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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Survive on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ohh yeah, I hate when you open that episode like that. I really do. I love it, Sophie. It makes me feel just shrieking, to be honest. I like an almost an almost sexual expression of satisfaction. That's how you start a podcast, Sophie. That's how you start a podcast. And to to be almost sexual with me, my guests today, Dan and Jordan have knowledge by Dan and Jordan on a scale of 1 to 10. How uncomfortable. Oh, wow. Wow. You're just buying in. Excellent. I was doing macho man Randy Savage. Yes. You won. He was. I was doing straight up. That's what I sound like during sex. Yeah. That that's gonna be very polarizing among the audience. Why I you know, people will have opinions. Why people will have opinions. Why I'm not gonna read those opinions. I I I I for my own mental health. I don't do that very often. Unless polarizing, though. The gracefulness with which Randy Macho man Savage would drop an elbow off the top rope. That's something everyone can appreciate. Yes. On our next episode we'll we'll we'll. Have me and the guests all slowly eat cereal in front of the mic. So we'll see what people hate more. The sex drugs or the cereal. Cereal. See, you could have them name the cereals people might kill accidentally become. Yeah, Robert guessed. The serial that I'm eating is this. Captain Crunch is this crunch. That could be our new show. Sophie. Guess the series. The whole show. There's not enough money in the world to get me to sit through that. But there is enough cereal. OHS. You could do this. Ah, so you know Part 2, right? We should probably get back into the story. So by, by February of 1947, Fifield has built this list of minister representatives, right? That's what he calls the the members of spiritual mobilization, because he's it's specifically an organization for religious leaders. And he calls these kind of, you know, you might call them foot soldiers or whatnot. And his war to make Christianity, capitalism, he calls the minister representatives registers. Yeah, reposters. And in night. He starts doing this in 1944. He has about 400 minister representatives in 44. By 1947, there's more than 10,000 of them within a money behind him. He's able to get out his message and keep spiritual mobilization together. Despite its meteoric rise, he finds great success in arguing against the Pagan statism. Of socialist politics rather than against a social safety net, and for the dignity of individual man as a child of God, rather than against the responsibility of rich people to pay taxes. Clergy begin to flood fifield's Los Angeles office. His phone rings off the hook for weird like in it it's usually people like when people call, it's citizens who have, like, come across his his organization somewhere, and they're they're writing him because they want to get sent political tracts. That's a big part of what? Spiritual mobilization. Because it sends out these right wing scenes and books from authors like Garrett, Garrett and Garrett. Garrett is a GARET, is his first name, and then his last name is spelled the right way if you heard of this guy. No, no, I have not. I've never heard of anyone being named Garrett twice. Yeah, it's a bad decision. Obviously twice as many times as is the wrong number of times. But but but Robert, is it a typo or is it spelled the first name spelled differently than the last name? It is it is the first name spelled differently. Is it a key and Peele bit I actually kind of I kind of like the different spellings. Yeah. The first thing that that that got me the first name has one R1T. The last name has 2R22R's. 2T's is it correct or is it Garrett? Garrett yeah. I don't like it. You're gonna give him that. I have questions. He's so he Garrett. Garrett is like a an EIN Rand type figure like he's a libertarian fiction mean awesome. Yes, uh, I mean based as hell. So he writes. He writes some of the most insufferable sounding literary libertarian fiction I've ever heard of. You can find all of his books today, hosted online for free by the Mises Institute. If you if you want to read Garrett Garrett. He was big in the 20s and 30s. And and if the summaries I'm reading are anything to judge by, like it is some of the most insufferable **** ever. One of his books is called Satan's Bushel, and here's how the Mises Institute describes Satan's bushel. What is Satan's bushel? It is the last bushel that the farmer puts on the market that breaks the price, that is, reduces it to the point that wheat farming is no longer profitable. The puzzle that afflicts the wheat farmers is that they sell their goods when the price is low and have no goods to sell when the price is high. Withholding goods from the market is 1 answer. But why should any farmer do that? What is the answer to this problem? Working from this premise, then, as implausible as it may sound, but the central figure in this book is the price of wheat. It is the main source of drama. The settings are the wheat pit at the Chicago. Jade in the Kansas wheat fields, yes. He wrote a book where the protagonist is the concept of wheat as a commodity. I ******* love how bored Satan has to be all the time where he's like, listen guys, we've got nothing going on today. I don't know, let's **** with the price of wheat. Yeah, there's no more relatable protagonists than the price of the price of wheat. The heroes journey of wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat initially rejects the call. To adventure, but then accepts it after finding a mentor. And the resolution, of course, is subsidies. Yes, yes. It always it all works out. It's perfect. It is also just a weird of darkness was my favorite book. Very telling because Garrett Garrett is huge. He's one of the most popular author authors that Fifield's distributing. It's very telling of these guys ideology that like, you hear, hey, we've gotten so good at farming wheat that it's it's basically free. And instead of being like, oh good, no one will ever not have bread again, the dream of human beings for thousands of years. Finally realized it's Oh my God, then we won't make money. It's it's it's unfortunate the way that the system works. Yeah, so. A lot of drama in the book hinges upon someone who's apparently poisoning all of the wheat as a favor to the farmers. Like poisoning the wheat to kill it so that it will make wheat more valuable to help the farmers. Like this guy. Sounds like a name was Monsanto. This is crazy. This is the most amazing book I've ever heard of predictive programming, if I understand correctly. Does is the person who's poisoning the wheat a heroic character? I think. So. I have that kind of. I'm gonna be honest with you guys. I didn't read this ******* book. Absolutely did not read this ******* book. I read a summary of the book by the Mises Institute, which by the way, this is this is y'all will enjoy this. In its biography of Garrett Garrett, the Mises Institute notes that he was, quote, as noted for his critiques of the New Deal and US involvement in the Second World War. Now, right you, you hear that the only war for whom being against is inherently suspicious. No, no, no, no. It's not that they're against World War Two is that they're against the concept of yeah, if you are against world. Or two, I had better see a Quaker somewhere in your biography, or I am making some dire assumptions. You know, the other Mesa Institute is one of the most the insufferable ***** I've ever run across. Like they they've come up in some of our stuff before, and they. Yeah. One of the things I I note in particular is like, they're like they they have a long argument on their website about why you don't have a positive obligation to feed your children. Like that's the good ****. That's. Good ****. That's the libertarian stuff I love right there. *******. When you've got like, Fred Koch arguing about the fact that people should be able to sell themselves into slavery and ******* yeah, yeah, that's the good ****. If you can't, then do you really own yourself? Yeah, it's really funny, too. Like, it's it's shameful that you've got something as batshit wacko as that is like, slavery is good because otherwise you don't own yourself. And this guy decides to write a book about ******* wheat prices. Like, come on, man. There's so many cooler places to take this. I mean, what's trading places about? But orange prices, it's the same central? No, no, it's the main character, right? I feel like I also there was a gorilla. That's not OK. Is this wheat book available on tape? I don't know about that, but it is public domain. Dan, you could do a free audio book of the week, write this down. I'm going to do this. Satan's bookshelf. Ohh man, that is an MST3K movie waiting to happen. I had to note we're going on a bit of a tangent with Garrett Garrett, but it is important to get some some some texture as to like the kind of material that spiritual mobilization is putting out. And when I saw that Garrett Garrett had been an opponent of US involvement in the Second World War, I did a little bit more digging and I found an article from Garrett Garrett titled War has lost its pockets from the Saturday Evening Post in 1940 where Garrett argues he argues a lot in this article. One of the things he says is that it wouldn't make sense for the Nazis. Use forced labor because that's bad for business. Sure. Nazis, they wouldn't use forced labor. That's not very efficient. I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be straight with you. Indisputable. Yeah. Disputable. Great argument. Remarket. Freemarket. Nailed it, Garrett. I've heard that same sort of like tone from libertarians about slavery in America as well. Like that it's people wouldn't mistreat their slaves. That doesn't make economic sense. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. OK, guys. Anyways, my favorite book of the Bible is Exodus. I don't know why, but. So spiritual mobilization sells this guy's books like hotcakes. Now, flush with cash, Fifield decides to draw in new ministers by making the Gospel of free enterprise profitable. In October of 1947. He holds a national sermon competition with the perils to freedom as a theme, and he offers $5000 in prize money. More than 20,000 ministers submit entries, which is 15% of all clergymen in the nation. So this is now. This isn't just I sent a letter to a bunch of people. This is, I have made a connection. They are engaging directly with the and making propaganda of their own now, which is a really smart way to do this. Right. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Has has part of that been like cause, cause everything that we're talking about now is purely economic and currently in the present day all of that is tied in with a real bloodthirst. So and this time period was that separate, was there still that undercurrent of like and you're going to have to kill infidels? Like that kind of thing or. Yeah, that's there. I mean these guys are very, we'll talk the Korean War comes into this a little bit. You know, they're, they're this is this immediate post war period. There's not quite as much of that just because everyone's kind of tired of fighting for a little. Everyone's already fought out. But once we know several million died, whatever, once we start getting into these wars in Korea and Vietnam, yes these guys get very pro killing the Communists and you know that this is cool. This gives birth to the, to the, the chunks of the conservative movement that are Pro Rhodesia and all that stuff. Cool, cool, cool. I love it. Yes, yeah. So Pew and the Nam are so happy with this, this thing that Fifield carries out, getting all these ministers to engage with this propaganda that they double his annual budget. Pew generally takes a lead here in soliciting donations from his rich friends. He he sees this as a success and he wants to like a crack has been made in this wall of leftism in in the clergy in America, and he wants to shoot as much ******* water into that crack as possible to try to expand it. So he tells his fellow rich guy friends it is hot that spiritual mobilization should be at the top of the list for all their donations, citing the polls that he paid for that showed ministers as the most influential moulders of public opinion. But as this experiment rolled forward, there were some on the left who could see the shape of was starting to take form. I'm going to quote now from Kevin Cruz's book 1, Nation under God, how corporate America invented Christian America. Quote in February 1948, journalist Kerry McWilliams wrote an acidic cover story on it. Or the nation with saved Christianity and the save Western capitalism chance becoming almost indistinguishable. A major battle for the minds of the clergy, particularly those of the Protestant persuasion, is now being waged in America, he began. For the most part, the battle lines are honestly drawn and represent a sharp clash in ideologies. But now and then the reactionary side tries to fudge a bit by backing movements which mask their true character and real sponsors. Such a movement is spiritual mobilization. McWilliams explained to his readers the scope of its operations, noting that it now had nine organizers. Working in high rent offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and had distributed hundreds of thousands of pamphlets to prohibit by pro business authors for free. But no one knew who was funding the operation, McWilliams warned. There had only been vague statements from Fifield that non ministers who have a common stake in the America and Christian traditions cannot contribute service, and that it was only natural that they give substance instead, and mcwilliams's withering account. Fifield came off as a charlatan who prostrated himself before the apostles of rugged individualism to secure his own. Fame and fortune and in return prostituted himself for their needs. So and this is how it's framed at the time because they don't have access to like the letters and stuff I've been reading. They don't know that this is all funded by the Nam, right. That's not super obvious to any to anyone writing it. But he can tell from what Fifield saying that like there is some shady business interest in spiritual mobilization like he's speaking about it. I always love more than anything whenever people use adjectives that are thoroughly inadequate for the job of like you know. These fudging things like, no, there's a multi $1,000,000 campaign behind a lie. Yeah, like this is not fudging things. He's not like, ohh, it's not made, it's not $50.00, it's $100. It's this ************ is killing everyone. Yeah, I mean, obviously at the time too, like McWilliams doesn't have all that data. There's only so much you can say in an article without being sued. But he you you can see he's like, he's he he knows what's happening. He just doesn't have the proof of it, right? Like he's he's trying to like, put that out as clearly as he can. Something's rotten in Denmark and the the the Dutchess India Company. Yeah, this scares the hell out of the Nam, right? That that, that, like, this guy's kind of on to them and that he's attacking Fifield is like a charlatan. So they mobilize a bunch of rich guys, including the President of the Republic Steel Corporation, to send out mass mailers to other business owners and executives defending Fifield. And as a fun fact, the guy who sends out this mass letter is the Charles White, the President of Republic Steel. Charles White presided over the 1937 Memorial Day massacre when ten Republic Steel union workers were gunned down by policemen for striking. So that's the guy. He sends out a letter to a bunch of rich guys calling Fifield. One of my personal friends to solicit donations for us is literally about to say Republic Steel sounds like a dystopian future name for like, the overarching and then the next thing you said murdered 10 people and I'm like, well, you know what? Let's not even, yeah, there we are. Well, from this letter that White writes defending Fifield, our company has supported this crusade generously for some years, and we believe in it deeply. The more so since I have read this irresponsible article and see how the opposition feels about spiritual mobilization, white then went on to ask the people he'd written this letter to why don't you send a check at once? And in short order, more than $100,000 had been donated by business owners to spiritual mobilization. And like a couple of days. It's great. Like, he's doing the whole. They're trying to cancel us. Like the liberal media is trying to cancel us. You need to send us money very ahead of his time. You know, Trailblazer, just such a like you're getting money from people. If you get $100,000 from people, it's people who do not give a **** about money, you know, like in two days. That's crazy. Yeah. And then just that's like a million or two, that's like a couple million bucks then. Yeah. So spiritual mobilization itself responded to this criticism in the nation and that time honored. Addition of smart *********. It got bigger and louder. In 1949 it launched the Freedom Story, a 15 minute radio program presented by Fifield. And here's Cruz and Politico describing this. In the original scripts, Fifield made direct attacks on democratic programs at home. But his lawyer warned him they would lose the public service designation that gave them free airtime if he were too plain spoken with partisan attacks. Instead, he advised you're gonna go down the Mike Lindell route. You gotta stop. You gotta stop. I could see the future. You're gonna become mark with Linda. No, that's not even what he's worried about. He's fine with him becoming Mike Lindell. He doesn't want him to have to pay for this ad by it being too political overhead. Yeah, right. So he advises instead that Fifield should basically instead of don't talk about democratic policies in the US that's not allowed. You. You'll get, you know, we'll have to pay for it then. But if you talk about foreign examples of the Minnesota ****** socialism, then that's not political. Hey, why don't that's we own. Why don't we own Venezuela? Like, I mean, honestly, like, look into your heart. OK, so anything outside the United States? Not politics. No, not politics. Can't be politics. Not percentages. Maybe not exactly. We we just talked about how nonpartisan the Crusades were. Yeah, good times. So since Fifield's Nam backers had lost a lot of friends in me or had a lot of friends in media. It was child's play to ensure that this freedom story got free airtime. Over 500 stations. So this this thing again and they're like, you ************* could pay for this. But you know, it also sounds better if it's not political, right? It doesn't sound like I'm a guy making a right wing like AD if I'm just talking about the history and the dangers of creeping socialism to freedom and these other countries, you know, it's it's it's a smarter way to do it. So this is a big hit, gets out to a lot of ear buds and five fields. Next big Move is a four day conference in 1950 with 25 of the most popular ministers in the United States. And an assortment of big business leaders, including Crane and Pew. A pair of economists, Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, were also present. Yeah, but they're great. The Austrians are here. Yeah. So meet me back in the mix. Between writing articles about how you don't have to feed your kids and how your child labor is fine, what are you doing feeding your kids? You're wasting your time shows up here. Good, good. Really, you're good for him. He he sits up. Perhaps children should starve and a rounds of applause come from the ministers and business leaders in the audience, like freedom. And listen, when I when I went to and took my dog Jake to basic dog training, the dog trainer was very specific. She said you have to work for your paycheck and now it makes perfect sense to me. People are dogs is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, yeah, that's that's what that's that's a big part of what's happening at this conference. So Fifield describes the goal of this like symposium as to quote define the conflicts in this critical period of civilization and to establish freedoms, answers to these problems. Tentatively, the agenda will cover such subjects as the relationship of liberty to Christianity, equality and morality, competition and corporation, and the application of true Christian. Principles the present day problems. So. This is a big hit. It gets the most popular preachers in the world or in the country, together with all of the richest people in the country and a bunch of libertarian economists, and they all start being buddies with each other. And they start, like, spreading their ideas around. And these ministers go back to their gigantic churches and, like, start talking about some other things they've encountered. Social mobilization launches a magazine called Faith and Freedom, which was billed as a place where ministers could write in and express their views freely, debating with one another over the issues of the day. But almost all of those debates were really just screeds against. Social welfare, right. There's not like a left wing, right wing debate. It's like, how much should we stop feeding people, right, right. And and this is actually where we get into one of the precursors of the modern right wing like bug bear, that Satanists are secretly behind socialism. I think this is the start of that. And I I wanna read a quote here. This is from one of the ministers who wrote for faith and freedom and an essay he did called Pagan origin of the social gospel, which in which he argues that Pagan influenced strands of Christianity. And he he includes Unitarianism here, sure had led to a quote, shift in faith from God to man, from eternity to time, from the individual to the group, from individual conversion to social coercion and from the church to the state. That like Pagan origin of the social gospel, that like the idea of a social welfare state in any way is he's not calling it satanist. But it's it's not Christian. It's fundamentally anti Christian is is. Don't swear. That argument starts, I think, yeah, it's a transition towards Satanism because it's God. Than humans. Then Satan's next. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, I I feel, I feel for the for these people. Right. Because you used to be able to just call someone a witch and people would believe you. Yeah. But now you have to do this whole dog and pony show with all these lies. You have to do all this Pagan ****. You can't just say people who like socialism or witches. So let's kill them. But to be fair, they did do empirical tests about whether or not people were witches. Well, they were heavy. Yeah. Yeah. Or or or they were able to be crushed. Iraq he cultures like there were things you would feed them and if they die, they're not a witch, but if they survive, they're a witch or vice versa. It works both ways. Get a job or have a giant rock tossed on you. I feel like this is very simple. So in 1950, the Republicans, you know, after this is after several years of Nam and Fifield working together. In 1950, the Republicans have a huge win at the midterm elections, right? And this is taken by Pew and the others in an AM as evidence that that what they're doing is working right like this. This **** is paying big political dividends. More funds poured into spiritual mobilization, Fifield celebrated in a letter to the head of General Motors writing quote. We are having quite a deluge of letters from across the country indicating the feeling that spiritual mobilization. Has had some part in the Awakening, which was evidenced by the elections. Of course, we are a little proud and very happy for whatever good we have been able to do in waking people up to the peril of collectivism and the importance of freedom under God. Meaning, now that the Nazis have been gone for a little while, fascism can totally be popular. Let's let's talk it back into fashion, back into it. Freedom under God, because there's nothing more. Free is a tiny number of people owning everything. And that's like, it's under God because that's what God wants, you know? And also definitely not paying taxes. That's true. Well, for sure, God does not want you paying taxes, no? Yeah. Well, now point of having surfs if you have to pay taxes to help them live. ********. Die When they're too old to work or to sell to work. Can you die? Yeah, I bet they have more than one. That'll be 20 got together. We did get there eventually. Do you have a positive responsibility to help people who are dying? Misra says. No. No, no, of course not. And in fact, you have a responsibility to maximize your own profit by letting people die sometimes. Because that's why I read an essay. Yeah. So now, empowered and properly organized, Fifield decides to lead his most ambitious charge ever. He is going to change the 4th of July forever and this is the thing people don't often get. They didn't used to be like a big big thing like we didn't always. It wasn't always like the hugest deal in the world, the 4th of July. Has become that in recent decades. And a big part of why it is what it is, especially on the right, why it is like such a almost a holy day. It is kind of a holy day to millions of Americans that really starts in this. But you know what's starting in this. Right now? Good services. That's right. That's right. Oh, and it's never gonna stop, baby. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the build to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. 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This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about, or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Ah, we're back and I have just learned the news that Buildabear Workshop launched an after dark series of ****** teddy bears. Ohh **** a bear. Love that place, Buck a bear. Yeah. So great. Yeah, I this is my whole world now, Sophie. Cancel our next 10 podcast recordings. I have a new thing to do. Oh, they seem to mostly just be build the bears in pajamas. I wouldn't openly say that on the Internet. Robert, do that. What? You what? I have a new thing to do. Talking about soccer. Bear **** bears? Yeah, absolutely. You know, Dan and Jordan, you guys can you guys can bounce. I got. I gotta deal with this bear situation. That's fair. That's a fair bear situation. So what's up? More care bear than a **** bear. A fair bear situation. *****. *****. Teddy bears. I want a teddy bear that's ready to Netflix and chill. Well, see, this is this is just society maintaining balance. The M&M's become less sexy. Yeah, build sometimes. So the build the Bears have to get have to get more ********. Do you know what's crazy? The care bear that had a Volvo on its stomach got cut real quick. Yeah, it's weird. There's a there's a ohh, now I'm in trouble. I mean that is that would basically just be a Fleshlight? That, you know Build-a-bear could make some money with a Fleshlight. Build-a-bear? Hey, I think Build-a-bear's already made a bit of money. Look, this is this is free cash we are leaving on the ground. We need a more ******** teddy bear. Look, right. This has been the problem since time immemorial. The problem with this riff is that it hasn't gone long enough. And once again, the furries have been on the cutting edge of ******** teddy bears. Always. Well, they sponsor yes yeah we are. We are we are sponsored by the concept of having sex with anthropomorphized Teddy bears Adam and eve.bear.com. Yeah that that is really the primary reason this podcast exists. Big **** bear. That's that's our sponsor Sophie really staying quiet here. So when we last left our actual episode our our buddy Mr Fifield has decided he's going to change the 4th of July and to explain what his plan is I'm going to quote from Kevin. Cruise again to mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they proposed for the week surrounding the 4th of July a massive series of events devoted to the theme of freedom under God. To that end, in June 1951, the leaders of Spiritual Mobilization announced the formation of a new committee to proclaim liberty, the Cpl to coordinate their 4th of July Freedom under God celebrations. Despite its apparent spiritual emphasis, the true goal of the committee was advancing political conservatism. Its two most prominent members had been brought low by Democratic administrations. Hoover. Driven from the White House 2 decades earlier by Franklin Roosevelt. You're driven from the driven from the right answer. Riven from the stones and chains and whips. Pennsylvania kept. Pennsylvania. Yeah. You you wanna guess who who Hoover's partner was in this? Who are you gonna put up next to Herbert Hoover in this 4th of July event? General Douglas MacArthur? Yeah, baby, because he had just gotten fired by Harry Truman for wanting to nuke all of China. In Russia, basically, sure. During the Korean War, he was like, why don't we start a nuclear war that kills 10s of millions of people in order to win in Korea? And Truman was like, oh, God, you're out of your mind. You should not be in charge of fighting men anymore. And then MacArthur said, what about freedom? Yeah. And that's that's what he spends the rest of his life doing in his defense. At the time, the military was just firing nuclear bombs into Arizona and forcing troops to walk through it in case it gave the why don't we know? We should at least nuke the enemy as much as we're nuking ourselves, right? Absolutely. That's just fair. That's Doug Mcarthur's attitude. OK, so he he had gotten fired two months ago when he gets put in this committee, right? Like, he has just gotten out of the Korean War business. So he immediately goes into let's make Christianity capitalism by subverting the 4th of July to our own purposes so these guys get joined by a bunch of different legal, like conservative right wing media figures, entertainment industry. Figures who are like, very right wing. Bing Crosby is a member of this committee, right? Bingo. James O'Keefe? No. But Cecil. So every time I've watched white Christmas, I've supported a ******* Nazi, *** **** it. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Old blue eyes wasn't a good man. She can't imagine you not just assuming that Cecil B de Mille is on the committee to proclaim liberty. Yeah, but of course he is. Walt Disney is on the committee to proclaim liberty. Of course he is. I just didn't know that Bing Crosby was a Nazi. Yeah, he's pretty far right. And of course, our buddy Ronald Reagan is on the committee. Well, yeah. And then you've got a bunch of big business types. There's J Howard Pew, obviously, Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, James Kraft, Harvey Firestein. The guy for the tires. Very different, very different. I was living in Independence Day. I was like, Oh my God, how can we do this? Mail Craft, Henry, use, Fred Maytag and JCPenney. All of these guys are are are part of the committee, are hanging out with bingo, you know, trying to do what killed democracy. Every time you learn the history of where you shop. If it's been around for longer than 50 years, you're like, why, why aren't I burning? It's down right now. Why can't I just lighting it on fire? Just should? Everyone briefly asked in 2020, and there's zero reason citing times. There's zero reason for a Hobby Lobby, Hobby Lobby to still be standing. Like zero reason they got a house, those stolen artifacts. That is true. And now we're back to Indiana Jones. So you wouldn't think a group of luminaries and brands with that kind of star power, you got all the Big Ben Crosby and Walt Disney together finally with with Douglas MacArthur. It is a dream team of dudes who sucked, but you wouldn't think like with that kind of. They're also dudes who are pretty good at being famous. You wouldn't think they would have needed to advertise for this sort of thing, but by God they do. Disney, Firestone, all of these big corporate like ************* take out a series of full page newspaper ads advertising all these events around the 4th of July. That's like week of right wing, you know, speeches and radio programs and whatnot. Each of these full page. Adds focuses primarily on the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. A lot of them are just the preamble being printed now. You might wonder, well, that doesn't sound super right wing right. That's just like a historical thing about the United States printing. There's nothing particularly right wing about printing the Declaration of Independence. Yeah, you have to read it for it not to be right wing. If you print it and you don't read it, it's right wing. It's a little. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, that's that is essentially what they're doing because they want people to read the preamble. They don't want people to read the Declaration of Independence. If you read the Declaration of Independence, a lot of it is very specific critiques about shortcomings of the British Government, right? Sure they are. They're problem is a lack of good government. They are as, as you might guess, by the fact that they made a government. They're not. Anti government. And again, evidence of this is that when the revolution was won, a lot of people who had signed that declaration went on to crush a libertarian uprising in their own country with cannons. You know, like they were not. Yeah. But, I mean, you know, reasonably speaking, only two people have actually read the declaration, and that's King George and Nick Cage, and those are the only two. To be fair, Nicholas Cage read the back of it. He did. He. He did not. Not even the front of it. Yeah. Yeah. So quoting just the preamble of the Declaration of Independence allows these guys to turn the declaration from what it is, which is a list of political grievances rooted in a specific place and time. And the solution of those grievances was a kind of government. It allows them to ignore that and just turn through the using only the preamble turned the declaration into a manifesto of Christian libertarianism, where the only focus is in. The founding fathers wanting to remove government, right? That's not the declaration. Isn't the founding father saying we don't want to have government because free enterprise is best? It's them saying this government is **** and we want to do a better job, right? You don't want that thought to go into people's head. In his book 1 Nation under God, Cruz quotes 1 version of this ad paid for by 8 by the San Diego Gas and Electric Company. It told its readers, quote these words are the stones upon which man built history's greatest work, the United States of America. Remember them well. And the words of the preamble were accompanied by helpful analysis by the good people at the committee. To preserve liberty, all men are created equal. That means you are as important in the eyes of God as any man brought into this world. You are made in his image and likeness. There is no superior man anyway. Alright, so we're anywhere. Stop right there. Yeah. Fine. Yeah, fine. We're all gonna go home. End of show. That guy was great. Let's get outta here. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Here is your birthright, the freedom to live, work, worship and vote. Did you choose? These are rights no government on Earth may take from you, except for the government established by this declaration, which didn't let most people vote. But like, whatever, I would like more rights than those. Thank you. Yeah. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. Here is the reason for and the purpose of government. Government is but a servant, not a master, not a giver of anything. Right now we get into the right wing propaganda deriving their just powers from the consent of the govern. In America, the government may assume only the powers you allow it to have. It may assume no others. Right. This is a subtle piece of propaganda, though this is very smart. What they are doing here is recontextualize. And repurposing history into something very different than what it was in order to inculcate a specific political ideology in the population. And this works pretty ******* good if you want to talk about how successful replacing the real look at the world today. Exactly. You ******* talking about ohh we need evidence. Yeah, the **** outta here I am. Do you know how do you know how obvious it is you use the word inculcate? Hmm. I did. I I I wanna quote to talk about like how successful, specifically the evidence that this worked. As both of us have podcasts. Both of us have podcasts. Yeah, but also it's interesting to me that the the preamble remains a really common piece of right wing propaganda. And in a lot of **** that's been happening very recently, I'm gonna quote from Jacqueline Keeler's book standoff, which is about the Bundy occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Quote on January 19th, 2016, Ryan Payne, a Malheur occupier and founder of Operation Mutual Aid, a militia coalition based in Montana, read the preamble of the Declaration of Independence at a community meeting held at the refuge. Political instruction in the philosophical beliefs that brought anti government activists together. An armed rebellion against the feds was common at both the refuge and during Cliven Bundy standoff in Bunkerville. Bought a two years earlier, and that's this is interesting because it's not just the preamble. A lot of these militiamen carry pocket constitutions, right? That is a huge thing among chunks of the the the libertarian right. And the specific pocket constitutions that are everyone at ******* Malheur has are produced by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, which was founded by a Mormon elder named W Cleon Skousen. Yeah, baby, yeah, skousen's in the housing Ohio. There's this guy was a founder of the John Birch Society who are directly talking with Fifield and within AM they are working with Nam right now. Welch is a member like, yeah. And Skousen got sort of, he had to remove himself from the Birch society because he was too extreme. So this is the guy who was too ****** for the worst people ever. Yeah yeah. But it is important to note that Skousen is very much copying Fifield and his organization in handing out these pocket constitutions. He he. Did that. This is where this idea comes from, that we can repurpose pieces of American history for this specific end without like like that. That's like part of a great thing for us is going to be taking these historical documents, adding our own context to them, right? Adding essays to them, explaining them in a way that makes our ideology seem like the only possible American thing. That starts here with the committee to preserve liberty and their effort to recontextualize the 4th of July. And obviously, as we've talked about this. A tremendously successful thing, right, right. So basically what you're saying is that. We need a ******* time machine. I look if I had a time machine. I would. I would. I would get up to some ****. Yeah. The president would be ****** ** if you had a time machine. Yeah. There would be a lot of folks just missing. Yeah. Boy howdy starting. No, that's not a good joke to tell. Back to the 4th of July. In the lead up to the day itself, Reverend Fifield gave a big radio service wherein he introduced to the people of the United States to the committee to proclaim Liberty. He told them its purpose was to quote revive a custom long forgotten in America, spiritual emphasis. On the 4th of July they held another big essay contest soliciting sermons on the theme freedom under God. Fifield encouraged ministers to read the sermons they wrote to their own. Congregations on independent Sunday, July 1st. Now I I want to hone in on this a bit because it's brilliant. Earlier Pew had criticized Fifield for not directly controlling what ministers wrote and said in their sermons, but data had told the Nam that that handing out that's just a sad ****** ** criticism. It is ****** ** just like, hey listen, you're not controlling what everyone saying you ***** ** ****. Hey bro, get your pastors on a leash. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but but what the **** at the same time. Well like Pew is frustrated by this. In Amy's data shows that the pre written sermons and stuff that like that they're handing out don't work. They sound too much, too propaganda. Yeah, right, right. So Fifield gets brothers are right ******* there, man. Well Fred Koch was founded. Number of the job exactly. Yep. So yeah, Fifield gets 17,000 ministers to write their own sermons on a theme that he's chosen and like ties that to the 4th of July, right? Has all of the all of these ministers, thousands of them around the country, giving variations of the same speech on a thing he's picked on my 4th of July. Yeah. That'll put it in your own words, kind of, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's how you copy. Well, it's like a school. Yeah. It's like a high school essay contest. You cheat. Yeah. It's like the winner gets to go to ******* DC yeah. The winner gets to help overthrow democracy and institute an oligarchic dictatorship. Yeah, I mean. You put it like, that's a bad thing, but that is an accomplishment. It is an accomplishment. Look, I'm not gonna taken anything from these dudes. They're good at what they're doing. So I'm gonna quote next from Kevin Cruz again. These sermons were amplified by a program broadcast that same evening over CBS's National Radio network. Cecil B Demil worked with his old friend Fifield to plan the production, giving it a professional tone and attracting an impressive array of Hollywood stars. Jimmy Stewart served as master of ceremonies while Bing Crosby and Gloria Swanson offered short. Messages of their own. The preamble to the declaration was led by Lionel Barrymore, who had this gonna be Mickey Mouse. This is this is what happens when you make a banker the protagonist of one of the most famous movies of all time. Hmm. That's entirely that's all. I know you've got very good points about all of these people, I mean, but I'm gonna blame Jimmy Stewart alone. It's it's all him. Not just a banker, but a banker who, to his credit, bombed, flew a bunch of bombing missions over Germany in World War Two, and then, to less of his credit, was an active general during the Korean War of the Air Force. Don't get me started on Mickey's history and Mickey Mouse has killed a lot of people. But you know what? Mickey doesn't get up in the sky to do it, Mickey. Mickey uses a knife. That's true. Yeah, so Lionel Barrymore. Drew Barrymore is either father or grandfather. I forget right now, but yeah, stop it. Yeah. 10 people alive. I'm sick of this ****. We need more characters in the human race. When you complain about that point about it, he he poses to, like, help advertise this event where he's, you know, all these famous people are are giving speeches and he's reading the preamble. He poses, holding a giant quill and looking at a piece of parchment. Parchment with the words freedom under God will save our country again. This is we don't think about what under God means. So much. But like this is a very specific political line, because freedom under God they have made mean a very specific thing, right? That you have the freedom. To be poor. That's what it means. Freedom under God do these guys is you have the freedom to be poor and you're not free if there aren't poor people. That I'm confused. It's really what you aren't. It sounds like you are not thankful for your freedom, Sir. Yeah, you know. Yeah, that's that's that's where all this gets started. So the broadcast featured choral performances of the America, as well as heritage and epic poem composed by the former leader of the US Chamber of Congress, General Matthew Ridgeway. Yeah, whites are great. Yeah, whites are great. It's dope. Everybody knows it's fun to be 8. The guy who takes over commanding American forces in Korea. Ohh, Lionel Barrymore's, great uncle to Drew Barrymore. Thank you, Sophie. Somewhere in there. So Matthew Ridgway, who's the commander of American forces in Korea, the guy who replaces ******* famous right wing ******** Douglas MacArthur. He's also a right wing ********. And he gives a keynote address from Tokyo as part of this. Like. Big ******* 4th of July brouhaha, and he tells America that the founding fathers were motivated to do what they did by their Christianity. You know, don't read Thomas Paine and the whole book he wrote about how he doesn't like Christianity. They did it all for Jesus, you know, that was the genesis of America. So this is the kind of propaganda that sticks in people's hearts and souls, and it becomes central to their being, the genius here. And this is where Pew and the Nam come into it was that wrangling beloved celebrities like Jimmy Stewart and Bing Crosby. But that's their like. Fifield doesn't have that kind of power on his own, but the Nam does. They've got all these ******* inroads everywhere, and this, this whole gigantic event solidifies the 4th of July as the most sacred day in the right wing religious calendar. Right? And as a side benefit to the corporations who sponsored the show, the Christian libertarian ideology Fifu Fifield expands upon over the airwaves also gets to hitch a ride into people's souls. It becomes part of the 4th of July and part of the celebration of the 4th of July, and part of the lexicon. He used to talk about freedom, gets infected with this thing that he's invented. One of the things that I absolutely despise most more than anything else is finding out some horrific tradition is only like like my dad could have not dealt with it, you know, like, like every time I go to a baseball game and there's a fly by by **** I'm like the wars over, man. Like I wanna start a war like it's that kind of fury at like we're we're past this, man. Yeah. Why are we still, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? We didn't do this for a long time. The information that you have just provided. Jordan will make it so he can't watch the hot dog eating contest. Never, never watch that hot dog eating contest. I will watch. Yeah. I mean, I I've never watched one and never will again. But certainly extra not now. And you can tell Jamie Loftus I said that Sophie is sending her an e-mail. Yeah. You better ******* do it. Yeah. Anyways, I will. So the celebrations. All of this ****. We've talked about as the days leading up to the 4th of July. On the 4th itself, the committee to Proclaim Liberty coordinates Americans in nearly every state to all ring their church bells simultaneously for 10 minutes. I don't like that. I don't like that. That's great. That's great news. In Los Angeles, the city government uses the air raid sirens like to do this. Like they joined in with LA's air raids. This is the first time Los Angeles's air raid sirens are used. That probably scare people who didn't know. Yeah, why would you do this? There's a Cold War on. What is wrong with you? We are fighting in Korea. Everyone has nukes now. One newspapers one. That's one of the things that is like changed so much from growing up in small town Middle America. Is like when I was young, a large group of people chanting the same thing was good. Yeah? Now that we're where we are, if a large group of people chant the same thing, I'm running in the opposite direction. I don't care if it's USA or like *******. Sylvan Esso is great. I'm out of here because there's Nazis there. Hmm. Sophie also just muted me for a second. I just want everyone to know she's trying to steal my, my, my voice and my free speech. I'm being cancelled by the radical. Left. So one of so the ******* Los Angeles uses their air raid sirens to celebrate the 4th of July, and a newspaper writer describes it as in the most fascist line I have ever heard in a newspaper. A scream as wild and proud as that of the American Eagle. Yeah, you love to hear it, Daniel. Can we get an air raid siren so everyone can hear a scream as loud and proud as the American Eagle? Ah, it was a good air raid siren. Not Daniel, Chris. Sorry, beautiful Chris. Just beautiful. The whole thing was a big hit, the committee to proclaim Liberty organizers wrote in a later analysis that quote the very words freedom under God have added to the vocabulary of freedom a new term. It is a significant phrase to people who know that everybody from Stalin on down is paying lip service to freedom until it's root meaning is no longer apparent. The term freedom under God provides a means of identifying and separating conditions which indicate pseudo freedom. Or actual slavery from those of true freedom. So if you meet think freedom is not having to worry about going broke because you can't pay for healthcare. Or if you think freedom is not starving to death, you're a slave. That's slavery. That's a really good point that I hadn't thought of it in that way before. Mm-hmm. But since you just said it, I'm convinced. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. I'm gonna go on to vote for Ronald Reagan in a couple days. It's it's really weird. Freedom. It's really weird how you convinced me of a point that you were in opposition to. Hmm. Yeah. So things start to move very quickly after this point. This is a huge hit. So in 1953, the US has its first ever National Prayer breakfast. We could talk a lot about the family here, but you know what the theme of the first prayer breakfast is? Harder contest, almost basics, funnier. Government under God. There's that term under God again. In 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance has the words under God added to it. Congress adds in God we trust to our stamps in 1954 and to paper money in 1955. In 1956, in God we trust becomes the first official motto of the United States. All of this happens right after this. 4th of July events. I know it's really not fair. That's ****** **. Like if I if my dad didn't have to say under God, I should retroactively not have to have said it. Yeah, when I said the President and furious. And if someone suggests that you shouldn't have to say, your dad's gonna be ******. You know who else is gonna be ******? He will be furious. The hot Dog eating contest people, well, yeah, they but they're always angry. No, who's gonna be ****** is the products and services that support this podcast because they're such good deals that Larry losing money on every sale. You know, they're really because of the deals that we're giving you. It's really hurting them. So, you know, they're all down to go broke. They do have that freedom. They have that freedom to be poor, you know? Ohh. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying. Or for a family. And it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet. Very happy at Mint Mobilcom behind. Now a word from our sponsor that our help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just, you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy. And better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy. Try better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind. Better help calm behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. And we're back. We are. You and I, me, us, all here together, talking. Hey, listen, I just want to say now that now that we're back, you're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you. I'm sorry for all the mean things I said about you off air to your face. That's that's that's OK. I cried on air through it. Sophie says most of that stuff to me every morning. That's how I wake up every day. Also also, I'd like to apologize that I kept telling you that Hoover won Pennsylvania during the process. You you you did say that about 130 times when Jordan was just cursing at me. An unbroken stream. I don't know what got came over me, but yeah, we're a good team. Yeah, it's good stuff. We'll just make that be the ad break next time, so. Reverend James Fifield has accomplished something amazing here, right? Like under God is ******* everywhere, and now we all know the horrible, ****** ** ideological reasons behind those words. In his write up on this whole ******* thing, Eckert toy junior notes quote, many of fifield's letters both to Pew and Crane ended with a request for funding. Fifield continuously presented himself as selfless and living a simple life, even though both his church and his spiritual mobilization were perpetually in a state of need as Fifield asked for donations and monetary interventions to save him. While financially he and his staff directed very few funds are outreach initiatives to the poor, they are spending it all. We're very, we're very. We're the tip of the spear. I just wanna let you. But we need your money to continue fighting the good fight. We're gonna just be. He's pioneering it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he's just talking directly to rich guys. Now. Toy quotes from a letter an employee of spiritual mobilization sent to crane of the Nam in 1953. Quote basic to your thought in this area is the concept of vast majorities. Cannot take care of themselves. They are too foolish, too weak, too gullible. You and a few others who really care feel the need to scurry around and get government to force somebody else to do something for these poor folk. Tolstoy made an observation that bears directly on your little crusade. He said people will do everything for the poor except get off their backs. This is the job for the government and libertarian thought to destroy parasitism by pulling people off their victims back. For this we need a strong government, strong enough to do the job. So you might have good stuff that you might qualify that incoherent. Like, we need a strong enough government to do the job of destroying the government. Yeah, Sir, one more time. A what? Hmm. It's very funny. It's also funny because Fifield himself is absolutely a parasite on the rich. Like, he's just sucking money away from them totally. And they get a lot for it early on, but it it starts, it doesn't work as well after this big 4th of July thing. That's kind of like his his high .5 fields. Yeah, 5 fields. Well, like you did his part. He did his part, right? And that's not necessary after that? That's exactly right. Oh my God. You are really getting to a tribe called Quest, aren't you? Sure? 5305, come on now. Come on. I didn't catch that. What am I, a monster? Am I a bad person? Just wasn't a good joke. I'm glad you said it Dan Yeah Fairpoint being a hero once again. I have the freedom of expression well and and we you also have the freedom to go broke when you get cancer that we have glorious freedom here all of us. O the Reverend Fifield, one of the funny things about him is that for all his love of capitalism and **** every time he tries to do what capitalism he's terrible at it. He he launches a television show based on his, you know, ramblings that does not do well. People do not like the the Reverend Fifield hour but his shoe line no that he doesn't try doing that but he does like he has like this land daily trade. He's like a couple of different business deals that all fall through that he uses the money. These foundations getting from rich guys to try to fund, right? And they start to get angry because they're like, well, he's just using our money to try to get Rich himself, and he's bad at it. And that's the real unforgivable sin to rich guys. This is gonna say, you do not have the freedom to be bad at getting rich. Yeah, you can. You can take our money and get rich. You cannot take our money and not get rich. Now, the good news is that spiritual mobilization had already done the one thing that it had meant to do, which is kick open the doors of religious politicization and tie Christianity to the free market and the hearts of millions of Americans. Just a few years after that famous 4th of July, his work had gone so far beyond him that he had been marginalized. His final straw with the Pew Brothers was a propaganda film which they considered weak. In 1957, Fifield quits spiritual mobilization altogether, and it drifted along on fumes for a few years before it died out. The cause that had birthed, however, sailed right ahead. Pew and Crane found a new minister to invest in, one who was much better with money. You want to guess what this guy's name was? Creflo, a dollar. Not quite yet. Not ******* barjo. Like, I don't know. It's not quite. I do love marjo. No. So they kind of love Margie, but he's very charming. No, it's Billy Graham. Ohhh. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's Billy Graham, baby. So we could have just gone back in time and just slapped that guy in the face and it would all been fine. I think we'd have to go back further. There's actually three boats. If I could go back in time with a chain gun. There's three boats. I'm taken care of, you know? Three boats. Yeah, right. That sounds like that. Sounds like a Coen brothers movie. Yeah. Three boats sunk in the middle of the ocean by a time traveller with a Gatling gun? Yeah. So yeah, Billy Graham Pew and Crane decided to back him next after they kind of abandoned Fifield. You know he has to leave. Spiritual mobilization, yada yada yada. Very sad story for the *******. Here's Eckert toy again. The mission was to spread the free market conservative message through religion had only just begun. And in many ways Graham further nuanced its delivery as Graham himself put it to Jay Howard Pugh. God has given me the ear of 1,000,000. He has given to you large sums of money. It seems to me that if we can put these two gifts of God together, we could reach the World. The message of Christ Ohh Billy Graham, much smarter guy. As a business proposition, supporting Graham was a win win. Graham's ministry would flourish, business interests would be advanced by a key opinion shaper, and unlike Fifield, Graham would not continually pester Pew about his dialer, dire financial situation, and the need for more funds. Graham was a public figure who ingratiated himself into the politics of America, promoting political involvement at his revival meetings. He had preached from the steps of the US Capitol in 1952, and he also had a close relationship with President. Eisenhower, so much comment. Yes, the fame. Famous Communist agent Eisenhower. Yeah. Be like Ike communism. Well, that's also too cause the the very early on the Nam. There's a lot of ties with the John Birch Society, but that's not the best way to get your message out to a lot of people. Billy Graham is a much cuddlier figure. He's got a lot more people are gonna like Billy Graham than than ******* Welch, you know? Well, and his stakes are more real to most people. Like your eternal soul. Whatever bones he's got. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So flank. Yeah. The the first big collaboration between Pew and Graham was a little publication. You might have heard about Jordan you might you might know about this Christianity Today. Ohh I've heard of yeah yeah that's this is how it starts. And my family was more focused on the family by the Dobsons. But yeah yeah, Christian and it's it's a different magazine now, but it was originally number one. It was originally just for ministers and it was founded by Graham and Pew to solidify ties between the right wing and organized Christianity, Pew explained quote. Christianity Today is a magazine conservative in its theology and beamed directly to the ministerial mine mind. Those of us who have given years of study to this problem realize that it is just as important to have conservatism and theology as it is to have conservatism and economics and sociology if America is to remain great. And that was true. That was true. Yeah, they were. They just nailed it. You know, sometimes, sometimes a lot of people are like, ah, they're bad people. But I'm telling you, they nailed it. And I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about ministersonly.com. They're dating website that they add underneath it. That really nailed it. Yeah. Minister ministers.com and priest **** which was its slightly, slightly trashier cousin. That was their equivalent of the ******* bear. Yeah, the ******* bear workshop. The Catholic ****. A bear workshop. They don't need to get into that. That's gonna get unsettling quickly. So yeah, from the beginning, both Graham and especially Pew took pains to ensure they could not be tied too closely to the magazine. They didn't want it to be seen as an overtly political look, even though it was. Despite claiming a hands off attitude, Pew constantly complained about the editorial direction chosen by the man they picked to run the magazine, Doctor Bell. In 1958, Pew hired the Opinion Research Bureau to conduct one of the first Pew surveys, although it was not yet called a Pew survey carried out on the readers of Christianity. Today it found that nearly 30% of ministers still describe themselves as something besides fundamentalist or conservatives. 14% even called themselves liberal. Now this might be due to the fact that Christianity Today was blatant right wing propaganda, so only a few progressives Reddit Billy Graham probably knew this, but he was savvy enough to see how this data could be used to peer pressure more ministers into moving right, he wrote. I believe this poll should be widely publicized so many of our liberal ministers are liberal only because they think it's the popular thing to be. If they could understand that the vast majority of American clergy are conservative, it could swing hundreds of others over to the conservative position. It would also probably have a great impact on our seminaries if properly distributed. This isn't the point but again your character fell apart in the middle of that. I I know I'm not a I'm not a very strong, but it just went just, you know. I mean I just kept thinking like what if the DARE program was more oriented around Christian nationalism leg is all of these pastors had peer pressured each other into doing drugs. I feel like we would have all had to do would have been an incredible place as a country. Acid is being discovered around this time. Amazing time. Yeah. Blown everyone. Only better Logan was around back, then, Rogan Christianity Today is literally just sheets of acid inside of a magazine. And obviously, today it is a different thing. In fact, Christianity Today is such a centrist magazine now that Donald Trump called it far left. Sure, obviously getting good data overall, and where priests, ministers, and reverends are politically as complicated, it's not an easy group to just certify, like survey all of them. But it's worth noting that while roughly 18% of Americans are white evangelical Protestants, they make more than up more than 43% of what, yes, Pew Research calls staunch conservatives. In 39% of so-called mainstream Republicans. So there's a debate to be had as to like whether or not it's broadened or narrowed the the, the electoral kind of possibilities of conservatives in America. But as a result of everything we've talked about this week, the center of the of organized conservatism in the US are white evangelical Protestants, the most reliable voting bloc, the most organized one. And it all started here. Good time, no refuse. Rewrite this story and make it less sad. Make it fun. Yeah, yeah. If I get a time machine, I can do the fun version of this story. That's, you know that that makes sense. Hmm. I mean, it is. Just a lot of people not wanting to. I just. I just hate that when stuff isn't old enough. Ohh, you know what I mean? It's kind of from a relatable time period. Yeah. I can't. I can't like, walk over to my grandfather and be like, hey, you remember when things weren't ****? Like, that's not fair. Like, I should have to go way further back in time. Yeah. This thing for this thing that seems like so entrenched. Yeah, but but it's not like from sudden. I mean, the heartening thing about that is, is because. It's not that old. We could we could do different stuff. Like we could make it be different as a country. Sure. We had a certain point of time. Christianity wasn't that old, and now it's ******* old. You know what I mean? But also Roberts also. What could happen, Robert? To your point, though, too. Like, you know, if your story has taught me anything, if we're going to shift this back, we need billionaires and we need charismatic preachers. Yeah, those are things that I don't think we have access to. I will accept being both. At anytime. As long as everybody else takes care of. I know George Soros listens to the podcast. Sure, sure. George, buddy. We got an idea. We're gonna, we're gonna recontextualize. Question what? What holiday can we take over? Arbor Day? Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna miss already. We're gonna make leftover. You're right. Per day is not ours to take over. We're gonna make Memorial Day about. Car finding. I was gonna say, well, that's what these guys would do. We're gonna have all day about. OK. Sorry. I thought that was Presidents Day. I thought we were branching out. You know, if we made Memorial Day the center of celebration, breaking in to the House of the Alex Azar, the former Health and Human Services Secretary, and taking all the ill gotten gains he made from jacking up the price of insulin, that could be the new the memorial to the dead of the insulin crisis. All we need is a couple $100 million to really get this going. And we can do a deep fake of Bing Crosby and and Jimmy Stewart. We can recontextualize them too. Listen, Jimmy, both of us were kind of milk toast before you say Bing Crosby. I'm in. I was in on hologram. I don't see why we shouldn't go to Alec's Alex Azar's house and and take his take his cars and his nice golden things. I'm Jason Stewart. Yeah, see, now that was a character. Yeah. It's a bit that I did my best there. I can't do. I can't. Well, no, I'm Bing Crosby and I think you should go to Alex Azar's house and take his car every, every time I take about doing. His car? Yeah. Time I think about doing a Bing Crosby. It transfers into a Yogi Bear instantaneously. Hmm. Just that constant, like, hey, we're gonna hey, Boo Boo. Like it's so fast. Yep. There's not a lot of, not a lot of, not a lot of distance of the Sackler family towed into the middle of the ocean on a barge. Hmm. We can, of course, the picnic basket. Hey, Boo Boo. We gotta take down the state. Hmm. Yeah. Bing Crosby. And *******. The the bear. Ah, *** ****. It is based on the name. I ruined the joke. Now it's over. Well, no, you're great. You guys got any plegables to plug? Well, just, you know, we have our our podcast knowledgefight.com India. Where, where, where that lives. Yeah. I just want to aggressively promote my book on this one. It's called the quiet part. Loud? Sure. You can download it for free at the quiet part. Loud. Anything you want. Just read it. Or don't. I really just put it out there and it was great. Anyways, it's the quiet partloud.com. Mm-hmm. It's a passive aggressive plug. Just wanna aggressively promote my book. There you go. Yeah. See, that's how you do it. That's how you plug your learning. I'm trying. You're learning. Soon you'll be as good a pitch man as the reincarnated digital ghosts of Jimmy Stewart and Bing Crosby. I'm just looking for that level of cells. Yeah, yeah. Which by the way, soon, coming soon, anytime, Lionel Barrymore comes back and tells people to rob Bank of America locations. Mickey Mouse takes up arms. Yeah, Mickey Mouse and fighting in the mountains to to make a Zapatista like Colony in Appalachia. I'll be back over after the war is finished. We could do it, everybody. We could do it. All we need is a couple $100 million. So now I'm now I'm in my head reading Civil War letters in Mickey Mouse's voice, and that will be the rest of your life to caravan, honey communication to the government troops. There are slides, so my love for you, Burns says every night. Oh, all right. Well, that should get us some fun fan art. OK, that's the episode. Have a good week, everybody. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Speaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break our handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SPREAKER. Dot com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. In wildlife, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.