Ladies and gentlemen, welcome again to another episode of Freedom's Creed. This is Rex Creed. I'm glad that you're tuning in today and look forward to presenting another episode of this podcast. You know, one of the things that I adhere to is the idea that whenever you tune into a podcast, you don't want the host to spoon feed you. At least that's my philosophy. So if you're tuning in for me to spoon feed you, then you'll want to search podcasts under the heading Goo Goo Gaga. My desire is to get you to think, even to challenge the things that you think or the way that you think. I'm actually going to be talking about some things today that center around that principle, that idea of actually thinking about things and really contemplating the choices that we make. Because it seems in a lot of ways today that young people are not being taught how to think, but they're being taught what to think. And there's a big difference between the two. In my view today, we're seeing some examples of what I would refer to as irresponsible use of freedom. For instance, uh when people riot, uh obviously we know that the right of the people to peaceably assemble is part of our founding documents. It's part of the Bill of Rights. Uh when people act in a way that is irresponsible, they destroy property or they don't respect the rights of other people. And then that begs the question: well, what is irresponsible? Um, I think irresponsibility when it comes to the way we live in society is simply going against the accepted civilized practices of a civilized society. I don't think that's asking too much. And I think that most people in America, and most people in the world probably, the vast majority conduct themselves in this way. It's always a few bad apples that ruin it for the rest of us. We may very well ask ourselves the question can we do whatever we want in society? Well, technically, yes, but what about the consequences? If you choose to break the law, then you've chosen to accept the consequences that go along with that. Uh let's take the civil rights struggle. There were people who actually suffered, who even died to fight for integration. And that was the right thing to do. Separate but equal was merely an excuse to justify racism. Yet, many prominent universities, even Ivy League universities, are encouraging separate but equal when they entertain the idea that these groups should have their own commencement. In my view, this flies in the face of what people were doing during the civil rights era, principally the 1960s, and it flies in the face of separate but equal. Anyone can attend university today, if that is their choice. If you take a look at the world's population and the percentage of people in the world today who have a college degree, you may be surprised that it's actually less than 7% of the world's population actually have a college degree. Now, as you might imagine, that number is significantly higher if you just take into account those in the United States. The last I looked, it's around 33%. So roughly a third of the people in the United States have a college uh degree. We also know that having a college degree today is not the end-all be-all. It's not like it was 30, 40, 50 years ago when you went to college. And if you did go to college, your chances of earning a greater living and climbing the economic ladder were significantly enhanced. But let's look at how privileged people really are who are able to go to college. And we're talking about men and women. In fact, women are much more prone to have post-secondary education than men. Uh pick a race, any race, and those individuals are able to go to uh college and quite frankly, earn a college degree and be in a class of people who are frankly privileged. You may be asking yourself, well, what's the point of all this? The point is that there are various groups of students today at prominent universities across the country who are requesting their own commencement, ostensibly so that they can feel more included. So if I understand this correctly, they're doing this because they want to feel more included when they were attending a university where a scant percentage of the population across the world have the opportunity to do so. Being privileged enough to attend a university apparently isn't enough for some people. This is a serious question, it's a serious topic. To divide into specific groups at the exclusion of others is the very essence of exclusion. And as I mentioned at the outset, we already went through this with the civil rights struggle and integration. So we had separate bathrooms, we had separate water fountains, we had separate restaurants, separate schools, and the list goes on and on. Again, ladies and gentlemen, separate but equal was a failed experiment. Black Americans suffered the most despicable and humiliating experiences imaginable, and that's not even the half of it. You're trying to tell me then that the people who suffered so much so that we can have and experience inclusion have to now sit back and look at people in college today who are saying that they need to have their own commencement because they don't feel included. This is hard for me to stomach. We're either going to have separate but equal, or we're not. I guess it just depends on who you're talking to and how they justify such actions. But for me, separate but equal should be shunned like a terrible virus. We have universities, big tech, and other corporations in America that we're seeing make strident efforts to, I'm just gonna say it, indoctrinate air quotes here, pale-skinned tone people to acknowledge their guilt, their fragility, and inherent racism, as if it is some kind of twisted payback to the slave masters of a foregone era. It makes no sense, people. I will hammer this fact as much as I have to hammer it. There is no law, there is no action, there is nothing that can be done in America today to make up for the inhumane treatment and murder of people from the slave era. It's not going to happen. So what do we do? You can answer that yourself, and you in fact should, but what I won't do is stand by and be lectured by someone who thinks that because of my skin tone, that I'm somehow inherently racist, I don't buy into it and categorically reject it. And it's not because I feel guilty because of what I have done, because in reality, I haven't done anything to perpetuate this notion. And it's unfair to hold people accountable for something they have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with. And that case was a particularly egregious because it was totally made up and phony. But look at all of the established media types and others who totally ran with it and said, ah, yep, see, white people are inherently racist. And the guy made up the whole thing, and worse yet, was not even held to account for what he did. That's despicable. Listen, making judgments about people based on skin tone alone is about as unfair and bigoted as it can get. And it's a giant slap in the face to those who came before us who literally had to struggle for everything that they were able to get and everything that they were able to do. For those who perpetuate uh this idea of segregation today, uh, they should keep in mind something that an amazing human being said. This amazing human being was Rosa Parks, and she said this I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people. Individuals like Rosa Parks were not only filled with bravery and courage, but were filled with the greatest integrity. She went on to do some amazing things in her life and lived to, I think, the age of 92. And perhaps I'll do a whole episode on Rosa Parks one of these days. But let me just say this about Rosa Parks and the profound impact that she had on society, not just black society, but society as a whole. In December of 1955, she gets on a bus like she had done many times before and decided she was going to sit down where she wanted to sit down. And that's what she did. Well, we know what happened. She was booked and she had to pay a fine and a court fee, which back then wasn't very much, but that's definitely not the point. It led to the Montgomery bus boycott because there was a very high percentage of the black population at the time who rode the bus. And not just rode the bus, but depended on it for their transportation. It was their main source of transportation. After some lawsuits, uh, one that actually reached the Supreme Court in November of 1956, less than one year after Rosa Parks took that bus seat, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional, not just for Montgomery, Alabama, but for every other town and city in the United States. It's amazing to me what a group of people can do in a constructive way if they put their mind to it. Now, is it unfortunate that they had to do this in the first place? Of course. But it was accomplished, and it was accomplished by a lot of people like Rosa Parks, who were fighting an injustice because of segregation. And here's the thing about laws. Laws can be made, but morality cannot be legislated. In other words, laws were made in post-slavery America and in the Jim Crow era, leading up to the civil rights uh legislation that was passed in the 1960s. Unfortunately, many of these laws were simply not upheld. So it comes down to people actually applying the golden rule and really just being decent people and having respect for other people, even if they don't look like they do. I, for one, am not going to stand by and watch other people make accusations about any race, I don't care what the race is, but projecting their own insecurities about race, perhaps, onto other people, claiming that those other people are inherently racist because of the color of their skin. I won't sit back and hear it without calling it out. I have simply tried and continue to try to live my life judging people based upon the content of their character and not the color of their skin. I'm truly hopeful that these modern day segregationists in our school systems particularly, as well as in corporate America, eventually come to their senses. I really do. And with that, here is my quote from none other than Dr. Martin Luther King, who said this. All we say to America is, be true to what you said on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. Thank you for listening, ladies and gentlemen. And remember, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.