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This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:45
All right guys from the jump here. I just got to be honest. I'm not much of an audio
0:48
file. I'm certainly not a audio engineer. I got some sort of weird feedback coming in my
0:53
headphones and so hopefully fingers crossed you're not getting that there on your side but you know
0:57
what? We're just going to do what we can and we're going to push through so if you get some weird
1:00
feedback just be comfortable with the fact that I will probably figure this out at some point but
1:06
I'm too stupid to do it before I record this episode. So launching into today's podcast called
1:12
Changing American Values. Changing American Values. I named this for a couple of different
1:18
reasons. The first thing is the obvious which is that values are changing in America. Americans
1:24
are changing their values the things that they hold dear in sacred right but the second reason is
1:30
because this change I feel like is being forced that there is a forced change that is causing
1:38
these American values to be shifted and I think we see evidence of both of those things in a recent
1:42
Wall Street Journal NBC poll that was released in the poll was done in August of 2019 but it was
1:49
basically looking at the different trends in terms of what's happening in the United States and how
1:54
people are viewing things from different backgrounds but more specifically different groups. So it
1:59
was looking at Gen Z. It was looking at Gen X millennials. I didn't exactly say that in order but you
2:06
know the youngest would be Gen Z and then we got me the millennials then we've got you know your
2:10
Gen X or you got your baby boomers you got stuff like that and kind of looked at a lot of the things
2:14
they're in. So what I want to do is I actually want to read from the NBC news.com report on this
2:19
poll and then I'm going to be coming kind of in and out on that to kind of give you my opinion and
2:24
on a few different things and it starts out pretty basic in a lot of different areas but then we
2:28
start getting into the meat of it down towards the end and if you are not driving and you can safely
2:33
do so you can go to the episodes the show notes in this episode rather and you can click on the link
2:38
and just follow along with me but here we go into the article. The political and cultural upheaval
2:42
of the last four years has divided the country on ever-hardening partisan and generational lines
2:47
but one filling unites Americans as much as it did before the 2016 election. They're still angry
2:54
and still unsettled about the future. The latest NBC news Wall Street Journal poll finds that despite
3:00
Americans overall satisfaction with the state of the US economy and their own personal finances
3:05
a majority say they are angry at the nation's political and financial establishment anxious
3:10
about its economic future and pessimistic about the country they're leaving for the next generation.
3:15
Four years ago we uncovered a deep and boiling anger across the country and
3:18
golfing our political system said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwit of heart research associates
3:23
which conducted this survey in partnership with the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies.
3:28
Four years later with a very different political leader in place that anger remains at the same
3:32
level. The poll finds that 70% of Americans say they feel angry quote because of our political system
3:39
that that seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power like those on Wall Street
3:44
or in Washington unquote. 43% say that statement describes them very well. So I'm going to kind
3:50
of come out here real quick and just talk a little bit about that. So again 70% of Americans again
3:55
this is assuming that they are happy with where the economy is or happy with where their personal
4:00
finances are. They feel angry. That was the specific wording inside of this article was that they feel
4:06
angry about the political system because they feel like there are insiders with money and power
4:11
that are basically boxing them out. That is just basically only going well for Wall Street people
4:16
or Washington people. I mean that that's an overwhelming 70%. That's an overwhelming
4:21
percent of Americans that are just basically angry. I mean when I think about the people that are
4:26
angry about money and power and those types of things. I think about Bernie Sanders and it's kind
4:31
of crazy to me that 70% of the people out there in the United States think this way. The kind of
4:37
this victim mentality that because they have I must have not. I think that's kind of interesting.
4:44
But I mean there's so much to go into in this poll and so I don't want to get into
4:48
a diet tribe about Bernie Sanders and socialism and taking from people to give the other people
4:54
and all the things they're in. But that that's at the very least from the very jump got to be very
4:58
very unfortunate for you. And this same poll was taken about four years ago looks to be October
5:04
of 2015 kind of that same feel angry about our political system type of thing. And it's only gotten
5:10
worse since then. But it's not like insanely worse. But it's gotten a little bit percentage
5:15
points worse. Okay. But then there was another question that was asked and it was this or you
5:20
basically had to say how much you agreed with the statement that was given. And this one's
5:24
basically talking about anxiety and uncertainty. It says I feel anxious and uncertain because the
5:29
economy still feels rocky and unpredictable. So I worry. So that has actually dropped quite a bit.
5:35
That's dropped about six or seven points since the same time four years ago. And so people are
5:40
still feeling good about where they're at in their own potential, you know, economic standpoint.
5:46
But it still makes them overall feel a little bit crazy. And then the last one I want to go
5:50
into here before we go back in the article is just satisfaction overall. And so the statement
5:53
they wanted people to look at is I feel satisfied that our political system is being shaken up and
5:59
those who have been for too long have been too long are now being heard and put first. I think
6:05
they left a word out here in this ABC article. But it's essentially they like that things are
6:09
being shaken up and over 50% of the respondents this year in August of 2019 say they feel very
6:15
satisfied with the fact that the political system is seeing a little bit of unrest. Perhaps that'll
6:20
feed into some of the things we'll talk about later. But let's go back into the article here.
6:23
That's almost exactly the percentage that agreed with the statement in October of 2015
6:28
when the presidential election was being upended by the anti-establishment message
6:32
of then candidate Donald Trump. Republicans report feeling somewhat less angry than they were
6:37
almost four years ago. But that optimism has been offset by an uptick in anger from other groups
6:42
typically more aligned with the Democratic Party surprise price. In 2015 39% of Republicans and 43%
6:48
of Democrats said a feeling of anger at the political establishment defined them very well.
6:54
Now it's 29% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats a 10 point swing for each party in opposite directions.
7:00
That's actually pretty astonishing. Those who were more likely to say feelings of anger described
7:04
than very well since 2015 include women under 50 48% of 10 points since 2015 African Americans
7:12
46% of five points and Hispanics 49% up 11 points. The question that decides the 2020 election may
7:20
no longer be are you better or worse off than you were four years ago. But instead are you as angry
7:26
as you were four years ago said horrid and if that's the question the answer is a deafening yes.
7:32
So now we're going to get into some of the more anxiety about the future in basically
7:36
our good economic times. Okay, back to the article. While 69% of Americans say they are satisfied
7:42
with their overall financial situation today a majority 56% also say they feel anxious and uncertain
7:48
because the economy still feels rocky and unpredictable. That's down slightly from 61% in 2015. And just
7:55
27% of those surveyed say they're confident as their children's generation will be better often
8:00
than them down from 35% in August of 2017. That pessimism is reflected among all groups
8:06
regardless of age, race, income, and party identification. Majorities of adults who are under 35 that
8:13
68% seniors 64% poor and working class 71% high income 64% white 67% black 73% and Hispanic 64%
8:25
all say they are not confident not confident that their children's generation will be better off
8:30
among Republicans 54% say they're not confident while 64% of independence and 78% of Democrats
8:36
agree about half of Americans 52% say they do feel satisfied that the political system is being
8:42
shaken up. Although only one in five say that they feel very strongly about that. So let's talk
8:46
about this section here. This is unbelievably surprising to me because we're in just kind of
8:51
the latest generation of generations that should have it better than our parents. Okay. I mean,
8:57
if you just think about it, 100 years ago, people really didn't have refrigerators, right? I think
9:02
I was listening to Jordan Peterson here recently, he was just talking about abject poverty, poverty
9:07
has almost been eradicated entirely. And that's because of capitalism and the spread of wealth and
9:12
those types of things in places where they've tried to manufacture that via the government,
9:17
right? Places that have enacted a communist or socialistic government, they've actually
9:20
stemmed at the tide of that a little bit. It's actually gone considerably slower in some of
9:24
those countries. But that is very interesting to me that the overwhelming majority of people
9:28
regardless of their background, their race, their sex or their party affiliation, they feel like
9:34
that the kids are not going to be inheriting a better life and a better America than they have.
9:38
And so there's a few ways that you can break this down. One of the ways is you can think about it is
9:42
like, okay, well, things can't get much better. Now, I know people that are maybe on the political
9:48
left or on the democratic side of things, you know, it's always about progress, right? You hear
9:52
about progressives and those types of things. So I would doubt that they would co-sign that type of
9:56
a statement. But I wonder if people are looking around and going, you know what, we've reached the
10:00
pinnacle of how convenient things can be. We can literally have food delivered to our door. We can
10:06
literally fly somewhere else in the country. And then once we land, we can rent someone else's car
10:12
to drive around the city. And if we don't want to do that, we don't have to mess with the taxi,
10:16
we can just go to one of several different apps and get a driver that will pick us up and do all
10:20
these different things. You know what, I can have a box of meat delivered to my door once a month.
10:25
That keeps me with the amount of chicken and beef and everything that I need, you know,
10:29
butcher box or something like that. Everything's so convenient. I can get on Amazon and literally
10:33
order anything on the planet. I can order a car online by Carvana or something like that. It's
10:39
basically like a vending machine for cars. I'm wondering if people think that, okay, we can
10:44
probably continue to make things a little bit easier, but it's not going to be so much more
10:50
than what we have now. Phones will get better, televisions will get better, computers will get
10:54
better. All the technology as a whole will get better. But maybe we've reached that point where
10:58
it's not that we're going to have diminishing returns, but it's just like, man, there's not
11:01
much else that we can fix that. I mean, maybe that's the way people are thinking, because if I would
11:06
have been asked this, I would have said, you know, I think our kids are going to have it better.
11:10
Just because of the trajectory of history, it would make sense. Now if there's political unrest,
11:15
which I'm sure we'll get into here in a little bit, perhaps not. But at the very least, it's going
11:20
to be a more complicated lifestyle for our children, but they're going to have all these tools that
11:25
help them to focus on some of the larger issues. So again, I thought that that was very pessimistic
11:29
and very, very surprising when I was looking at the results. But let's go ahead and go back
11:33
into the article here and we're going to talk about unease about change. That's the next section.
11:38
Americans also express some ambivalence about changes in American society in the country becoming
11:43
more diverse and tolerant of different lifestyles, languages, cultures, and races. 40% call those
11:49
changes a step forward, while 14% call them a step backward. The remainder, 43%, say those
11:55
changes are some of both. 61% of Republicans and 44% of independents and 27% of Democrats expressed
12:01
those mixed feelings. I think it's a step forward in a way that people are becoming more aware of
12:06
the differences between them. But I think it's a step back when you bend over so much and become
12:10
politically correct that you take away a person's right to think or say how they feel, said one
12:16
suburban man from Hawaii who supported Trump in 2016. Immigration has brought richness and a
12:21
better quality of life to our people. But I think that it is often difficult for all of us to understand
12:26
one another and become a community as new people come into society, said a female Clinton voter
12:31
from New York. It's a difficult time and sometimes fraught process that sometimes takes time.
12:36
That poll also offers a glum view of race relations. 6 and 10 describe either a lot or some tension
12:43
between people of different races in their state. The same share, 60%, say that race relations in
12:49
the United States are bad, although that's down from 70% in 2017 and a high of 74% in the
12:55
summer of 2016. And more than a half, 56% say that race relations have gotten worse since Trump
13:02
became president. Another 33% say race relations have stayed the same while 10% say that they have
13:07
improved. So let's kind of come out and talk a little bit about that. There were a couple of
13:12
different things there. The first was just basically the mixed feelings that people are having with
13:17
the changing demographics of the United States. So what people on the right would say is, you know,
13:21
this is just basically how it goes. Perhaps that's, you know, you have a lot of people that were not
13:26
forcing to assimilate to some sort of an amalgamation of American culture. Then you will have people
13:31
in the political left that will just say anyone that says something like that is racist. Because
13:35
how dare you say that somebody should speak the given language of this country or something like
13:39
that. So you have people kind of fighting from both sides. But I think it is a fair assessment
13:43
whenever about 20 or what I forgot what it said right in here. But a good percentage of people
13:48
are a little bit afraid of the fact that things are changing and that they're not changing within
13:53
any particular purpose or direction. Because I don't think people are nearly as bothered by
13:57
change as they are bothered by change that will lead to something more negative. And so I've seen
14:02
a lot of people talk about how people that are immigrating here are not being encouraged even.
14:08
I'm not saying force, but they're not even being encouraged to learn how to speak English, which
14:12
that is the most popular language in this country. It's the official language of our country is
14:18
English. That doesn't mean that you can't speak other languages. Obviously, the more languages
14:22
you speak, the better. But if we don't have a common way to communicate, it does make things
14:26
different. And it does cause people to kind of go into their separate communities and not basically
14:32
become a part of the community writ large. And so I think those are things that are a little bit
14:36
interesting. So it's it's interesting to hear that people are responding honestly that there are
14:40
some concerns about that. And then you get into race relations, something that we haven't talked
14:44
a lot about here on this podcast, not for any particular reason, but it's not that surprising
14:48
that people think that there are race problems in the United States. But the thing that I feel
14:53
like is interesting here is kind of this unspoken undertone, which is that people think that race
14:59
relations can be fixed in the United States. And I think the biggest piece of evidence against that
15:06
is, okay, we had an African American or a part African American president for eight years in
15:12
Barack Obama. And people's attitudes on race relations actually devolved. They got worse.
15:18
They felt that America was a more racist place after eight years of Obama presidency.
15:25
So you have to ask yourself, like, how is that possible? How could that possibly happen that we
15:32
have this, this great glowing man come into the White House, this great unifiers or so we were
15:39
told. And yet people have a more sour impression of race relations. Because I think it's easy
15:44
that for a lot of people to kind of pick on Donald Trump, because he's been so clunky in some of
15:48
his language, especially with people that are aligned with the alt riot or white supremacy or
15:53
those types of things. But he has very definitively said that he is against those people. He's against
15:58
those ideologies. But the problem that I think that we're having is we're not getting a fair look
16:04
at race relations when we look anywhere outside of our or just our immediate community. Okay.
16:10
So I feel like for Edmund, Oklahoma, I can give you a pretty good idea of how race relations are
16:15
for Edmund, Oklahoma City. I feel like I can do a pretty good job of that. I feel like I've got
16:19
enough information. I've lived here long enough. I've interacted with enough different people where
16:23
I can kind of give you a sense of that. But what I can't give you a sense of is what race relations
16:28
are in a different community. And I can kind of extend that out for kind of where my wife's
16:33
family's from. And so South Central Oklahoma, where my family's from in Southwest Oklahoma,
16:37
I can kind of like parse that out and give you some details. But when we're looking at the country
16:42
as a whole, and we're trying to figure out what race relations look like, it's difficult to do so.
16:46
And so we rely on the media to do that for us or Twitter to do that for us, which is a dangerous
16:53
proposition. I'll know if y'all saw this, of course, this went under the radar and just about
16:57
every single news outlet that you might think of. But it was this memo that was leaked from
17:01
somebody over at the New York Times that basically admitted that for the entire first two years of
17:06
the Donald Trump presidency, the entire staff, essentially, of the New York Times, of the new
17:11
staff was basically fully sold out to the Trump Russia conspiracy. Like they give all their money
17:19
and all their attention and all their time to that. And this memo said that after it basically
17:23
came out that the Trump Russia stuff was a farce, it was basically made up. There was no there there.
17:28
They've completely shifted their tactic for 2020 again, because they would like to have a Democrat
17:34
elected to the Trump being a racist narrative. And so it's interesting. A lot of the pieces that
17:40
are coming out of the New York Times today are, or you know, just in general today, that they're
17:45
more race based type things. Anytime Trump says something that can even be misconstrued as racist
17:51
or ethnocentric or something like that, they jump all over it. And again, this is not me defending
17:56
Donald Trump. I mean, he said some ridiculous things and he probably believes way more ridiculous
18:00
things than he even admits out loud. But at the same time, it's like, is it any surprise that
18:05
people think race relations are worse when we have a gigantic majority of the mainstream media
18:11
trying to convince us that our president sitting in the White House is himself a white supremacist,
18:16
not just racist as if there was something worse than being a racist, but a white supremacist.
18:20
Someone that is really hoping that the white race can prevail over all of the races, which,
18:26
again, if he's a white supremacist, he's one of the worst white supremacists potentially out there,
18:30
because of the positives that are going on in the non white communities in the United States right
18:35
now, black and Hispanic unemployment rates are at the lowest they've ever been in this country.
18:39
There's a lot of statistics around that that would make it a little bit weird for somebody that was
18:44
so vehemently opposed to people that weren't white to have that level of success. That would be
18:49
really, really interesting. But this is going to be one thing that I want us to continue to look
18:53
at because I think the odds are pretty good that Donald Trump is not reelected next year.
18:58
I mean, again, I mean, the Democrats on the other side right now, it's like basically a bunch of
19:04
clowns competing for who can have the most ridiculous face paint and those types of things. I mean,
19:09
it's absolutely insane. Some of the things that they're saying and that they're doing. But I think
19:13
that Donald Trump is not doing what he needs to do in order to win some of those key purple states
19:17
that will allow him to retain the presidency. And I don't know that Democrats are going to let
19:21
there be another problem like they had last time where they have such an unpalatable candidate
19:26
that's Hillary Clinton that most people actually just sit at home and not go out and vote.
19:29
But regardless of who's in the White House next, this is the point I'm trying to make.
19:33
Whether it's Donald Trump leaving office in, you know, five years or leaving office next year or
19:39
whatever the thing might be, this is going to be an interesting thing to kind of keep an eye on
19:42
is where statistics about race relations go. Because if Kamala Harris goes into office,
19:48
the first female and another Black president goes into office, will things change? What about
19:52
Elizabeth Warren? What about the octogenarian socialist Bernie Sanders? What about Joe Biden,
19:58
who is who is loved by Black people, especially in the South? What does that look like when we look
20:03
at kind of the next wave of Republican candidates? I mean, are we going to have a Nikki Haley who is,
20:08
you know, a non-white American woman? Are we going to have like a den Crenshaw, a very typical
20:14
all American type guys are going to be Rubio coming back up who's got the Cuban heritage?
20:18
Like, what's it going to look like? And do we all look at race relations as if it's going to improve?
20:23
Again, I think it's a dubious proposition for us to assume that race relations will eventually
20:27
get to the point where we won't have that anymore. There was a Joe Rogan podcast episode a while
20:32
back. I can't even remember who he was talking to, but he was basically like, man, I just can't wait
20:36
until someday down the road when we don't have this anymore. We don't have that anymore. We don't
20:40
have racism anymore above. And you just kind of threw that in there as like a throwaway statement,
20:44
which was unbelievable to me that he said something so silly, but he is honestly a progressive at
20:51
his core. And he thinks that at some point, we're actually going to not have racism anymore. And this
20:57
is kind of par for the course for somebody that thinks that we're just highly evolved hairless
21:01
apes. You know, he's the type of guy that thinks that, you know, we can evolve. We can evolve to
21:05
where everyone is happy to where everyone is satisfied to where everyone has everything that they need,
21:10
because we're just highly evolved monkeys and monkeys just need more shiny things. And if we
21:14
can get shiny things and keep people from being mean to us, we should be fine. So this will be
21:19
something to keep an eye on. But let's go ahead and get back into the meat of this. And this is
21:23
going to be the big part of what we're talking about today with, which is the shifting values.
21:27
So the shifting values of Americans. And so this section here, I just want to go ahead and kind of
21:32
describe to you, because this is what most people were talking about whenever they were looking at
21:36
this poll data that they were looking at this and they wanted to kind of give us an idea of what
21:40
things would look like. So I'm going to go and describe to you. And it's in two different categories.
21:45
So you have millennials and Gen Z in one category. And so that's people that are between the age
21:49
of 18 and 38 right now. And then you've got boomers and the silent generation. So those are the
21:55
people that are ages, you know, 55 to 91. Okay, so I'll just basically sum it up as, you know,
22:01
millennials, Gen Z and boomers. Okay. So we're going to be looking at a bunch of different categories
22:06
and what those groups think about when it comes to saying these subjects are very important. So
22:11
the first one is patriotism. So only about 40% of millennials and Gen Z think that patriotism
22:18
is very important. Whereas almost 80% of boomers think that patriotism is important. Okay, belief in
22:25
God, millennials and Gen Z, it's about 30% believe that it's very important. Whereas with boomers,
22:32
it's more like 70%. Having children, millennials and Gen Z, it's about 35%. Whereas for boomers,
22:40
it's more like 55%. In terms of hard work, millennials and Gen Z and boomers alike are kind of in that
22:48
80 to 90 range of thinking that hard work is very important. Financial security, it's almost
22:54
exactly the same for millennials, Gen Z and boomers that they're around that 80% mark. In terms of
23:00
tolerance for others, it's essentially the same, just over the 80% mark for all groups. And then
23:06
self fulfillment, you have boomers actually slightly below that, they're about 55% think
23:13
it's very important. Whereas around 65 or 70% of millennials and Gen Z think it's very important.
23:19
Okay. Now I know that's a lot of information there, but I'm going to go ahead and do that same
23:23
exact lineup with Democrats and Republicans. And this is where it gets really interesting,
23:28
because in the first three categories, patriotism, belief in God and having children,
23:32
we have almost the same breakdown as we did with millennials, Gen Z and then the boomers,
23:37
as with Democrats and Republicans. So with patriotism, just over 40% of Democrats think that
23:42
patriotism is very important. Whereas over 80% Republicans think it's very important,
23:47
belief in God, less than 40% of Democrats think that's important, whereas 70% of Republicans think
23:52
it's important. Having children about 35% of Democrats think that that's important. Whereas
23:58
about 55% of Republicans think that that's an important thing. And then with hard work,
24:02
they're both pretty high up there. Democrats are a little bit lower than Republicans on that.
24:06
Financial security is almost the same tolerance for others. About 70% of Republicans think that's
24:12
important. We're almost 95% of Democrats think that is important. It's kind of like
24:16
their big thing is you have to be tolerant, even if you have to be intolerant to get there.
24:20
And self fulfillment was about the same, you know, 60 to 70% for both groups. So there's a lot
24:25
to talk about there. And there's a lot kind of in the margin for error. But what I want to go
24:29
ahead and do is I would just want to read these last few sentences of the article. And then we'll
24:32
start breaking down this last piece, which is really the biggest piece here. So nearly nine
24:37
in 10 Americans, that's 89% identify hard work as very important value, even higher than the 83%
24:43
who said the same thing in the 1998 NBC Wall Street Journal poll. But those who say that
24:48
patriotism is very important slid from 70% two decades ago to 61% now. The share citing religion
24:54
decreased even more from 62% in 1998 to 48% now. Those changes come amid a start generational
25:02
divide over which values are seen as most important. Among those who are either millennials or
25:06
Generation Z ages 18 to 38, only 42% rate patriotism as very important value, while 79% of those over
25:13
55 say the same. Just 30% of the younger groups cite religion or belief in God is very important,
25:19
while 67% of the older group does. And just 32% of those under the age of 38, 38 years old call
25:25
having children very important, while 54% of those over 55 agree. There is an emerging America where
25:32
issues like children, religion and patriotism are far less important said Republican pollster Bill
25:36
Mick, Mick. Whoa, whoa, what's that name? Mick intro. All right, Bill Mick intro. So hopefully
25:42
that's the last time I have to say that of the public opinion strategies. And in America,
25:46
it's the emerging generation that calls the shots about where the country's headed. So the thing
25:52
about this is there's a lot to discuss here. But I thought that Albert Mueller did a great job on
25:56
his podcast. So if you're not listening to the Albert Mueller podcast, it's podcast, it's called
26:00
The Briefing with Albert Mueller. So it's Christian news and events or it's news and events from a
26:05
Christian worldview. So that's kind of the overall thing. It's Monday through Friday. Albert Mueller
26:10
is a big time Baptist Southern Baptist convention guy. And you know, he basically just releases
26:15
episodes with the the date and time. And so if you go back to his Tuesday, August 27th of 2019
26:22
episode, he basically talks a lot about this in here. But his overall summary is the one that I
26:26
agree with. It's that basically the next generation of Americans is less patriotic, less religious,
26:33
and we will be less populated. So the less patriotic and less religious thing, I think is
26:38
important. But I wanted to kind of focus a little bit on the less populated part.
26:42
So there's a lot of information that's been released here recently, and it's kind of gone on deaf ears
26:46
about the birth rate in the United States. And so there's another article I found on NBC News. That's
26:51
a short one that I want to read to you that kind of gives you an idea of of what this could potentially
26:55
mean for us. Okay, so the name of the article is birth rate in the US falls to lowest level in 32
27:00
years. CDC says, let me go and read this article to you here and we'll get back into breaking down
27:05
the poll. The number of babies born in the US in 2018 fell to the lowest level in 32 years,
27:11
according to a government report released Wednesday. The numbers are part of a decades long trend
27:16
towards fewer and fewer babies being born each year, which means we're getting further away
27:20
from the possibility of having enough children to replace ourselves according to the report from
27:25
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority finding is that the fertility rates
27:29
are reaching record lows, said the reports lead author Brady Hamilton, a statistician and demographer
27:34
at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. There have been record lows in the teenage birth
27:39
rate, which fell 7% compared to 2017. Hamilton and his colleagues found that the
27:45
total number of births in 2018 at 3,788,235 was down 2% from 2017. The general fertility rate for
27:55
2018 was 59 births per 1000 women aged 15 to 44, another record low for the US. For perspective,
28:03
it's lower than in the years after the Great Depression. In 1936, for example, the general
28:08
fertility rate was 75.6. More telling, perhaps, is the drop in the total fertility rate,
28:14
which also fell 2% compared to the 2017 figures, to 1728 births per 1000 women of childbearing age.
28:22
For the nation's population to reproduce itself at current numbers and remain stable,
28:26
the total fertility rate would need to be at least 2100 births per 1000 women.
28:31
So, essentially, for the population to remain stable, each woman needs to have at least
28:36
two babies. At 2000, there would be enough children to replace fathers and mothers.
28:41
The extra 100 is to account for deaths. Now we're going to talk a little bit about team births at
28:46
record low. The CDC research doesn't explain why birth rates are declining, Hamilton says.
28:51
There was some good news in the new report. Pure babies are being born to teens. In fact,
28:56
these are record lows for teenage birth rates, Hamilton said. This year's rate is 7% lower
29:01
than in 2017. Overall, the report finds that younger women are having fewer babies,
29:06
with the only demographic seeing an increase in birth rates as women in their late 30s and early
29:10
40s. The pattern seen in the US echoes what's been happening in many developed countries,
29:15
said Dr. John W. Rowe, a professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
29:20
For comparison, the total fertility rate in Europe is 1.58. In southern Europe, meaning Spain and
29:26
Italy, it's 1.3 and in Japan, it's 1.44, Rowe said, so it's not unprecedented. There are some
29:32
serious implications that could result from the declining birth rates, Rowe said. Long-term,
29:36
it means that we're going to have an increasing proportion of older people, he said.
29:40
Older projections about what the percent of the population will be elderly in 5, 10, 20 years from
29:46
now were made with the assumption that the birth rate would be stable. The lower birth rate will
29:50
have significant impact on the labor force, Rowe said. Now we're going to talk about delaying
29:54
marriage and childbirth. Japan, in particular, is having issues related to declining birth rates
29:59
because of its immigration policies, Rowe said. "They don't have an adequate workforce to take
30:03
care of the very large elderly population," he explained. "It's a real challenge for them."
30:07
Studies have shown that women are delaying both marriage and childbirth,
30:11
said Donna Strobino, professor and chair of education population family, and reproductive
30:15
health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "We're clearly in the throes
30:20
of a major societal change with regard to women getting married and choosing to have children,"
30:24
she said. "There's no question that part of the explanation for that is economic.
30:28
It's very expensive to raise children these days, and in part, it's social. All the changes
30:33
in women's roles." Still, there are hints in the new report that the current trend
30:39
could be at least partially reverse itself. "Let me just do that whole sentence again."
30:43
Still, there are hints in the new report that the current trend could at least partially reverse
30:47
itself," said Strobino. "It's perhaps not as gloom and doom as some think it is," Strobino said.
30:52
She points to an increase in the number of babies being born to women in their late 30s and early
30:56
40s, which she sees as a possible sign that the fertility rate could recover eventually.
31:01
It's possible that women who have been postponing pregnancy may have the babies they were planning
31:06
to have, and that could reverse the trend. "Maybe," says Dr. Helen Kim, but maybe not.
31:11
"As a fertility specialist, I worry that delaying childbearing will result in more fertility problems,"
31:16
said Kim, an associate professor at Northwestern University of Feinberg School of Medicine.
31:20
"Fertility particularly women's fertility declines with age. I've seen numerous couples who have
31:26
waited too long," said Kim. "Some have been married for more than 10 years before they think about
31:30
having kids. There have been many advances in fertility treatment, but there is still no treatment
31:34
for reproductive aging." And so, those are kind of the two articles I wanted to go through, but
31:39
now I want to kind of get into kind of breaking that down because I feel like that article did
31:42
a really good job of giving you an idea of where we're going because again, I agree with Albert
31:46
Mueller that the next generation, at the very least the next generation, but certainly subsequent
31:50
generations, they seem like they're going to be less patriotic, less religious, and that we are
31:55
going to have trouble with population. And the thing about it is when you look at this and you start
32:01
looking at deeper details within a poll like this, is you see people that are parents. Parents
32:07
tend to be more patriotic, more religious, more conservative, and once procreate, I mean,
32:12
duh, I mean, they're their parents. But the huge thing and of all the things that we've talked about
32:16
so far, perhaps the big takeaway should be this, it's that parents, people that have children,
32:21
people that have procreated, they are deeply invested in the health of society moving forward,
32:27
deeply invested. These are people that want to make sure that the next generation is better off
32:35
than they were. And so, we've seen this with every successive generation looking backwards,
32:40
that they've always had kind of had that forward thinking approach. But we live in an era now where,
32:46
you know, for some people, it seems absolutely insane that you would even want to be a parent.
32:51
I know several couples that don't want children. They're the same age as my wife and I, and in just
32:55
the thought of having children that it's like, yeah, no, why would I want to do that? Like,
32:59
we make what we make right now, I couldn't imagine spending, you know, what it costs to get a kid
33:04
from the age of born to the age of 18 without paying for a car, without paying for college funding,
33:08
without paying for, you know, K through 12 private school, it's about $300,000 per kid.
33:12
Like, and I get it. So they're like, what, you want me to have two or three of those,
33:16
and we spend a million dollars just to raise a human being to feed them and clothe them
33:20
and get them into the activities that they want to be into. So it's really interesting. And so,
33:24
whenever I kind of pull myself out from this a little bit, I want to look at what's to blame.
33:28
Okay. So, so what would be to blame for these poll numbers that we saw? And so there's a few
33:33
different things that I looked at. The first thing I think is the easy one, which is the political
33:37
left. Okay. People that are on the political left, they are pushing society in a certain direction.
33:42
And the subsequent generations are not becoming more conservative. They're becoming more progressive
33:47
and progressive, progressiveism leans more leftward. Okay. And so the thing about it that you can say
33:53
that this is a really easy one is because can you name any major politician on the right that
33:58
doesn't want us to be more patriotic or more religious or to have kids or those types of things.
34:04
Those aren't really things that you hear from people that are on the political right.
34:09
Certainly not the first two. I mean, you could not survive in this country as a red candidate
34:13
and say that you don't want us to be patriotic to say that this country is awful, that we're racist,
34:18
that we're horrible, that, you know, we need to be more like this country or that country or any
34:22
of those types of things. The interesting thing about people on the other side that are saying
34:26
those exact things, they don't want to move, right? They don't want to go to the Nordic countries or
34:31
to Canada or to any of these other places in the world where we basically, according to them,
34:36
it's a little bit closer to utopia. They don't want to leave, they want to stay here, but they
34:39
just want to be up in arms and complain about it. But this other thing about kind of the political
34:43
left is just this overall hatred of humans. And again, I'm making a, I'm going to make a
34:47
distinction between leftist and liberal, because I think those are two different things. I'm talking
34:51
about people that are leftist, people that are on the political left. These people hate humans.
34:55
And if you don't take me seriously on that, think about their options in terms of what they say
35:00
with abortion, that they don't talk about what's going on in the womb as someone that has rights
35:06
as a human being that has rights as a human. And you have other leftists that believe even after
35:11
the baby has been born, if after a botched abortion, that that baby should be left there to die.
35:17
We literally have leftist politicians that have been on video saying that exact thing. So I think
35:22
the political left has some blame to share in this in terms of moving us in certain directions.
35:27
But the other thing I want to look at is kind of in turn with the political left. And that's
35:32
social or cultural or entertainment elites, right? So think Hollywood elites or New York elites.
35:38
And these people, the big thing about them is they love to be able to control humans, right?
35:43
Because we can control people if we control culture, because if we make a good enough movie,
35:48
we can get a whole bunch of people to spend money and go and look at the same screen. That's control.
35:52
But also every political season, you can see these ads start to pop up with these recognizable
35:58
faces from your favorite movies, basically telling you, don't vote for the red guy,
36:02
vote for the blue guy or something like that. You see something like that. They want to be able to
36:06
control you. And when they can't control you, they freak out. Yet all these people that are like,
36:10
I'm going to move out of the country of Trump's elected, literally none of them have moved out of
36:13
the country. But it's because they thought, Oh my gosh, you the the end user, the end voter,
36:19
we're going to maybe be like, Oh my gosh, Madonna is going to like basically, you know,
36:24
renouncer citizenship or or, you know, whoopi Goldberg is going to move like, what are we going
36:28
to do if whoopi moves like it's, it's that it's nonsense like that. But again, it's just more about
36:33
control. But then you also get these ideas that start to spread that start in kind of this,
36:38
the social or cultural elitist type groups. So you've heard a lot of people moving towards
36:42
global warming, basically being the reason for for them not wanting to have children.
36:48
You saw I think it was a one of the princes over in England. I can't remember him and his
36:52
wife. They just had their their first baby. And they said at maximum, they're going to have two
36:56
babies. And when asked why they were like, well, because of climate change. Well, which again,
37:01
it used to be called global warming until it was seen that most of the warming models that were put
37:06
out there were absolutely way off when it came to what they were trying to predict. So now it's
37:10
climate change as if that's something that can be easily defined. And so these individuals,
37:15
they're not going to have babies because of climate change. And then so you have these dumb
37:19
dumps that are like, Oh my gosh, I recognize that person from television or from tabloid covers.
37:24
You know, I'm going to not have children either, which probably isn't the worst idea for someone
37:27
like that. But I'm just, I'm just saying like it's one of those deals that you get these people
37:31
that think in this way, they keep putting out entertainment in this way and it's going to keep
37:34
pushing the way forward. I mean, guys, literally right before I got onto this podcast, literally
37:39
right before a group of guys, they, you know, he sent out an email to me, but it was this Arthur
37:44
episode. I don't know if y'all remember that the show Arthur, but they had an episode here in the
37:48
last season where there was a same sex wedding where basically Arthur's teacher married his partner.
37:55
And the thing was, is he was sending the text of this group because he's like, they literally
37:59
just played this episode of Arthur for my kindergartners. He's got a kid that just went into
38:03
kindergarten like a week ago. And he's like, app, I'm about to like send an email off to them. And
38:07
it's like, dude, an email is not going to do it. Are you kidding me? Like in the public school
38:11
system, even in a conservative state like Oklahoma, you're going to have stuff like that that come
38:14
out that are going to try to normalize lifestyles that you think are immoral. And for us as Christians,
38:19
we obviously think that the homosexual lifestyle is an immoral thing. Jesus did talk about a
38:24
homosexuality being wrong, being immoral, being sinful. But again, when you look through the lens
38:29
of social, cultural and entertainment elites, they don't really kind of go through that.
38:32
Another thing I was thinking about in terms of how these stats kind of got to where they were
38:36
is just the connectedness culture. So we live in one of these, these cultures where we're constantly
38:42
connected. We were constantly on social media, we're constantly talking to people. I mean,
38:47
you'll even see people like to make fun of it, but you'll see Gen Zers, they'll be all sitting in a
38:51
room together texting. And sometimes they're texting each other, as opposed to just looking
38:57
to their right and being like, Hey, what's up? Uh, everyone here joke like they're, they're texting
39:03
each other. But it's just, it's this feeling of connectedness, even though they're not.
39:07
So I think that has a little bit to do with how people are looking at the future and how
39:12
things just really aren't that important anymore. And the connectedness culture kind of gives off to
39:16
a me culture, right? We're this unbelievable narcissism that we're so focused on us. We're
39:22
focused on me and the things that we're doing. And if you're too focused on you, you're not going to
39:26
be very patriotic because in order to be patriotic towards your country, that requires a little bit
39:30
of a sacrifice. You're certainly not going to be more religious because especially if you come from
39:34
the Geodeo Christian framework and you follow, um, you know, Christianity or any of those types of
39:39
things, it's not really a U centric thing unless you go to Joel's team's church or Steven Furtick's
39:43
church or Carlins's church or something like that. And then you're the sinner and you're the superstar
39:47
and you're the hero, right? But at the same time, that's, that's what we get with this me culture.
39:52
When, when you're constantly connected, when, you know, you're worth for that day is,
39:57
tied to how many likes you get on Instagram post or how many people respond on a Facebook.
40:01
You know, it's, it's one of those things that it's, it's interesting for us, but it leads to that
40:06
for us. And all of those things lead to kind of this stuff culture as well, that there's always
40:11
this stuff that we need to attain. And so it's good. Again, going to be really hard for us to be
40:16
focused on being patriotic, on being religious or focusing on pro-creating. And you know, obviously
40:21
the selfless, uh,ness of being a parent, if we're constantly worried about getting stuff. And so
40:26
that's one thing you see with trends around people that are my age is people will, you know, wait to
40:30
get married because, you know, I haven't established myself yet. I haven't gotten that second or third
40:35
promotion. I'm not making six figures yet. I'm not doing whatever the thing might be. And you know,
40:39
I'll get married. I'll start looking when I can get all that stuff settled. And then if it takes
40:44
them until they're 35 to get that settled, then they start looking for a mate. Uh, maybe they're
40:49
kind of looking around. There's not as many people in their age range as they thought would be there
40:52
by the time they got everything set. And then you start thinking about, well, when are we going to
40:55
be able to have children? It all kind of gets, gets thrown off a little bit like it just kind of gets
41:00
thrown out of whack. And I don't think people really enjoy that very much. Nor should they really
41:04
look at enjoying that very much. And kind of the, the other thing I want to talk about that's a
41:08
little bit of a divergence. And we've talked about this quite a bit lately here on this podcast,
41:12
but it's kind of the, the more limited influence that fathers are having. I think that has a role
41:17
to play here because obviously there are less fathers living in the home and less fathers that
41:21
have a direct impact on their children's lives than any other time in America in American history.
41:26
And, you know, a lot of kids go to bed without dad in the house. And so you got to think, um, you
41:32
know, when I think about my dad and I think about the dads of some of my friends that I grew up with,
41:37
these were incredibly patriotic and religious men that obviously had families. And so they wanted
41:43
to be able to conserve that for their children. They wanted to teach their children patriotism,
41:48
teach them about being a good Christian and show them the value of being a good dad so that they
41:53
could be one someday. Right. But since we have more of a limited influence from fathers, since we
41:59
don't have, you know, rights of passage that are helping these boys understand why they should go
42:03
and do things like being patriotic and religious and having children and what it means to be the
42:10
man that can do all those things. I think that that has something to blame. I think there is some
42:14
blame to be used there. And so, um, the way that I want to kind of bring this all up and culminate
42:19
is, uh, the thing that I've thought about since I've started reading this reaches is I'm wondering
42:24
if this is America getting what she deserves. Like, I wonder if these trends and things that
42:30
are going in this direction and I'm not exactly, uh, bullish on the fact that they're going to be
42:34
able to change that. I wonder if we deserve it. And I'm reminded of the John Adams quote that's
42:40
obviously very popular and a lot of people have used, but it's that our constitution was made only
42:44
for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
42:49
And the thing about it is, is we're trying to have the benefits of a Judeo-Christian framework
42:55
without having God, the Judeo-Christian God. Like we want to have all the benefits of a moral
43:02
society while at the same time saying that morality is relative, that it can't be brought into one
43:08
specific area or one specific worldview. It's kind of an amalgamation of all these different
43:14
worldviews. And so I know this was a little bit more of an ethereal look at this poll. But I think
43:19
there are some things for us to be really, really concerned about, because typically in something
43:24
like this, even though I'm more pessimistic, I do kind of look for that, that positive thing,
43:28
like, well, what's positive? But to be honest with you, the only positive here is that Americans
43:32
still think hard work is a good thing. That, you know, even 20 years down the road, even with,
43:38
you know, people talking about how millennials are lazy and Gen Z is going to be worse and blah,
43:42
blah, blah, and all that. We still value hard work almost more than anything. That is as American
43:47
DNA, like as you can possibly get is we're going to work hard and pull ourself up by our bootstraps.
43:53
So that's the one positive. But all the rest of these things are incredibly, incredibly concerning.
43:58
Because I don't want to live in America. That's not very patriotic. I don't want to live in an
44:02
America that's only patriotic when the Olympics come up, right, which is what you see with a lot
44:05
of other countries. They're waving the flag and they're being proud and all that. And then they're
44:09
burning them the next week. It's just, it's a weird, it's a weird thing when you look around the world.
44:12
And obviously we're going to have exacerbated problems. The less religious the society becomes
44:18
because religion in and of itself helps control. It helps control people. It controls their actions.
44:24
It controls their vices. It's not a foolproof thing for anybody or any group of bodies, right?
44:29
But it's certainly better. And obviously I have some, some very big misgivings about the progress
44:34
of this mindset in terms of where things are going, because a conservative mindset much more
44:39
aligns with a biblical mindset, being able to conserve things in a way that it was meant to be
44:45
here 2,000 years later after Jesus was teaching the way that he was teaching. And so I didn't want
44:50
this podcast to turn into an alarmist podcast, but I didn't know if any of you had seen that
44:54
research. I wanted to make sure I shared it with you so that you can think through that as well.
44:57
All right, guys, let's do a quick resilience boost for let you out here. As you know, by now,
45:01
we are immense ministry and our mission is cultivating manly resilience. Specifically,
45:05
we do that by providing content that for just spiritual, mental and physical toughness. So
45:09
today I'm going to go on to give you a rundown of the things that we've looked at. So I'm going to
45:12
give you a link to the article, which is a deep and boiling anger. NBC Wall Street Journal poll
45:17
finds a pessimistic America despite current economic satisfaction. And then the other one that I read
45:22
on here was the birth rate in US falls to lowest level in 32 years. CDC says, but then also I provided
45:29
the link to the episode for the briefing with Albert Mueller from Tuesday, August 27th of 2019.
45:35
So it's at the Albert Mueller dot com website. But basically, guys, anywhere where you get your
45:39
podcast, you can go ahead and get that podcast. And I could not suggest it more to you. So please,
45:44
please start listening to that. Guys, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We really
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual,
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