Last week, we were joined by Amanda Achtman of Canadian Physicians for Life, an organization on the front lines in Canada's culture wars, where she leads ethics education and cultural engagement. Her work focuses specifically on offering hope and preventing euthanasia, and she is one of the leaders in the battle against the prevailing culture of death. The episode includes hard facts and sad stories about the comfort level with death-on-demand in Canada and other rich nations, and we hope you will check it out (and support Amanda's very important work) if you have not done so already. Find the episode here.
A couple days before we released the episode, news broke that former President of the United States (and current candidate for the presidency again) Donald Trump had barely survived an attempt on his life. We know now that a 20-year-old man tried to assassinate the former President with a firearm by firing from a nearby roof during a campaign event while the former President was speaking. The shooting killed one spectator, sent several others to hospital, and Donald Trump was hit in the ear by a bullet that if placed even a couple inches differently would have killed him.
Whatever your political or ideological views, this should shock and scare you.
I'm personally of the view that Americans, and especially Catholic Christians in that country, face two equally awful options when they vote (or choose not to vote) this November.
On the one hand, until his (laudable) decision yesterday to drop out of the race, Joe Biden was showing clear and sad signs of mental decline, was routinely confused at public events, was losing his place on teleprompters, and almost constantly veered into incoherency when speaking. He was being accompanied everywhere by sycophants and lackeys who seemed to exist only to try to hide his decline. The man with arguably the most influential job in the world (and certainly in the West) isn't even allowed to take spontaneous questions but instead only responds to those questions his handlers preapprove or write themselves. Further, Biden is (or claims to be) a Catholic and yet his is the most aggressively anti-Catholic administration ever seen in the nation's long and well-documented history of anti-Catholicism. His administration is not satisfied with merely endorsing and implementing policies contrary to Catholic moral teachings but rather introduces and enforces policies that are explicitly and irreconcilably hostile to the Catholic faith. Biden's administrative agencies expressly and deliberately force policies upon both public and private entities causing Catholics to participate in morally repugnant practices, particularly with respect to the poison of gender ideology (which Pope Francis has warned about and condemned repeatedly). Further, and most alarmingly, Biden engages in what can only be described as pro-abortion advocacy despite the fact that the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 2271) states:
"Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law".
Additionally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 2272) states:
"Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life."
I want to be charitable toward Joe Biden and give him the benefit of the doubt, but anything other than a pro-life position is impossible for a Catholic Christian to maintain. Joe Biden seems to epitomize "cafeteria Catholicism" (i.e., pick and choose). He is a hypocrite, or worse. I am pleased to see him dropping out of the race, yet his most likely successor (i.e., the current Vice President) has been every bit as "anti-Catholic" as Biden, and perhaps more overtly so, in her political career, so this may indeed be a change for the worse. Time will tell.
But on the other hand... Donald Trump's character flaws are legion. This hardly needs explaining. It is difficult to even know where to start when discussing the problems with this man. His narcissism and psychological instability are almost without equal in Western politics. Catholics who have justified a vote for him based on his policy positions against abortion no longer have this justification as he says he isn't interested in the issue any longer. His positions on immigration, in-vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and capital punishment (among others) are as antithetical to Catholic moral teaching as those of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
All that said, surely no reasonable person can justify harboring hatred toward either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Irrespective your personal political views, which are almost certainly fortified in your own narrow and confirmation-biased echo chamber, you must see in these men fellow human beings and, if you are a Christian, you must acknowledge that their lives are sacred. You have no choice but to love them. Given some of the sentiments shared publicly following the attempt on Donald Trump's life, it is clear that many (so-called) Christians do not realize this (which I find deeply disturbing), and it is equally clear that many highly educated people in our society wish evil upon their fellow men without a second thought. In fact, some of the most educated people in our society do so.
Consider this...
My father and both of my siblings have PhDs. Collectively, we (4 people) have 15 university degrees. Many of these were awarded with perfect grades. I'm the "dumb one" without a doctorate, yet I'm currently a graduate student at Canada's top university and my GPA is 3.9 on a 4.0 scale. I have lectured at 5 universities and I currently teach at 2. So, you might say that we and I know a little about advanced education and succeeding therein.
These facts say nothing about the quality of our or my decisions, or our or my morality.
No level of education, academic track record, number of credentials, or institutional affiliation ensures common sense, good decision-making, or moral uprightness. Sometimes the very opposite (e.g., the overconfidence effect). And sometimes being highly and/or prestigiously educated makes you entirely blind to your own bullcrap, biases, bogus beliefs, and bubbles.
Within hours of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, Karen Pinder, a professor of teaching at the University of British Columbia's faculty of medicine, said, "Damn, so close. Too bad," and then, "What a glorious day this could have been!" on social media. Evidence here:
Her comments came in response to another social media post made by a biology professor, Shoshanah Jacobs, at the University of Guelph, who posted a video of the aftermath of the shooting along with the words, "When 4 inches really matters."
Just to be clear, a PhD-educated professor in the medical faculty at Canada's (second) leading university who is training future (and urgently needed) doctors publicly expressed her disappointment that a fellow human being hadn't been murdered on live television in response to another PhD-educated professor at another Canadian university who also publicly expressed her disappointment that a fellow human being hadn't been murdered on live television.
Read that again.
I don't have a PhD. But I know evil when I see it.
And I know a lot of people with PhDs working in universities, both personally and professionally. They are all more educated than I am and many of them are more successful than I am. And yet I wouldn't trust many of them with the wellbeing of those I care about.
Education doesn't equal intelligence or morality.
This week, we're speaking on the podcast with Dr. Brad Wilcox, Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the Future of Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Wilcox studies marital quality, marital stability, and the impact of strong and stable marriages on men, women, and children and is the author of the 2024 book Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization. Who are some of these "elites"? The same highly educated people I've been talking about.... We hope you'll check out the episode!
God bless,
Travis
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