Sampling the Substitutes, Part I

Over the holidays many of my favorite radio shows and podcasters take a break. It’s good to take a break from the daily news. A podcast can simply not provide content until they decide to. But radio shows can’t leave dead air. So they get substitutes to fill in. Often these are less well-known broadcasters, people who are thrilled to have a chance to have a larger audience. So they might be putting forth their best work—which they have a chance to do, because the news onslaught tends to be less intense during holidays.

I was listening to the substitutes on the Glenn Beck radio program, which had some valuable information. So I’m sharing some of what they said. I'm covering three programs, and I pictured it as just some quick lists, but when I included some commentary on each one, it went long. So I’ll cover two of the days today and save the third for a part II.

Mike Broomhead
image from his Facebook page

Monday, December 23, Mike Broomhead

On the Monday before Christmas the substitute was Mike Broomhead, who has a radio show in Phoenix, Arizona. He spent the beginning ten minutes of the second hour (from 39:58 on the recording) listing the data on the economy. I’ll do it in list form.

·         Stock Market: The Dow Jones has added of 10,000 points since Trump was inaugurated. The Dow, the NASDAQ, the S&P, the three big indicators, have all touched and/or set records this month.

·         Employment: The lowest unemployment rate in 54 or 55 years.

o   Highest number of Americans employed.

o   Lowest black unemployment since statistics have been kept.

o   Lowest Hispanic unemployment since statistics have been kept.

o   60% of jobs created during this administration have gone to women.

·         Income Growth: People’s incomes growing faster now than in decades.

o   Low inflation means raises don’t just keep up with standard of living, but people are actually living better.

o   Lowest earners have seen the greatest growth.

o   All demographics of Americans are better off.

·         Consumer Confidence: These two indicators are both positive, which they haven’t been in decades:

o   “Are you better off this year than you were last year?” Yes.

o   “Do you believe you will be better off next year than you are this year?” Yes.

o   Travel over Thanksgiving was the highest in decades, or forever. True also for Christmas holiday travel.

o   Gift giving and spending up. People are willing to risk using a credit card, because they believe their job is secure.

o   Working-class Americans notice a huge difference when inflation stays low and they have more discretionary income.

·         Tax Cuts Working: The US Treasury is collecting more income tax dollars from individuals and businesses now than ever in the history of America—even when adjusted for inflation.

o   That means deficits are definitely due to a spending problem, not a “not enough taxes” problem.

The odd thing is that many Americans don’t seem to be cheering about all this good news.  As Broomhead says,

I live in a desert. I live in Phoenix, Arizona. There’s a time of year we call monsoon season when the rains come. People dance in the streets when it rains here, because of the long spans without rain. When it rains, it’s a joyous experience.

We should be overjoyed with the rain right now. We had so much of an economic drought, and climbing out of a recession, businesses scraping by and not thriving. And now businesses big and small are thriving, and individuals are thriving as well. As a nation we should be overjoyed.

The only explanation for the lack of celebration is disdain for President Trump. If the opposition allows people to notice that they’re better off, he’ll get reelected. But it’s hard to deny this vindication of what we conservatives have been saying all along:

We have now shown that, when the government gets out of the way, the lives of people improve. They do it themselves. All this president did was unleash the job creators, and look what it’s done.

Monday, December 30, Steve Deace

image from Amazon.com

Steve Deace (pronounce Dace) has a program on The Blaze. He filled in for Glenn Beck for two days, and I’m going to cover both of them (one in the next post). Both include lists. This first one is philosophical. The second one is tactical. Both refer to books he’s written.

Philosophy day covered "The Seven Deadly Worldviews," and refers to his book The Nefarious Plot. These seven worldviews, he says, go in order to devolve a civilization. They are summarized in an article in The Christian Post, so, for simplicity I’m using the definitions from that article for each of the seven. Then for each one there’s Deace’s commentary, plus a bit of mine.

1.       Gnosticism: The rejection of God's Word as not sufficient for us to know our true purpose or for life to have its ultimate meaning. The seeking of extra or special knowledge elsewhere other than God himself.

·   There’s a preference for experts, to make people believe that knowledge they need is hidden to them, and only the special few have it. Then there’s a search, not for actual truth, but for something to make the searcher feel elite.

2.       Legalism: A religious system that puts more emphasis on works based righteous than the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

·   This is feeling superior because of behavioral rules you adhere to and impose on others. There’s no acceptance of contrarians, or heresies from what the rule setters impose.

3.       Dualism: The belief that good and evil are equal in power and essentially two sides of the same coin.

·   An example of this came up in a review I read about the latest Star Wars movie, but covering the whole three-trilogy series. Particularly in episodes 1-3 there’s this pseudo-scientific way of looking at good and evil, with measurements of Midi-Chlorians. There’s talk about there needing to be a balance in the force. But that is never the goal. Neither the dark side nor the light side seeks balance, but dominance. There is no satisfaction in getting to the point in the battle where you say, “We’ve done enough winning; lets let the dark side win for a bit to create balance.” Light always needs to vanquish the dark. The odd thing about this worldview is that it’s so close. No. Anywhere you turn on a light, darkness is vanquished. Good is much more powerful than evil, so it’s always better to choose good over evil.

4.       Darwinism: The belief the universe is the result of random chance occurring completely in the natural world and not the purposeful plan of a creative and sovereign God.

·   Darwinism is not equivalent to evolution. Darwinism reduces humans to animal status. It is nihilistic. There’s no meaning, no purpose in life. This worldview paves the way for eugenics and racism. The Twentieth Century was Darwin’s century. His “scientism” was used by Margaret Sanger (of Planned Parenthood) and the Nazis to murder massive numbers of human beings.

·   There’s a piece I wrote in 2011 that compares treating people as “meat machine” or a human being. 

5.       Pragmatism: A utilitarian ideology that says something can only be true if the practical consequences of accepting it satisfies our needs, desires and wants.

·   The most common summary is “The ends justify the means.” The wrong questions are asked, so the answer comes out wrong. For example, “Why should Mother Teresa be helping people who were put into their miserable circumstances for some karmic reason?” And, as Margaret Sanger would say, “It’s cruel to bring an unwanted child into the world,” so you should kill them before they’re born.

6.       Syncretism: The blending of two or more distinct belief systems for the purpose of creating a new system.

·   A more understandable term might be relativism. People choose their truth. They incorporate any useful belief into their own belief system. They offer fake tolerance; they get to judge you all they want, but don’t allow you to judge them. But in reality, two opposing, contrary views cannot both be simultaneously true. Our founders cracked the code on living peaceably with those that have differing beliefs—holding strong to your own Judeo-Christian beliefs while respecting the differing beliefs of others, but not accepting and taking on the differing beliefs.

7.       Secular Humanism: A belief system that rejects virtually every single principle of God's Word.

·   The seeds for this final deadly worldview have already been sown. It’s the endgame of a culture. We need to worship; there’s never been a longstanding secular culture. The Soviets ended up making government their god—and that is the typical move of secular humanists all over. Note that enlightenment thinkers were supporters of the slave trade, and then of eugenics. Clues: if your culture is doing baby killing, they’re worshiping a pagan god, as anthropology shows us every culture has done. You either worship the true and living God, or you make a god such as government to worship, or you make yourself as god.

The final words on the show were:

We live in a nation where we are first and foremost accountable to God. We know what secular humanism will bring. It’s revival or bust.