Caller: People Aspire to Have Community Bonds Without Doing What Cultivates Community

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Membership is aspired to and it’s what makes community so powerful. You have no guarantee, even if you’re in the United States, and no sense of guarantee or no sense that you should accept without actual investigation that those people you’re about to counter believe as you do, that they fear retribution of the transcendent, of God, if they commit certain acts and atrocities against you, that the law of man is great and fine but the law of God is even more powerful.  You don’t know these things.  It’s a loss of what there once was an awful lot more of, which is why on this show we talk about republicanism all the time.  Without communities, there can be no republicanism. Check out the rest in today’s transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Brandon is in Pennsylvania next.  Hello, Brandon, how you doing?

Caller Brandon:  Good morning, Mr. Church.  Welcome back and Godspeed to a quick recovery, and Merry Christmas as well.

Mike:  What’s on your mind, Brandon?

Caller Brandon:  Listening to the whole show this morning, in the first hour you were talking a little bit with AG about humility.  The fact of the matter is, we as the people, we turn to government, and whether it be left, right, indifferent, we expect them to come up with solutions in their arrogance as man.  We think as men we can correct these problems of evil that can be done by anyone with any means.  It’s not for us to decide the motive.  It’s not for us to judge.  The fact of the matter is, there will be judgment.  I think we’ve failed as a society.  I’m 28 years old and I don’t have a family of my own, but I can’t even be in polite society anymore and tell someone, “You have a cute kid.”  The years gone by, that was acceptable.  I have a fear in my heart that people look at me like I’m a creep.  The kindness that we should be showing to one another.  I always try to look for the best in people but often we look for the worst.  It’s sad.

Mike:  That’s a survival mechanism kicking in there to look for the worst.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.  James Madison once famously said, “If men were but angels, we wouldn’t need governments to organize our affairs.”  Don’t be too hard on yourself because you have some trepidation about being suspect to people, although I think in communities you’re probably less likely to believe that’s going to be suspect.  American Express has one of the most famous advertising adages ever.  You know what it is, right?

Caller Brandon:  Yes, sir.

Mike:  What is it?

Caller Brandon:  I’m assuming it’s the one with this costs so much and this costs so much.

Mike:  No, “membership has its privileges.”  Why do we care about membership?  After all, what is membership?

Caller Brandon:  It’s being included.

Mike:  It implies community.  It implies fraternity.  Why else would you want to be a member of something?  All of us join things.  We all want to be members of certain things.  AG’s cousin is a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, isn’t he?

AG:  Eventually he will be.  It’s my uncle now.

Mike:  Well, he didn’t have any choice because it’s hereditary, but if he did, he would probably aspire to that membership.  Why do we desire membership?  Why do we want to be in groups?  On résumés we list our community affiliation.  It used to be on résumés you’d list your membership in the Knights of Columbus, Rotary Club, Kiwanis or religious affiliation or organization.  The point is that membership is aspired to and it’s what makes community so powerful.  In a community that is closely knit together and is friendly and cultivates the good, your trepidation would be less than it is when you go into the urban mean streets and you don’t know anyone because you don’t know what to expect.  You have no guarantee, even if you’re in the United States, and no sense of guarantee or no sense that you should accept without actual investigation that those people you’re about to counter believe as you do, that they fear retribution of the transcendent, of God, if they commit certain acts and atrocities against you, that the law of man is great and fine but the law of God is even more powerful.  You don’t know these things.  You certainly don’t know whether they’re predisposed to thinking that if you say something nice about their children that you’re a perv.  What you’re describing to me is a loss of community.  It’s a loss of what there once was an awful lot more of, which is why on this show we talk about republicanism all the time.  Without communities, there can be no republicanism.  I think you’re on the right nerve.

Caller Brandon:  I’ve been listening to your show for a couple years.  I started a thought process.  I’ve lived in the same community my whole life.  I volunteer with certain things and try and help out.  We all want to lump together and say we’re American, like you said about the little flags being displayed.  I engaged it and look at it in reverse, which is probably how people used to look at it.  I look at my township first.  Outside of my township, I’m a member of my county, then I’m a member of my state, then after that I’m a member of America.  Might I add, though, before I’m a member of my township or any various forms of government, I am first and foremost a member of my church and my belief set.  I think if we start to put that in perspective and utilize that as a whole more often, some of these people that are slipping and falling through the cracks, they’ll be remembered for this heinous act.  I’m like you, I wish there was an easy answer.  I don’t think there is, but the less people seem to feel like there’s no sense of belonging to anything, we could see less frequency of these atrocities.

Mike:  In simpler times, there were probably simpler answers.  Maybe the issue of what is right and what is wrong was easier to spot and easier to live by.  Today, that is a very gray area in which to exist.  If you missed this earlier, I brought up the discussion and focus on government and the gun.  Again, it’s ridiculous, fruitless, and won’t solve anything.  It is but an exercise that people have been programmed to go into.  It’s the same demons, libs v. conservatives, left v. right, Republicans v. Democrats, red v. blue.  It’s amazing to me how the propaganda and the inculcation of these things that our elite, almighty federal overlords and their henchmen want us to respond in a manner in which they want us to respond, that they get the calculated response.  You could have predicted what the response to this would have been.

End Mike Church Show Transcript