Transcript

Well, it's the morning after Election Day, and since I filmed this episode a few weeks ago, I don't know who the president is.

I don't even know if we know who the president is by this point.

But no matter what happens, we still have an obligation to defend the moral foundations of our faith in society.

So, in today's episode, I wanna share with you a talk I recently gave for the Young Americans for Freedom Foundation, YAF. It's a great program for high school students, so I definitely encourage you to check it out if you are in high school or if you know someone who is in high school.

And definitely pray for our country during this important time.

So without further ado, here is my talk, Seven Questions Liberals Can't Answer.

Thank you guys so much for being here today.

Uh, I've been invited to speak on the question seven que- sorry, on the topic, Seven Questions Liberals Cannot Answer.

And actually, they can answer these, but in doing so, it undermines many of the positions that they put forward that are often anti-life, anti-family, and just not good for the common good of society.

So I'm gonna go through those this morning with you, but I also wanna point out why I wanna talk about questions, because I think that's one of the most effective ways when you're on a college campus, uh, when you're dialoguing with other people, I find that using a question-based approach, also called a Socratic approach I'm sure you guys know who Socrates is, hopefully, uh, if you have a good classical education.

I find it to be so helpful.

Before I began working at Catholic Answers, I worked for a pro-life organization called Justice For All, and I would travel the country engaging college students.

And I found one of the most effective ways to engage them on different beliefs, whether it was the issue of abortion or religion or the value of Western civilization, moral relativism, was to ask a series of questions.

Instead of just saying, I'm right and you're wrong.

Um, you know, it might be like the Matilda approach, right?

I'm right.

You're wrong.

I'm big.

You're small.

I'm smart.

You're dumb.

Uh, That makes people ve- feel very reticent, hesitant to wanna listen to us.

But when you ask people questions, as the Christian apologist Greg Koukl says, It takes you out of the hot seat and puts you into the driver's seat of the conversation.

Let me repeat that again.

When you ask questions, it takes you out of the hot seat, and it puts you into the driver's seat of the conversation.

That's what's so powerful about doing.

That's why Socrates was called the gadfly of Athens, that he said that what made Socrates so wise I mean, people said, Oh, you're so wise, and you're, you're wiser than, than all men.

That's what the Oracle at Delphi said about Socrates, and he said, The only reason I'm wise is because I know what I don't know.

And he can spot other people who think they know things, but after a series of questions, reveal that they don't.

Another person who was great at using this particular approach is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Uh, I remember one of my favorite interactions when Jesus engages the Pharisees.

They walk up to Him.

This is the, the loose Dynamic Trent Horn translation.

And they say to Jesus, Who gave you the authority to do these things?

Who gave you the authority to teach and to preach?

And so Jesus said, All right.

Well, I'll answer your question, but first, you gotta answer my question.

The baptism of John, John the Baptist, is it from heaven or is it from earth?

Answer my question, and then I'll answer yours.

Even back in the day, Jesus understood that when people are cornered, when they have a deficient position, they'll often resort to filibustering or changing the subject.

Now, you can see this when people like Charlie Kirk, for example, go on college campuses or when you watch politicians be answered in town halls.

People will ask them a question, and they'll say, I'd rather talk about this instead.

So Jesus says, No, no, no.

Answer my question, then I'll answer yours.

And so, the Pharisees get into a huddle, and they realize Jesus has got them in a bind with this question, because they had a live-and-let-live policy with John the Baptist.

They said, Okay.

If we say it's, it's from heaven, that he's a real prophet, the people will ask, 'Why didn't you believe him?

Why didn't you support him?' If we say it's from earth, the people will revolt, 'cause they think John is a legitimate prophet.

So they go back to Jesus, and they say, We don't know.

So they, they try to split the horns of the dilemma.

And then Jesus says, Then neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

And in that moment, it's so powerful.

Jesus revealed the hypocrisy of the religious authorities of his day, that they didn't care about authority.

They cared about preserving the status quo.

And by asking a simple question, He was more powerfully able to demonstrate that than by simply saying that they were hypocrites.

I mean, He saves that for Matthew Chapter 23 and unloads on them.

There's a time and a place for that.

But asking a very strategic question, I find, is very helpful.

So let's go through these seven questions.

I find when you engage people on different subjects, uh, whenever they come up, be sure to ask these questions and also have your own answer to these questions, 'cause people might turn around and ask you the same thing.

They might ask you the same thing.

So, uh, let's start with a basic one here.

Uh, a lot of times, the issue of socialism will come up on college campuses.

Uh, I wrote a book, uh, that you heard about in the introduction, Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?

The full title of the book is Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?

The Answer Is No.

Here's Why.

So I, I gave the whole thing away right there in the book cover, uh, which is amazing because you have people like Pope Pius XI and others being very clear, saying in the 1930s, No good Catholic can be a true socialist.

And I think the pope is interesting.

When he said that, he added the qualifiers there.

No good Catholic or Christian, uh, 'cause you got people who say they're Catholic or Christian and believe all kinds of crazy stuff, can be a true socialist.

So there's might people who might say that they're socialists, but And they'll argue saying, Well, why, why do you believe in the evils of capitalism?

What about socialism?

What about caring for the poor?

What about doing all these things?

Why shouldn't government be helping people?

And people will think to themselves socialism is just government helps people and makes sure there aren't billionaires sucking up all of the wealth, or something like that.

So I would recommend asking the person, if you're engaged in a dialogue on the subject, What is socialism?What do you mean by the term socialism?

And if you're on a college campus, nine times out of ten, the person will not give you the correct definition of the term socialism.

Instead, they'll vaguely describe, uh, the Nordic m- economic model.

Nine times out of ten, they will describe the Nordic e- economic model in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, uh, which are, which are essentially, they're capitalist free market societies that take a lot of the investments from their own industries and reinvest them into various, uh, social benefits, social entitlement programs.

And people can have good-natured debates about whether these are feasible or whether these are good or bad systems or relative merits, but that in itself is not socialism.

'Cause you can say, All right, what was the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union?

All right.

It's not just the fact that public r- you know, pub- people will say, Oh, do you believe in public roads and public libraries and public airports?

Then you're a socialist.

No, 'cause the United States had all of those things and so did the Soviets, but we were not socialists like they were.

So we have to ask, uh Also, when it comes to entitlement programs, in the United States, people only starve to death if they have some kind of a mental illness and they're not able to acquire, uh, state benefits and help.

Uh, we do have entitlement programs here.

So that is not the essence of what socialism is, and it's also not to allocate- you know, preventing billionaires from existing.

There are more billionaires per capita in Sweden than in the United States.

Yeah, all that IKEA meatball money went somewhere, right?

I lo- whenever my wife says, Let's go shopping at IKEA, I'm all for it.

I don't want to buy anything that I can't read the instructions, but I am addicted to the meatballs.

And that's why they have all the billionaires over there.

So it's not just that.

What socialism is, socialism is when the means of production are socially controlled.

That's it.

So the means of production, farms, corporations, businesses, the things that produce the goods and services that we need to survive as an economy.

The question is, who owns them?

Should the majority of it be private firms, maybe an individual, a company, a public or a private company?

Not necessarily 100%.

You might have government owning some companies that tend to be very inefficient and propped up to survive.

Uh, think about comparing the post office to UPS or Amtrak to any other way of trying to get around the country.

But the majority are private firms and businesses.

In a socialist society, it's socially controlled and people will often try to say, Oh, well, it's about, you know Everybody gets to be involved and every- and we, we all run it, and that way, if we're all involved, then we'll make sure all the workers and everyone is treated fairly.

So would you like to spend your Saturdays going to an eight-hour meeting talking about, uh, dividends and benefits and salary wages?

No.

When people say it's socially controlled, in a real socialist economy, you're not gonna do that.

You're gonna vote, vote to have someone else do that on a committee.

And so it's not gonna be society that controls means of production, it's government that will control it.

And we see what happens when government controls the means of production.

By the way, pointing out, asking what socialism is, when people talk about it well, it's the Nordic model, which is not socialism.

But when it's actually presented, like say the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany, Venezuela, a variant of it in North Korea, that's not real socialism.

Well, what is it?

So give me a definition of that.

The last thing I'll point out when it comes to socialism, and this you should point out.

In these countries that actually are socialist, that have the government control of the means of production, and they're supposed to be worker's paradises, what's interesting is that all these countries, think to the Soviet Union, think about East Germany, Cuba, North Korea, uh, they have security barriers, right?

Security barriers that prevent travel, but it's not to prevent workers from trying to illegally immigrate into these worker paradises.

It's to prevent the people there from illegally escaping, which should tell you something about the merits of that system.

Another element th- though from socialism, this will tie in as we go through the rest of the questions.

They'll all chain together, as you'll see.

I think one of the biggest flaws in socialism is it tries to make government the, uh, the basis of society.

What is the foundation of society?

And people say, Oh, well, it's government.

No, it's not.

Government serves us, not the other way around.

It is not the foundation of society.

But the other extreme is to say, Well, it's the individual.

The individual is the foundation of society.

And you can have radically libertarian views that aren't, uh, that are antithetical to the common good as well.

It's not government that's the foundation of society.

It's not the individual.

What is it?

It's family.

The family is the foundation of society.

That's why early socialists and socialists today have wanted to abolish the family.

In the 1920s in Oregon, uh, the state attempted to pass a law banning private and homeschooling, compelling all students to attend public schools.

This went to a s- this went to the Supreme Court, Pierce versus, uh, s- the, uh, a, it was a, uh, a nun, a private Catholic school, Society of Sisters.

Pierce versus Society of Sisters.

And the Supreme Court, there's a passage in there that the Pope later quoted when the court ruled against the state and said, You can't make everybody attend government-run schools.

It said, The child is not the mere creature of the state.

The child is not the mere creature of the state.

The family is the foundation of society because where does society come from?

It comes from people.

And if y- where do people come from?

They come from families.

And if you don't have that, then society starts to fall apart.

So that gets into the next question that I find that liberals have a difficult time answering.

So the first one is, what is socialism?

The second is, what is marriage?

What is marriage?

We talk about families.

What makes a family a family?

What makes Then what bonds that together?

It'd be the issue of marriage.Once when I was doing a documentary for Catholic Answers, I was going around Balboa Park.

I was asking people what they didn't like about the Catholic Church.

It was a wonderful afternoon.

What do you really dis- what do you really hate about the Catholic Church?

And we go through and one guy said, he said, Look, I think the Catholic Church wants to impose its views on everybody.

I said, Like how?

Like marriage, like it wants to tell other people, you know, only a man and woman can get married.

Like what's wrong with two women or two men getting married?

Like it's, it's not fair.

They're imposing their view of marriage on everybody else.

So remember what Greg Koukl says, when you ask questions, it takes you out of the hot seat, puts you into the driver's seat of the conversation.

Here you might be tempted to argue with him saying, Well, no, marriage is a man and a woman and here's why.

It's always been that way for thousands of years.

And that's true, but when you ask questions, it turns it around a little.

So I just asked him, I'll call him Steve.

I guess I can make everybody in these examples Steve.

I only say that 'cause I don't remember his name, not for his anonymity.

So I said, Steve, let me ask you a question.

What is marriage?

When you use that word marriage, what- what are you talking about?

He said, Well, you know, marriage is when two people are married, you know.

Li- literally, that's what he said.

Marriage is when two people are like, you know, married, like a man and man or a woman and woman or man and woman.

That- that's what marriage is.

Now, I feel like my seven-year-old could probably give a better definition that doesn't have the term you're trying to define in the definition, which is a hallmark of a terrible definition.

But you see the problem that will arise, uh, with many of these terms, you know, it gets hidden in the definition.

I asked him, Well, okay, what is marriage?

I said, How do you know that?

You can also ask people, What do you think?

How do you know that's true?

What is marriage?

How do you know that?

Well, it- it just is.

That's just my definition.

I know that's what marriage is.

I said, Okay, well, I've seen reality television shows online and on Netflix and other places with polyamorous couples, polygamous couples.

Why does it have to be two?

Could a man marry two women?

Could a woman marry two man?

They all What if they all love each other and they all want to share a life together?

He said, Well, no, they- they can't do that.

And I said, Okay.

Well, Steve, help me understand what's going on here.

You're mad at the Catholic Church 'cause they say this is what marriage is and some people disagree and they don't fit under that definition.

But you said this is what marriage is.

It's two people, okay?

But then three or four, however many people don't fit under your definition.

Aren't you doing the same thing that the Church does that you hate?

And he sat for like a minute and he said, You're right, it's a double standard, but it's my double standard, so it's okay.

I'm not kidding you.

That's what he said.

So when you call people out and ask questions to find their terms, uh, a lot of times you'll see these, you'll see these problems arise.

Uh, so how would we how should we define marriage then?

I like the definition from William B. May, a moral theologian.

Marriage is that which unites men and women to one another and to any children that proceed from their union.

That's what marriage is for.

So notice how it's phrased.

It's what unites men and women to one another and to any children that proceed from their union.

And so it's not requiring children.

It's just saying that if you form a union, men and women form the unions that tend to make children.

Look, when kids are born, they are utterly helpless, right?

Who's supposed to take care of them?

Probably the people that created them.

So parents are irreplaceable to their children.

If they die, we do our best to find a substitute, but it'll never be the exact same.

So before parents become irreplaceable to children, we should have something that makes the man and woman irreplaceable to one another, and that would be marriage.

That's why nearly every society on Earth has discovered this.

It's not something Marriage is not something that just the West invented or an arbitrary concept.

It is a universal norm.

You can't redefine marriage just like you can't redefine friendship or justice.

It's a basic natural good created from he who gave us all the goods in the universe.

So No-, 'cause also some people, this definition, the idea that it's open to li-, that it's a union from which children may proceed, but they may not, and so it binds men and women together.

Answers an objection.

People say, Well, what about infertile couples?

Are you saying they're not a real marriage?

No, of course they are.

If you have nine guys throwing pop flies playing in a field and just throwing the baseball around and catching pop flies, it's probably a lot of fun, but that's not baseball.

But if you have nine guys organized as a team to try to win a baseball game and they never score a single run all season, they're still a baseball game.

They're still a baseball team even if they don't reach their proper end.

I remember reading a critic though who said, Ugh, these marriage radicals.

Are you saying infertile couples, if they don't have children are losers like a losing baseball team?

No, but this view of marriage is the only one that explains why their infertility is a genuine loss that they feel.

Two men or two women, it is not logical for them to feel a sense of loss at being unable to conceive children because they are not engaging in the act that does that.

Just like I don't feel a sense of loss that I can't fly by flapping my wings.

That would be cool if I could do that.

But if I could not walk, I would feel a sense of loss because in my nature, I should be able to do that.

But if in my nature I can't do something, I don't feel a loss towards it.

So this gets into question number three then, which, uh, w- when we understand what marriage is, that which unites men and women to one another and to any children that proceed from their union, this helps us answer the next question liberals have a hard time with.

Number three, what is sex for?

I once went around the University of San Diego.

No, no, that was a Catholic school, although honestly, if I went there, the answers would be pretty much the same.

I went to San Diego State University, a public school, probably got similar, would've got similar answers.

And I went around for a video I was recording and I just asked students, What is sex for?What is it for?

And the answer's usually, I got something like, Well, it's for emotions and it bonds people together, and it's a way to show love.

Ah, one woman did say though, she said, It's not for anything.

It's just whatever you want it to be for.

But what's interesting then, if it's not for, if sex is not for anything, or if it just for emotions and bonding, this can't explain widespread intuitions people have.

Now, what's difficult when you talk about sexual ethics, when you talk about sexual ethics, usually you have to argue, okay, here's your view on sexuality and it's bad because it leads to this crazy thing.

We do that a lot with moral arguments.

Here's the thing you believe, it's bad 'cause it leads to a crazy thing.

And what's hard is people say, That's not really a crazy thing.

I'm okay with that too.

So that's why it gets hard.

Like, when we argue about abortion, right?

We'll say, Well, it leads to infanticide, so that's crazy, right?

Maybe it's not so bad.

So the challenge then when you're arguing sexual ethics on a college campus is to find at least crazy things that people still think are, think are crazy.

Uh, so sexual behaviors, uh, that don't cause injury, but are extremely disordered and perverted leading to something like that showing that.

Uh, I've also talked about just infidelity.

That if it's just about, if what sex is for is just sharing emotions or if it's not for anything at all, why is infidelity such a big deal?

Why is it such a big deal?

Imagine your significant other goes to see a movie and you two promised you'd see it together and they see it with another friend instead.

You might be peeved, but you're not gonna be devastated.

But let's say your significant other has sex with that friend instead.

You're gonna be more than peeved.

You're gonna be more than peeved.

You should be, hopefully .

But why?

Because I've asked people, If sex isn't for anything, why is infidelity wrong?

They say, Oh, well, it's, it's breaking a promise.

Yeah, but it's, that's not quite it, is it?

'Cause we don't, we're not as devastated by that.

There's something deeper.

So what is the deeper answer?

'Cause people will turn it around on you, right?

They'll say, Well, okay, what do you think sex is for?

And there's a trap answer here.

If, if you say, Well, sex is for babies, that's the trap answer, because then people will say, Oh, so you're saying infertile people should never have sex, should never get married?

You saying older people past menopause shouldn't?

This is the answer that I prefer.

Sex is for Oh, you're waiting.

The expression of marital love.

That is what it's for.

That's what it's for.

It is for, and marital lo- What, so that goes back what we just said about marriage.

Marriage is what unites men and women to one another.

We need something that bonds them together.

If sex was just for emotional, you know, oh, it's a good way of expressing emotions, it makes people feel more united.

Well then sex, sh- By that definition, then sex should be great for friendships 'cause it makes you more emotionally united.

But guess what?

Sex is usually terrible for friendships, right?

Everything's awkward and weird after in hookup culture and you ask people about it.

It messes things up 'cause that's not what it's for.

Friendship, Aristotle said that friendship is, uh, two bodies sharing the same soul.

Okay?

Just two bodies like sharing the same soul.

It, it's the idea that you are united at the mind.

You know, you, it's like two, two minds put, put together.

Th- That's how, th- that's the love of friendship.

Frien- Any love seeks union with the beloved.

Like, I love In-and-Out, so I'm always trying to be united with a double-double.

And I and the double-double become one.

And sometimes it still sticks around r- right about here.

Friendship, we seek union with our, we spend time with our friends.

Where is the union?

In activities, in conversation.

We unite at the mind level, at the souls.

Yeah.

It's, uh, you know, one soul inhabiting two bodies.

Marriage is two souls inhabiting one body.

They become one flesh.

It's not just a union of minds or interests.

It's a union of bodies.

That's what makes marriage different from any other union.

And so that's what sex is for.

And that's wha- Why does sex ruin friendships?

Because sex is for that total and complete permanent gift of self to another person.

Friendships are great, but they're not meant to be permanent.

If they don't s- If you don't serve one another as friends, you might stop being friends, and that's okay.

But marriage is for ch- Is ordered towards children, and you don't want moms and dads just separating from one another when they're not friends anymore.

That leads to the crisis of divorce and the mental health crises we're seeing today.

Studies have even shown that children suffer more negative health effects from being the products of divorce than from having a parent who died naturally.

Children are more likely to have negative health effects from being, uh, involved in a divorce than from having a parent die, because at least in one of the cases, they feel like the parent left, but not through their own choice.

So, all right.

So we talked about marriage, we talked about sexuality, we talked about that which unites men and women to one another.

So this leads to my next question that they have a har- that liberals have a hard time answering.

What is a woman or what is a man?

So notice how all of this starts to tie together, right?

When we understand these things, it starts to reveal the inadequacies of this worldview.

Of course, this question is made famous by Matt Walsh in his documentary, What is a Woman?

And it seems like you ask and people can only give, uh, circular definitions.

A woman is anyone who says they're a woman.

Well, what does that mean , okay?

What's, or you can also ask the question, what's the difference between men and women?

'Cause clearly there's a difference.

They're not the same thing.

Like, if you say that the v- the morning star is the evening star, that both of those things refer to the same object, the planet Venus.

Okay?

But a man, we say a man is a woman, well, no.

Even people who identify with transgender ideology know that men and women are different.

They're different because if a transgender woman came up to me and I said, How's it going, sir?

And they say, It's ma'am.

It's ma'am.

They say that because the terms men and women are not interchangeable.

They refer to something that has a difference there.So I'd say, Oh, okay.

Well, what's You don't like me saying you're a man 'cause you're actually a woman.

What's the difference between a man and a woman then?

What's the difference?

And it's very, very difficult for defenders of transgender ideology to answer that question, what is a man, what is a woman?

Or the variant question, what is the difference between men and women?

What's the difference between the two?

Now, many defenders of this view will try to turn the question around on us to say, Well, you can't answer it either, because of complexities in chromosomes, in hormonal development, in biology, physiology, anatomy.

Uh, so for example, Walsh's preferred answer is a adult human female, which is a good answer.

It's a nice distinct answer.

A woman is an adult human female.

But then that sort of kicks the can down the road a little 'cause people ask, Well, what is a female?

What is a female?

And here, you want to avoid another trap.

The other trap is if you simply say, Well, a woman is someone who has, for among humans, a female is anyone with XX chromosomes, and a male is anyone with XY chromosomes.

That's a bad answer because there are people with chromosomal abnormalities.

Okay, so there's some people who, you know, if you're, you get an X from your mom and if you get either an X or a Y from your dad, depends if you're gonna be a, a boy or a girl.

Some people only have an X. Uh, they are females, they're Turner syndrome.

There are some people who are XXY, Klinefelter syndrome.

They're males, but those are chromosomal abnormalities.

We can identify they're male or female, they tend to just have sex-specific, uh, developmental disorders, sterility, uh, lack of development in secondary sex characteristics, things like that.

So just simply saying X, X, X, Y, that's not a good definition.

I prefer something a little bit broader.

So what is a woman?

I would say a woman is a member of the human species naturally ordered towards gestation and ovum production.

A woman is the human who is naturally ordered towards gestation.

A man is a human being naturally ordered towards impregnation.

Okay.

We can see what you are ordered towards and then we can identify that within the genetic makeup, the physiological makeup.

There may be like four cases, rare cases in literature where we really aren't sure, but that doesn't mean we don't know the binary.

That doesn't mean that we don't know there are men and there are women.

The idea that there are cases where we aren't sure does not overturn the 99.9% of other cases where we are sure.

Okay.

All right, let's go onto the, to next sentence.

We've talked about w- you know, being a member of the human species, watching out for the chromosome abnormality.

The next question that I find that liberals have a hard time answering would be this, what is a person?

So if you think about it, we're talking about how human beings are ordered towards one another in marriage, what sexuality is for, produces new persons, new children.

Uh, all of this is where society comes from, uniting men and women one to- together, and yet we have many people who will say they'll support legal abortion, for example, because they'll say a human being in the womb is not a person.

Or at the other end of life, you have people say that someone who is in a so-called persistent vegetative state, someone who has minimal consciousness or a lack of consciousness is not a person.

So I find this is a question we need to ask because especially when the issue of abortion comes up, many people on the other side will not want to answer this question.

They'll defend abortion by going to all other kinds of side issues.

What about in the case of rape?

What about poverty?

What about choice?

What about overpopulation?

What about equal rights?

What, you know, you, you aren't voting to help people take care of these children, blah, blah, blah.

We go down those rabbit trails, we lose.

Instead, we should put their feet to the fire and say, All right, you're saying an unborn human being should n- doesn't have a right to life, shouldn't be protected under the law.

They're not a person.

What is a person?

If you're so confident the unborn are not people, you have to know what a person is in order to disqualify them from being a person.

Like, I can say my phone is not shaped like a sphere because I know what a sphere is shaped like.

If I said that it's not shaped like a rectangle, that would only prove I don't know what the heck a rectangle is.

Much the same way if someone says the unborn is not a person, they have to be able to answer that question.

If they say, I don't know, then you can say, Well, if you don't know what a person is, how do you know the unborn is not a person?

What's your definition?

And usually what they'll do is they won't even give a definition.

They'll just say, Oh, well You know, the- they're, they'll point out a difference between us and the unborn.

They'll just say, Well, look, they, they can't think or feel.

They can't survive outside of the womb.

So what?

Okay, that's the difference.

Are you saying that in order to be a person, you have to be able to think like you or I? Or you have to be Let's say this.

You have to be able to feel pain.

Feeling pain is what makes you a person.

Great.

Now, if you fumigate a barn with rats, you're a mass murderer.

If you, if you run over, uh, a possum, you have to call, you know, 911 or if you drive away, is that a hit and run?

Lots of animals feel pain.

By the way, when I talk about this, you say, Well, feeling pain makes you a person.

You gotta pick a really unsympathetic animal 'cause I used to say, you know, dogs and cats feel pain.

Are they people?

I love dogs and cats.

Dogs are better than people.

No, they're not.

They're just better than crummy people.

But they're not better than They're not better than people.

You know why?

'Cause most people don't come over to my house, steal my sandwich off my plate, and then wipe their butts on the carpet.

Most people.

So they are better than most people.

If there are crummy people that do that, yes, the dog is better.

All right.

But for most people, they aren't.

So, so feeling pain doesn't make those non-human animals persons.

Well, you know, you have to be able to think at a level higher than an animal.

Okay, that means infants are not persons and consistent pro-abortion philosophers will bite the bullet on that one.

J- And I worry that more people in our culture will be willing to follow that.

So you have to show that their definition or, well, it can't survive outside the womb.

Okay, are you saying anything that can live outside the womb is a, is a person?Okay.

Well, once again, an unsympathetic animal.

The ones I like, dogs and cats don't work as well, rats and pigeons.

Pigeons are just flying rats.

And they're, the thing is, I pick rats and pigeons 'cause they're also pretty smart.

Rats can solve mazes, pigeons can deliver messages.

They're pretty smart, but they're not people, and nobody thinks it's murder to kill them.

So it can't just be functional ability, it can't just be surviving outside the womb.

Lots of animals do that.

And people say, Okay, if you're so smart, what's a, what's a person?

Now, here's another trap answer.

The trap answer is to say, Well, a person's a human being.

I agree they're basically synonymous, but that's not a good definition, because it's possible there can be persons who are not human beings.

Like, if an extraterrestrial visited and they acted like us, we'd say they're a person.

Is Spock a person?

Uh, you know, or, or Su- Superman is a person, even though he's Kryptonian.

Or to pick an example that really exists, angels.

Angels are persons, but they're not human beings.

So we have to have a broader definition then, and I like this one.

A person is an individual member of a rational kind.

Individual member of a rational kind, that's what a person is.

So it doesn't matter what you're able to do, it's the fact that you belong, you're a living member of that rational kind.

So an alien, an angel, uh, you, me, an infant, an unborn child, even a person with developmental disabilities who will no, who will never be f- rational in the future is a member of that kind, and they deserve to be protected solely in virtue of belonging to that kind.

Now, people might say, Well, why does that kind matter?

That can get you to the deeper question of, yeah, rational kinds like humans matter because they're created in the image of pure rationality and perfection itself.

So a lot of these questions get you to more fundamental elements.

And as I said, even somebody who will never be conscious again, uh, even someone who is profoundly disabled is a person with dignity, is a person that oughta be treated with dignity, so here's question number six people have a hard time answering.

For those who are sick or who have these handicaps, they'll often defend assisted suicide or euthanasia.

They'll call it death with dignity.

And so I'll ask them, Can you tell me what is death with dignity?

Can you spell that out for me?

What is death with dignity?

'Cause if you're just saying that a person should be treated with dignity when they die, I agree with that.

Uh, they shouldn't be isolated, they should be cared for, they should be given pain medication to ease their suffering, but we agree on that.

Where we disagree is you think an inherent element of a dignified death is the ability to commit suicide on your own terms.

That's the difference between you and I. And one, I would say that to s- to call physician-assisted suicide death with dignity is an awful thing to do, because it implies that people who don't choose suicide and die naturally, even though it may be very painful, have chosen an undignified way to die, and they certainly have not.

Or people, many people have died, uh, in situations beyond their control and they faced death in a dignified way.

So they might say, Oh, well, it's just having the choice to be able to, to end your own life, that's what gives one dignity.

So I have a followup question to that.

Okay, who should be allowed to s- choose physician-assisted suicide?

And the problem becomes there's no way for them to draw a line, because everybody agrees there's some people when they contemplate suicide, we help them out of that deadly decision, sometimes by force.

If someone's gonna jump off a bridge because their girlfriend broke up with them, we pull them off the bridge.

We, we say that's, No, you're not gonna do that.

But then, people in our culture will say, Yeah, but if you're really suffering and you're near the end of your life and you wanna commit suicide, we're gonna help you into that decision.

That's, once again, I'm not talking about giving people pain medication to ease their suffering as they die.

I'm talking about directly killing someone with poison, drugs, or other means like asphyxiation.

Or like in the Netherlands and in Europe, they have suicide pods now.

It's just, hey, one cl- you get in the pod, you push a button, it fills with nitrogen gas.

And what is amazing to me is the same liberals who will promote suicide pods where you kill yourself with nitrogen gas are the same people who say it is cruel and unusual punishment for the state to execute, uh, capital offenders with nitrogen gas.

That's, that's something that just blows my mind.

They'll say that when the state does it with the death penalty, it's cruel and unusual punishment, but if you choose to sph- asph- asphyxiate yourself with nitrogen gas, well, that's freedom of choice.

And I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm just saying we have to answer it, okay?

So, uh, so here you can point out, where do you draw the line?

There's nowhere to consistently draw it.

All right?

'Cause between my girlfriend broke up with me and I'm in a lot of pain and near the end of life, I might say, Well, what about people who are not terminally ill, but in chronic pain?

They might have 40 or 50 years of pain.

Or someone in a wheelchair, someone with quadriplegia, or someone who's just chronically depressed because they're, they're a widower or their family has died.

They, everyone who defends assisted suicide draws the line somewhere, but there's nowhere for them to draw the line 'cause the principle for them is it's up to the person to be able to choose, not for us to decide whether their suffering is enough.

That's why you see, I did an episode on this on my channel recently, in Canada, in Europe, you see assis- assisted suicide being given to people who simply have mental illnesses, anorexia, people who just don't want to live anymore, they're tired of life.

There's nowhere to draw the line, and so the slippery slope is indeed quite real.

It's been born out.

So ask them, What is death with dignity?

Where do you draw the line between helping someone commit suicide and say, 'No, that's not a good enough reason'?

There's nowhere for them to consistently draw the line, and that's why what I say is, All human beings, every single human being matters, so they have a right to life.

They should be protected from people who want to kill them, like in a case of abortion, or protected from people who would coerce them into killing themselves, as in assisted suicide.

And here's the last question.

When I'm engaging people on subject, especially liberal audiences, and they tell me, Well, Jesus would never say that.

Jesus doesn't care about homosexuality.

Jesus doesn't care about abortion.

Jesus would support this tax policy.

Jesus would do this, Jesus would do that, I ask them who is Jesus?

And in particular, is Jesus God?

Like if someone's going to argue with me from a Christian liberal perspective, I wanna know, are we start, talking from the same page here?

Do you think that Jesus is God incarnate?

And if the person says no, I'm gonna say, Well then, we're, we can't even have the same conversation, 'cause you're talking about a false Jesus.

They'll probably say, Well, he was a good teacher.

Uh, he had some, you know, good ideas and that Okay, I don't care.

W- who cares about what some guy who was a cross between Mr. Rogers and a first century hippie thought 2,000 years ago?

Why should that matter to me?

But if that person is God, then it changes.

Then it absolutely changes.

And I would also ask them, especially when it comes up with sexual ethics, especially sexual ethics, Would Jesus care about two people who love each other?

Jesus wouldn't care about same-sex marriage?

So-called I should say, by the way, because if marriage, by definition, unites men and women, there's no such thing as same-sex marriage.

It's an oxymoron.

Would Jesus care about that?

So I ask them, Do you agree with Jesus that remarriage after a lawful divorce is adultery?

Do you agree with him that remarriage after divorce is sinful?

And if the person says no, I'd say, Okay then, you don't care what Jesus really thinks about sexual ethics, 'cause Jesus is abundantly clear about this in the Gospel of Mark.

He says, 'The woman who divorces her husband and marries another commits adultery.' So there is a case of just two consenting adults deciding who they want to sleep with, and Jesus is upset about that, which is so interesting here, because Jesus w- people say, Oh well, Jesus, you know, he didn't like the Pharisees.

He didn't like the super conservative people.

When it came to sexual ethics, Jesus was ridiculously far right, way past the Pharisees.

Some of the Pharisees said you could get a divorce if your wife burnt your dinner.

They just disagreed about when divorce was allowed.

Some said it was rare, others said for basically any reason.

Jesus was the most far right you could be on sexual ethics in the first century, because he said this isn't just about Moses giving you Moses allowed divorce.

Saint Thomas Aquinas thought it was for this reason.

Moses allowed divorce for your hardness of hearts, and Aquinas thought that concession was in the law to prevent husbands from just murdering their wives to get out of marriage, because you can't be convicted without more witnesses, two or three witnesses, and husbands and wives are usually alone together.

That was what Aquinas thought, was the reasoning behind that bad law to prevent greater evils.

A concession, if you will.

So there I asked them, when it comes to who Jesus is, to tell me, Do you agree with his actual teachings?

Do you agree he's God?

And if not, I'm not going to have a debate with you about Christianity, 'cause you're not even fulfilling the basic tenets of Christian faith and doctrine.

It reminds me, actually, I was once at a Catholic high school, and I was speaking, and I mentioned these things.

I mentioned about grave sin, and I talked about racism, and people were like And I talked about, you know, uh, wage theft, and I said, and you know, abortion, and fornication.

This was for the faculty, and the faculty rolled their eyes.

I was like, Oh, goodness.

A woman came up to me later and she's, I asked her, What'd you think of the talk?

And she said, Well, you know, I just don't think Jesus would be that exclu- I don't think Jesus would tell people they're wrong.

And this lady had a name tag, and under it, her name, it said, Chair of Theology.

So I say that because you are going out in the world where there are people in my generation, which is, you know, millennials have our problems, but we're really trying to hold everybody together here.

I feel like we're in the middle, trying to hold gen alpha and gen Z over here, and X and boomers, like, I'm just, we're trying to keep everything up.

We have our problems, I, I agree with that.

We went overboard with the avocado toast and the Harry Potter.

I agree with that.

I am sorry about that.

But, there are other generations beyond us who have these leadership positions in Catholic schools, in think tanks, on college campuses, people who even claim to be Christian, claim to be pro-life, but can't answer the basic questions because they care more about liberal ideology.

By asking these kinds of questions, I think you'll help to expose the vacuousness of their worldview.

So, thank you guys so much for being here this morning.

Awesome.

If you all have a question, you could stand behind my colleague, Sophia, um, and please state your name, your school, and your question, a brief question.

I'm Jackson Catalano, I'm from Bowman College Preparatory.

Um, you mentioned seven great questions, it was a really great speech.

I have a question: what is love?

Baby, don't hurt me, no more, no more.

I'm sorry, that is Pavlovian.

L- I would say love is to, to love is an act of will, to will the good for another.

So when we practice love, we are willing good for another.

So we can love lots of things, right?

If you love something, you will see what is good for that, whether it is another person, whether it's an animal, for example, even whether it's the natural environment.

Maybe it's an idea, you know, a true idea.

If I love this idea, I want it to spread and for other people to accept that.

Uh, so love is to will the good for another.

How's that?

All right?

That's great.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Hi, my name is Caitlin, I'm homeschooled, and I was wondering, um, you talked about the death with dignity, and I have not heard those terms used before-

Mm-hmm.

but that's an interesting way to say it.

Um, my mom's sister had a terrible motorcycle accident-

Yeah.

and she was not right in the head, but her body was still fully functioning, and because they couldn't do physician-assisted suicide, they had to starve her to death.

Ugh.

And so-

Yeah.

I was wondering what would be your opinion on that, because-And also, there's people who don't want to be a burden to society and if they're already gonna die, then what happens to them?

Uh, I think the problem here is that people, they have a utilitarian view.

They think for You know when we were talking about earlier, the socialism, if government is the foundation of society, we all fit in it as cogs and when a cog stops turning, you throw it out.

That is an inhuman way of looking at people.

We don't exist to serve government like a cog in a machine.

Government exists so that families and individuals can peaceably live with one another to promote the common good of society, so we have laws and courts and things, so, to manage our disputes with one another.

Society exists to protect the individual rights and the intrinsic dignity of every human being and the mar- the difference between a civilized society and a barbaric one is precisely how it treats the least capable members among it.

How does a society Ask about a society, how does it treat the most vulnerable, the weakest members of it?

If it treats them with compassion and gives them love, care and support and marshals resources dedicated towards helping them, it's a civilized society.

If it just puts them out in the wilderness to die, it's a barbaric one.

We see that all throughout history.

In Ancient Rome, they would put unwanted children in the woods to let them starve to death and Christians would go and rescue them.

Uh, same in other societies that would just, you know, you know, execute You know, not execute, starve to death the elderly, the disabled.

Uh, Nazi, Germany had the Action T4 program to euthanize people who were considered Lebenswert und Leben, uh, li- Lebenswert und Leben, a life unworthy of life.

But if we're civilized, we, we don't do that.

We care for people and we may provide pain medication to e- to It's okay to ease someone's journey into death, but not kick them down the stairs into it.

If that makes sense.

Okay, thank you.

Um, I'm Sebastian.

I attend American Heritage Academy in Las Vegas.

Um, earlier you mentioned that, um, socialism is where, you know, everything revolves around the government.

Um, how is that different from communism?

Socialism and communism tend to be interchangeable terms.

Uh, so different people define them in different ways, but they both exist in the same sphere of the idea of social ownership of productive property.

So, it depends who you ask, but many early communists saw, uh, socialism as a waypoint to an ultimate journey towards communism.

The idea is that socialism would be that there are different classes of people, but there is a social control over the economy.

And communism would be the end point where there are n- no different classes anymore.

So, we get to a point where there aren't rich and poor classes, for example, or managing class and employee class.

We get to a classless society, would be the end goal, and socialism is a waypoint to try to get there.

Uh, but both of them, they tend to be used They just tend to be used interchangeably.

Some people will mistakenly say, Well, no.

Communism is authoritarian socialism.

They'll say that the examples I give like the Soviet Union or Cuba or East Germany or whatever it may be, or even Venezuela, it's authoritarianism that's the problem, not socialism.

But the problem here is that if you're gonna have a so- If you're gonna have a, a socialist society, like what would that really When you read books about what it's like, it's about if the government owns, controls the means of production, sets the prices for things, including the wages.

It controls the prices, the wages.

Instead of allowing the free market to determine what they actually are, if it's imposed by fiat, in order to do that, you have to have a massive central planning bureaucracy and you'd have to implement it.

And if people don't go with the program, it falls apart.

So, if you have people, if the government's trying to manage, you know, saying, okay, selling eggs and this is the best way to make a just society, we'll produce this many eggs for this price, and you got this little farmer over here who says, Oh, but I can make my own eggs and I can sell them for half the cost the government does.

That messes up their scheme.

So, what do they do?

They put the guy with the eggs in prison for 20 years.

I'm not making that up.

That's what they've done in Cuba because we A, a black market, right, wh- where do black markets operate for products you're not legally allowed to buy?

So, in the United States, it'd be like weap- illegal weapons and drugs, for example.

But in a, in a society where the government manages all, the whole economy, suddenly there's a black market for everything.

And in order to suppress that black market, you would need a huge authoritarian complex.

In East Germany, the group that was designated to do that were the Stasi.

They were the secret police.

And the Stasi had informants who worked for them in the general population, people who just loved to do this.

And it was one I, I think that at any dinner party in East Germany, if there were eight people there, one of them probably was a secret informant to Stasi to see if you were doing something subversive.

And I remember reading that thinking I couldn't imagine this actually happening around me until COVID 'cause think about how many people loved tattling on their neighbors.

They loved it because these were people who had small lives that were, uh, lives that were trivial, that they didn't want to dedicate themselves to anything good and grand.

The only thing that gave them value was finally, Oh, I'm valuable to, to Look, I'm helping, I'm helping.

And they I took my kids to the playground in California during COVID, during the George Floyd riots, and somebody called the police on us because we weren't allowed to be there.

And I asked the cops who showed up, How come my kids can't be on this slide, but there's 10,000 people downtown rioting right now?

And the cop said, That's a good question.

And then he left.

Uh, so there, and so it was interesting that I s- At COVID, I really saw how authoritarian governments succeed 'cause there's a large number of people- who love feeling value even if it's by being a government tattletale.

And I s- we, and I saw that firsthand and that's why I do worry about authoritarianism, uh, in the future because it's, there's a pl- a decent number of people in the world who will cooperate just, just because of the selfish goal of feeling good as a tattletale.

Is that a good answer for you?

Helpful?

Yes, thank you.

I completely agree.

All right, thanks so much.

And this will be our last question.

Hello.

My name is Jeffrey Jajack, and I attend American Heritage Academy.

Uh, very impressive speech, Mr. Horn.

I've been following you for a while.

I really like your work.

Thank you.

Uh, uh, what do you make of various Catholic systems that emerged in the 20th century as alternatives to capitalism and socialism, most notably, uh, G.K. Chesterton's-

Oh, yeah.

Distributism?

Right.

So in my book, Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?, I discuss this alternative.

Uh, it's called Distributism or Distributivism, uh, depending on, on who you ask.

Uh, this is, uh, something popularized by Hilary Belloc and G.K. Chesterton.

And the idea is they wanted to try to find a third way between capitalism, the idea of the means of production, uh, kind of being coalesced around certain firms and corporations, or the state owning the means of production.

They wanted to widely distribute the means of production to, so that every person would have them and ideally you wouldn't be a slave either to the state or to some, uh, corporation or something like that.

Uh, and I, in the book that I co-authored with Katharine Pakaluk, I say that this is a permissible view for Catholics to hold, this idea that government should distribute the means of production.

You're allowed to believe it.

Uh, you're not required to.

Uh, I would say there's no Catholic mo- there's no Catholic economics in the sense that there's no such thing as Catholic medicine.

There are Catholic moral principles that inform medicine, but we have to use science to figure out what medicine works and what doesn't.

Much the same way there are moral principles to inform economics, Catholic moral principles to inform it, but we have to use science to figure out what cr- So we use science to figure out in medicine what makes health, and we have to use science and economics to figure out what makes wealth.

That's not religious questions.

But you can make health through an immoral means, right?

Uh, so there's immoral things in medicine and you need moral principles to manage it, and you can make wealth through immoral means as well, so you need moral principles to manage it.

So I would say Distributism is permissible but it is not Catholic economics because there's no such thing like that.

Uh, and I then go on to add my own editorializing where I find the system to be un- unfeasible.

Uh, I also think that, that the idea that y- you want to, okay, you don't want to be a slave, the problem is this, there is no way to avoid having to work to survive and the peril, and the peril involved in that.

So you say, oh, I don't want to be a slave to the state, I want to be a slave to an employer, I want to have the means of production to myself.

You're still a slave to getting other people to buy your stuff.

So it's like, oh, well, anybody can go and pursue Distributism, set up a farm, set up a homestead.

You still have to sell your goods to other people.

You, you still require other people.

And the fact is, yeah, there's things that stink about, you know, working for a boss, but there's also things that stink about starting your own business, like the fact that half of them fail in five years, you know?

And it goes up even more after that.

Um, some people are willing to do that, but many people will trade the independence that comes with entrepreneurship for the security that comes with, you know, wage employment, for example.

And I think that distributists, y- here's my problem with Distributism.

Socialists can at least point to systems where we try socialism and we see, yeah, it didn't work well.

Distributists really can't point to any system where it's tried.

Say, well, where's your evidence?

The most they could point to would be something like 17th century rural France, like peasant life.

I'd almost rather live in some socialist countries than the hardships there.

People romanticize the past.

Yes, it didn't have some of the evils we have today, but it had its own fair share of evils, um, back then.

Uh, for example, I, I like living in a society where half of children make it, you know, I don't want to live in a place where half of all children die before the age of five, for example, and where it's Anyways, I could go on a rant about all that, but I, like I said, permissible, it's not the Catholic view.

I have serious doubts about it.

I, I, I think it's an interesting exercise to, to think about, but I'm looking more for practical economic interventions to promote the common good.

Excellent.

Thank you.

All right.

All right.

Well, I think, uh, turn back over to our, our host.

Let's give him one more round of applause.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you guys for watching, and please don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel.

Once again, thank you so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.