Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Let me say to you something you won’t hear very many members of the talk radio mafia, a derisive name given to talk radio show hosts by Mary Anastasia O’Grady back in 2008 because radio hosts were refusing to endorse Senator McCain back then. I don’t believe that this juncture in the lives of Americans or of Western civilization in general is that much removed from the similar situations and juncture that were experienced by men of 1750 to 1820, by the men of 1800 to 1870, by the men of 1850 to 1920, by the men of 1910 to 1980, or by the men of 1920 (known as the greatest generation to those who have survived today) to this current generation. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…
Begin Mike Church Show Transcript
Mike: I want to read a piece of email. Yes, we are being distracted here and we are missing the big issue, but it’s not politics. This is from, I’ll just call him Michael K. You can write me kingdude@mikechurch.com or use the contact form on the website while you’re checking out Professor Gutzman’s Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.
[reading]
Mike, I’ve absolutely had enough of politicians, certain Democrats in particular, always throwing the little children out there every time they want something wildly unpopular. These cretins do not nor have they ever cared about the children. If they did, they would not support and in some cases promote abortion. They also would be active in cleaning up a society that has degraded because of that wiz-bang sexual revolution they were so proud of 40 years ago. Many of today’s social problems stem directly from the sexual revolution which gave us the divorce culture and the contraceptive mentality. All of the above has sort of programmed many in the following generations to view people as something less than human beings. Some people will wonder how certain criminals are created or why some people just turn out the way they do. Well, that wonderful sexual revolution and the tidal wave of immorality that followed it is the reason some males grow up to be perverts and some females grow up to be promiscuous. If you soak in a tub of manure long enough, you’re liable to come out smelling funny. This filth culture is responsible for the destruction of the lives of countless numbers of the little children, all a direct result of that wonderful sexual revolution that was brought to us by the generation of people currently running our government. God help us because he certainly will judge us for the destruction of those children’s lives.
[end reading]
Mike: Michael, I think you’re on the right track there. I believe that our cultural problems are what permit our political problems. Let me say to you something you won’t hear very many members of the talk radio mafia, a derisive name given to talk radio show hosts by Mary Anastasia O’Grady back in 2008 because radio hosts were refusing to endorse Senator McCain back then. I don’t believe that this juncture in the lives of Americans or of Western civilization in general is that much removed from the similar situations and juncture that were experienced by men of 1750 to 1820, by the men of 1800 to 1870, by the men of 1850 to 1920, by the men of 1910 to 1980, or by the men of 1920 (known as the greatest generation to those who have survived today) to this current generation. The reason I say that is because a fair reading of the correspondence of those men throughout those periods, you can find — John Adams was one of the biggest gripers about the people around him and about the culture around him and how it was degrading. You can read Adams’ correspondence and you would think that Adams was living in 2013 in the middle of some kind of a bad neighborhood in south central LA. He wasn’t sipping gin and juice in the hood either. That’s the title of a movie, by the way.
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There have always been grave concerns. I was mentioning Patrick Henry earlier. One of Henry’s correspondences when he was governor of Virginia for the third year, in the year 1779, he was complaining to someone and wondering where the spirit of ’76 had gone. Where was the spirit of his countrymen? Why weren’t they as animated and as active? When were they going to wake up to the danger that was all around them and all around their new country? I think this is perfectly natural to think this way, perfectly in keeping with the American spirit of always finding something to be cynical about. AG, are you a cynical or an un-cynical type?
AG: I would think I’m very cynical.
Mike: Are you cynical about your generation or are you hopeful? Which one would you be more of? You’re probably a little of both. Which one are you more of?
AG: I think I would be cynical. It may depend on the situation, but I would tend to lean cynical.
Mike: But you’re still hopeful. You see some good. You don’t think it’s all bad, right?
AG: Thinking about it, I’m probably more cynical about the older generations and hopeful about my generation.
Mike: Honest answer, good. Ask Evan the same question. What’s young Evan’s response? You and he are about the same age.
AG: He throws up his hands and says hopeful.
Mike: You know what? He needs to put that hoosegow pipe down. Back away from the pipe, Evan.
AG: Eric just walked in in his Ravens jersey and says hopeful as well.
Mike: If the Ravens start their season off 0-4, ask him again.
AG: They’ll get the loss tonight against Denver.
Mike: That’s right, the NFL kicks off tonight. So I asked a question, and the reason I asked the question is because I think most people, if we conducted a poll, they would respond that they’re cynical and not hopeful. If we point back to John Adams, who was a very devout man of faith [mocking] “He was a deist.” There is so little evidence to support this fatuous claim that these men were just running around and did not belong to denominated churches. It is one of the great urban legends. I’m going to spend some time writing about it and proving that it is incorrect. We’ll start with Patrick Henry, who had actually heard these rumors that he was a deist. In a letter that he wrote to one of his daughters, Patsy, right before he died, Mr. Henry had asked that the world would know that he was an Episcopalian. That’s right, Patrick Henry was an Episcopalian. He had heard the whole deist claim.
He was a man of spirit. He wanted it to be known. I would beg your patience, but I think I’ve already taken up too much of your time, so I’ll save it for another day. I’ll read you his last will and testament one day and you will be shocked at what that great august leader of the revolutionary generation of Americans said and what he left to his children. It wasn’t a lot of material wealth. Washington was also a devout man. Most of the men of the founding generation were. Yet, if you read their writings, they were very cynical. To a man, they were very convinced that governments they had formed and the revolution that they had fought was all going to end awry, was all going to end in tears, that they hadn’t done enough, hadn’t put enough safeguards in.
What they were hopeful about, and perhaps they were just leaving a paper trail to say “I told you so,” because one thing they did see, the men of the founding generation, we never asked why they did what they did. Why did they do it? I try to answer this in my docudrama Fame of Our Fathers, which is based on Sir Francis Bacon’s essay about the conditores imperiorum, founders of commonwealths and empires. Those men left that correspondence behind, possibly the greatest correspondence in human history. They left it behind intentionally. It was not an accident that they saved every cotton pickin’ letter that they wrote, with the exception of men like Washington, who took some of his war correspondence and said: No one’ s ever reading that. Throw that in the fire. They left their correspondence behind intentionally.
You can draw two conclusions from that. They left it behind so they could say: See, told you so. They were cynics. Or did they leave it behind because then they could say: See, we left you a nice road map. We’re very hopeful for our posterity that they will follow? I think the answer is the latter. They were very hopeful. They always talked with great reverence about their posterity, their children, meaning they thought they were doing a pretty good job of raising the next generation. Ladies and gentlemen, folks, that’s where our challenge is. That’s why I think Michael K’s letter is important here. The challenge is in the next generation. They haven’t come to age yet. They have not become sexually promiscuous, most of them, yet. They have not done a Miley Cyrus twerk move at the high school musical or the Christmas play or spring musical. They can be prevented, encouraged, molded, shaped into being that hopeful posterity.
We always hear [mocking] “I want the best for my kids.” Really, do you? Do you make them read the good book? Do you teach them prayers? Do you instruct them on the great men and women of the past and how the great women of the past kept their ninnies inside their blouses, how the great men of the past kept their derrieres inside their pants and never felt compelled to show them in order to gain favor with an adoring public? Do you read to them the arts and letters that the great men and women of the past created and left behind? Try this sometime. Type in “James Madison letter” or “J.R.R. Tolkien letter” and see if any correspondence comes up.
Here’s another good one. We have, and on pretty good authority, we listened to a speech that was delivered by John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the Episcopalian Society of Houston. I talked about this yesterday. It was Kennedy trying to disavow the men around him and the public and the press that he was going to do the pope’s bidding and be a religious zealot while in office. That’s a good speech. The intention of the speech is good about the separation of churches and states. The real beauty of that speech is the way it’s written, the prose. You can find it online. As a matter of fact, Andrew, if you’d do me the favor, find the YouTube of it with a transcript, I’ll put it out there on the Twitter feed.
Read the speech. Kennedy was of the last generation of American men and some women that actually went to a university for the purpose of higher education. I don’t mean the pursuit of a job or a career that he was going to have to have some diploma of. He actually went there and received this education. In his delivery of the speech, in his mannerisms, in the courtesies of the speech that he relayed to the audience that was watching it and possibly knowing that we might want to read it at one point in the future, it is written with a very 18th century tone. It’s not written in the “Hey, ya know, hey, bra.” It’s not writing in modern, sloppy vernacular. It is written in a very classical tone.
You can say all you want [mocking] “Come on, Mike, times change and people change.” Why do manners have to change? Why does being polite and courteous ever have to change? Whose idea is that? I think that’s a rotten idea. That’s why I am encouraged and more hopeful than I am cynical, because I hear many of you following some of the example I try to set by using the proper terminology whenever possible by using the term “Sir,” by calling women who call the show “Madam,” by responding to your emails in the proper format. In other words, so many of the things that the culture has — it’s not a culture. We’re not cultivating any longer. We’re un-cultivating. We’re refusing to cultivate.
We can bring those things back. You can bring those things back. I think we can live with the iPhone and modern technology and live with it and speak respectfully, with great manners, with great humility, and with the graces, which is something I believe those men of those foregone generations pursued. Those men pursued the graces as were taught to us by great men and women like the Blessed Mother Mary, the way she dealt with her child, her prodigy, the way her son, Jesus, dealt with all the adversity around him. These are graceful things. Where’s the pursuit of grace? Why is the pursuit of vulgarity rewarded instead of the pursuit of grace and graceful-like actions? Answer that question or do something about arresting that and I think you can then do something about arresting the spread of the virus of deceit and corruption in your politics. You have to first arrest the spread of violence and deceit and corruption in our personal lives.
End Mike Church Show Transcript
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