Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. Today is Tuesday, August the 30th, 2022. I took a week off from the podcast last week, and I hope each of you are enjoying your summer as much as I am. And speaking of which, summer is nearly over. We got a little less than a month to go, and we'll be into the fall season. But in any case, I hope you're having a great summer, and I hope the end of your summer goes really well. The way I see things these days, it seems like there's never a shortage of things to talk about in the media, in politics, in the world in general, in our culture. There is so much to discuss, so much to really evaluate, I guess is a good word for it. And I find myself thinking that I could never have imagined some of the things that are going on in our culture 20, 30, or even 40 years ago. There are things that are taking place today that were just beyond anyone's imagination, I think, back then. And I don't believe it was because of ignorance. I think it was just something that we never thought could happen. We never imagined that we'd be talking about things like transgenders and that sort of thing in our society, or how the government mandates certain things, or how politicians are and now that's a whole nother ball of wax, but politicians have been pretty corrupt for a long time. But in any case, there's a lot of things that are going on today that a lot of us who are my generation, I suppose, just could never have imagined before. Naturally, the proliferation of social media, the internet, and technology in general has made it so that things are not really private anymore. If you notice that, it it's something can be said on social media innocently, and if it's not in conformity with the powers that be, that person can literally be canceled overnight or be excoriated in such a way that we just couldn't have imagined before. And so, yes, social media has played a role and does play a role, but I think personal responsibility and those kinds of efforts to be a good citizen, no matter whether we have social media or technology or not, really doesn't matter. To be a responsible citizen, you should just be that a responsible citizen irrespective of social media or the trends that are going on in our society today. So I want to begin today's episode by stating that simply expressing a particular belief or opinion that is characterized as being threatening to some will get you into some trouble in our culture today. You might ask yourself, well, where's the evidence for such a statement? Please allow me to provide some proof for what I'm saying. I've chosen a few items to highlight, and there may be, in fact, I know there is a lot more that I could discuss, but I'm simply focusing on two or three things that I want to talk about and hopefully wrap it up at the end with some ideas and thoughts to sort of tie everything together. So here we go. Here's exhibit number one, as it were. I'm not a lawyer, but it's fun to say that. How about simply acknowledging that there are biological differences between males and females? Now, we all have 23 pairs of chromosomes, 46 total chromosomes. Females have two X chromosomes, and males have one X and one Y chromosome. Now, I'm no biologist or a scientist, but in my opinion, a five-year-old knows that men and women, or boys and girls, are different from one another. For instance, most five-year-olds know that men cannot get pregnant. Five-year-olds certainly don't know the ins and outs of male and female anatomy, and well, they probably shouldn't. But let's just say that we know that men don't have ovaries, we don't have fallopian tubes, a uterus, or any other female anatomy parts that don't exist inside the male body. But notwithstanding all of this evidence and really so much more, we still have people in our society who believe that men can become women and women can become men. And if anyone who is a public figure makes a statement rejecting such a notion, it's as if they have denied the existence of gravity. Yet everyone knows that gravity is actually real. What goes up eventually must come down. But there are people, in spite of their supposed intelligence, who will argue that no, men can become women and women can become men. It it does happen. And let's not deny that it happens. Well, I'm gonna be one of those people who says, no, it can't happen. I will be a man wants to be a woman, woman wants to be a man denier, for sure. And think about this for a minute. Look at anyone who speaks out against the things that I've just mentioned about transgenderism. A cancel campaign is waged against that person non stop until they either shut up or get on board with the prevailing sentiment, however kooky that might be. Okay, on to exhibit number two. The COVID-19 vaccinations. Now, the prevailing wins when it comes to the vaccination was that if you're vaxxed, then you're okay. You love other people, you care about other people, you want to protect other people, and you'll do your best or did your best by receiving the vaccination. Well, guess what? That's fine. If you as an individual want to get vaccinated, then that ought to be your choice. If the government says you should get vaccinated, or your employer says you should get vaccinated, well then that tends to muddy the waters a little bit and it's not exactly black and white. There's a lot of gray area there. In any case, the way that people were viewed who received the vaccination is that, well, they just cared about people a lot more than people who didn't. And speaking of which, if you were unvaxxed or still are unvaxxed, then you're definitely not okay. You're labeled as uncaring. You don't care if others get sick, quote unquote, because of you. You're anti-science, and on and on. Oh yeah, and if you're Novak Djokovic, then well, you just can't play in the US Open tennis tournament. And Joker is a guy who's won twenty-one Grand Slam events in tennis, I believe. Just one behind Rafa Nadal. Oh, and as an amazing side note on the women's side. Yeah. Serena Williams has 23 Grand Slam events, so the boys are chasing her. In any event, COVID-19 surely introduced to all of us the way that speech can be demonized in our country for gain, whether it be politically, medically, financially. There was a lot of ways that people gained from COVID-19 and the vaccinations. And I'll leave it at that for now. And let me go on to exhibit number three, which is what about the differences between liberal and conservative? Generally, if you're liberal, you're perceived as open-minded, you care about other people, you're not a racist, you believe in science, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if you're conservative, you're perceived as the exact opposite of everything I just mentioned. And the really scary thing about all of this, ladies and gentlemen, is that there are a lot of people who believe these perceptions, whether they're on the left or on the right or in the center, whatever, it doesn't matter. People believe much of what they hear in media, and that in and of itself is a scary proposition. We should take all of the things that we hear, see, learn in social media and in big media and big tech with a huge grain of salt, in my opinion. Now, I could go on and talk about additional aspects of our society where I think that speech is demonized, but I won't right now because I think I've proven my point and proven my case. You'll have to do some studying on your own, and the things that you learn about and study and look into on your own will give you the foundation for your beliefs in these particular things, just as every other thing that you study and learn, you form an opinion about, and then you form a foundation or a basis from which to draw from or to build upon. And that's the way it should be. We should be informed, we should study the issues, we should look at the issues, we should be honest about the things that we see and hear. That's a big component that I think is missing in the media and dare I say, among politicians. Why am I whispering? I don't know, but you get the point. Let me just say that I think, in my opinion, anyway, we live in a very appeasement-rich society, meaning that whatever people want to believe, that's okay, even if it flies in the face of reality. I guess we're just supposed to deny logic at its very core so that we can affirm the mental illness that is prevalent in our society and just go about our business pretending that all of this is okay and that it's uh dare I say normal. Look at what happens to people who speak out against some of the things that I've been talking about. A cancel campaign is waged against that person. Just as I said earlier, and if they don't just shut up or get on board with a prevailing sentiment, then their lives are literally turned upside down. So where do we go from here? Or what do we do when we're faced with a situation where we're having a discussion with someone who thinks that men can become women or women can become men, or that you're evil because you didn't get vaccinated, or you're a conservative, you are the worst person ever. You're even worse than a mass murderer. Okay, that might be a stretch, but you get what I'm saying. It's outside of this world and outside of our abilities to comprehend the illogical way that people perceive and look at someone who believes something different than what they believe, or whose opinions don't exactly jibe with their own opinion. It's insane. So what do we do? How do we live in a free society? What does it mean to live in a free society like the United States? Well, allow me to provide some answers to that question, and in a nutshell, they can be found, those answers, that is, in the Bill of Rights. You may have a different approach or you may look at this, the answer to this question, I should say, in a different way. But I hope that you'll take a look at the Bill of Rights and that it will spur in you a desire to say, you know what, that really is the basis for a free society, and we should indeed build upon that foundation. So, first of all, we have freedom of speech and religion and the press in the United States. We have the right to peaceably assemble. We have the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and not to be aggrieved because we have done so. How many times have we seen people who have tried to redress their grievances to the government and all hell came crashing down on them? It's happened way too often in our society, and frankly, it shouldn't happen at all. In our society in America, we have the right to keep and bear arms without infringement. We have the right against unreasonable searches and seizures. We have the right to not be searched without probable cause. We have the right not to self-incriminate. We have the right to property, to life and liberty. We have the right of due process. In other words, we're innocent until proven guilty. We have the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. We have the right to confront witnesses, to obtain witnesses in our favor, and have the assistance of counsel for defense. We have the right to be free of being charged for the same crime after an acquittal or conviction. We know this to be double jeopardy. We have the right against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments, and we have the right to privacy. And as a people, we also have the right to self-govern. In fact, the Tenth Amendment reads, quote, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. Now think about this for a minute. Thought, speech, belief, unbelief, anything that a person wants to do in our society as long as it is lawful is not un-American. In fact, it's very American. We have the right to disagree. We have the right to be able to debate and discuss topics, whether it be privately or through the public discourse, no matter the medium that we're talking about. We have that right to be able to express our viewpoints and to speak freely. Whether it hurts someone's feelings or not is really irrelevant. As long as we're not actually hurting someone, that we're not causing physical harm to someone by the things that we say, then we should be able to have that right to speech. As far as I'm concerned, everything associated with the right to live and speak freely, without fear of reprisal, attack, cancellation, or any current societal manifestation surrounding the minimization of speech or any other right that is infringed upon, must never be allowed to be taken away from we the people. It doesn't matter if we agree with it or not. It doesn't matter if a politician doesn't like something that a constituent says. It absolutely does not matter. These are the kinds of risks that we take in a free society. And we shouldn't be canceling people just because they believe something that is different than what we believe. And let me simply say this too, and that is that any attempt to restrict our freedoms today because of evils that took place in American culture hundreds of years ago is going to be and is indeed bad for all of us. The only way for freedom to be preserved is by preserving the Constitution and the liberties it provides to all people. There is frankly no other way to say it, ladies and gentlemen. That is how it is. That is the society that we live in. If we don't like a particular belief, a particular law, no matter what it is, or we disagree with the things that other people have to say, the way to combat that, the way to overcome it is to be able to debate the issues, to be able to have discussions, to be able to be adult enough to say, you know what, this person doesn't believe like I do. They believe something totally different. But guess what? They have the right to do so, as well as I have the right to believe as I choose to believe. There is simply no need to demonize the speech of other people. There is no basis for this. We live in a society, of course, where there's going to be disagreements and we're not all going to get along, that's for sure. But I mean, to make somebody out to be the devil incarnate because they believe something that is totally different than what I might believe, that's just stupid. There's no reason for it. We shouldn't be doing it. And I wish that we wouldn't if we could just get along. And I mean, it's really not that difficult. It's there is no reason why we should look at another person and think there's something less of a human because they believe something different than we do. It's just really dumb. Well, on that note, let me end this episode by reading a quote to you from Alexander Hamilton. This was a quote that he said in defense of the quote unquote new constitution. And he made these comments in October of 1787 as part of the Federalist Papers. He said this quote, I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity. My arguments will be open to all and may be judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit which will not disgrace the cause of truth. End of quote. And remember, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.