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1:57
This is Undaunted Life Man's podcast.
2:20
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
2:21
Let's get into it.
2:22
All right, guys.
2:23
Today, we got a special guest on the podcast.
2:25
His name is Benjamin Watson.
2:27
He is a retired Super Bowl-winning first-round draft pick tied in to the NFL, and he played
2:31
16 seasons for the New England Patriots, Cleveland Browns, New Orleans Saints, and Baltimore
2:36
Ravens.
2:37
He and his wife have seven children, and he is known for being a very devout Christian
2:41
and pro-life advocate, and he is the author of a brand new book that is out now, if you're
2:45
listening to this, called The New Fight for Life, Row Race and a Pro-Life Commitment to
2:51
Justice.
2:52
I was very excited about this interview because I love talking about the pro-life cause.
2:56
I love talking about the cause of life, and I was excited to talk to him because obviously
3:00
he has a large profile and a big background in sports and things that I really enjoy,
3:06
but this is a guy that never really thought he'd be going around speaking about the pro-life
3:10
cause while he's doing two-a-days or doing mini-camps or any of those types of things,
3:15
and yet here he is.
3:16
But I will give you one little caveat before we get into the interview, because in the
3:20
interview, we talk about football, we talk about his book, we talk about some of his viewpoints
3:24
on the pro-life cause and how the pro-life cause is a little different, and I told him
3:29
this off-air as well, but I read his book from cover to cover.
3:32
That's what I do for every interview, right?
3:34
And there are places where he and I have significant agreement.
3:37
There are places where he and I have significant disagreement, and then there are some places
3:41
where it doesn't really matter that much, but I told him, I was like, you know, I want
3:44
to focus on the fact that we're both team Jesus, we're both team pro-life.
3:48
We just have some disagreements as to how we should go about that, but there are some
3:52
unique arguments in here that we don't really hear a lot from your typical pro-life people.
3:58
And I was going to kind of give, you know, a little bit of a repudiation of some of the
4:01
things in the book later and all that, but this is just what I'll tell you.
4:04
If you pick up a new fight for life and you read it, and you think to yourself, well,
4:09
why didn't Kyle ask him about this in the interview?
4:11
Believe me, I wanted to.
4:13
I wanted to do a 10-hour long interview where we got through everything and tried to find
4:16
some common ground, but I wanted to get to some areas where there would definitely be
4:20
some pushback, some areas where I was very, very confused.
4:23
And I wasn't fully satisfied with all of his arguments, but that's not necessarily the
4:27
point of a short interview like this is to give you an idea as to here's how this person
4:31
thinks about a certain issue.
4:33
It might be different than your way.
4:34
Let's put our each of our ways on the table and let's see what we can combine or let's
4:38
see what we can take whole cloth and make the best way to move forward.
4:42
And so to anyone that might be screaming at their phone or at their speakers thinking,
4:46
like, why didn't he ask him about this?
4:47
Why didn't he do that?
4:48
Believe me, all that stuff was in my brain.
4:50
But I was following rabbit trails that I thought were going to be best to producing a conversation
4:55
that was palatable for you for today and then gave you enough to basically challenge some
4:59
of your maybe closely held notions about the whole pro-life cause.
5:03
So maybe I hit the mark on that.
5:04
Maybe I didn't.
5:05
You can obviously let me know in the comments and you can let me know through my email inbox.
5:09
But I really, really did enjoy my time with Benjamin.
5:11
He is just an absolutely stand-up guy.
5:13
So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
5:16
Benjamin Watson, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
5:19
Hey, man, good to be here with you.
5:21
I appreciate the opportunity.
5:22
Hey, this is going to be fun today.
5:24
And I told you out there, like, you know, we're going to get into this.
5:26
We're going to get into the meat of your book today.
5:29
But I feel like it would be deeply inappropriate, Benjamin, if we were to have a conversation
5:34
and not at least talk about football a little bit, okay?
5:38
Because, you know, I don't know if anyone knows this, but football is kind of part of
5:41
your story.
5:42
It's kind of part of your, your background.
5:43
But maybe I have some questions that you haven't quite been asked before about football.
5:48
So, so if you're cool, you want to start with a little bit of football talk?
5:51
Let's talk everybody loves football.
5:53
Okay.
5:54
Everybody loves football.
5:55
So you played football in the most competitive conference while in college.
6:00
You played in the SEC for the Georgia Bulldogs, Go Dogs, and then you played at the highest
6:04
level of football period playing 16 seasons in the NFL.
6:08
What I want to know is I know baseball better than I know football.
6:13
And I know the gap between a really good high school player and the gap between a major
6:17
leaguer is like it's miles apart.
6:21
But I don't really know in football, what is the gap between like a stud at an SEC school
6:28
and somebody in the NFL?
6:30
Because there are guys that you watch on Saturdays and then they can't make the practice squad
6:35
come the next season on Sunday.
6:36
So what's that gap like for really, really, really good college players and then elite
6:41
level NFL players?
6:42
And then I guess, you know, 10 plus year veteran NFL players.
6:46
Yeah, I think that's a good question because everybody who played like in college or high
6:50
school was like, man, I could do this.
6:52
We all know guys who are like, man, I could do what this guy is doing.
6:55
This guy's getting paid.
6:56
That's mine.
6:57
I could do that.
6:58
It's like, no, no, you couldn't.
6:59
You really can't.
7:00
And if you could, then you're an idiot for not doing it, but I think to me, the biggest
7:05
difference.
7:06
And, you know, when I got drafted in 2004 and I went to my first NFL rookie camp, everybody
7:13
talks about the speed just goes up exponentially.
7:16
And it does because all the guys that you see that are kind of the elite of college, they're
7:22
all on those teams.
7:24
But the biggest difference to me was not even the physical part of it.
7:27
It was the mental part of the game.
7:29
What I mean by that is at this point, when you get into the NFL, it is your occupation.
7:35
It's your job.
7:36
It's how you're feeding your families.
7:37
How you're making a living.
7:38
Like you're going, you go to work like everybody else and that's how you treat it.
7:42
And the physical, the mental part of it, not just dealing with the pressure because when
7:47
you, when money comes, so does pressure because people's livelihoods are depending upon you
7:50
doing the right thing.
7:52
But the capacity and the amount of learning that you have to do and the amount of knowledge
7:58
you have to process very quickly is totally different from college.
8:03
And so you'll see a guy who physically is comparable to anybody in the NFL.
8:08
And for whatever reason, it was the pressure that got to him because now you're playing
8:13
18 games and you're playing Sundays and there's money involved and there's pressure at a different
8:19
level.
8:20
Or that guy's coming in on Wednesday and they're installing first and second down.
8:25
And he's not able to take that information and do it correctly three hours later at practice
8:30
over and over and over again.
8:32
And so you fall by the wayside.
8:34
So physically, I mean, I'll probably, you know, when you're 20, what was I, 22 years
8:39
old, I mean, you're is yoked up.
8:41
I mean, you come, you NFL training can't like ready, and ready.
8:48
And then you realize the biggest way to slow down a fast, strong competitive athlete is
8:55
to make them think.
8:57
And if you can't process quickly enough, all your muscles, all your speed, it don't matter
9:00
because you don't know what to do.
9:03
I think that's right, because you see some of these guys that just disappear when they
9:06
get to the league.
9:07
And it was like, man, they were just carving up, you know, SEC and big 12 and big 10 defenses.
9:12
And then it's like, well, when you have a guy, a quarterback, like a Tom Brady who you have
9:16
some experience with or a Peyton Manning or a Drew Brees or Dan Marino, it's like the
9:21
little things that they do at the line is going to make you think for a half a second
9:25
longer.
9:26
And then maybe you're out of position for a half a second and then West Welker's open
9:30
now.
9:31
That's just something that's just a lot different.
9:33
So I guess for you, obviously Bill Belichick was your coach for, I guess, the majority
9:37
of your career.
9:38
And again, we don't really know what that guy looks like.
9:40
We just know he's, you know, brooding on the sideline and looking like a homeless guy with
9:44
his T-shirts and his hoodies and all that.
9:46
But does a hard unforgiving coach like that make it better for a young player that's trying
9:55
to get the mental side ready to go while keeping the physical side ready?
9:59
Or is it better maybe to have kind of a guy that's a little bit more relaxed, a little
10:03
bit more, you know, again, and bell checks got the rings to prove otherwise.
10:07
But what do you think for like that young player trying to make more of that mental transition?
10:12
You know, good coaches become what they need to be for their players and good coaches are
10:17
able to decipher.
10:18
Okay, this guy needs a loving hand of correction.
10:23
This guy needs for me to put him on Front Street on blast and embarrass him.
10:27
And I get the best out of him, you know, and, and Bill was, is the latter, like he calls
10:33
you out.
10:34
There's a lot of accountability.
10:36
Everybody from the, you know, the last man on the roster to Tom Brady is how he'll, he'll
10:40
to the same standards, like he will embarrass you in front of your peers.
10:44
I've been embarrassed by him in front of my peers and I didn't like it very much.
10:49
But he has a way of bringing the most out of his teams, even if you don't like him like
10:56
to be honest with me, Kyle, I, I didn't like Bill for a lot of my career, but I respected
11:01
him.
11:02
Yeah.
11:03
I respect him because of the standard that he kept.
11:05
And when I left New England and saw how it was done elsewhere, I even respected him
11:09
more because it's very difficult to be successful once is even harder to be successful multiple
11:15
times because complacency sets in and he was able to do that.
11:20
But for the young player, look, it all depends on, it depends on the player being coachable,
11:26
but also depends on the coach, understanding how that player best needs to be coach.
11:30
So the other thing to our, to the previous question about, you know, what happens to
11:34
some players when they go to the league, a lot of it depends on what situation you get
11:39
drafted or picked up into.
11:41
I mean, you can have a guy who, I mean, let's take Tom Brady for example, we don't know
11:45
who he is if Drew bless so doesn't get hurt.
11:47
Now that was an accident that happened, but my point is he's in a place where they've,
11:52
they've got a good defense, they've got a good offense, they've got coaches that can
11:57
nurture him and teach him.
11:59
And then you see some guys, I may go to another place where they're the best, you know, in
12:03
college, but they get to an organization that is not built right from top to bottom.
12:07
It's a mess and it's just a bad situation for them to develop as a young player.
12:12
And therefore you don't ever see them be successful.
12:15
That's a great point because, I mean, you look at an Aaron Rodgers being behind Brett
12:19
Favre for years and years and years before he was a starter.
12:22
And within a few years, he went to Super Bowl.
12:25
Look at Johnny Manziel.
12:26
Now the guys had some, some mental struggles and, but let's say he was, he ended up on
12:31
the Patriots, or let's say he ended up on, on another team, like, let's say he ended
12:35
up on the Colts and Peyton Manning had gotten hurt as opposed to going to the Browns.
12:39
Um, but it's also a really good point about coaches, because I know there are a lot of
12:43
guys out here that have their kids and in team sports and all that and coaches will,
12:47
if they're good, they're not going to apply their style to every situation.
12:52
You know, there was a kid in college that I went to high school with and he was on my,
12:57
my college basketball team.
12:58
I wasn't on the team.
12:59
He was on the team.
13:00
And I remember mentioning to the coach, Hey coach, you're going to have to get this kid
13:03
mad because when he's mad, he plays better because otherwise he was, he was a big body,
13:08
but he was kind of soft, but he, when he was mad, he turned into like the incredible
13:12
Hulk and played better, whereas other guys, if they play mad, they'll brick every shot
13:16
that they ever take.
13:17
But something that you said, whenever talked about respect and liking, um, I don't know
13:21
why this came to mind, but we were so concerned in modern society and I don't want to get
13:25
too far off into the philosophical, we're so concerned about everyone liking us and
13:30
we're not as concerned about them respecting us.
13:31
Like I've thought about before, like, I'm not a fan of Barack Obama, uh, but you know,
13:36
I disagree with him politically on just about everything, but if I were the same room with
13:40
him and I had the chance to meet him, I would go up to him.
13:42
I would shake his hand.
13:43
I would say, hello, Mr, uh, president, thank you so much for being here and thank you for
13:47
serving our country.
13:48
Now, if he wanted to have a policy discussion, you know, get the fireworks out.
13:52
It's going to, it's going to be a lot of fun, but I respect the office.
13:55
I respect the man, even though, you know, I have some misgivings, talk to me, I guess
13:59
a little bit about that because you've got a bunch of kids, you got a whole gang of kids
14:02
at your house.
14:03
Like what is it?
14:04
Seven 18, 19, 20 now, like you got so many kids.
14:07
How are you going to teach these kids to respect authority figures, even if they don't like
14:11
them?
14:12
Yeah.
14:13
Well, not quite 18 or 19, but we do have seven.
14:17
It sounds like 18 or 19 sometimes in our house because this list on many of them, seven kids
14:23
ages 14 down to four and the last two are identical twin boys.
14:28
They're four years old.
14:29
We, we jokingly call them typhoon and tornado because they're just like all boy all the
14:34
time.
14:35
We go crazy, but we, we, we teach our kids, you know, when it comes to, to respect and
14:42
honoring authority.
14:43
I mean, it's not our, our idea.
14:46
I mean, we're getting that from our parents.
14:48
We're getting that from the prescription that we see in Scripture, just the idea of honoring
14:53
authority.
14:54
Even when you think about, you know, Romans 13 and how we honor the government, whether
14:57
we agree with the government or not, they are in a place of authority over us.
15:01
And so it's important for our children to know that support, it's important for them
15:04
to see us, um, subject ourselves and humble ourselves to authority because it's not that
15:10
we as parents get to do whatever the heck we want to do.
15:13
It's like, no, we are submitting ourselves to God.
15:17
We're submitting ourselves to the authorities that are putting our life where there, where
15:20
there's a coach.
15:21
Look, there are times playing football where I really didn't like my coach, whoever that
15:27
coach was.
15:28
And I really didn't agree with my coach.
15:30
Now, it doesn't mean you don't say anything to them, but there is a way that you go about
15:34
um, respectfully disagreeing with within authority figure, even if it's the president, whether
15:40
you like Trump or whether you like Barack Obama, it really, it really doesn't, it doesn't
15:44
matter.
15:45
You can disagree with them, but there's a certain way that we honor the Lord in the way that
15:49
we speak to those who are in places of authority while still holding them accountable.
15:54
I mean, if they're out of line, then of course they need to be held accountable as well.
15:59
I agree with that.
16:00
And you know, I have two young boys, three year old and a one year old.
16:03
And so those are going to be some of those discussions where I wasn't sat down and taught
16:08
those things.
16:09
I more saw it modeled.
16:10
I saw respect modeled like, Hey, we, you know, chivalry, we hold the door open for ladies
16:15
like we, we stand up when they come to the table, like little things like that, that we're
16:18
maybe not getting in modern culture or modern entertainment or something like that.
16:22
Last thing on football before we move off to everything else, you know, I just mentioned
16:25
I have two young boys and I've said before, in my community, we have every single sport
16:31
that you could possibly want to play available, including, you know, ice hockey, including,
16:35
you know, pickleball, we, we have everything.
16:37
The one sport I've told people, I'm like, I'm not going to let my kids play football.
16:41
All my buddies that played football, the head and neck injuries that they've suffered,
16:45
all the data that's coming out about high school kids, concussions, and then obviously
16:49
carrying on into college and the pros, what's your opinion on that?
16:53
Because obviously you've built a pretty nice life for yourself and your family based on
16:56
your physical and athletic prowess and, you know, I don't, I don't have your chart in
17:00
front of me with your brain scan, but it's like, you know, are there concerns there with
17:04
the Watson boys following a dad's footsteps?
17:07
Well, first off, I would say bravo for you for making a decision that you want to make
17:11
about your, your kids and what they're going to do and sticking to it.
17:14
I mean, I, people ask me that all the time, you know, you played football for 20, I mean,
17:18
I played football for 20 something years in total.
17:22
And you know, would you let your boys play?
17:25
I say, yes, I'll let them play.
17:27
They've got to be a little bit older.
17:28
I'm not letting them play tackle football, you know, in PWE and stuff like that.
17:31
That's just my preference.
17:33
I don't begrudge any other parent for, for doing something different, but I would rather
17:38
them not play.
17:39
Look, if they could go play baseball, if they could go own a baseball team or own a football
17:43
team or they're a player, I told him I said the other day he loves football my 10 year
17:47
old.
17:48
I mean, he's all in the football call 100% and I said, you know, if you don't play, there
17:52
are also other occupations in football.
17:56
I mean, there's accountants, there's lawyers, I mean, there's people who, there's, there's
18:00
chefs.
18:01
I mean, there's, there's, there's contract negotiators, there's agents.
18:03
I mean, there's a lot of other things you can do within the game, but as far as playing
18:07
to be quite honest, I worry about it.
18:09
I had several concussions.
18:11
I had seven while I was playing the NFL.
18:13
I had, I had something in a college and I've had a bunch of orthopedic injuries.
18:18
I mean, if you looked at my chart right now, now it's all digital, but back before with
18:21
digital, I played actually my career was long enough to play when carry around your chart.
18:26
And now it was like on a little disc, but every time I would go, the beginning of a season
18:30
or I'll go to a new team, they would be like, golly, how are you still walking with all
18:33
these injuries that you've had?
18:35
And so as I look at my boys, I'll say this, the number one thing, whether they play football
18:40
or not, my wife, person, and I will decide when that happens, then ultimately I'm not
18:45
going to prohibit them from playing.
18:48
But what I don't want to know, what I would never want is for them to play simply because
18:53
daddy played and because they think that I am going to approve of them as my children
19:01
because they walked in my footsteps.
19:03
And I want them, and we talk about this a lot, like they have value regardless if they play
19:08
football or not.
19:09
By simplifying that you're my son, I'm not going to love you anymore or less because
19:12
you're going there and I'm going to pray for you differently and probably more if you're
19:17
playing, but that won't ever change.
19:19
Well, that's a good word just because, you know, I do jujitsu, I've been doing jujitsu
19:24
for five or six years now.
19:25
I want to try that.
19:28
You haven't done it before?
19:29
I have not, but I hear great things about it.
19:31
And I'm like, I want to learn some martial art because my kids are going to try me one
19:35
day and I want to be able to just break them down when I'm old and I don't have any muscles
19:39
anymore.
19:40
Okay, all right.
19:41
So this is what we're going to do.
19:42
You and I are going to train together because I need to get a hold of you before you know
19:45
anything and so like, I'll roll you up, but I just got to tell you, nothing in my life
19:50
Benjamin has been harder than jujitsu mentally and physically because you're going to walk
19:55
in there because because we had a guy that came in our gym.
19:59
He played at Oklahoma State, he bounced around the NFL a little bit.
20:03
And then he came to jujitsu and when he had when he was, I think he was on the packers
20:08
practice squad, he was like 250 pound linebacker, right?
20:11
As, as yoked as yoked can get, and he comes in, he's getting smashed by dudes that weigh
20:16
150 pounds and he can't do anything about it and it doesn't make sense.
20:21
And that gives you a dividing line Benjamin to where it's like, okay, I'm either going
20:25
to figure out what this is.
20:26
So this doesn't happen to me again, or I'm going to retreat to my ego and say, oh, little
20:32
nerdy kid just got lucky and I'm just going to go walk around pretending like I'm dangerous.
20:37
But the level of grit and resilience that you get from something like jujitsu, especially
20:41
with the high quality jujitsu now in the country, it's on another level.
20:44
We'll talk more about that.
20:45
But my boys are, they see me leave my three year old nose when dad leaves to go to jujitsu,
20:51
he doesn't know what that is.
20:52
But I'm not going to give my son any more extra consideration as my son if he decides
20:57
to do jujitsu because in our house, our boys have to play sports.
21:02
We're not going to choose their sports for them, but we want them to play team sports
21:06
and we want them to play individual sports.
21:07
Well, in terms of individual sports, you're basically like wrestling, jujitsu, tennis.
21:12
That's about all you got.
21:13
But we want them to know what it's like to depend on themselves and we want them to
21:17
know what it's like to depend on themselves within the higher unit of a team that's kind
21:21
of working together.
21:23
But that's very interesting that you want to do jujitsu because I got to tell you, like
21:27
if you learn how to not use your muscles and turn off your athleticism and just do the
21:31
technique, it is shocking how easily you can control another human being that doesn't
21:35
know what they're doing.
21:36
It is absolutely shocking.
21:37
So we'll work that out.
21:38
But as we get into the more serious side of our interview today, you're a Christian and
21:43
you're pro life.
21:45
That's a big thing about you.
21:46
That's one of the biggest things that someone could say about you other than the fact that
21:49
you have a relationship with football.
21:52
But Christian and pro life should always go together, but unfortunately they don't always
21:56
do that and we'll get more into that in this conversation.
21:59
But if you would just give us the 30,000 foot overview of how you became a Christian,
22:04
but then specifically why you're so outspoken about the subject of life because a lot of
22:09
Christians aren't that.
22:11
So go.
22:12
Yeah.
22:13
Yeah.
22:14
Well, I became a Christian at a pretty young age.
22:16
My father actually led me to the law when I was probably about five or six years old.
22:20
And that's when I first, that's when the Holy Spirit called me and through repentance
22:24
of faith, I put my faith in trust and Jesus Christ at a very young age and obviously grown
22:30
a lot since then.
22:31
But as the Bible says, that's when eternal life started.
22:33
All life is knowing God and Jesus, who he sent.
22:36
And so that's when eternal life began for me.
22:39
And my father and my mother are both believers, but they would always tell us that, you know,
22:44
this is a decision that you have to make when the Spirit calls you, like you don't get any
22:48
family credit, you know, getting into heaven just because we just because we're believers.
22:54
Yeah.
22:55
God doesn't have grandchildren.
22:56
Exactly.
22:57
Right.
22:58
This is, this is between you and the Lord.
22:59
So that's when I first came to know the Lord and as far as the pro-life stuff goes, it's
23:04
really weird because, you know, growing up in my family, I don't really recall the term
23:11
pro-life being used a lot, although it was a quote unquote pro-life household.
23:15
I do remember, you know, you know, supporting my father's a pastor now back then, he was
23:21
still involved in ministry.
23:22
And I remember that being, you know, a part of life growing up, but not the political
23:28
pro-life part of it that we kind of experience now when we say that there were a pro-life.
23:34
And then for me, I think that some of my earliest recollections of understanding the impact
23:41
of abortion, a lot of times had to do with the black community and it had to do with
23:48
hearing about these statistics about black women and black children.
23:53
And this is back in high school and just kind of thinking those things over.
23:57
And then fast forwarding up until we had our first child and our first child, her name
24:02
was Grace.
24:03
In 2009, we went to see a 3D/4D ultrasound.
24:06
So you know what this is when you've had, you know, a baby looks like a clay figure,
24:11
but you can really actually see the child.
24:14
And we left there and my wife said, you know, I would love to offer this service for other
24:18
women at some point in our life.
24:21
We didn't know what that was going to look like.
24:23
About eight years later, eight years in the league later, I was playing for the Baltimore
24:26
Ravens.
24:28
And two organizations were doing this sort of ultrasound program where you could actually
24:35
support or purchase ultrasounds for pregnancy resource centers.
24:38
And my wife goes, let's do it.
24:40
So we ended up doing that.
24:41
We purchased an ultrasound in Baltimore, Maryland at a pregnancy resource center there.
24:47
When to go see it.
24:48
And then we started doing that in different places where we've either, you know, lived
24:51
or played or even in my hometown in South Carolina.
24:54
And so it comes that when you're in the NFL and you purchase an ultrasound for a PRC,
25:00
it's like everybody starts talking about, you know, good, bad or different.
25:04
It makes news and that was never, that was never the plan.
25:07
And so I always say like there was no point in time where I just said, you know, I'm pro
25:11
life.
25:12
I believe this.
25:13
I've always believed that people were made an image of God.
25:15
I've always believed that human beings had value outside of any other created being that
25:24
walks the face of the other human beings are different and that there's value, whether
25:28
you are at any at the stage of life of fertilization or whether you're in your middle age of life
25:33
or whether you're at the end of life, I always believe that I believe that people have value
25:37
no matter their ethnicity or background of those sorts of things.
25:41
And that always the issue of justice and fighting for justice for vulnerable people, whether
25:47
that be the preborn or whether it comes to racial injustice in America or even in trafficking.
25:53
My wife and I do some stuff with the organization that does a lot with sex trafficking of children.
25:58
And I see it as a justice issue.
25:59
And so my arm ramp was was not, you know, I want to be involved in pro life because of
26:06
the necessary politics of it, although they're all politics involved because we live in America.
26:11
It was more about justice and about defending the voiceless and defending a group of people
26:17
that are vulnerable.
26:20
So the interesting thing about why you were talking is I guess I never really thought
26:24
about that.
26:25
I don't remember hearing pro life ever used in our household.
26:30
And even before I was a Christian, it's almost like I believed in the value of human life
26:35
before I knew that we were made in the image of God, I guess.
26:38
So I believed in the value of human life before I knew what the amago day is that they were
26:42
made in his image.
26:43
And so it would make sense.
26:45
You know, even an atheist, it's like, Oh, well, you know, of course you want your species
26:49
to propagate.
26:50
But then obviously if you're a believer in God, you know, it goes much, much deeper than
26:53
that.
26:54
And so I and then with last year happening, obviously last summer, Roe v. Wade and Planned
27:00
Parenthood v. Casey go the way the trash bin and those were overturned.
27:04
And that was a big moment for our country and we're still unraveling exactly what that,
27:10
the ramifications of that are I'm I'm a little bit, not a little bit.
27:14
I'm quite a bit disappointed in a lot of supposedly pro life and Republican politicians coming
27:19
out and being a lot squish here on the issue now.
27:22
It's like, you know, we won, but we need to do more and now it's like, Oh, we don't want
27:26
to make anyone mad.
27:27
So it's it's kind of a weird milieu that we're in right now Benjamin and we'll we'll get more
27:31
into that here when we get into the book.
27:32
But just generically, when Roe v. Wade was and you go over this in the book, but when
27:37
Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey Rover turn last summer, how did you feel like
27:42
in your gut?
27:43
Cause I remember being on a lawn mower, getting a call from a buddy saying it's overturned,
27:48
it's overturned.
27:49
Oh my gosh, it's overturned.
27:50
And I come running up here to this studio.
27:51
I'm covered in dirt and I've got like a camo shirt on and I just record an episode and
27:55
I'm in tears because I'm so shocked and I'm so happy and it was just like, it was overwhelming.
28:00
I'll never forget that.
28:01
But what was it like for you in the Watson how household?
28:04
I wasn't I wasn't on a lawn mower.
28:07
I was shot nonetheless.
28:08
I think I think I was even more shocked and emotional when the leak came out.
28:14
So if you remember the leak came out like a few months before that this was going to
28:18
happen.
28:19
And I was, you know, it was breathtaking to hear that this could be a possibility.
28:24
And I think that's when I had most of my, you know, the tea, even the tears then.
28:29
And then when it actually happened, I felt kind of just in awe, I think, like, wow, this
28:36
actually happened.
28:37
I mean, you know, as far as being involved in the quote unquote pro life movement for
28:41
the last, you know, actively five, you know, 67 years as far as even working with a, you
28:47
know, a pro life organization, human coalition.
28:51
You meet so many people who have been on the front lines in different capacities for the
28:54
last 50 years.
28:55
I mean, people who have been in resource centers, people in medicine, people in academia, people
28:59
in politics, I mean, people in the faith community, Catholic process, it doesn't matter.
29:04
And thinking about all the work that they've done.
29:06
But I remember we were about to fly out to Dallas to speak at any event.
29:10
My wife and I, when the text message started coming in.
29:13
And I remember thinking, are we ready for this?
29:17
Like, what's next?
29:20
Because I saw the very real fear and anger from, from abortion proponents.
29:27
I saw the fear of many women who, it was a genuine fear thinking that, you know, something
29:33
was being taken away from them.
29:34
Because in essence, it was we have to, we have to honor that.
29:37
Those are very real feelings from them.
29:40
And I knew that the battle over abortion was not over by any stretch of the imagination.
29:47
I knew that it, in many ways, just begun.
29:50
Like, in many ways, there was a new, a new fight for life had really just begun.
29:53
And I felt like, okay, our pro life is really ready for this.
29:58
And that's not to chastise any of us.
30:01
That's just more of a challenge saying that, okay, it might look a little bit different
30:04
now than it did before, because, quite frankly, the reasons why women were going to get abortions,
30:10
whatever they may be, are still very, very real, whether Roe is here or whether Roe is
30:15
not.
30:16
Now, that's not to say that we don't celebrate Roe being overturned, because yes, I believe
30:19
that law influences culture, culture influences law, but a lot of times law influences culture.
30:24
So when you overturn something like that, the trickle down effect, not only this year,
30:29
but next year, next year, next year is the norm and the accepted norm for us and for our
30:34
children is not going to be a default to abortion.
30:36
And that's a good thing.
30:38
But outside of that, it's imperative that, you know, people in pro life circles, you mentioned
30:43
politicians who got squishy, as you said, and who it seemed like they were just doing
30:47
it for the vote.
30:48
They were just doing it because it was a popular thing to do.
30:51
Is that really your conviction?
30:52
Because right now, we need you now more than ever to stay firm in the stances that you've
30:57
taken and not only that to be leaders where the heat is being turned up tremendously
31:04
on individuals, corporations, organizations, churches.
31:08
The question was, I felt like, you know, are we ready for what's next?
31:11
Yeah, you use the word chastisement there earlier.
31:14
I'm okay with chastising people that are getting a little squishy right now that are because
31:19
what I've said before is that I don't believe that Donald J. Trump is pro life in his heart,
31:25
but I do know that he legislated and governed in a way that was pro life.
31:29
And so it's like, which one do you want if you only get one or the other?
31:33
It's like, you obviously want the guy that's going to legislate that way.
31:35
But look where we are now, he's currently attacking governor DeSantis, who's not even
31:40
in the race yet, from the left of the abortion issue, saying that a six week ban is a little
31:46
bit too intense.
31:47
And so it's like, there's this, there's this dichotomy there.
31:50
There's certainly this tension, but that all gets into the new book that is out now, guys,
31:54
if you were listening to this, it is in the show, no, she can go and pick up a copy.
31:57
It's called the new fight for life, row race and a pro life commitment to justice.
32:01
So just finished this a couple of weeks ago.
32:05
It's on 10 Dale.
32:06
I'm so happy that they were able to send this to me and that we were able to get this
32:08
all scheduled up.
32:09
But in your own words, let's just go again, 30,000 foot view.
32:13
What is this book about?
32:15
Why did you write it?
32:16
And then we'll start digging in.
32:17
Yeah, the book is about what's next for the pro life movement June 24th, 2022, as we talked
32:22
about, Roe v. Wade was overturned.
32:26
But we're a year out from Roe v. Wade being overturned.
32:29
And I believe, and I, what I see is honestly Kyle, a bit of apathy, and I see a bit of
32:37
apathy.
32:38
A lot of that.
32:39
Yeah.
32:40
Yeah.
32:41
You've been really pleased.
32:42
I've seen a lot of apathy in the whole life movement, meaning so many feel like the battle
32:47
is over.
32:48
So many feel like lives are being saved and they are.
32:52
And so many feel like, okay, now it's time to retreat because the heat is being turned
32:55
up.
32:56
And what I wanted to do was to provide a blueprint or a game plan to encourage the pro life movement
33:00
to move forward in a way that might seem different than before.
33:03
Because as you mentioned, legislation is one thing.
33:06
Making abortion both unthinkable and unnecessary is something totally different.
33:11
And so the reason why I wrote the book I mentioned before, I've been working with an organization,
33:17
human coalition, and we provide direct services for pregnant women, we also involved in state
33:24
local federal legislation when it comes to life.
33:26
And also outside of that, whether it's within churches or pregnancy resource centers or
33:31
different organizations, I've heard this statistic get thrown out a lot about black women.
33:38
And it resonated with me as a black man, with a black mother, with black children, with
33:42
a black wife, three to four times more likely to have abortions than their white counterparts.
33:50
And the reason why I wanted to speak into this, because I always ask the next question, which
33:55
is why, which I usually never hear people say, Kyle, I never hear people say, why is that?
33:59
And so to me, I'm thinking, okay, it's either because black folks like killing their kids
34:05
more than anybody else.
34:07
And if that's what you believe, be proud and say it.
34:10
We could talk about that.
34:11
You know what I mean?
34:12
That may be it, or is it that because of so much that has happened now currently and in
34:20
the past, as we see with so many other outcomes in the black community, that programs, policies,
34:26
discriminatory issues, events that have happened over the course of history from yesterday backwards
34:32
have created a group of people that is more vulnerable to the stain of abortion, because
34:37
a lot of times we point the finger at Planned Parenthood, which we should.
34:41
And we say that those folks are racist, which they've admitted by distancing themselves
34:47
from eugenics and Margaret Sanger, they've admitted those things.
34:51
But a lot of times, what we as a pro-life movement fail to identify, we fail to unpack
34:55
probably because it's painful for us to talk about is, how does the experience of the descendants
35:00
of enslaved people in this country?
35:03
How does that make them a prime target for a Planned Parenthood to be able to pray on?
35:09
And so what I tried to do in the book was to say, okay, it's a pro-life movement.
35:13
This is a sore spot for us.
35:15
This is a spot of a lot of connectivity where there's a lot of abortion in this area.
35:22
How do we address that person and that group, while also addressing everyone else, but specifically
35:28
when I talk about race and pro-life movement to justice, how do we shift our moments and
35:33
our thinking on justice to turn off the faucet to abortion?
35:39
30,000 foot.
35:40
That's where we are because I believe that right now when it comes to the pro-life movement
35:44
a year after a row, we're just scratching the surface.
35:47
And when it comes to the numbers of babies being aborted, we've got the abortion pill
35:53
on the rise, 60 to 70%, possibly 80 in the next couple of years is going to be the abortion
35:58
pill.
36:00
The politics of it, as you mentioned before, the issues are still there.
36:04
We as a pro-life movement have a great opportunity not only to address those things but also
36:08
think this, Kyle, that people on the other side of this debate want to hear us speak
36:13
in ways that are holistic, that are taken out of the political realm, and more speak
36:19
to compassion and speak to people's hearts.
36:21
I think there are some people on the fence that are also waiting to see if this pro-life
36:25
movement really real, do they really care?
36:27
Not that we have to prove ourselves to everybody, but what I'm saying is that there's an opportunity
36:30
here to build bridges.
36:34
So I appreciate you giving me the overview of that.
36:38
And guys, this is probably a good time to mention.
36:41
We can't even get into a quarter of the stuff that's in this book in our time today.
36:45
I'm just really trying to go over some of those things.
36:47
And even as you and I chatted off air, there are some things that we have significant agreement
36:52
on, significant disagreement on, there's things in the middle that just doesn't really matter
36:56
that much.
36:57
So let's go and go into deep water right here from the beginning, because it goes into something
37:01
that you brought up in the book, because there was something about how you framed the subject
37:05
of abortion amongst the black population in the United States that it was a little bit
37:10
confusing to me, and I just need a little bit more clarification on, because the way you
37:14
seem to describe it was that abortion was happening to black women in this country.
37:21
Like there were quotes like abortion disproportionately affects the black community, abortion disproportionately
37:27
impacts black women, and obviously to my knowledge, I don't think there are vans of people going
37:33
around looking for pregnant black women to throw them into Planned Parenthood for them
37:36
to kill their babies.
37:37
And I think this does bleed into the personal responsibility part of the discussion, which
37:42
also goes into how the church can get involved, and I want to get there as well.
37:48
And almost 100% of the cases women are having consensual unprotected sex with men, and that's
37:54
how they get pregnant.
37:56
And I guess there's a lot of choices that go into what's happening with the abortion.
38:02
Like they have to decide that they're not going to have, not going to save themselves
38:07
for marriage.
38:08
They have to choose to be sexually active.
38:09
They have to choose to have sexual individual men, they have to choose to have unprotected
38:13
sex.
38:14
They have to choose to not care for the child.
38:16
They have to choose that they're going to get an abortion, choose which abortion facility,
38:19
choose to go there, choose to give them money.
38:21
There's so many choices that that go along the way before we even get get to the baby
38:27
being alive outside the womb.
38:30
So talk to me a little bit more about that because as I was reading through it, the whole
38:33
time I was like, it was almost like you were talking about it like this was a thing that
38:37
happened to them like they were being attacked by abortion as opposed to choosing it.
38:41
If that makes sense.
38:42
Yeah, well, I do say in the book that there is choice, and I believe that everybody has
38:47
a choice in what they do.
38:51
Ironically, I'm one of the people that believe in personal responsibility and the fact that
38:55
circumstances can impact your personal responsibility and your personal responsibility.
38:58
Yeah.
38:59
I mean, we see that in so many situations that happen every single day where you're influenced
39:05
to make certain choices or you have an availability to make certain choices because of your circumstances
39:10
while still realizing that you still have consequences for your actions.
39:14
And so when it comes to the issue of abortion, I would also say that there is a bit of targeting.
39:22
And you mentioned there's nobody riding around on a bus telling black women to get abortion.
39:25
I don't know if you've been on the internet.
39:27
I don't know if you've driven down the highways in Atlanta on I-85 because I've seen billboards
39:32
that say that abortion impacts or harms black and brown women the most.
39:37
That is targeting directly at a certain people group telling them that they need abortion.
39:41
Well, Benjamin, to your point earlier, where was Margaret Sanger in Planned Parenthood
39:45
putting abortion clinics when they were doing their kind of low-key eugenicist movement,
39:52
they weren't putting it in affluent areas, they were putting in areas where there were
39:56
a lot of people of color and not people of means.
39:59
And so, yeah, I'm certainly sensitive to that.
40:01
Well, Margaret Sanger, I mean, she was never a proponent of abortion.
40:05
She was with birth control and our abortion was introduced to what became Planned Parenthood
40:08
by Alan Gootmark or by a man.
40:10
So I know we're going to talk about men at some point because all of the men are listening.
40:13
So men have a big role in this too.
40:16
But my point is that there is advertising dollars that are specifically directed at a
40:24
certain demographic that are directed at black people.
40:27
And that doesn't make anybody do anything just because I show you advertising about Pepsi
40:32
or Coca-Cola, whichever floats your boat, it doesn't mean that you have to go do that.
40:36
What I'm saying is there's ample opportunity.
40:39
And also, when you think about the school system and how Planned Parenthood has infiltrated
40:43
our school systems, and this goes to everybody, this isn't just black kids or white kids
40:47
or anybody in between, there is curriculum that Planned Parenthood be the first trusted
40:54
name that young women turn to whenever there is anything you have to do with women's health,
41:01
that's a legitimate women's health concern, anything you have to do with abortion, all
41:03
those sorts of things.
41:04
And so they have made themselves and cosied themselves up to black women, Hispanic women,
41:11
but specifically black women, so that they're that trusted partner, while we can still say
41:18
that, look, you have a responsibility and you don't have to do anything to your point.
41:23
You don't have to have sex, none of us do, but studies show that everybody has sex at
41:26
about the same rate.
41:28
You don't have to have sex, you don't have to do that.
41:31
You can use birth control, you can do that.
41:34
So I agree with you there that there's responsibility, but what I'm pushing and what I'm challenging
41:40
the pro-life community is to look at is all these, I would say, ancillary that are directly
41:49
related issues and entities that are feeding into the issue of abortion.
41:56
Because where I believe we fall short many times is when we isolate the decision to abort
42:04
and take it out of the context of someone's entire life.
42:09
And that's where I think pro-lifers can do better, even if we're just listening and
42:14
understanding.
42:17
That's one thing where I typically hate it when people are like, I just want to have
42:20
a conversation, I just want to listen, but there are things that we need to fill in the
42:24
gaps where you can be literally, forgive the pun, black and white on particular things,
42:29
have no movement, be binary in your decision-making, but inform that with a little bit more context
42:35
to what's actually happening with people.
42:36
And the thing is, if you can be black and white on killing children, and I'm black and
42:43
white on that, on killing people, because we say they are people, they're pre-born people,
42:50
we can be black and white on killing pre-born people no matter what your circumstance is,
42:55
we are black and white on that.
42:57
And we can also say at the same time, I understand that your situation may be a little bit different
43:04
than somebody else's in these areas.
43:07
And how can I or how can we address those areas and be open to seeing how those issues
43:15
may impact your decision here?
43:17
Well, never sacrificing conviction.
43:21
You don't sacrifice conviction, even if you have compassion.
43:24
And what happens too often for all of us, we're all prone to do this in our own circles
43:29
and our own tribes, is to separate the two and say, "If I'm having compassion for that
43:34
person, I am absolving them of guilt."
43:38
And no, that's not what we're doing.
43:40
I'm trying to present both, trying to create understanding, while also saying no, you have
43:45
a decision to make, and I'm going to agree with the decision at all.
43:49
Yeah, I think that's a good distinction because I think people, if you come towards the center
43:55
on any type of, I guess the way that I've said it before, like with the trans issue,
44:00
there's no middle ground on the trans issue, you're either forward or against it, but that
44:04
doesn't mean you have to completely shut out conversation and talking to people about where
44:08
they are.
44:09
But I think this comes back around to the narrative of sex in the home and in the church.
44:15
There's a short quote from your book.
44:16
It says this, "That's why I believe it's vital that we start having more authentic God-honoring
44:21
conversations about sex, both at home and in the church."
44:25
Now, obviously, this is an oversimplification, but I see the pro-life pro-choice issue as
44:33
not an abortion issue, it's a gospel issue, because if you really believe that we are
44:39
made in the image of God and that Jesus was sent here by His Father to be the propitiation
44:43
for our sins, and that's how we're going to be able to get to the afterlife and be in
44:47
God's presence, man, killing an image bearer of God doesn't really end up on your menu
44:52
that much, but I mean, I didn't grow up in a Christian household, I grew up in Oklahoma,
44:58
so we were Christians because we were born in Oklahoma, but we didn't have these God-honoring
45:02
conversations about sex, so frankly, Benjamin, I don't know what those look like for children,
45:07
and I don't know what you and your wife are doing in your home, but talk to me a little
45:10
bit more about how those conversations in the home and in church can be well upstream
45:17
of a woman's decision to kill her child.
45:19
Yeah.
45:20
Well, I was born in Virginia, the Commonwealth, so we have our own Virginia pride, but it
45:26
ain't nothing like Oklahoma, Texas pride.
45:28
If you read the narrative of Scripture, and you go cover to cover, I would venture to
45:37
say that outside of the Holy Spirit, sex is probably the most powerful influence that
45:44
we see in Scripture.
45:45
Why do I say that?
45:46
Well, when I look at people like David and Beth Sheba, or when I look at Abraham and
45:50
Sarah and him sleeping with Hagar to make God's promise come through to fruition when I look
45:57
at rape and incest in Scripture, when I look at all the rules that God had to make about
46:02
how to differentiate His people, the Israelites from the surrounding cultures because of the
46:08
sexual idolatry and hedonism that they were involved in, the power of, when I look at
46:15
my own life and our own life and the powers of our hormones and sex, sex is that beautiful
46:20
thing that God gave to man, to humankind, but outside of the proper directives and
46:28
distinctives, it creates so much havoc.
46:33
And it still does.
46:36
And part of the issue while we struggle, I believe, in the church specifically to have
46:40
conversations with our kids about sex is because we carry our own sex guilt.
46:45
And so whether you're a believer or not, you remember things that you did, things that you
46:50
thought about, and you really don't want your kids to ask you certain questions.
46:54
Because it wouldn't be very Christian of you to be able to answer these questions, but
46:57
you know what?
46:58
Your kids are going to have to deal with some of the same decisions and make the same decisions
47:01
that you made.
47:02
Heaven forbid they make the same decision when you could have prevented them from making
47:05
a decision that would ruin their lives in many ways.
47:09
And so answering your question, you know, how do we have those conversations?
47:12
We need parents.
47:13
We need men, honestly.
47:15
And I think a lot of this lies on men because we're the ones that don't like to talk about
47:18
it the most.
47:20
We have to be willing to be direct and honest with our kids, with our mistakes, while still
47:25
appointed them to a standard that is not daddy, but a standard, as you mentioned, that is laid
47:30
out in the words of Scripture.
47:33
Because there is a prescription to have healthy sex lives, there's a prescription in Scripture
47:39
to have a healthy sexual legacy and to avoid so much.
47:45
But so often we don't talk about it because it's uncomfortable with our kids, or we just
47:49
we just think, you know, somebody else is going to do it.
47:51
Well, guess what?
47:52
Somebody else is going to do it.
47:53
And I guarantee you they're not going to tell you the right, tell them the right thing.
47:56
Yeah, it's not going to come from a God honoring place.
47:58
And you mentioned the word standards there.
48:00
And it's like, where do standards come from?
48:02
They typically come from the dad, right?
48:04
And the dad holds the hard line of the standards.
48:07
And so if I could wave a magic wand and go back to before you started writing this book,
48:12
I would have like grabbed you by your ears and shaken your head and said, you have to
48:16
talk about this one issue and you have to talk about it a lot.
48:20
But probably the most egregious error of the book is how you don't really talk about rampant
48:26
fatherlessness almost at all in the entire book.
48:30
And again, this is just my opinion.
48:31
You wrote the book, you know what you're doing.
48:33
But aside from you talking about yourself and your family, which I enjoyed because it
48:37
gave us a little peek by in the curtain of how you do life with your wife and your children,
48:41
you hardly mention fathers at all in the book and you focus on the mothers and sometimes
48:48
the children and you spend less than two pages and it was towards the very end of the book,
48:53
even talking about fatherhood and fatherlessness and you know, it's mainly just generic stuff
48:58
to keep the narrative of the chapter going.
49:01
But there was no, what I would have wanted, you know, a full repudiation of men abandoning
49:07
their families, abandoning their communities.
49:10
There was no mention whatsoever of the fatherlessness rate exploding in all communities except Asians
49:17
since the civil rights movement, not just the black community, right?
49:20
Where it went from like 33% to 70% in the white community, it went from 3% to 30% over that
49:26
same time period, a thousand percentage point increase, right?
49:30
And so I guess why didn't you spend more time talking about the scourge of fatherlessness
49:35
because for me, I see a direct correlation between these girls running into the arms
49:41
of these boys that can shave and having sex with them, not having confidence in holding
49:47
their sexuality for their husbands, they're not seeing it modeled, dad's not around or
49:52
dad's a [inaudible], like help me kind of see why that wasn't more of a focus of the book.
49:58
Well, the short answer is because that wasn't the focus of the book.
50:03
The short answer is the focus of the book was centered on justice and on a narrative that
50:08
isn't really talked about as much, although I'm glad you mentioned that I did talk about
50:12
fatherhood and I remember it, you know, even I was speaking, I was speaking, I'm sorry,
50:16
we got a dog and he's, hey, you know, this is a guy's podcast and so, is it at least
50:24
a bulldog?
50:25
Is it a bulldog?
50:26
It's an American bullet.
50:28
Okay, well, see, you could have just lied and it would have been for everybody.
50:31
Well, he's like, he's like 80, he's like 85 pounds, bro, and he's like 11 months old.
50:36
I mean, why are you serious?
50:38
Oh, like he bent the presses.
50:40
I don't know.
50:41
Like he trained somewhere.
50:42
I don't know.
50:43
But anyway, back to fathers.
50:44
I remember I was looking at the March for Life and a couple of years ago, and in my speech,
50:48
I talked a lot about fathers because I believe that when this, that this issue, I believe
50:52
that most all issues that we deal with in our, in our, in the world trace directly back
50:58
to manhood.
50:59
Yeah.
51:00
And I say that because I hate to pick on Adam because we would have done the same thing,
51:05
but you see in Adam, you see all of us, you see an abdication of our responsibility.
51:10
You see us blaming our women, you see us hiding from God.
51:15
You see us doing all those sorts of things that have wreaked havoc in our culture.
51:19
And so manhood is a huge part of that.
51:22
I mean, one of the number one reasons when it comes to a woman having abortion is if
51:26
her father is present.
51:27
And so the purpose of the book is not to deny that or anything.
51:32
I speak, I speak on it and I've spoken on it in length.
51:35
The purpose of this book, however, was to give a new lens, perhaps another perspective
51:41
for the pro-life movement to address abortion, making it unthinkable and unnecessary that
51:47
that many of us haven't drawn correlation with before.
51:52
And so yeah, the fatherhood piece is huge and I've written and talked about that a lot,
51:57
but the short answer for your question, which is a good one, is just that that wasn't the
52:02
crux of my mission in speaking on this.
52:05
Well, Benjamin, you can thank me later for this, but I'm doing you and Tindale a favor.
52:11
That's what your next book is going to be about.
52:13
Okay, your next book is going to be.
52:14
It's already rolling, dude.
52:15
It's already going, but when that time comes, you just send me an autograph copy.
52:22
We'll get you back on here and we'll be good to go.
52:26
So in the book, again, it's not the world's longest book.
52:30
It's, you know, 250 pages or so.
52:32
And so it's not going to be this exhaustive explanation of everything that could potentially
52:36
be done.
52:37
So we have to kind of speak in generalities a little bit, but it seems like, and obviously
52:41
correct me if you would couch it a different way, but throughout the book, you're advocating
52:46
for more government involvement in areas that the government of the United States has already
52:51
proven, frankly, that they suck at fixing and that they actually can make things worse.
52:55
So the government interventions and education have been a failure, wealth inequality, failure,
53:00
race issues, failure, families, abject failure, fatherlessness, which we just talked about.
53:05
They've actually made it substantially worse.
53:08
And so from my perspective, again, this I hate to be generic, but you know, we're just
53:11
kind of stuck with the medium here, but why in the world would anyone in their right mind
53:16
advocate for more government programs that would give the United States government or
53:21
our local governments more of our money and more of our power to fix societal problems
53:27
that they've proven time and time again that they are just flat out and capable of fixing.
53:32
Yeah.
53:33
Well, we're stuck with government, Kyle, we're stuck with them.
53:37
We live in a constitutional republic.
53:40
And so we have to deal with government, whether we like it or not, we're going to pay taxes.
53:45
That's how it was going to work.
53:46
We are going to have certain social services.
53:48
That's how it was going to work.
53:50
And so part of the reimagining process is not to say that government can solve everything
53:55
because I don't believe that they are good at solving everything.
53:59
But I do believe that folks who have the right mind, folks who are pro-life, folks who care
54:05
about pre-born children and women, that we need them to be integral in creating these
54:12
programs and committing to them.
54:14
I wouldn't go as far to say that the government never gets anything right.
54:18
I'm not saying you said that, but there can be a feeling sometimes that the government
54:22
can do nothing right and we don't need the government.
54:24
So I wouldn't say that because there are plenty of things we look at throughout history where
54:29
the government has done something good.
54:31
It has helped people when they needed to be helped and we do need them to be there.
54:35
But I think more importantly, specifically when it comes to, and I talk about this in
54:40
the book, specifically when it comes to black people in this country, the government policies
54:48
have been some of the policies that have hurt black folks the most.
54:52
Sure.
54:53
And that's the example of the GI Bill.
54:55
GI Bill that allowed home ownership for many veterans, many of them not black to build
55:00
wealth in this country.
55:01
And now we look at we have a 10 to 1 wealth gap in this country.
55:04
We can't decouple that government policy that helps some people and say that they had
55:09
nothing to do with the situation and the context by which we see America in this country.
55:14
And so my point and my efforts in the book, part history book, part definitely challenging,
55:22
not going to make you feel good sometimes if you're on one side of the tracks or one
55:27
side of the political spectrum.
55:29
But I try my darndest to cite everything and to give an accurate, I guess, report of history
55:36
and how it impacts the landscape now while still saying going back to our conversation
55:40
about 30 minutes ago that we are responsibility.
55:45
But this is larger than simply telling a young woman, don't don't kill your baby.
55:50
Like, I think we can do more than that as pro life.
55:55
We certainly can.
55:56
We can't do less than that, but we, I would agree, we can do certainly more than that.
56:00
Well, there was another quote in the book that I think maybe speaks to this a little
56:04
bit because we kind of have this modern since Benjamin that if something goes wrong, we
56:10
need the government to fix it.
56:12
Something's going bad.
56:13
The government needs to fix us.
56:14
I feel like I'm in danger.
56:16
The government needs to fix it.
56:18
But here's a short quote from, I believe it was early in the book, as a church, we need
56:22
to become a safe haven, a refuge, a place where the most vulnerable can turn, not just for
56:28
spiritual help, but for emotional material and financial support too.
56:33
I know that there are a lot of churches out there, regardless of size, because I know
56:37
that there are enormous churches that are terrible and enormous churches that are great
56:40
and all the way down to the small ones, it's, you know, they, they come in many shapes and
56:44
sizes and colors and modalities.
56:47
But I feel like, I feel like the church in general has lost the thread where they spend
56:55
a lot more time moralizing and a lot less time ministering.
56:59
And I don't mean spreading of the gospel.
57:01
I mean, actually spending time to get down on one knee in your $1,000 suit and taking
57:09
the hand of a homeless person and saying, not, and not, hey, come with me to my house.
57:14
I'm going to take care of you for the rest of your life necessarily.
57:17
But is there something I can do to pray for you?
57:19
Is there, is there something I can do to be the hands and feet of the Lord in your world
57:23
right now?
57:25
And I think that as America, and I'll get off my personal sermon here in a second, but
57:30
as America becomes more secularized, and we see this in the day to the day to say that
57:35
atheists and agnostics are more politically involved than any other type of group in America,
57:42
it's because politics becomes their religion, wokeness becomes their religion, progressivism
57:47
becomes their religion, whatever it is.
57:49
And the less we depend on the Lord, the more we will depend on daddy government.
57:54
What do you think about that?
57:55
Well, you said a lot there.
57:59
I agree with you as far as the church.
58:02
And even when we think about the early church, when we think about the way, and there's in
58:07
the book of Acts when it talks about the church and the fact that this is within the body,
58:11
this is outside of the body of Christ.
58:13
But at least within the body, it talks about no one being in need.
58:18
And as a matter of fact, two people were killed because they went and sold a field and lied
58:23
about how much money they made and brought it to the apostles, and he said, why are you
58:27
lying about this money that you were supposed to give to the brothers and sisters?
58:31
And so there is Matthew 25, whatever you do for the lease of these, my brothers do for
58:36
me, Jesus is talking about the people in the body of Christ that we should be taking care
58:41
of each other.
58:42
Now, outside of that, clearly, the church has always been those who created schools.
58:49
It was churches that, even in our country, we talk about abolition and creating schools
58:54
for formerly enslaved people.
58:55
It was churches that did those sorts of things.
58:57
It was churches that made hospitals, and it was churches throughout the world who led
59:01
some of the biggest humanitarian campaigns that we see, and so that DNA is still in us.
59:10
And we see it a lot.
59:11
I mean, there are a lot of faith-based organizations in this country that do tremendous work.
59:16
But to your point, we have to remember that.
59:18
What does that look like when it comes to abortion?
59:20
I talk about some of these things.
59:22
It's welcoming these women, four and ten women who have had abortions are inside of our churches.
59:27
And so they are sitting next to us in the pews.
59:30
And I also would like to say that if there's four and ten women, there's probably about
59:34
four and ten men, too, that are coming through our churches.
59:39
And this is a topic, an issue, that most churches do not speak about.
59:44
A recent few research poll came out that says something around less than 10%, or at least
59:49
less than 15% of churchgoers had even heard of sermon when it comes to the issue of abortion.
59:55
And so it's imperative that churches do that, not only offer the physical, tangible needs,
59:59
whether it's helping with adoption or diapers, whatever it is, but just being a place where
1:00:05
people don't feel condemnation, that they feel healing while still holding to a standard.
1:00:12
And politics has become a God.
1:00:15
I don't know if it's always been at this level, but I will say just in my lifetime, look,
1:00:20
I can't speak for what happened for me.
1:00:23
But I can't say it does seem in the last several years there are a lot of cultural wars that
1:00:30
are politically tied, and that has become our savior and has become the banner that we
1:00:37
run under, and there have been churches that have split.
1:00:41
You know them as well as I do, churches that have split over the last presidential elections
1:00:46
and all that sort of stuff.
1:00:48
And I don't believe in John 17 that this is what Jesus was thinking about when he was
1:00:53
praying for us.
1:00:54
Benjamin, I think that we, I love that, but we have to dig down on something that you
1:00:59
mentioned that I can't believe I didn't even think about asking you about it.
1:01:02
So I'm so glad you brought it up.
1:01:05
The fact that churches are not talking about the issue of life.
1:01:09
So I go to a church that I love, there's expository preaching, we stick to the word.
1:01:14
It's not, hey, here's 20 examples from my life.
1:01:17
And here's a few scriptures, I'll sprinkle over the top of it so I can keep my tax exempt
1:01:21
status.
1:01:22
We're preaching the Bible.
1:01:23
But in the first five years I went to this church, the lead pastor maybe talked about
1:01:27
abortion for a grand total of three minutes.
1:01:30
And it was always just kind of like this ad hoc, you know, add on thing that that he would
1:01:35
just kind of mention.
1:01:36
And I actually will go around and speak at churches and I do a presentation called defeating
1:01:41
pro-abortion arguments.
1:01:43
And I get up there and I equip the saints to be able to push back against the darkness
1:01:47
of abortion because most people don't even engage in the discussion about abortion because
1:01:51
they're afraid, well, what if they say this and they don't know what to say back?
1:01:55
And so I say, hey, if someone says, my body, my choice, what do you say in response to
1:02:00
that?
1:02:01
If someone says, oh, you only care about the baby before they're born, what do you say
1:02:03
in response to that?
1:02:05
But so many pastors are scared of the women and their congregations that have had abortions
1:02:10
because they don't want them to feel judged.
1:02:12
But it's like, as you said, they're already there.
1:02:16
And what better explanation of why they need the gospel than the total depravity of their
1:02:21
sin and Benjamin, when I speak at churches, the first words out of my mouth when I talk
1:02:26
about abortion is there is now therefore no condemnation for those that are in Christ
1:02:31
Jesus.
1:02:32
And then I stop talking and then I say, everybody take a deep breath.
1:02:36
We're going to put on our big boy and big girl pants because guess what?
1:02:39
Jesus died for that sin too.
1:02:42
And I just don't know why more pastors of all denominations, all races, all ages, why
1:02:49
are they not talking about this issue, why are they so cowardly?
1:02:52
Yeah.
1:02:53
Part of the reason I think, well, not I think I know is, well, number one, the politics
1:02:59
of it.
1:03:00
That's one because as soon as you open that can of worms, which shouldn't be that way
1:03:04
when it comes to abortion.
1:03:05
And it wasn't always that way.
1:03:06
I mean, when we talk about the history of how pro life and pro choice, even the terminology
1:03:11
came about, you know, you're talking about politics.
1:03:13
You're only talking within the last, you know, 40 or so years of that kind of vernacular
1:03:17
started really getting into the American lexicon.
1:03:20
But when you look at the pastors, many of them are post abortive.
1:03:24
And so abortion is so widespread, is so widespread globally in our country that it impacts so
1:03:35
many different people, even people who are pastors.
1:03:38
And so if you got a pastor that perhaps pay for an abortion or you had a daughter or,
1:03:43
you know, an aunt or a cousin or he actually pushed someone to go get one at some point
1:03:48
in time, is he going to want to talk about those things?
1:03:50
The same conversation that we just had about the sex conversation, I think applies in many
1:03:54
ways to abortion because it's one of those things that you don't want to address because
1:03:58
it's so hurtful and it makes sense that it's hurtful because life is at stake.
1:04:03
Anytime there is life at stake and someone loses life, that hits differently than any
1:04:10
other sort of horrible outcome.
1:04:14
And it impacts what pastors talk about.
1:04:17
And I think because of that, perhaps many don't feel equipped to talk about it.
1:04:22
I recently did a series, it's a six, I love for you to check it out, but it's a six week
1:04:28
series with a group called Stand For Life.
1:04:31
And it's about the image of God, the image of God and people and children, image of God
1:04:34
and women and the elderly and it's six different sessions, it's a free resource.
1:04:41
And we're not trying to tell anybody what to do, but it's a free resource for pastors.
1:04:44
There's a curriculum there that talks about the image of God and then there are six different
1:04:48
sessions where I go through a 20 minute teaching video, it comes with videos just to help equip
1:04:56
not only pastors, but just church leaders, small groups, whatever it may be, on how to
1:05:01
create kind of a culture of life and how we even think about the image of God and people
1:05:08
and what that means as far as the issue of abortion and how we talk about it in churches.
1:05:12
Okay, we'll make sure to get that so that we can put that in the show notes.
1:05:16
I want to make sure that the guys can check that out and make sure that they have access
1:05:19
to that.
1:05:20
And we're kind of winding to a close here, but there are some other things I wanted to
1:05:23
get in.
1:05:24
So I'm trying to pick and choose.
1:05:25
There was one thing that I'm trying to remember, I should have actually made a screenshot
1:05:29
of it, but I think this was when, so I think it was when in Florida, Governor DeSantis
1:05:34
and the Florida, you know, state house or whatever, they announced that they were going
1:05:38
to be enacting the death penalty for people that raped children.
1:05:43
And I was one of the people that was like, yeah, yeah, that'll, that'll make people think
1:05:47
twice if they're going to have a sexual, or if they're going to rape a child or something
1:05:52
like that.
1:05:53
I've been advocating for that for a while and I don't have a biblical way to define that
1:05:58
aside from the fact that if you're, if you're killing somebody, scripture tells us that
1:06:02
we can kill you back.
1:06:03
And you know, but if you're raping somebody, that's different.
1:06:06
But I think if I remember correctly, you tweeted something like, like subtweeted an article
1:06:11
about that and said, wait a minute, this isn't pro life or it was something like that.
1:06:15
Like you were aghast that that people were excited, that pedophilic rapists were going
1:06:20
to be, you know, potentially put to death in the state of Florida.
1:06:24
And so I, I guess I wanted to ask you about that one is my memory and certainly remember
1:06:28
we should have to screenshot for sure.
1:06:30
Dang it.
1:06:31
Okay.
1:06:32
Well here, let's make it generic then let's just make it generic.
1:06:33
What are your thoughts on the death penalty?
1:06:35
Because that is one thing that people will say they're like, well, your pro capital punishment.
1:06:40
So you're not pro life.
1:06:42
And what I say is, are you comparing an unborn child in the womb to a murderer that's living
1:06:48
outside the womb?
1:06:49
Because we only kill people that kill people in this country.
1:06:51
That's it.
1:06:52
So but some people think, hey, you're not sufficiently pro life.
1:06:55
If you think the government should be able to take life.
1:06:57
So what are your thoughts on that?
1:06:58
Are you talking about for rape, like, like, you think there's no murder.
1:07:02
So do you think capital punishment should exist at all murder for rape?
1:07:06
I don't agree with you on that.
1:07:07
I'm a one of murder somebody for sure.
1:07:10
If they're right, babe, that I know, or even that I remotely know, I'm definitely going
1:07:13
to want to, but I'm just categorically, do you believe in capital punishment?
1:07:17
Do you believe in capital punishment?
1:07:19
I agree on capital punishment, but this is what I don't agree with.
1:07:22
And this is why I'm not a proponent of capital punishment, even though, even though on theoretically,
1:07:29
I do agree with capital punishment, I don't agree with capital punishment for some of
1:07:33
the reasons, even that I don't even know if I covered it in the book, I probably didn't.
1:07:38
But the way capital punishment has been administered, and I don't have the statistics in front
1:07:41
of me, but I would generically say when it comes to capital punishment, I mean, even
1:07:45
when we talk about people like Emmett Till, that's a very obviously well-known situation.
1:07:50
We talk about George Steny, or I can name a list of people who were black men or boys
1:07:57
who didn't receive fair trials, who were killed for much less than killing someone else.
1:08:03
And so in theory, I do agree with capital punishment, but I don't agree with capital
1:08:08
punishment being administered in this country because this country hasn't shown me the
1:08:12
responsibility to do it fairly.
1:08:14
So that's my biggest issue, honestly, with capital punishment is that when I look at
1:08:18
who gets killed and what they get killed for, and the rate I wish they get killed and the
1:08:23
unfairness that is administered, I don't agree with it being administered.
1:08:29
I don't think, however, that someone who is totally for capital punishment is not pro
1:08:35
life.
1:08:36
I don't agree with that.
1:08:37
I think that, you know, you for capital punishment, you can be pro life for sure because to what
1:08:41
you said, you're advocating for someone being killed for killing someone else.
1:08:48
I don't argue against that at all.
1:08:50
I'm just saying, in the context by which capital punishment has been administered in this country,
1:08:55
it makes it very hard for me to say yes to that, knowing the process and the unfairness
1:09:02
with that capital punishment has been administered in this country, so.
1:09:06
Well, and I think there's a lot of-
1:09:08
That makes sense.
1:09:09
That makes sense.
1:09:10
You've got something to say, I love it, but that's how I feel about it if that makes
1:09:15
sense.
1:09:16
Well, Benjamin, I'm setting you up for failure here because I'm asking you about these enormous
1:09:21
topics and I'm like, all right, you got five minutes, so give me all the possible scenarios
1:09:25
you get there out there.
1:09:26
This is a discussion that you and I can have over, you know, a drink in a cigar over like
1:09:30
you, an hour, an hour and a half.
1:09:32
But I think in general, you know, Christians a lot of times are guilted by, you know, seemingly
1:09:38
well-meaning people like, oh, you shouldn't advocate for death.
1:09:41
And then they'll turn the gospel on us and they'll be like, wait a minute.
1:09:44
You want that person that raped and murdered three girls to be killed?
1:09:49
But you know, wouldn't you want them to live for as long as possible so they have a better
1:09:53
chance of accepting the gospel?
1:09:55
And you know, it's stuff like that.
1:09:57
It's disingenuous and it's intellectually dishonest, but it's like, you know, in Genesis
1:10:01
and Exodus, Ecclesiastes, like we see, we see throughout that God gives us the ability
1:10:07
to take life to shed the blood of those that have shed blood back.
1:10:11
My argument and I, you know, again, we don't have enough time to get into it for rapists
1:10:16
is rape is a fundamentally different sin than other sins.
1:10:20
This church camp idea that all sins are equal is nonsense, but you are violating the most
1:10:26
sacred part of a human without taking their life.
1:10:29
So when you're holding someone down and forcibly penetrating them against their will, you were
1:10:34
doing something to the Amago day that is more disgusting and more vile than anything else
1:10:39
you could do to it aside from ending it entirely.
1:10:43
And so I think it is, it's in a egregious crime to an almost insane level.
1:10:48
But Benjamin, we'll make this or go ahead, go ahead.
1:10:51
I was going to say you make a compelling argument there when it comes to rape and rape is different
1:10:56
than any other.
1:10:57
I mean, outside of killing someone and one could argue that it's very similar in what
1:11:02
you're killing inside of that person, different than, than everything else.
1:11:07
So it's a, we definitely should have a coffee and talk about it.
1:11:12
All right.
1:11:13
I said whiskey in a cigar.
1:11:14
Okay.
1:11:15
So let's, let's get that straight.
1:11:16
I didn't say coffee.
1:11:17
That is just dirty water.
1:11:18
Nobody wants that, but also this is what we'll just so fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh beans,
1:11:24
bro.
1:11:25
Fresh beans.
1:11:26
Okay.
1:11:27
Here's the idea.
1:11:28
You got to get out of the actual beans.
1:11:29
Okay.
1:11:30
So we'll, you and I will sit down.
1:11:31
You can pour me a coffee.
1:11:32
Don't drink it.
1:11:33
But then as soon as you're done drinking your dirty water, we'll go and do jiu jitsu and
1:11:37
then we'll go grab some lunch and then we can talk about the rest of the stuff.
1:11:40
But we'll make this, we'll make this the last question of the day because I guarantee
1:11:45
you and we weren't able to get into everything today because I really wanted to focus on
1:11:48
the fact that you and I were both team Jesus were both team pro life.
1:11:52
We just may not think about everything in the same way, but there will be people Benjamin
1:11:55
that you already know that are going to read the new fight for life.
1:11:59
And they're going to be like Benjamin Watson's a Marxist.
1:12:02
He's a socialist.
1:12:03
He's a crazy person.
1:12:05
I disagree with him.
1:12:06
I thought he was on my team.
1:12:07
I trusted him.
1:12:09
They're going to feel violated by some of the subject matters you go into.
1:12:13
Some of the arguments that you make and to be frank, there are several arguments in
1:12:16
the book that I'm like, this doesn't make any sense at all.
1:12:18
But it's like you're giving us a brief overview of your opinions on an issue and you're laying
1:12:23
your opinions bare for everybody to evaluate.
1:12:26
And what is your message to people that are going to pick up this book, fervently read
1:12:29
it with intellectual honesty, running through their veins, but come away saying, yeah, I
1:12:34
just don't agree with him.
1:12:37
Perfectly fine, Kyle.
1:12:38
Perfectly fine.
1:12:39
I've been called a Marxist, people don't even know who Marx was.
1:12:42
I've been called CRT.
1:12:43
People don't know what CRT is.
1:12:45
I've been called woke.
1:12:46
People don't really know what wokeism is.
1:12:47
I mean, we can, we, that's another conversation that we should probably go into at some point.
1:12:52
So I, you know, this is what I say about, about me in this book.
1:12:59
I love people.
1:13:01
I love children.
1:13:03
I love the gospel.
1:13:05
I love my savior.
1:13:08
Everything I try to do is an outflowing of that.
1:13:12
The reason why I'm talking about this topic ain't got to do with me because I quite honestly,
1:13:17
there are better ways to sell a bunch of books and talking about this issue than the way
1:13:21
I'm talking about it.
1:13:23
But I do believe in being honest and being truthful and to pushing people toward a holistic
1:13:33
and whole view of scripture.
1:13:35
When I look at scripture, I see a lot of issues that I see that I try to present in this book
1:13:40
and apply them to a very, very difficult topic of abortion and a painful topic.
1:13:45
I've spoken around the country on this issue in a lot of different settings.
1:13:49
This was never my plan, Kyle, I wasn't playing in the NFL and was like, hey, I want to get
1:13:53
out and start talking about abortion.
1:13:55
That was not it, but sometimes God places you in places and doesn't make sense to you.
1:14:01
And I'm trying to grow where I've been planted for now for this season of my life.
1:14:06
And this is where he has me.
1:14:08
And so to the people that, that, you know, didn't agree, I would say thank you for reading
1:14:11
the book.
1:14:12
Thank you for trusting me enough even to read the book in the first place.
1:14:15
And then my hope is that all the things that you agree with and all the things that you
1:14:19
didn't agree with, you will then turn and have that conversation with someone close to you.
1:14:24
Your wife, a classmate, a coworker, a friend, a relative, because I do believe that the
1:14:32
more we have these conversations, the more lives will be safe that this is this is a
1:14:37
new time.
1:14:38
We got to try some different things.
1:14:39
And most importantly, I just want to bring awareness to some things that I think that
1:14:42
a lot of people just aren't talking about.
1:14:45
Well, Benjamin, I lied to you, but I'm going to blame you because you opened up a can of
1:14:50
worms by saying the word woke and then saying we should talk about it more.
1:14:53
So that was going to be the last question of the day, but we're just going to roll into
1:14:57
what will maybe be the last question of the day.
1:15:00
Let's talk about wokeness because I think there was a gal that wrote a book with the
1:15:04
Daily Wire.
1:15:05
She got crushed online because, you know, the interview asked her what wokeness was and
1:15:10
she just wrote a book about it, but she couldn't like say it in a capitalized little quote.
1:15:15
And you know, it just got clipped and everybody that hates, you know, the right loved it.
1:15:20
But I mean, wokeness, the easiest definition is a higher consciousness of supposed systemic
1:15:25
oppression.
1:15:26
But it's like, that's a basic way of saying it, but there's a whole lot more to it because
1:15:30
it's a derivative of Karl Marx's class consciousness and this constant state of awareness of where
1:15:35
you are and the continuum between, you know, bourgeoisie and proletariat and, you know,
1:15:39
the way it kind of leads to critical legal theory and critical legal studies and critical
1:15:42
theory.
1:15:43
Frankfort school, there's all this stuff in there.
1:15:45
But talk to me a little bit about wokeness because I'm all for using the term.
1:15:50
If you know what the hell it means and if you apply it correctly, but when anything you
1:15:54
don't like is woke, you sound stupid.
1:15:57
And I just I want people to to use it properly.
1:16:00
So so give me some thoughts on wokeness.
1:16:03
Are you saying Ron DeSantis sound stupid?
1:16:07
Hey, I like Ron DeSantis, but there are times when you categorize things as woke that have
1:16:12
no tangential connections to the concept of woke to where it's like, it's red meat.
1:16:17
It's red meat for your base.
1:16:18
So it's, you know, it's some brand that is left leaning during the month of June, putting
1:16:24
pride and trans flags on everything that they sell.
1:16:27
They don't even really mean it.
1:16:28
They're just there's virtue signaling.
1:16:30
So it's it's become a red meat virtue signal on the right to use the word woke, right?
1:16:35
Even if it's not applied appropriately.
1:16:38
So you're saying that people on the right, when they use it, they sound stupid.
1:16:43
Sometimes, especially when they use it incorrectly.
1:16:45
Absolutely.
1:16:46
Yeah.
1:16:47
Well, for me, I'll just tell you my experience with woke.
1:16:52
Yeah.
1:16:53
We've been woke long before white Republicans started talking about woke.
1:17:00
We've been woke when I was a kid.
1:17:02
They woke, what woke simply meant was being aware of injustice, specifically racial injustice,
1:17:11
educating yourself on your history, knowing that, you know, certain timeframes, certain
1:17:18
places, certain situations could be dangerous for you.
1:17:23
That's what woke was.
1:17:25
It wasn't a negative as a matter of fact, it was a positive.
1:17:29
And even going back to WB Du Bois talking about, you know, the double consciousness of the
1:17:34
double awareness as he talked about of the black American of being being American, yes,
1:17:42
we're American, America's my country, I love America, but also understanding that there's
1:17:47
a part of you that you've never acknowledged or been to and you have this double conscience
1:17:52
of being in a country that is your country, but a country that hasn't always accepted
1:17:55
you and also understanding that there's another part of you that is across the ocean where
1:18:02
your history first lied.
1:18:04
And so there's this dual consciousness as WB just talked about it.
1:18:09
And then specifically, there was a group of young men, they called them the Scottsboro
1:18:13
boys who were accused of raping a young woman.
1:18:18
And there was a song by a guy named Led belly that talked about staying woke and these young
1:18:23
men were sentenced to death, they ended up not not being killed because at the last minute
1:18:29
they were exonerated.
1:18:31
But the whole idea of wokeness was that was way back in the I believe the twenties.
1:18:36
And so in in in black in the black community, the term woke has been around for a long time.
1:18:45
And so for me, when I hear it being made pejorative, when I hear it being weaponized and when I
1:18:54
hear it being used as a catch all, as you said, for everything that is, you know, anti God
1:19:01
or anti America or LGBT budget that stuff that it had nothing to do with in the first
1:19:09
place, then it agrees me because it seems to be another misappropriation of a concept
1:19:17
that was beautiful and informative in the black community that is now taken outside of that
1:19:22
and turned into something that it wasn't and used as a weapon and weaponized and thrown
1:19:28
as you've mentioned as red meat to people who could quite frankly care less about the
1:19:34
origins or how it has been used in this country for a long time.
1:19:38
Before 2020, because also it was the timing when woke became so popularized.
1:19:46
It was 2020 when we were all in COVID and there was the murder of George Floyd.
1:19:51
And you remember we were all there all the stuff that was happening.
1:19:54
A lot of positives came out of that.
1:19:56
But part of the backlash or the repercussions is the use of the word woke now to identify
1:20:03
all these things.
1:20:04
And so I'm glad you said about people using it sound stupid because I didn't want to
1:20:07
be that harsh.
1:20:08
But glad you said that's how you're just you're just such a nice guy and you know you're sitting
1:20:13
there and you're nice little couch and all that.
1:20:15
So I can be mean so you can be nice.
1:20:18
But again, I think it's the it's it's the influence of postmodernism and Marxism on
1:20:25
culture that even leads to a concept of wokeness because I guess if you want to talk about how
1:20:29
I was raised because I was raised in a pretty rough city, but I was raised so you couldn't
1:20:34
call it woke you could maybe call it swivel because I was constantly told by my family
1:20:38
keep your head on a swivel, which was their way of saying like, don't be an idiot, like
1:20:43
make sure you're looking around, make sure you're you're not making bad decisions with
1:20:46
the people that you're hanging out with.
1:20:48
The number of talks I had with my parents about what happens if you get pulled over by
1:20:52
the cops, we had those talks all the time like, do this, do this, do this.
1:20:56
This was just something that was part of my upbringing.
1:20:58
That isn't the same for everybody else.
1:21:00
And we just didn't have a word for it that that went any deeper than, yeah, just don't
1:21:04
be a moron like don't do all those things.
1:21:06
But I am concerned, especially as we get into another election season next year, to where
1:21:11
it's like, you have to be more intellectually honest, and you have to do more than just
1:21:17
a univariate analysis of what's going on.
1:21:19
You can't just say that's not what I like.
1:21:21
So it's woke like that that means you're a rubber stamp.
1:21:25
There's not much that a rubber stamp can do Benjamin, other than click the same thing
1:21:29
onto different papers, right?
1:21:32
There's no, there's no nuance, which is everyone's favorite word.
1:21:35
If they're actually dumb, they use that to sound smart, but there is no nuance.
1:21:38
There's no a back and forth.
1:21:40
There's no anecdote that can be brought in to make the conversation better.
1:21:43
So I just caution people, if you want to call something woke, maybe take five seconds to
1:21:48
step back and say, if someone were to ask me the definition of woke right now, could I
1:21:52
give them one?
1:21:53
Because if not, maybe figure that out before we start calling stuff woke.
1:21:56
Is that fair?
1:21:57
That's fair.
1:21:58
I love that.
1:21:59
Okay.
1:22:00
Benjamin, we have covered a lot of ground today and there's so much more that we have
1:22:03
to cover.
1:22:04
And again, I'm very, very intent on you and I getting together and grappling before you
1:22:08
figure out what grappling is so that I can show you a thing or two, but that's all for
1:22:12
me.
1:22:13
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:22:14
Man, no, I appreciate the conversation.
1:22:16
Honestly, I appreciate that you pushed back.
1:22:18
This was fun, honestly.
1:22:20
And I appreciate you reading the book.
1:22:21
Look, a lot of times people, a lot of times people do interviews and they don't take time
1:22:25
to read the book and they pick out a few things and they only pick out the things that they
1:22:29
agree with.
1:22:30
And so I think it's important, life matters enough for us to grapple with how to solve
1:22:35
this problem.
1:22:36
And that's, yeah, and there are a bunch of different ways to do it and a bunch of different
1:22:41
ways for people to come together with different strengths and weaknesses to get it done.
1:22:47
And that's why their show sucks and this show is awesome.
1:22:49
Benjamin Watson, thank you for coming on Daunte and Life of Man's podcast.
1:22:53
Thank you, sir.
1:22:54
Yeah.
1:22:55
There you go, guys.
1:22:56
Hope you enjoyed my time with Benjamin Watson.
1:22:58
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost add on Daunte and
1:23:01
Life.
1:23:02
Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental
1:23:05
and physical resilience.
1:23:07
So the three links I've got for you today, I've got a link to the Watson family website.
1:23:10
I got a link to where you can buy your copy of the new fight for life.
1:23:14
And I've also got a link to that thing that he talked about in the interview, the little
1:23:17
six session thing that kind of helps out with churches and the pro life calls.
1:23:20
It's called stand for life.
1:23:22
So I have their website on there as well.
1:23:24
Thank you guys for listening to this episode.
1:23:26
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
1:23:28
star review.
1:23:29
If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email
1:23:33
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1:23:35
That's I in F O and on to not life, follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and
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1:23:43
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1:23:46
Also we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:23:50
The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self titled debut album
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1:23:56
The links are in the description.
1:23:58
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:24:00
Remember keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:24:06
You're seeking the lion of Judah.