideals that we care about more. But
Speaker 1: certainly I have closer ties and closer kinship and a
Speaker 1: kind of closer love for people from the San Joaquin
Speaker 1: Valley than I do people from San Francisco. It's a
Speaker 1: different place, a different region, a different culture. It's something
Speaker 1: I just naturally don't care as much about because I
Speaker 1: don't have those common experiences, those common ties, those bonds
Speaker 1: of affection. You know, I've don't have the kinds of
Speaker 1: fond memories of driving from my house out to you know,
Speaker 1: visit someone in sane or in seeing you know, a
Speaker 1: beautiful sunset, the kinds of things that give me love
Speaker 1: and affection for this community. It's only for this one.
Speaker 1: This is where I live, this is where I grew up,
Speaker 1: and this is something that's natural and something that Dvance
Speaker 1: is just pointing out that our public it is getting
Speaker 1: frustrating to the American people. Why did Donald Trump win
Speaker 1: this election. I think one of many reasons why is
Speaker 1: because I think Americans are getting tired of the sort
Speaker 1: of borderless vision of modern day American liberalism, which does
Speaker 1: view human beings as just fundamentally isolated atoms, not as
Speaker 1: members of communities really, and that therefore there's no reason
Speaker 1: and whatsoever to have any kind of greater love or
Speaker 1: care concern for an American citizen than for someone coming
Speaker 1: over the border. Does this mean we should you know?
Speaker 1: Does that mean I want Catholic charities to never help
Speaker 1: a poor person who happens to be an immigrant. No,
Speaker 1: it's not the case. Our love for our fellow man
Speaker 1: does extend to everybody, and we should love everyone. But
Speaker 1: there is a kind of right ordering of our loves.
Speaker 1: The policies of the United States government should be to
Speaker 1: have some greater concern for our own citizen rate. So
Speaker 1: all of these liberal Christians are just absolutely passing out
Speaker 1: over Vance saying this and kind of makes me delighted
Speaker 1: when we return a financial proposal for Christians who think
Speaker 1: that this concept is evil or bad something that could
Speaker 1: help me out next on the JOHNS Groarty Show. So
Speaker 1: all these lefty Christians are freaking out because JD. Van said, Hey,
Speaker 1: actually American foreign policy should prioritize Americans and that there's
Speaker 1: actually nothing Unchristian about it. In fact, Christianity has this
Speaker 1: kind of built in assumption that we have an ordering
Speaker 1: of our loves, that we are actually supposed to care
Speaker 1: about people immediately closest to us first. Now, this is
Speaker 1: horrifying to liberal Christianity, who embraces a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of Enlightenment notions of like the social contract, and this
Speaker 1: idea of human beings as atomized individuals, not as members
Speaker 1: of families, not as members of communities, not as members
Speaker 1: of political communities. Even the idea of the political community
Speaker 1: as a natural entity is completely foreign to all these people,
Speaker 1: whether out of ignorance or elite level philosophical rejection of
Speaker 1: a lot of these principles of Christians and political thinking.
Speaker 1: To these people who say, no, we shouldn't treat someone
Speaker 1: outside of our realm of love. There's no ordering of
Speaker 1: our loves that everyone we need to give everyone. We
Speaker 1: have the same obligations to everyone equally. Yes, on a
Speaker 1: certain baseline level, we do have a certain obligation of
Speaker 1: basic love, willing the good, willing salvation for everyone. This
Speaker 1: is what motivates apostles to go to all the ends
Speaker 1: of the earth and baptize people in the name of
Speaker 1: the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit, what motivates
Speaker 1: missionaries to go to India and China. However, if these
Speaker 1: people do, in fact think that there is no proper
Speaker 1: ordering of loves, I would like to set up I'm
Speaker 1: announcing the John Girardi pay my mortgage VENMO. So any
Speaker 1: of you liberals who don't think that, think that we
Speaker 1: love people indiscriminately, I would encourage you to send money
Speaker 1: to my VENMO to pay off my mortgage. Given that
Speaker 1: you have no greater or less obligation to me than
Speaker 1: to your own family or to your own bank account,
Speaker 1: I would recommend you make a contribution to this very
Speaker 1: worthy cause. That'll do it. John J Already shows see
Speaker 1: next time on Power Talk