Hearts of Oak Podcast

Dr David Wood - Islam's Misconceptions and the Importance of Historical Evidence

Shownotes and Transcript
Dr. David Wood joins Hearts of Oak to recount his transformative journey from atheism to Christianity. Sparked by profound discussions with Nabeel Qureshi during his time in jail. Focusing on apologetics regarding Islam, he emphasizes the need for Christians to address Islam's global ambitions for dominance and engage with its challenges. The conversation delves into Islam's complexities, including misconceptions, Muhammad's role, and controversial practices, shedding light on control mechanisms within the religion. Highlighting the growing curiosity to critically examine faith, the discussion urges critical engagement with Islam, support for individuals leaving the faith, and challenges foundational beliefs through historical and logical analyses. By comparing Jesus and Muhammad, the dialogue aims to encourage critical thinking and foster open discussions to prompt introspection and reshape perspectives on faith.
Dr David Wood is an American evangelical missionary, Christian apologist and polemicist. He is currently head of the Acts 17 Apologetics Ministry. He is a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers and the Evangelical Philosophical Society.After converting to Christianity, he earned degrees in biology and philosophy, and a PhD in the philosophy of religion.
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Interview recorded  15.7.24
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Transcript
Hearts of Oak:
I'm delighted to have Dr. David Wood with us today. David, thank you so much for your time.
Dr David Wood:
Hey, how you doing, Peter?
Hearts of Oak:
All good. All the better for seeing you and better for seeing you in London when you're over with the absolutely awesome conference that you and Jay and many others were involved in. So thank you for taking the time and coming over to Blighty.
Dr David Wood:
Yeah, that was fun.
Hearts of Oak:
It was good fun. Obviously, people can find you @Acts17David on Twitter and @ApologeticsRoadshow over on YouTube. Make use of both of those resources. But David, I've followed you for, I mean, quite a number of years on the engagement on Islam. And obviously I've known Jay for back when he was in London. So 17, 18 years ago, I first connected with Jay and was opened up into the world of engaging Islam and polemics and something I didn't understand before. And I've got to slowly understand and marvel at his ability to engage, as is your ability. But can I maybe step back a little bit?
You've put out videos about you being an atheist and becoming a Christian. And I'm curious about that journey before we get on to your engagement on actually deconstructing Islam and taking it apart and destroying it, absolutely. But your conversion, tell us about that.
Dr David Wood:
I grew up as an atheist. I don't remember ever believing in God when I was a kid, but it wasn't really an issue. I wasn't thinking about it. It just wasn't an issue wherever I was. I was probably, I don't know, 13, 14 when I realized I was an atheist and eventually ended up in jail. And whenever I say that, atheists go, oh, you're saying that all atheists go to jail. No, I'm not. That was me. That was me. Okay. That was me. I'm one of the people who had a jailhouse conversion. So I got to jail and I met a Christian in there. This was a guy who had turned himself in for 21 felonies. So he became a Christian, went, turned himself in for everything he'd ever done. I thought that was the most idiotic thing I'd ever heard about in my life. So I started talking to this guy and he enraged me so much that I was, I started studying Christianity just to, just to argue with this guy. And, uh, uh, anyway, a while later, uh, took a while, but I eventually became a Christian, uh, had to serve some time, uh, got out, went to college. And so, yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's, that's the short version. If people want the law, if people want the long version, they can, they can, uh, check it out on my channel.
Hearts of Oak:
It's on your YouTube channel. Absolutely. What is your, cause you kind of think, I mean, I grew up pastor's kids, so very different background. Uh, you're growing up where you, you never went to church, never went to Sunday school. That just wasn't part of your upbringing.
Dr David Wood:
No, the only time I went to church was if I, and I never went to church when I was like little, uh, eventually we moved and we were closer to my grandmother and my aunt. But if I were visiting my grandmother or my aunt then and it was a Sunday then we'd go to church and I just remember I'd go in there and I'd sit right beside the little clock on the wall and I would just stare at that thing for the entire service and then as soon as it was done I would bolt for the door because they would have like donuts or brownies downstairs and so I'd bolt downstairs and grab a bunch of donuts and stuff.
Hearts of Oak:
But it wasn't on your agenda at all no you you talked about being in prison and I've read Nabil Qureshi's book and you touch on that and that having an impact on you, meeting him. And what was that connection like?
Dr David Wood:
Well, we just, we, we became best friends in college. So we were both on the, uh, speech and debate team at Old Dominion University. And, um, we went on, uh, uh, you go to different competitions and stuff. So this is, this is after I was locked up. So I got, uh, once I got out, I went to, uh, school, met Nabil Qureshi and we ended up sharing a hotel room on a school trip.
And of course, you know, I'd been a Christian for several years now. He'd been a Muslim all his life.
And I'm sitting in the hotel room and I see this guy's a Muslim, but I don't, you don't know if he's like a hardcore Muslim or, you know, liberal Muslim or something like that. So I was wondering, I'm sitting there reading my Bible in a year and I pray, I say, God, if you want me to talk to this guy, let him start it because I don't want people to accuse me of attacking the Muslim or something like that. And anyway, little, little while after that, I'm sitting there reading my Bible and he He goes, he goes, so are you a hardcore Christian? I was like, all right. Come on. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. And so we ended up, we ended up talking a lot that weekend about Islam and Christianity. We just became, we just became best friends. We got along really well. We ended up hanging out all the time together and so on. And yeah, so we spent the next basically four years arguing about Christianity and Islam. he eventually became a Christian. And when he became a Christian, I actually thought, oh, cool. I'm done with Islam right now because the only reason I was studying Islam was because my best friend was a Muslim. If he'd been something else, I'd have been studying that. And so, yeah, he became a, he became a Christian. I thought, ah, cool. I'm done with this stuff. I can get back to stuff I'm more interested in, which is almost anything. But yeah, it was actually part, part of the reason I stayed dealing with Islam was kind of watching the stand that he took for the gospel, and I was just like, wow, Muslims make really cool Christians. And by the way, there's a reason for that.
There's kind of a flip side of what's a negative, and it ends up being a positive. But Islam puts all these psychological barriers in front of people, in front of Muslims, to keep them from leaving Islam. So Muslims are told their entire lives that the worst possible sin you can commit is the sin of shirk, associating a partner with Allah. So if you say Jesus is Lord, you've just associated a partner with Allah. That's the worst possible. That's a one-way ticket to hell. So saying Jesus is Lord is the worst thing you can possibly do. Two, they know they have to give up their families if they convert to Islam, or at the very least that their relationships with their families are going to be very, very, very strained. And three, the penalty for leaving Islam is death. Doesn't happen a lot in the West, but you always have to be kind of looking over your shoulder if you leave Islam. So we're Christians. We preach the good news.
And when a Muslim, what a Muslim hears when we preach the good news is, oh, so you're telling me to believe this thing that's going to have to, that'll cause me to have to give up my family and maybe get my head chopped off and it's a one-way ticket to hell. And you guys call this the good news because it sounds like the worst news ever. So that's kind of a negative. Islam makes it very difficult to leave Islam. But the positive side, the positive side, I said there's There's a reversal here. The positive side is that when a Muslim says, you know what? I may have to give up my family and this may get my head chopped off. And I've been told all my life this will get me sent to hell. But you know what? I want to know Jesus anyway. That's someone who will stand up for Christ. And so, yeah, I just ended up sticking with it.
Hearts of Oak:
What was, what were you, before we get into that, what was your interest before? What kind of pathway may you have followed if someone like Nabeel Quresh had not come into your world and you'd understood the importance of presenting Christ to Muslims?
Dr David Wood:
Well, I was more interested in the objections of atheists because that was my background. So I probably would have done that. And that was the other part of it, why I ended up staying with Islam was that as I was thinking about that, like after Nabeel became a Christian, as I was thinking about what I wanted to focus on, it was just like, almost every Christian apologist out there deals with atheism. And back then there weren't a lot of Christians who were dealing with Islam. So you're talking early 2000s, like, you know, shortly after 9-11. If you went into Christian apologetics back then, you were either dealing with the objections of atheists or you're dealing with cults or or something like that, there were not a lot of people dealing with Islam. It was Jay Smith over there in the UK. There was Tony Costa in Canada. There's Samuel Green down in Australia and a couple of people in the US, but it just wasn't an emphasis. And so there was also that point where, okay, maybe I need to not be doing what I'm most interested in and do what's needed. And so I started focusing on that. Fortunately, it's a different time. Lots of people deal with to Islam now. So these are actually good days.
Hearts of Oak:
Well, of course, the starting point is, why would you engage with Islam? Surely Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all three of the great Abrahamic faiths. So why would you even want to engage on that when someone is following the great Abrahamic faith and therefore is good?
Dr David Wood:
I know you're not serious, but no, it's funny. So you've, we're told, we're told in, we're told in the New Testament what the core of the gospel is. So Jesus spent a few years with his followers. But when you look at the book of Acts, the message they actually went out and were preaching afterwards, this is the takeaway. The main takeaway for them was that Jesus died on the cross for sins. He rose from the dead and he's Lord. So you've got death, resurrection and deity. Those are the points they hit wherever they went. So that was the core of the gospel message for them. And we're also told in the New Testament that false teachers and false prophets are going to come. What are these false teachers and false prophets going to do? They're going to lead people away from that core message. And then you get down to Muhammad, and Muhammad comes along. And Muhammad says, hey, you Christians, you believe in God? So do I. You believe that God sent prophets? So do I. You believe in these revelations, these scriptures? So do I. When it comes to Jesus, you believe that he's born of a virgin? So do I. You believe that he lived the most miraculous life in history? So do I. you believe that he's the word, so do I. You believe that he's the Messiah, so do I. I agree with you on all these things.
But there are just these three things we have to get past. One, he didn't die on the cross for sins. Two, he didn't rise from the dead. And three, he's not Lord. So if we can just get past those things, we'll all be on the same page. And it's like, my goodness, we've been waiting for you, buddy. You are like the perfect, you are the perfect ultimate example of a false prophet. Someone who agrees with us on all these other things and says, yeah, we're this close to being on the same page. Just drop the entire core of the Christian gospel. And so, yeah, we were warned. We were warned about Muhammad and we definitely have to respond to him.
Hearts of Oak:
Now, I want to go into a lot of the issues that you engage with on Islam, and especially the person of Muhammad. But you touched on people focus on atheism and see that as the threat. You obviously see Islam as a threat that's not being focused on. Tell us about that clash, because is it safer to focus on Islam? Is the people are blind to Islam? What is it? Why is the reason why the focus is on one threat and not the other?
Dr David Wood:
Well, it's just it was just atheism was a bigger issue in the West. So in the in the 80s and 90s, when apologetics started becoming more of an issue for people, and it was because you had Christian families and their kids are going off to college and their kids are coming back. Their kids weren't coming back Muslims. Their kids were going off to college and taking some philosophy classes and becoming skeptical. And if your kids had been raised in a church but hadn't really been given any reasons, in other words, they hadn't dealt with apologetics at all, and they didn't know how to respond to issues, and then you were actually challenged on your faith, some of those kids would just leave Christianity and become atheists. So people started focusing on that. And it's the other issue as far as cults where it wasn't Muslims knocking at your door, it was Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons. So people were responding to what was kind of an issue for them and Islam wasn't really an issue in the 70s, 80s and 90s and so on. So that by the time Islam started becoming an issue.
Christian apologetics was just veered towards completely other things. And so, yeah, so yeah, that's why I started focusing on Islam. But no, it's definitely not, it's definitely not, not, not safer by any means. But as far as, as far as the, why it's so relevant, there's nothing in atheism that tells you one way or another how you're supposed to behave. So you could have an atheist who's, you know, a really mean, aggressive guy. You can have an atheist who, I don't care what people believe. Like my friend, I'm friends with the guy, the apostate prophet. His attitude is, look, I don't believe this stuff, but I don't really care what other people believe. It's not an issue for me. Like I'm an atheist. I don't believe anything happens after death. But if you believe something, what do I care? Right. And that makes sense from an atheistic perspective. So it only makes sense from an atheistic perspective to be concerned about something that's actually like causing you harm in your life or something like that. So he focuses on Islam.
There's one religion out there that wants to execute me because he's an ex-Muslim. So he focuses on that. But apart from that, there's nothing in atheism that tells you you have to subjugate the world or anything like that. And you could have all different kinds of atheists. But part of Islam is the goal of ultimately subjugating the world and making all religion for Allah. law. So even with Muslims, you'll have different kinds of Muslims. So you'll have peaceful Muslims, you'll have very aggressive Muslims, but it's not like atheism where the ideology doesn't tell you what to do. The ideology tells you that your ultimate goal is to subjugate the world. And so Islam is, even with a diversity among Muslims, Islam is always going to be a bigger issue because when people take it seriously, then they have to start taking these issues seriously about confronting other people and, yeah, ultimately subjugating the world.
Hearts of Oak:
Well, that's a concept that doesn't really connect with Christians and those in the West. Generally, they think there's a pluralism and your freedom to believe what you think. And then Islam comes along and seems to be to want that dominance, to want to force its opinion that you can accept anything, but you must accept Islam. You don't have that freedom. I don't think that many Christians, certainly in the UK, probably the same for the US, I don't think they understand that desire to dominate that comes from Islam.
Dr David Wood:
Yeah, they don't. And you have lots of Christians who are, who are, you know, they might be ashamed of the history of Christianity. They might say, oh, well, you know, there were times when Christians tried to conquer people and stuff. So who are we to complain about Islam? Not realizing, well, you're not told, you weren't told to conquer the world. It's just a thing that humans do. too. So anyone might do that. You could have various ideologies where just because there are human beings involved, human beings very frequently want to make our way the way for everyone else. But Islam is different in that it actually calls for it. So as a Christian, if Christians start going around killing people, then you as a Christian could say, you're not supposed to be doing that. Here, let me show you why. Look, Jesus says right here, here. My kingdom is not of this world. He breaks it down to here. He's not fighting for an earthly kingdom. You can explain why they're wrong. You can say, look, it says right here, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. You're not supposed to hate everyone and try to kill everyone. So you have a basis within Christianity for saying, no, you shouldn't be doing that. In Islam, it's the reverse, where if you're peaceful and you just want to get along with people and so on, you can actually say, hey, if you're a Muslim, you need to be looking at what you're supposed supposed to be doing here.
And so, yeah, it's just lots of people think, oh, you know, different religions have had their issues. Islam may just have a little bit of an issue now that you have some aggressive guys in it, but it can mellow out after time. But yeah, when one of the main goals of the religion is subjugating the world, that's going to keep popping up, and we keep seeing it pop up for a reason.
Hearts of Oak:
It is a possibly difficult issue to engage on. Okay, so moving on to um and I don't know if jihadi tears is available on your website because I love the mug
Dr David Wood:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have a little online store, because I got this one made for live streams, but people asked where they could get it. So, yeah, they can get it in my little merch store.
Hearts of Oak:
Okay, it's available there. I just want to point that out. all right the so engaging on Islam um many people don't many people are afraid although they don't know they're afraid um where do you start is it then maybe start with the person of Muhammad um that we are told peace be upon him he is a prophet he must be respected and whether or not he exists or not I'm not very sure but how do you let's start with the person of Muhammad because Because I know that my good friend Calvin Robinson here in the UK calls it Muhammadism, those who follow Muhammad. And then you think, actually, is this about him or is it about something else? So how do you begin to tackle that issue of that individual?
Dr David Wood:
Well, yeah, people who call it Muhammadism and point out that it seems to be about Muhammad, absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. Correct. If you look at Islam, I mean, the word, you can learn a lot about a religion by kind of what its name is, like Christianity emphasizes Christ in the name of the religion. Islam, the word Islam means submission, and in its religious context means submission to Allah, refers to submission to Allah.
And so Muslims will use that as sort of a sales pitch. Hey, Christians and Jews, you believe in God. You believe in submitting to God, right? Well, this is just the religion of submission to God. Why would you be opposed to that? Well, Islam doesn't just tell you that you must submit to Allah. It tells you how you submit to Allah. And you submit to Allah by obeying Muhammad in everything. And I'm not making that up. I'm not exaggerating this. Surah 4, verse 65, among other passages, Surah 4, verse 65. Says that Muslims can have no real faith until they make Muhammad judge in all disputes, have no resistance against anything that he decides and submit to him with full submission.
And so here's the religion where you submit to Allah. OK, how do you do that? By mindlessly obeying anything this guy over here says, this guy who's an illiterate 7th century Arabian caravan robber. You have to mindlessly obey everything he says. If you have any doubt about what he says or you question anything, he says, you're not a real Muslim. And so, yeah, the religion is all about Muhammad.
And it would be one thing if he was a really, really great, nice guy. It's something else entirely if he's a guy who calls for the violent subjugation of the world, a guy who says that apostates have to be beheaded, A guy who says that Jews and Christians, because they have true revelations, can accept an inferior status in society and pay tribute money to Muslims in honor in order to not be killed. But everyone else, they either have to be they have to convert or die.
It's just it's just an entirely different category, especially when you look at some of you start getting down to the moral issues with with Muhammad, things like.
A child marriage, he married a girl who was six years old. He consummated the marriage when she was nine years old. And you can look down to today, you have Muslims who are the world champions of defending child marriage. Daniel Hakikachu, you can consummate a marriage with a five-year-old, a six-year-old, a seven-year-old. He argues this, he defends this, he tries to defend it academically. You have Ali Dawa, who said that if his daughter was nine years old and she got her first menstrual, she got her first monthly period, then he said he would tell her she's ready to be married. And keep in mind, the Quran doesn't even require that. Aisha hadn't even reached puberty. So Ali Dawa, as revolting as it is to say, I would tell my nine-year-old daughter she's ready to be married. He's actually better than Muhammad who didn't wait, who didn't wait for a first, uh, didn't wait for a menstrual cycle. And so this is, this is the kind of guy you're dealing with. I mean, Muhammad again, had sex with a nine-year-old girl. He took the wife of his own adopted son after he caused the divorce by seeing her practically naked and started lusting after her and, uh, eventually married her after he caused the divorce when his adopted son's like, Oh, oh, if you want her, then you take her. And so he bought, owned, sold, and traded black African slaves. Those are the guys who institutionalized the African slave trade long before the United States ever existed.
They're just amazing stories about the issues that this guy had. And they're in the Muslim sources. They're right there in the Muslim sources. So I'll just share one story that sort of gives you an idea of what you're dealing with here. Once Muhammad got caught in the bed of his wife, Hafsa, having sex with his slave girl. Now he was allowed to have sex with his slave girls. They understood that they didn't want it happening in their own beds, right? His, his wives didn't want him having sex with his slave girls in their beds. That was the issue. So Hafsa goes out to run some errands. She comes back early. Muhammad is in her bed with his sex slave. She objects to this. She goes and complains to the other wives and then to stop his wives from complaining. Like, what are you, you're rolling around with a slave girl in our bed, the bed that I sleep in. And then I'm about to go to bed there and you were just, you know, in there with your slave girl.
So he, so in order to deal with his wives complaining, he says, fine, look, I'll never, I swear by Allah, I will never have sex with that slave girl again. And so then his wives are, oh, okay, that's fine. And then he gets the revelations in that are the opening verses of Surah 66. Anyone could read these, the opening verses of Surah 66, Allah tells him to break his oath. He said, I didn't tell you, I didn't tell you to break that. I didn't tell you to make that oath. I didn't tell you to swear that to me. And so he says, hey, you break that oath. And so Muhammad went back to having sex with his slave girl. He eventually, that's Mary the cop. That one was Mary the cop. He eventually got her pregnant.
So, but I mean, think about this. This is Muhammad swears an oath to Allah. Allah tells him to break the oath because, well, I didn't tell you to make that oath and therefore you can break it. Well, think about that. Like 99.9999999% of all oaths that anyone ever takes were not commanded to you by God. So that means anyone could just break any oath at any time because God didn't order you to do it. And that's what you actually find in the Muslim sources that Muhammad is constantly being told, here's the justification for this horrible behavior that you're doing. And it comes from God. God is the one who's justifying your behavior right now. And if you look at the justifications, it makes all sorts of really, really terrible behavior completely acceptable.
Hearts of Oak:
So you're telling us that you can come up with voices in your head and then you can announce that is the way according to God to live by. And then you can do whatever you like. I don't know what to make of that.
Dr David Wood:
It is. is if you have enough people following you, if you get enough followers, you can silence anyone who criticizes you. I call this, this is a version of what I call Islam's 99-1 rule. And I usually talk about that in the context of apologetics with, I mean, Islamic apologetics with people like Zakir Naik. Because you sit there and listen to Zakir Naik, if you have any idea what he's talking about, you know, if you understand the issues that he's talking about, you know he's spouting complete nonsense. But the audience he's talking to, they don't know about any of this. They just agree with whatever he's saying And so the rule that has always been part of Islam is, If you're telling a crowd something Even if you're making it up If 99% of the people are just going to go along with what you say and believe you And 1% are going to object and go I'm not sure about that Or no, I know you're wrong about this Or this sounds suspicious to me If only 1% of people are going to object The 99% can silence the 1% So it's always been the way to do things in Islam So if you go out and you convince a bunch of people in Arabia to mindlessly agree with anything you say, and someone objects and says, hey, wait, I think we have a problem here. Well, the 99 can silence the one. And so that's been built into Islam from the beginning. It's the same in Islam now.
Hearts of Oak:
So you approach Islam, and what part of it do you tackle? You've got the Quran itself with its gibberish stories. You've then got the theology and all the books written about it. You've got Muhammad's life story. You've got all the practices that happen. I mean, you look at this range, and it's much more complicated. In Christianity, you have the Bible. You've got Genesis to Revelation. Revelation, you read it. It's fairly simple. You can understand the vast majority, if not the whole of the Bible. Maybe we'll leave a bit of Revelation aside in some of the other books. But I mean, it's simple to understand.
The Islam seems to be much more complicated and convoluted and purposely designed to confuse people. So how do you start with unpacking it?
Dr David Wood:
Islam is extremely confusing. If you just start reading the Quran, you're going to be confused. Like when I see Christians who say, hey, I'm interested in doing Christian apologetics and dealing with Islam and so on. Should I read the Quran? I usually tell them that's going to confuse you at the beginning. Hold off on that. You might want to look up certain, you might want to look up the verses on certain topics that you're interested in. But as far as just sitting down and reading the Quran, you're not going to get anything out of it. You're probably going to give up around midway through surah two you're going to give up and so if you think that's essential to doing apologetics with Islam you're going you're not going to last long because you're going to give up and say this is too confusing uh but yeah the Quran's just it's completely disorganized it jumps around when they arranged it they basically arranged it from longest apart from the opening prayer uh they basically arranged it from longest chapters the shortest chapters so the chapters are completely out of out of like historical order um and so very confusing there You can only figure out.
These passages mean or what the correct order is by going outside the Quran to these massive multi-volume collection of stories called the Hadiths and to the Sira literature and so on. And the impact that that has had on the Muslim community over the centuries is that, keep in mind, when I cited Surah 4, verse 65, that you can't have any resistance against anything Muhammad has said. You can't come up with your own interpretation of things. That's the sin of innovation in Islam. That's a one-way ticket to hell. If you come up with your own interpretation, your own understanding, that's a one-way ticket to hell. So the result of the Quran being very, very confusing and requiring these massive multi-volume collections of other sources and commentaries in order to understand what the Quran is even saying, the impact, the practical impact that it's had on the Muslim community over the centuries is you don't want to just read the Quran for yourself, because if you do, you're going to misunderstand some things and you might fall into some massive sins as far as coming up with your own understanding, misunderstanding passages, and you're actually...
Going against Muhammad's understanding on some of these issues. And so you're actually in a lot of trouble not realizing it. So you don't want to do that. So the impact that this has had is you either need to learn all of it. So you learn the Quran and the commentaries, the Hadith, the Syria, you learn all of that so that you understand the Quran accurately, or sit down, shut up and listen to what your scholar says. The scholar who understands all this stuff, listen to what that guy says. And so your average Muslim, and this is shocking because we think of Muslims as very knowledgeable about their religion because we see them go to the mosque, we see them dressed in a certain way. No, Islam emphasizes that Muslims need to understand these basic practices and they need to do these things. They need to fast during Ramadan. They need to dress a certain way. They need to take the pilgrimage. But as far as understanding their book, it was shocking to me how little Muslims know about their book. In fact, the vast majority of times, the vast majority of times when I'm quoting the Quran to Muslims, they have no clue what I'm talking about because they're just not familiar with it. And that's kind of sad because you're trying to expose Muhammad by quoting these passages and they don't know what you're talking about. But there's a positive side to that as well.
Namely that when you're showing Muslims what the Quran says about all these issues, the question that rises in their mind is, wait a minute, why have I never heard this from my Imam? Why have I never heard this from my Sheikh? Why am I hearing these things from this Christian only? And so there can be a kind of light switch moment eventually like, wait a minute, have they been filtering information from, have they been hiding this stuff from me? Have my leaders been hiding this information about the Quran and Muhammad from me? And why am I getting this stuff from the Christian and so on? So that can actually encourage them to start studying Islam for themselves. And at which point they're going to be on their way out of Islam.
Hearts of Oak:
It doesn't be a perfect setup for a cult because you do something that is only accessible to a few people in a language that only Allah can speak in. That's a bit of a bummer that you have a God that can only speak in one language, but that you've only got one language and the vast majority don't understand it. And therefore, they just do what they're told to do in a robotic fashion. It does seem like a perfect setup for having a worldwide cult.
It is. It's considered a big religion just because of the size of it. If it were smaller, you would consider it a cult. But yeah, cult tactics are at the core of Islam. If you look at the tactics of any cult, that's exactly what Muhammad was doing the entire time.
When you engage with people when they begin to see through the nonsense that is in front of them um and realizing that they are born you're born a Muslim as a Christian you you make a choice later in life but Islam you're supposedly born into it and you're stuck with that when they begin to realize what they're born into doesn't really make sense um it's it's difficult for an individual to walk away because Islam is not just a religious belief, but it's tied to many cultures. And there's a huge difficulty to walk away from that which defines you as a person, I guess.
Dr David Wood:
Yeah this ties into what I was saying earlier about Islam placing these psychological barriers, in the way of Muslims so if Muslim leaves in the west the main issue he has to deal with is okay I might be shunned by my family and when I say family I don't just mean mom and dad I mean aunts uncles cousins your entire community if you are in an area let's say of London where the, you've got the Muslim community and your family is part of the Muslim community and so on you say I don't really believe this. Your life gets very, very difficult. So the inclination would be lots of times to just, okay, I'll just keep going with the flow. I'll deal with this at some point later in life.
That's in the West. If it's in a Muslim country and you're leaving Islam, that's a different story entirely because now you might have to deal with legal authorities. You can have to deal with your family just doing something to you and so on. But yeah, Islam makes it very very, very difficult, regardless of where it happens. Islam always makes it very difficult to leave Islam. And as far as how Christians should respond to this, keep in mind, Muslims are in a position very similar to the first century. If a Jewish teenager heard the preaching of Jesus and wanted to go follow Jesus, well, that might lead to problems with his family if his family rejected Jesus and so on. And so it's kind of a similar situation, but it's interesting because some of the same principles would apply where Jesus tells people that they may have to give up various things, but you're actually getting more. So you may have to give up, you may lose your family, but you're getting a much bigger family. And so Christians actually need to make this common knowledge among Muslims that, hey, if you guys have to give up your family, if you are shunned by your family because you leave Islam, guess what? We're going to take care of you. You have a much bigger family out here waiting for you.
Hearts of Oak:
Tell me about how you engage it. What for you is the big thing? I saw you having a celebration with Jay on the holes in the Qur'an and how that's come out, the different Qur'ans. Then you have the history that Islam teaches, and you find out that that begins to unravel as well. Which part of it do you see as being the main focus maybe at the moment or over the last few years, certainly for your work personally?
Dr David Wood:
Well, I've always been pretty much the same in that you have the arguments that Muslims are using to show that Muhammad is a true prophet. So we want to respond to those kinds of arguments. But also, what are the arguments that are most effective in dealing with Islam? So what are the arguments you use to expose Islam? What are the arguments that are most effective at exposing Muhammad and the Quran? and then how do you respond to the arguments that Muslims use to show that Islam is true. So those are the kind of issues that I've always focused on. And if you look at the arguments that Muslims used over the past several decades, the reason the holes in the narrative.
Talking about the holes in the narrative about the preservation of the Quran, the reason that was such a big issue was that was one of their main arguments, if not their main argument for a couple of decades, was this argument from perfect preservation.
They argued that the Quran has been miraculously preserved, dot for dot, letter for letter, and so on, from the time of Muhammad. I have Muslim apologetics books that say that there has not been one single letter changed in any single Quran manuscript, any single copy of the Quran from the time of Muhammad to the day. It's complete nonsense.
It was a lie. This goes back to what I was calling the 99-1 rule. If If you're going to tell a group of people, hey, the Quran's been perfectly preserved, it's a miracle. Because you might wonder, if you're not familiar with this, you might be wondering, wait, why would a book being perfectly preserved be a miracle? I mean, if I take a copy of some book on my shelf and I find out this book is just, it's never changed or something like that, why would that mean that it's from God? But the reasoning is that if every time someone sits down to copy the Quran, they are miraculously preserved from making any sort of like scribal error or something like that, then this seems like it's god preserving it so that's the idea problem is it was it was just complete nonsense I mean if you if you go to the Muslim sources about the compilation of the Quran you find entire chapters came up missing because uh Muslims didn't recite those enough and they forgot them because early on they were trying to preserve it through memory um you find large passages of the Quran came up missing over 200 verses were lost just from surah 33 because the only people who had those passages memorized died in battle and they actually had a copy but Aisha's sheep He ate the only copy.
So, I mean, you go to the Muslim sources and Allah can't even protect the Quran from a sheep. And you're talking about this perfect, miraculous preservation. So verses are lost.
So that's what you find when you look at the Muslim sources. Then you can examine manuscripts. You can put manuscripts side by side. You find all kinds of differences, tens of thousands of differences when you examine Quran manuscripts. scripts. And then you get to the issue of different kirat in the world today. So there are actually different versions of the Quran that are used in different parts. Since the Ottoman Empire was the main empire of Islam, since that was the caliphate for centuries, their version, the version of the Quran that was popular with them, the Haftz Quran, that became most popular. And that was eventually what was used in compiling the 1924 Cairo edition of the Quran, the Haas version. So for most, for lots of Muslims, they're reading, they're reading that version of the Quran, but they're, that's not universal. You can go to, you can go to other parts of the Muslim world and they use different, different versions of the Quran. And so it was just a, it was just complete nonsense. It was a lie. It was at some point, some Muslim leaders just made this up and they spread the lie. And then people's confidence in Islam is based on this lie. It's the same thing with the scientific miracles arguments where they said the Quran is filled with all these scientific miracles.
It's the same thing with arguing that because of Muhammad's amazing character, he must be a true prophet. No one could be this awesome and amazing if he weren't a prophet. These arguments only work in an atmosphere of ignorance. They only work in an atmosphere where no one knows about any of this. And guess what? That was the situation in the West when Muslim Da'is, their version of evangelists, these are people who invite people to Islam, when their preachers came to an area and started saying, oh, our book's been perfectly preserved, dot for dot, letter for letter. There are all these scientific miracles.
Muhammad's the greatest man ever. No one was in any position to respond to any of this. And so they were able to actually convince people and win converts based on complete total deception. And so one of the main goals of me and many others over the years has been just to respond to these. And fortunately, over time, they collapse. You don't find lots of Muslims using the perfect preservation argument anymore. You won't find any other dawah guys using this anymore, unless they know they're talking to someone who is completely clueless. They wouldn't dare try that with Bob from Speaker's Corner or Chris. They wouldn't dare try that with anyone nowadays, because they know it's a lie and they know it's been exposed. Same thing with the scientific miracles argument. They wouldn't dare use that with any knowledgeable Christian. They would only use that if they walk up to someone, hey, do you know anything about Islam? Oh, you don't know anything about Islam? Oh, let me tell you about Islam. They'll use it there. And so if you know that their arguments only work in an atmosphere of ignorance, because they're based on complete deception, the way to respond to that is to just.
Make an informed population. Make sure that there's always someone around who knows about this stuff. And the dawah, the dawah will never work. So that's one side of it. And the other, the other side is actually challenging Islam, exposing the Quran, giving arguments that Muhammad is a false prophet. And there's just, just plenty of that out there.
Hearts of Oak:
Because again, you grew up in the West and you have criticism of Christianity. If you, I grew up pastor's kid and massive criticism at school and debate and argument. and you have that, Islam seems to be a protected characteristic where you don't have. So your experience with Nabel, talking to him and beginning to expose, most Muslims do not get that. Most kids at school, when they learn about Islam, they learn it's perfect. With Christianity, they may be told, actually, there may be concerns of this or this historical document, and they have criticism early on. Islam doesn't have that. So it is difficult, I'm assuming, for a Muslim to walk away from something that they believe is perfect and their whole world is based on.
Dr David Wood:
And that's why actually responding to the arguments and using arguments to expose Muhammad is so absolutely essential. And fortunately, Christians are catching on to this because back when I was starting, the main response I got from Christians was, look, if you want to preach the gospel to Muslims, just preach the gospel. Don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Quran. That's just going to drive them away. And they had no idea how dangerous that idea was. So I'll just give an example. You mentioned Nabil. Nabil told me after he became a Christian, after he became a Christian, he said, we spent years examining the evidence for the death of Jesus, for his resurrection, for the reliability of the New Testament, for belief in his divine nature. We spent years going over all this. And he said, I was actually thinking, when we would go through the evidence, when we would watch lectures and debates, when we would read books on these issues, he said, I would be thinking.
Wow, Christians have a much better case than I thought they did. They actually have good reasons for everything they believe here. He said he was realizing that as a Muslim, but he said what kept him being a Muslim at that time was he was thinking, but even if they can show me with 99% certainty that Christianity is true, that all these claims are true, even if they show me with 99% certainty that all these claims are true, I'm still 100% sure that Islam is true because of the the scientific miracles, because of the perfect preservation of the Quran, because of the character of Muhammad, because of all these things that were just based on lies. So think about this. You have Christians in the West saying, don't criticize Islam. Don't criticize Islam because that's just going to drive Muslims away when their heads have been filled with lies and they think that they have an airtight case. And so you're saying, hey, don't respond to what they think is an airtight case and is nothing but lies. Don't respond to that. And so what? You're just going to leave them with this 100% confidence in Islam that is based on lies and you don't want to deal with that. So I have to say, by experience, just my experience over the years, I would estimate that probably 95 to 97% of Muslims who leave Islam, it only happened after their confidence in Muhammad was shaken. That's when they were able to take an alternative seriously. So it's really, really important to expose those lies and that deception to show these problems with Islam.
And again, fortunately, fortunately, Christians have woken up to this over the years because back, this is actually kind of funny. When I was starting, so years ago, and I would hear this, don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Quran. That's something you never do. That'll never work. And I'm thinking, wait a minute. I know from experience that works. I know from experience that works. And so I actually tried to figure out where are Christians getting this idea? Is it just because Christians in the West have become obsessed with being super nice? Where's this idea coming from? And I was able to trace it to two sources where they were getting this idea. One, there were Christian missionaries in Muslim countries who would come back to the US because churches back here are supporting their work. And there were Christians who are missionaries in the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia and so on. And they would come back to the the U.S. and you'd say, oh, wow, we've got a missionary to the Muslim world here. Hey, come tell us about witnessing the Muslims. And the Christian missionary would say, yeah, and don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Koran.
Well, that makes sense in Saudi Arabia, right? You have to be careful in Saudi Arabia. That makes sense. It doesn't make sense over here. What are you talking about? In fact, you could say, okay, if it's really difficult to criticize Muhammad and the Quran over there, fine, we can do it over here and we'll put it online. We'll get the message out for you. But the takeaway for people was, okay, just don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Quran. That's just going to lead to problems. So they're hearing that from Christian missionaries. But then the other source was they were hearing it from Muslim speakers at interfaith meetings, right? So they're actually going in there to an interfaith meeting where you have Christians and Jews and Muslims all gathered together. And the Muslim speaker would say, hey, it's great that we're building these bridges here. It's great that we're all getting along. Isn't this great? And as a Christian, you're saying, yeah, it's great. It's great being in a room with Muslims and everyone else. It's great. And so you say, hey, if you want to keep this going, just remember one thing.
Never criticize Muhammad or the Quran because that would just destroy all these great bridges we're building. It would just destroy it all. So remember, never, ever criticize Muhammad to the Quran. That's just going to drive Muslims away. And then you'll never get along with Muslims ever again. And Christians go, oh, okay. And then they tell me this stuff and I'm sitting there thinking, are you serious? You think that the Muslim speaker is giving you accurate information about how to lead Muslims out of Islam? Are you serious? Are you joking? You believe that? You believe that this guy is trying to give you a good methodology for leading Muslims to, are you serious? Are you joking? And so, but that was so common back then that it was just, look, you just, I'm just going to have to show them. And so the, what's happened over the past two decades is basically the, the people who are blasting away at Muhammad and the Quran, that's where everyone sees Muslims leaving Islam. And all the people who say, don't do that, they don't see anyone leaving Islam. And so Christians have just realized over the past couple of decades, wait a minute, this is just, this is very effective. It's actually very effective criticizing Muhammad and the Quran.
Hearts of Oak:
On because of it just to finish off um I mean jay talks always I'm sure you do about the book and the man the book of the man and you look at you compare as a Christian as Christians we want to present Christ because we believe that Jesus actually is a solution actually he is the way the truth and the life and you compare him to Muhammad and you think well you've got this This violent, bloodthirsty warlord that just wants to get his own way and makes up theology because he hears stuff in his head. That's not really the person I would like to follow. So when you compare them side by side, there does seem to be only one option. But yet in many Muslim countries, I guess people have not seen who Jesus is and therefore do not have the option of following him.
Dr David Wood:
Yeah, that's correct. If you listen to, because Muslims have their information filtered for them, they think of Muhammad as this really, really great, wonderful guy who, if you were to put him side by side with Jesus, you'd say, wow, these are both really, really wonderful guys. But that's just because their information has been filtered from them. Lots of Muslims, I mean, lots of Muslim leaders understand that there are all these issues. And so they hide this from Muslims. And so they're not going to hear it from anywhere else. They have to hear it from us. They have to hear this. They have to hear this information from us. What's amazing is there's a radical difference between Jesus and Muhammad, even in the Muslim sources.
Like you could just completely ignore the Bible if you just look at Jesus in the Muslim sources. So he's called the word of Allah. No one else is called the word of Allah. And Muhammad didn't even know what that meant, which we know what that means. In the beginning was the word. The word is with God. God, the word was God. The word became flesh. We know why Jesus is called the word. This has to do with his deity. Muhammad didn't know that. He just thought this was a name for Jesus. But in the Quran, Jesus is the word of Allah and he's called a spirit from Allah. And Muslims haven't thought through the theology of this. But when Allah creates something, he says, be, and the thing pops into existence, right? So a book, be, and something, a book will pop into existence. Chair, be, and the chair can pop into existence. That's how Allah creates. But when you're talking about Jesus, Jesus is the word of Allah That's something spoken out by Allah That's like something that originates from within Allah And Allah's speech is eternal So what? Jesus is the eternal word? What's going on? Are you not thinking about this? And then the spirit, a spirit is something that Allah breathes out Allah breathes out the spirit.
And so here it sounds like Jesus is from within Allah, which makes him different from all the rest of all the rest of creation. So Jesus is the word of Allah. He's a spirit from Allah. He's sinless in Islam. He's called faultless in the Koran. And in the Hadith, you find out that Satan touches every child that's born into the world, including Muhammad. But he couldn't touch Jesus. He was he was prevented from touching Jesus. So Jesus ends up sinless even in Islam. Jesus lives the most miraculous life in history in Islam. Jesus does things like he creates in the same way that Allah creates. This is in the Quran. I'm not talking about Christianity. I'm talking about in the Quran.
Allah creates Adam by fashioning Adam out of clay, and then he breathes the spirit into it, and then Adam comes alive. life. Jesus says, hey, look at this. He does it with a clay bird. He makes a bird out of clay, breathes the spirit into it, and then the bird comes alive. He creates in exactly the same way Allah creates in the Quran. So he's performing all these miracles. He's the Messiah. All these things are unique about Jesus, make him completely different. And you look at Muhammad, even in the Muslim sources, he's awful. He's terrible. So you can actually compare Jesus and Muhammad even in the Muslim sources and making a pretty airtight case that Jesus is superior to Muhammad. When you actually really, really go into the history of Muhammad and you look at the Jesus of the Bible, it's night and day. But Muslims don't know that, and they're not going to ow that until we show it to them.

Barbie Rivera - Enough Is Enough: Exposing the Education System's Failures

Shownotes and Transcript
Delighted to have Barbie Rivera join us as she discusses her book "Enough is Enough," sharing her personal experience with her son being labelled as 'mentally handicapped' by the school system, despite no signs of it at home. She criticizes the pressure to medicate children in schools and highlights the education system's failure in supporting her son, leading to low self-esteem. Barbie advocates for home-schooling as a solution, sharing success stories of her own children thriving in a personalized environment. She calls for an individualized approach to education and envisions a future where home-schooling is a common option. Barbie aims to raise awareness about education system flaws, promote home-schooling, and revolutionize children's education for a brighter future
Barbie Rivera is an artist and mother of four. Painting her way to “fame and fortune” was her dream; however, in 1991 after a teacher told her that her six-year-old was “mentally handicapped” and in need of psychotropic medication, Barbie put her paintbrushes aside and began to start a school from her home. She found teaching to be just as creative, if not more so, than fine art. Within the first week of home-schooling, Barbie had seven additional students who were the children of friends, all learning to read, write and do math. No stress. No homework. No state-required tests. The word of mouth spread, creating such a demand that Barbie established a small private school, H.E.L.P. Miami.Over the last 30-plus years, Barbie has encountered hundreds of children who, like her son, were told they could not learn. Many had been placed on multiple mind-altering medications before their baby teeth had fallen out. Barbie found that in addition to the medications being pushed, the textbooks and lesson plans were overly complicated and deliberately confusing, thus ruining a child’s natural love of learning.Her new book Enough Is Enough! fully documents the destructive agendas and psychological manipulation that American children are subjected to in mainstream public, private and charter schools, which aims to “keep them drugged and keep them dumb.”
'Enough Is Enough!: Exposing the Education System After Their Failed Attempt to Label and Drug My Son' in paperback on Amazon  https://a.co/d/gz00RPD
Connect with Barbie...WEBSITE            barbierivera.comFACEBOOK         facebook.com/barbieriveraeducatorX/TWITTER         x.com/barbieeducator
Interview recorded  18.7.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...X/TWITTER        x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/
Transcript
Hearts of Oak:
I'm delighted to be joined by a brand new guest. Thanks to the wonderful Sam Sorbo for connecting us. And that's Barbie Rivera. Barbie, thank you so much for your time today.
Barbie Rivera:
Thank you for having me.
Not at all. Whenever I hadn't come across your book and whenever Sam had sent it over, it was intriguing, fascinating subject on education and the battle and the fight that many of us are learning that we're having. And there is the picture there, Enough is Enough, exposing the education system after their failed attempt to label and drug my son. And we're going to get into your personal story, which is what the book, the personal story, and then looking at the education system. And then you end up on what you had to do, your actions on it. But you're the founder and principal of Help Miami, a K-12 private school, author of Enough is Enough. And we're going to go in there. And I saw the Red Epoch Times article, and they did a 16-page article about this in 2022. And the links will be in the description, whether people are watching or they're listening on any of the podcasting apps later on. But tell us right back to 1991.
You were brought into the school and your six-year-old was labeled as mentally handicapped by the school. So, yeah, tell us about that situation as a parent.
Barbie Rivera:
Okay, so I never let him get officially labeled, but that's what I was told he suffered from. And we're talking the second Friday of the school year. Like, the second Friday. And to be completely honest about my son, and I'm not one of these parents of my child does no wrong. He never tells a lie. I have eyes in the back of my head. I know my kids, right? But Damon was bilingual when he was six. I don't speak two languages. His grandfather is Cuban and they were bonded, you know, from birth, first grandson, very well behaved, like really easy going. He would, you know, very creative, like after dinner, put a blanket over the dining room table, make a tent would always draw was would play was would ask questions that were normal, like I understand these questions. So in school, I'm thinking they're going to love this boy. They're going to love him. And he's going to love school based on my experience in first grade. Anyway.
It was a disaster from the get-go. That Friday, I'm called in and I'm told my son is mentally handicapped and will need pharmaceuticals most likely for the rest of his life. And I'm like, what is even happening? How can, first of all, a teacher has no qualifications to tell me that. I'm not going to the teacher about cavities or about a skin rash. I'm not going to go to the teacher for mental health. So I'm like, what is happening here? And the teacher said he confuses the B and the D. And I'm like, well, they look alike. They factually look alike. And I think with practice, going back to my first grade, where first grade was really one full school year of learning your numbers to 20, to 20, and your alphabet. Like we didn't get into long vowel sounds until the end of first grade because you really needed to work on the basic sounds of the letters, right?
Anyway, he only had, they gave him two weeks and that was it. And I'm like, well, he doesn't confuse a cow and a refrigerator. So he knows differences. And then to further make their point, he also confuses the six and the nine.
And I'm like, they look alike. But the seriousness of how grave a situation it was that my six-year-old did not know the difference two weeks into the year, 10 days, 10 days into first grade, he could not determine. He made the mistake of swapping B and D on his handwriting. And he made the mistake of identifying six and nine. And I told the teacher, I'm like, okay, I'll take him off of all family financial responsibilities. He will no longer write checks or balance the check book. And I thought I was being funny. They didn't like that at all. They thought that I was for, I was degrading or demeaning them. I go, but what you're saying is ridiculous. Well, don't you care about his future? I go, yeah, but I'm also not panicking about what dress I'm going to wear to his wedding. He's six.
Again, my argument, over their head, I was very pregnant with my fourth child. So I did something, you know, it's like you have life regrets. This is a life regret that does not go away. I kept my son in school for the entirety of first grade because I didn't think I could home-school him. I was pregnant. I had my, I had a toddler that wasn't quite one. My daughter was three. And I'm like, I'm going to make a disaster out of my six-year-old. And I should have, I feel like I left my son in a burning building for my comfort. You know, because I, and I get it. I was pregnant. But anyway, by the end of first grade, my son thought he was stupid. That's what school gave him. He was convinced he was unwanted and convinced he could not learn. And I'm like there's no six-year-old on this planet who has the right to feel that way mentally handicapped or not. That's how I got started.
I mean look you know I'll pick up a number of those points but now as you look all the way back and have conversations with many other parents often you find you're in a situation and you're alone this is only you no one else understand or are struggling with this. And then you begin to realize actually the story is maybe replicated elsewhere. And we'll get into kind of failings in the education system and all of that. But as you just look back, how have you begun to understand that what happened with you was not just a single issue, that there are those cases happening across the country?
No, totally. And the scary thing is, it's like.
Shortly after I started home-schooling, I became a single parent, but even as a single parent, my kids, we had dinner every day. We had clean up time. The kids had chores. I'm talking when the baby was one. Now he's not going to be breaking rocks on the train line or anything like that, but he can help put things away. So they had responsibilities. I read stories to them every day. I'm talking years. So my son was well cared for. Like he was given ample attention. And he showed it. His manners were, he behaved very well, very respectful, spoke two languages, clearly this boy's loved. And if he is targeted, we're in trouble as a society. Like that was my, I was, I couldn't believe what I was experiencing. Cause I never thought that, you know, I always had this viewpoint of, oh, ADHD. Those are those crazy kids that run around a restaurant or a screen in a grocery store. And you know now I'm my kids are all grown and I think most of that is just bad parenting' sorry parents but I really do.
At the beginning the the rush to medicate is something that we are all now used to and we look around probably even more in the U.S. than the U.K. And there's a drug that will fix everything in your life and then you get another drug to fix whatever the first drug has caused. But for teachers to talk about giving drugs to children, that's not... Was this teacher medically trained? Has she been a nurse or a doctor or anything?
How does a teacher who is there to teach children how to read, to write, to learn, to do maths, how do they then decide, actually, this pharmaceutical company will give you a drug and that's what your child needs after two weeks?
Well, because of drug studies that are run in the school and the checklist that the teachers do, like I'm jumping ahead. But when I decided to home-school my son, instantly I had four or five friends that are like, I don't want to send my child to school. And when I started home-schooling Damon, now I was no longer pregnant, but now I had a 10-month-old, a one-year-old, a four-year-old, and Damon had just turned seven. So all that I home-schooled was second grade and kindergarten. I wouldn't take anybody else. So friends of mine who had children, you know, you kind of have family, you hang out with people your own age, and everybody has kids the same age. And the kids that were over at my house for sleepovers, the parents wanted me to home-school them. And I got so full that that's when I became a private school. Cause as soon as you move a home-school from a home into a commercial location, now you clap your classed as a private school. The point to that is as, as soon as I became a private school, now I'm on private school mailing list. I get flyers about cheerleading uniforms about football. You know, none of that applies to me. I'm still small, but I'm on that list. So I'm on also on the list for drug studies.
And again, I'm like, I'm shocked at what I'm about to tell you. And I actually write about this in the book because it's horrific.
Two pharmaceutical reps, they were actually PR students from a local university, came in with a drug study that they wanted my participation in. Red flags instantly up. I'm like, what is this? But tell me what it is. There were three levels of participation. The first level for every name, address, and phone number that I submitted to the the drug study, I get a hundred dollars. So Peter, I was told I could use my Christmas card mailing list of my great aunt Gladys, who is in her eighties. I'd get a hundred dollars for her. There's no way she's going to participate in an ADH. You know, it's, it's even their fraud is fraud. So the second level of participation, I was given a sample mental health checklist for me to fill out. It had 30 items on it. I did not have to sit face to face with the student. This was my opinion by observation.
And things on the checklist were student has bad handwriting. That's a signal for ADHD. But guess what? They don't teach proper handwriting anymore in school. So the kid develops his bad habits. You can't read what he writes. It's not corrected anywhere along the line because heaven forbid we correct the student. We don't want to, you know, hurt them in any way. Like that's ridiculous anyway. So if I submit the mental health checklist with name, address, and phone number, I get $500 per checklist submitted.
Now, Peter, if I sit with you and your wife and I get you to participate in the drug that they were doing the drug study on, which was at that time, it was a form of called Intuniv, which Intuniv has been on the market, but this was like a timed release. It was some variant of this drug. If I get you to put your child on it and enter the drug study, I get $5,000 per child.
And I'm told by these drug reps, the money could go to me personally because I own the school or it could go to the school. Cause let's face it, Barbara, your school is really small and ugly. And it's in the shopping center, that was supposed to inspire like, Oh, it is, you know? And I'm like, well, I'm going to be nasty now. I'm like, well, let's face it. I'm in Miami, the cocaine capital of the world. If I want to use drug money, I'll just put an ad on Craigslist. Hey, cocaine dealers, I need some of your funding. Like, but because the cocaine dealers aren't looking for the five-year-olds to get on drugs or the middle schoolers, it's ridiculous. And then I was told that they couldn't believe that I refused the money could not believe it and I was told I was the only educator in all of south Florida day-care private school uh Christian schools catholic schools charter schools public schools I was the only one to say no.
I remember looking at doing drug studies uh as a as a grown up thinking actually that could be a way to make money but it sounds as though the the big, the pharmaceutical pharmaceutical industry is allowed to use children as as lab rats in effect
That's right
And that's how you have the teachers because the teachers will get offered kickbacks. Now you don't call it that, but hey, fill out this mental health checklist on a student who's on three different pharmaceuticals. Could you fill this out once a month? We'll give you $25 in gift cards. Like what is this?
I want to get on the education, but just that thing. I remember in, oh, I mean, I've travelled probably eight different times to the U.S. in the last two years. And one thing that really strikes me is the adverts for different medical procedures, different drugs on TV. And I realize that actually Americans are bombarded with them much more than we. I don't think we really have any adverts for medication on TV. And yet in the States, it's the norm. So it is a whole culture that actually is bombarded and soaked in actually, drugs are the way to fix things. And whenever it happens from, whenever that message is given in regards to children, I mean, you start early, I guess, and then you've got a clientele that is hooked on your products.
Yes. No. And I, from my experience, now this is my experience. I've never gone to college. I've done what I've done out of passion to save my kids. Right. And then I can't be blind to what's around me. That's why I'm still doing what I'm doing. The longer these kids are on these medications, the harder they are to teach. But to me, that makes sense because some of the drugs are in the same class as cocaine. And let's say that we give a low level dose of cocaine to a five-year-old when their brain is developing before their baby teeth have even fallen out. And we keep that dose going. It's going to have an effect and it's not going to be, Oh, 30 years of this. No, it's going to have an effect in about three months, if not instantly. And then I have parents that are like, well, I don't give it to them on the weekend or at summer break. I'm like, it doesn't even make sense.
So you've got two sides. You've got the financial incentive, and that's how you get people on, and kickback is the only term I can think of using for it. But then the other side is the, I mean, my younger one is certainly much more hyper than my older one, and doesn't sometimes seem to have an off switch. And in some circles you could say actually that's ADHD and we need to actually give drugs, is this a way for teachers to just have an easier life if they've got a large classroom if a child is a little bit more agitated or hyper than others they can just drug them and quietens it down and the class is easier. Is it that kind of financial gain, but also an easier life within the classroom?
Yeah, because I mean, there's a couple of approaches to that. Yes. And even the term hyper, like when the psychiatric community started labeling children for being children, that's a problem. Oh, he's hyperactive. Damn right. He's hyperactive. He's five. What do we want, that's like labeling my basset hound hyper bitey, he's three months old, yeah dogs go through the puppy stage, you know and it's like, I use my book to compare, my upbringing and what the modern is, so that you come to a conclusion I'm actually not even even trying to lead somebody. I'm not saying, Hey, you should not do this. Like make up your own mind. But factual, I was born in 1964. I'm number four of five for my parents. My parents didn't get matching furniture until all five of us were out of the house.
Why? Because when they went to the grocery store, we got our wiffle ball bats out. We had an Olympic stadium in the living room. They knew it.
We would be running. If it was snowing outside, we took the play inside and would be playing tag and flicking people, flicking each other with the dish towels. It was a noisy, rambunctious house. And my parents, they never said, hey, my dad would say, keep it to a dull roar. But it was never shut up, never sit down and watch TV all day or, wow, can I put a device in my children's hands? It was never that. We were never expected to be quiet. And in school, again, making the comparison to my son's first grade experience, which was nine o'clock to three o'clock with a lunch break. And most of that time was seat work. And then he got two to three hours of homework every night. That is to me, that's mind control because a six-year-old is not equipped to handle that. Adults won't do homework unless they're being paid. So what's the payoff for my six-year-old? Just drudgery. He hated school and that happened. He started school in August. He hated it by the end of September. Like he's a quick boy. So his mind was made up.
My first grade was, we had a break in the morning, recess, 30 minutes, and it wasn't wild playtime. It was 30 minutes with the teacher on the playground, us holding hands, singing songs, whatever. Then we had lunch. Then we had a break in the afternoon. I did not get homework until I think the fourth grade because it just was not allowed. And I remember in my kindergarten, which was non-academic kindergarten, a police officer would come in and tell you how be nice to old people. You know, it was all very hands-on. You'd make things. You were always making things. There was a daily arts and crafts. There was singing. There was book time. You had the line-up to go to the bathroom. You were learning social skills.
In kindergarten, I told the teacher, I complained, I'm like, I want to read. I want to learn to read. She goes, Barbara, what's your hurry? That's for first graders. And that was for first graders. Now for me as a home schooler, if I had a five-year-old that wanted to read, I would teach them to read, but that's me with five kids in my house. But my son was expected to write book reports before he could read. He was expected to know the difference between the D and the B before he practiced the difference between the D and the B. Maybe it would take him two weeks. Maybe it'd take him two months. Maybe it would take him 10 months. But it really doesn't matter.
And again, the whole education system, like you say, we're bombarded with the drugs. The parents pick up on the lingo. Oh, he's hyperactive. I'm like, really? That's hilarious. Of course he is. They have more energy. They're growing.
And is that danger of being labelled? And you talked about not wanting your child to be labelled. And a label on a child can be very harmful. It can put unnecessary expectations on them or doubts and fears on them whenever that's stabbed and we've certainly experienced that in or understand the education system you need to weave a line because no you don't wantcertain labels whatever they think, but it's this rush to label things that is a fairly newer phenomenon, it certainly didn't happen when I was growing up. But when we were in school, it was just kids are kids. Now there's a rush to label. And I guess label gives them the ability to medicate or bring other action or to bring individuals in. And no, no, just let them enjoy school. But yeah, this labeling issue is huge.
Exactly. And when I, like similar to you, I think I'm older than you by much. But when I went to school, there was no one labeled. I don't recall anyone in my class taking Medicaid, having to leave the class to take medication, but now there's a label for everything. If you are doing well in school in the United States, you are labeled gifted and you're put on an accelerated program because they're going to make sure they shut you down. You're competent. You know this. Well, we're going to load it on to make you sorry you ever raised that hand. And if you can't take it, then you have anxiety and there's a drug for that.
Anyway, to me, the United States, and again, my opinion, has surrendered any rights of education to the psychologists and to the psychiatrists who have taken over. And then you find that the kids, their papers aren't even being graded anymore because they don't want to do, I forget what it's called. They don't want to lower the self-esteem. I'm like, you're going to kill their self-esteem if you don't tell them that two plus two actually has an answer. Well, we let them do six because we want him to develop the critical thinking. I'm like, that's not critical thinking. The mind actually does that on its own. If you let it grow the way it's supposed to.
No completely. The second part of the book, the middle part, gives a great overview of the education system. And you go through all different dates. There was one quote that stuck out with me, and it was Rockefeller Sr. Saying, I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers. And such a mindset, surely, you kind of think of the American dream, innovation, freedom to actually be who you want to be and be successful. And that's what the world has certainly seen on the US. But this movement, I think, from the West to formalize everything and remove any concept of imagination or innovation will be the other end of any nation, whether it's the US, the UK, wherever it is. But it was fascinating, the middle part of the book, going through that and talking about Rockefeller and the money he put in and making the education system official and regimented and controlled and taking away a lot of the freedom.
Yes. But people don't see it that way. You know, they want that A. And now like I gotta, I'll tell you about a student that I worked with, who I don't speak about in the book, he was 16 years old failed eighth grade three times, his aunt from Texas called me, it's like, hey, he just won't go to school, like bring him, send him to me and it was right, excuse me, it was right before Christmas and this boy comes in very respectful and I'm like, okay, I'm going to need to tutor you over Christmas break because your academics need like the electrodes for the heart. We need to, we have no time. But he was in second grade in math. And he was allowed to stay in second grade because he was learning disabled. So that label, not only does it destroy the child, but it justifies not teaching him because he can't learn anyway. And so I tutored him over Christmas, an hour a day, 10 hours.
First thing I'm like, okay a hundred take away 81 he goes I never learned how to do it I am learning disabled, I am ADHD, there's something wrong with my mind and I go, okay so first thing we're cancelling all of it because it's not true, second thing here is a hundred dollar bill, you need to give me $81. Turn this $100 bill into 10 $10 bills. How much money do you have? Oh, $100. We didn't change anything. Now turn one of those tens into ones. And in about 25 seconds, he learned how to do that type of math for the rest of his life. So we went from a hundred takeaway 81. We were going into the millions and the billions because I'm like, Tony, you are not going to be able to succeed in life with a second grade level of mathematics. You will never run your own business. You will never be your own boss.
And in 10 hours, I got him to eighth grade mathematics, 10 hours. It took me to graduate him with the standard diploma he had to stay till he was 19 because like I say it was a disaster but he did the algebra 1, the geometry, the algebra 2 and he did it so well he could tutor it because that is the standard is that you know it and can use it but on all the mental health forms which I go into in my book, you have, in the United States, they're called different things, but like once the child gets labeled, they're given what's called an IEP, an Individual Educational Plan. This is supposed to be individual to the child. Sounds great. They're all the same. Basically, they just change the name and the date, you know.
So anyway, on that, you flip through and it's just a bunch of, to me, psychobabble, which it takes months to get these things. And I'm like, in what, with, in 10 seconds, I determined exactly where Tony was at in math. I did not need a checklist. I did not need a PhD. I did not need anything. I could have done it with notebook paper. I didn't need, I didn't even need an assessment. I just need to know what I'm, what I know and give him certain problems and I can determine where he's at anyway. So on this IEP, then it gets into what you're going to do with the students subject by subject, like how, I'll use Tony as an example, though, the example I'm going to give if it's not his IEP, but it would be similar. Tony is ADHD. Our goal, our measurable goal is that when Tony is given a grammar or language arts problems, he can solve the definition of the word with a 70% accuracy. When given grade level math or geometry, he can solve with 70% accuracy and they go through all of the subjects that Tony's taking.
And the goal, the measurable goal in writing is 70% accuracy. And here it's a parent showing me this proud. They went through all of the, this, and I'm like, okay, have you ever had a kitchen remodel? Oh yeah, we did one last year. I'm like, were you satisfied with 70% accuracy? Mom, do you ever get your nails done? Are you you ever satisfied with the 70% accuracy? And they look at me like I, a light bulb just went off. I'm like your son or your daughter deserves more than a 70% accuracy. The only standard there is, is a hundred percent. And if your child truly is special needs, he's going to need, he or she's is going to need care for the rest of their life because it's impossible for them to get a hundred percent accuracy on certain intellectual material, but not all, like they can, they, they should be able to feed themselves. Like those are called life skills. And when they're learning to use a stove, I'm not satisfied teaching somebody with special needs, how to use a stove and Oh, 70% is good enough.
It's crazy. And that's the standard of the United States. So they take like my son, if we took my son and he never got an IEP because he was never labeled, they're having a fit because he's 70% accurate on his B's and D's. But yet after they do all the prodding and probing and testing and this, that, and the other and drugging, their standard is that it's okay that he has 70% accuracy. And I'm like, what are, what was the point in all of that, what was the point.
I want to hear how home-schooling fits in and I think the only person I've had on talking about home-schooling was Sam, but which is a concept that's maybe a bit different to us in Europe because in some countries it's illegal to home-school, but that's the whole that will not even get into that, but tell us because I talked to some people and it's actually the education system needs improving, talk to others, and actually say, well, actually, home-schooling has to be a major option. You've moved into seeing home-schooling as a perfect option for you, but also believe it can be a perfect option for others. Tell us how that fits in, why that is a solution to the mess, I guess, that you have seen in the state system.
Well, home-schooling gives the parent a hundred percent control, right? Done right. It gives the child a challenge and a win. I have, as I mentioned, I have four children. All four of my children are vastly different. They have different responses. One can't stand scary movies. One is all about spiders, you know, like three boys and a girl, completely different. They could have come from different mothers. That's how different they are. So to try to put them, let's say they were all born on the same day. I have quadruplets. They're still vastly different. So you have to address them educationally different. Now you and I know they need to be able to read. They need to have grammar. They need to have some life skills that, you know, we know what they need to have, but we need to take that, what we know and cater it to what they need and want.
One of my children, Adam. Twice before he was five years old, birds in the sky flew and landed on his shoulder. And I'm like, well, that's intense. And he's like, he named them instantly. Like if it was plant, it's like, Hey Jake, how's it going? And I'm like, and Jake was this huge crow that in my mind, I'm going to, he's going to peck my son's eyes out, you know, and here he is. And Adam isn't fearful at all. And I don't want to put my fear into it, but to me, that's a gift. I can't teach that. And my son was only interested in animals. He was not interested in history. He was like for his reading material, he was interested in animals. So I call up his aunts and uncles, his grandparents from both sides of the family. I'm like, Hey, Adam needs books on animals.
He's learning to read. So let's, you know, keep it simple. By the time he was 10 on his own, he had read 250 books on his own on animals. And he once asked me like, he's like, where's the lemonade pitcher? I should have had red flags all over the place on that question because what 10 year old boy is going to want a lemonade pitcher? I'm like, oh, it's in the pantry behind blah, blah, blah.
Half an hour later, he comes in. The lemonade pitcher has 71 egg sacks of a black widow spider and four black widow spiders in it with the lid on. I'm like, I'm like, Adam, what are we doing? He goes, well, I read that they are very quiet. They're not aggressive. But we had a place in the yard where I thought it would be best to move them because the yard guy is going to come and cut that down. And I'm like, well, I'm glad you were thinking of the survival of the Black Widow spiders, but they're now in my house. So anyway, I call up Miami Museum of Science and we go. And he donated the spiders to their exhibit. But this is him. He was once playing, I don't know, playing football in the front yard in a Florida, they're called egrets. They look like storks. Came, its wing was at a weird angle and it landed right on him. And he told his friends, go get my mom I need a rubber band and a dish towel and he knew exactly he put the dish towel over the head secured it with a loose rubber band and he had me call some wildlife preserve, but a 10 year old boy knew exactly what to do because his home schooling was around, his love of animals.
He was allowed to solve problems in mathematics concerning animals. Hey, it's not been raining for four or five days. What are you going to do about the lizards? Well, I'm going to, you know, and he would go out and do a project. He wasn't on a device. He wasn't hooked to a TV. He wasn't bombarded with homework. He was using what he was learning in real life and solving problems. And it really served him well when he was a teenager, then he was all about history and war and uniforms. And he would write these amazing essays as if he was, he did something about World War II, that he was a teenager hitting that beach, seeing his friends die. And it was a great essay, but he is captivated with learning because he was home-schooled. That would never have happened in a regular school.
He would not have been given the freedom. If anything, he would have been labeled as being difficult because he didn't want to read whatever they were pushing. And again, I know that reading, reading is the top skill. You have to read words and understand what they, what they mean to survive. Math comes next, then language and expressing yourself. My opinion. Anyway, that to me is the result of home-schooling. So for me, my next book, once I get this one up and running, is how to make a living home-schooling. Because since the pandemic, like what I did, the word micro school did not exist. Because that's basically what I did when I took my son out of school is I had in my house 11 kids, including my four. But there's a way to do it to where you can make money. It might not be Lamborghini money. I mean, unless you have Lamborghini friends.
But I believe that right now people are fed up with the school system and they don't know the extent of why the kid is cited with, oh, he's a troublemaker, doesn't like to do homework. He's lazy. I'm like, well, have you taken a look at what he's been given? It's no longer math. Math has been abandoned as a subject when my son was in school. So we're 40 years or 30 something years past that point. It's not improved. It's gotten 10 times worse. And now with the pandemic, all matter of justifications are on in the United States on why we're graduating so many kids who cannot read and write. And they don't know that they don't know. That's the dangerous thing. If you tell me, hey, I need you to do anything with a computer, basically, I'm going to tell you, Peter, I don't know how to do that. I have no lost pride. But right now, I have a whole generation, the United States has a whole generation of kids that don't know that they don't know. And they have no skills to survive. And that's frightening.
The last point on on the book, you, it takes time to write a book. I've never done it. I don't think I ever want to. But it takes time to sit down, discipline, bring everything together. You want to tell, give a piece of information to the public through that. You want to give your story, but it's not just your story. It all connects into the education system, which is wider, and it's not just an American story. It could be a story here in the UK. It could be a story across Europe. That doesn't matter where you're geographically based, because we're all kind of having a similar battle. But what was your, when you sat down to put pen and paper, if I can use that term on the book, what was your desire for the book? What did you see the purpose of the book? What did you want to accomplish with it?
Well, there's a couple of things. There's one, I want people to know what they're up against. Because we have, like in the United States now, the pharmaceutical companies are no longer being looked at as the authorities, right? So there's a little bit of a shift in the reality.
There needs to be a bigger shift in that reality. The school system. People are like, oh, well, I did great in school. I'm like, yeah, school's not the same. My kindergarten is nowhere close to the kindergarten. The kindergartners that I'm getting in my school who are six years old, who were placed on Prozac when they were three in a day-care. I'm like, who puts a three-year-old on Prozac? How much attention or how much anxiety society or how much mental health problems can a three-year-old possibly have? And I know it's a lot if the parents aren't on board. But to me, we're labeling bad parenting as mental health issues and we're drugging the kid. It's the wrong target. So I want people to know that our children, not only are they being indoctrinated politically, and I don't touch the gender thing. I really haven't had any experience with that. But even that, that confusion, that basic confusion, it's school. And I could get the best dictionary and take a modern math textbook, and I will be frustrated within three minutes because a modern math textbook is not trying to get that child to master math.
It was written by somebody trained in psychology who thinks that they're using critical thinking skills instead of just simply the definition of the word sum is the answer to an addition problem. Write the sums here. Boom. Even multiple choice, that entered in after psychology came in. Can you imagine going to a heart surgeon and he's like multiple choicing your surgery? No, I don't want that. I don't want that. But yet that's the standard. Oh, 70% accuracy. Totally fine. As long as he's got that 70%. I'm like, well, what about the 30?
Multiple choice. He can guess it as long as he does well on a test. I'm like, no, our kids are being indoctrinated one to know that they don't matter and that they can't learn and that there's a drug for everything and the authorities come first. Don't question the authority. If you do, you're going to be labeled with some label.
So that was one of the reasons for writing the book. The other reason, I don't want to say this as like a self flattery because it really isn't, but my kids are all grown. I just turned 60 and I have this small private school. It has 50 kids in it. In my school, I have eight staff. I love my staff. they're parents like me or people really interested who've not been taught. They're not certified teachers, right? And we get great, we do great things. But this school was put there because I had my back up against the wall and it had to happen.
So I'm on the last part of my life and I don't want my work to die when I die. So I wrote a book because I feel, and I don't, I don't have the money to even fund the dream, if you want to call it that. That sounds kind of lame, but to fund the next step. Because the next step is, is I get a school, like a campus. I want 100 to 125 kids where I can bring, I want to develop a teacher training. I don't want the college. I don't want what the college says is acceptable. I want to do it myself. And I realize that anyone who's in their 20s, 30s, or 40s, their education, if they were educated in the United States, is subpar. So we're going to have to fix that, which is not a hard fix if you have somebody willing.
So develop teacher training. And then I want to create, I talk about a project it's called restore American literacy. And I want to create a curriculum company that is very simple, that I wish I would have had when I started home schooling of, this is what a kindergarten, this is the perfect kindergarten day. Here are the games you need to get from Amazon. Here's the teacher guide. So even if you didn't get it growing up, you're going to get it here. And it's going to tell you definitions of words, very simply put, it's going to give you the discussion points, but it's also going to allow the teacher to put their personality in it. Because like, if you're, if you're doing a lesson on dinosaurs, there's a hundred ways you can, you can take toilet paper tubes and make a giant a dinosaur. I don't care. There's a hundred ways to do that. And that's the creativity of the teacher because I don't want to shut the teacher down. But right now to do what I do, not bragging, you have to have a high IQ and you have to be motivated. And the school system is not graduating that anymore.
I 100% agree. I really enjoy going through and I think the book is for anyone giving them a window into the education system and what should be possible. It's called Enough is Enough, Exposing the Education System After Their Failed… available in the USA, all the links are in the description, but Barbie I really appreciate your time, coming on and sharing your story and telling us a little bit more about the book, so thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.

Topher Field - Good People Break Bad Laws: Civil Disobedience in the Modern Age

Shownotes and Transcript
On this episode of Hearts of Oak Podcast, we sit down with Topher Field, a prominent Australian libertarian commentator and activist. Topher shares his experience navigating the challenging landscape of media and activism during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Melbourne. He discusses the charges he faced for advocating peaceful protests against government actions and the importance of freedom of speech in the face of oppressive measures.The interview delves into the impact of lockdowns on mental health and relationships, which fuelled Topher's increased activism. He provides a detailed account of the progression of protests in Melbourne, highlighting the power of grassroots movements in challenging authority. The conversation also touches on leaderless movements, accountability in COVID inquiries, and the need to resist oppressive policies.Throughout the episode, Topher encourages listeners to question authority, uphold morality, and resist unjust laws and critiques the worship of government and the compliance of churches with oppressive regulations, advocating for spiritual autonomy and the purity of faith-based practices.
Over 15 years Topher Field has accumulated over 2 Million video views, over 150,000 regular followers, 14 film awards, 2 Libertarian awards, and released his first book in 2023.But his proudest achievement is without doubt his two criminal charges for ‘Incitement’. During the world famous Melbourne Lockdowns Topher was awarded these charges by Victoria Police for encouraging people to exercise their Human Rights during the Covid era in 2021.Topher is a renowned public speaker, interviewer, podcaster, writer, satirist, and champion of Human Rights.
Good People Break Bad Laws: Civil Disobedience in the Modern Age in paperback and e-book from Amazon   amzn.eu/d/09MJazgR
Watch award winning 'Battleground Melbourne'   battlegroundmelbourne.com
Connect with Topher...WEBSITE          topherfield.netX/TWITTER       x.com/TopherFieldINSTAGRAM     instagram.com/topherfield
Interview recorded  16.7.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...X/TWITTER        x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
And I'm delighted to have someone from down under that I've seen the name quite a bit in my feeds over the last couple of years.
It's always great to talk to someone that you've watched from afar, and that's Topher Field. Topher, thank you so much for your time today.
(Topher Field)
Well, Peter, what a pleasure, and thank you for having me.
Not at all, it's great to have you on.
And obviously, people can follow you @TopherField on Twitter, and TopherField.net is your website.
And of course you're, I mean I've seen you on twitter quite a bit and whenever Sam Sobel connected us, and I thought I kind of recognized that name, because Topher is not a name that's very popular.
So, you're thinking that definitely sticks out but you're probably one of Australia's leading, I think most recognized libertarian political commentators.
And you've, it's it's your work in in the media and I know that's your background from when you were younger and now you've really made a name for yourself winning awards: libertarian awards.
Also that documentary Battleground Melbourne setting.
The madness that you faced there in Australia and author of Good People Break Bad Laws which is a fascinating topic.
I know we'll delve into that a little bit and loved, I think on your website you said that your proudest moment, proudest achievement is getting those incitements, those punishments for standing up against the COVID lockdown.
Not just punishments, criminal charges.
They chased me with criminal charges and tried to lock me away for two and a half years for the crime of encouraging people to exercise their human right to engage in peaceful political protest at a time when our government was violating human rights.
So yeah, that is honestly, that is my proudest achievement and, I hope never to have to repeat such a thing in my, in the future, but unfortunately you and I both know this fight is far from over.
Oh, absolutely.
Could I tell them, I mean, leading, leading up to that, what, you're also your, your background, I mean, you grew up with your dad being involved in media and your understanding a little bit about the business.
Some of us have been thrown into this and we've either sunk or swell or swum, but you kind of had a little bit of an understanding.
Can you tell us about your role in the media leading up to, I guess, the COVID tyranny.
What had been your primary focus in terms of putting a message out up until, I guess, up until 2020?
Well, I'm probably the world's only accidental political commentator.
I was driving a forklift in a warehouse, quite enjoying myself, making good money.
I enjoyed the manual labor, the repetition of it, and I could go home.
And I was working on a fiction novel at the time and doing a bit of acting.
And just enjoying sort of creative expression.
And my cousin came into work one day. Yes, I'm the cliche forklift driving cousin working at the same place, kind of life, very blue collar.
And my cousin comes into work and he says, Topher, you should audition for project next.
And I said, what's that?
It was a project being run by a very respected Australian journalist where he was recruiting and looking for the next generation of news producers, presenters, writers, researchers, these sorts of things.
And in order to audition, you had to submit a video.
So I went, okay, my dad taught me how to do videos.
He was involved in community television.
He was in professional radio and then in community television.
And I cut my teeth from the earliest ages that I can remember.
There was a camera in the house and I've been editing and doing audio and all that stuff. I learned the craft from him.
So, I put that to good use and I made a video as an audition.
And I was deliberately quite controversial, because I didn't want to find that I got into this show and then had my wings clipped and they were telling me what I could say or what I couldn't say.
So I was deliberately pretty provocative and I didn't get in.
Surprise, surprise.
And so then I was left with this video that I had nothing.
This is 2009.
I didn't even have a YouTube channel.
In fact, in Australia in 2009, most people didn't have internet fast enough to play YouTube videos in real time.
You had to let them buffer for a few minutes.
So, I started a brand new YouTube channel with zero subscribers.
I uploaded the video and I sent it to my mom and she must've watched that video 30,000 times because shortly afterwards, was I had 30,000 views, which is pretty extraordinary for 2009 in Australia, doing a 12 minute long political exploration of water supply issues into my home city of Melbourne.
Tell me how a video like that gets 30,000 views, even in today's market, let alone back then. So, then people began asking me to do more videos and I'm going, this is absurd.
I'm a forklift driver.
What do you think I am? I'm nothing.
And eventually someone came to me with a video.
I said no to everybody, and then someone came to me with a video that I couldn't say no to, and I said yes to that second video, and then I said yes to a third video and a fourth video, and it became a bit of a thing.
My main focus has actually been water and water supply issues, particularly to irrigation farmers in what's called the Murray Darling Basin in Australia.
So, 40% of Australia's food comes from this part of the world, and our government is destroying farmers by regulating and restricting access to irrigation water.
So, that's really what I've spent most of my time talking about.
But I did a series on climate change where I partnered with Lord Christopher Monckton in the UK, and I travelled to the US and Canada, interviewed a bunch of people.
Professor Fred Singer, before he passed away, is one of my sort of proudest achievements to have had the chance to speak to him while he was alive.
I've done work on freedom of speech.
I've done work on over-regulation, over-taxation, cost of living, and a range of other sort of topics along the way.
Basically always on the I'm a libertarian.
So, I'm always coming from that libertarian perspective, but I'm also a Christian.
So, bringing those two together and that's a pretty rare thing in Australia there really isn't a lot of a lot of people in that space in Australia and broadly on the conservative side of politics.
Oh that's fascinating.
Water management and freedom of speech.
How do those fit together?
So, I've had to ask myself the same question and the best answer I've got for you, Peter, and it's not necessarily a good answer, but it's the best one I've got, is that I struggle to walk past an injustice.
Once I see something and go, that's wrong.
That should not be the way it is.
I find it very difficult to just ignore it and pretend I didn't see.
And so water management, I kind of fell into because my very first video was about water supply into Melbourne city, which is a 4.4 and a half million person city that was on heavy water restrictions.
There was a drought at the time and they were building a desalination plant and I've said the desalination plant was a bad idea and we should instead build a dam on there's a particular river where there was a dam reservation set aside by engineers 100 years ago, but politics being what it is today they were refusing to build a dam there for greeny sort of reasons.
So, that's that was my very first video and then someone said well if you think that's bad have a look at what they're doing down irrigators up on the Murray River.
And I investigated that and boy, boy, is that is that bad and people are literally being pushed to suicide and despair and bankruptcy and everything.
And of course, it impacts food prices and has a knock-on effect to us all.
So for me, that was kind of a fight that I couldn't walk past.
But as a political commentator, freedom of speech is essential to my work.
It's a non-negotiable, and it should be a non-negotiable for us all, but it's especially a non-negotiable when that's your stock in trade, is the right and the ability to say, government, you're wrong.
You're doing the wrong thing.
And so I was already defending, I was defending freedom of speech before it was cool.
And then, of course, COVID came along and we saw censorship just escalate to an entirely new level. But those two have really been two of my biggest topics along the way.
Tell us about during the COVID tyranny.
I saw a level, and probably you did as well in Australia, a level of frustration boiling over that we haven't seen in a long time.
We saw demonstrations against the Iraq war back in Tony Blair's time, a million people on the streets. Since then, we hadn't seen anything else.
It was the pool tax rats and Margaret Thatcher's time, going back to that.
And suddenly this happens and you've got huge, huge crowds coming out and active, I guess not civil obedience, but beginning to beginning to walk towards that line.
I mean were you surprised that certainly in Britain people seem to be pushed and pushed and pushed and the the frustration boils out at the pub over a couple of drinks and that's the the level of it.
Yeah.
But something happened to push people how did you see that and view that because I wasn't in media at that point.
We had just started two months before, but you saw this through a perspective of someone in the media.
Tell us how you viewed that in your country.
Our experience was very different in Melbourne as compared to anywhere else in Australia, let alone anywhere else in the world.
So, for those that don't know, Melbourne became the most locked down city in the world and remains that to this day with the exception of China.
China then did go on to do even more extreme things, but for a long time, Melbourne was the most locked down and outside of China continues to be the most locked down city in the world.
We had de facto house arrest.
You could not leave your house unless you were leaving for less than one hour and for an approved set of conditions.
They shut down schools. They shut down all but essential workplaces.
They shut down even kids' playgrounds and things.
You could not so much as go to a beach and sit on the beach to watch a sunset.
Even in your one hour of yard time, you would be arrested if you were found to have left the house just to go and enjoy some sunshine.
So we had a curfew, an 8 p.m. curfew that was enforced very, very vigorously, very, very violently.
We had what was called a ring of steel.
This was a series of checkpoints that separated metropolitan Melbourne from the rest of rural Victoria.
And they had military manning that checkpoint and demanding that you show paperwork to prove that you had a need to travel across that artificial new border that they'd put up around the city.
And we had protests being treated as completely illegal.
So, I spoke at the very first anti-lockdown protest, and this was my first ever conscious act of civil disobedience.
It was the first time I walked out my door.
I was 38 years old or so.
I was a clean skin, ex-Army Reserve, ex-I'd done a bunch of charitable work.
I was a clean skin.
You look at my police record, It was better than spotless.
It was positive.
I'd handed in wallets that I'd found on the street and all sorts of stuff, right?
And then all of a sudden, here I am walking out my door to go and deliberately speak at a rally that had been declared to be illegal.
And that was really a turning point in my life and took me in a whole new direction, because I live streamed that event and such was the hunger.
People were desperate, but no one was yet willing to make any moves.
By the time I got home from that event, that live stream had been watched over 100,000 times.
And this is just a live stream on Facebook.
I had a Facebook page with maybe 10,000 people on it.
So, that was a pretty big deal for me at the time.
And people, you know, I had a wave of abuse pour into my inbox, into my emails and so forth.
People angry how dare you.
You're killing grandma all that sort of stuff.
Then shortly on the back of that there was a wave of support: thank you for speaking out I've been thinking the same thing, but I thought I was going crazy, now I know I'm not.
And then on the back of that was a wave of despair, people reaching out in emails and in messages into my inbox just needing to tell me their story, because by this point in time we were about we were about by then we're about eight weeks in to lockdowns, seven weeks into lockdowns.
And for anyone who was already at the margins financially, was already close to the wind, this was absolutely decimating them.
For anyone whose mental health was already borderline, this was destroying them. Anyone whose marriage was close to breaking up, this was the final straw.
And I just had people pouring their hearts out to me.
And at first, I thought, why are you talking to me?
I can't help you.
I've got nothing.
I'm in the same position as you.
I've got a kid, a pregnant wife.
My business is going down the tube, because I had I had another business separate to the political commentary at the time.
My life is as much of a mess as yours.
Why are you asking me for help?
And then I realized they weren't asking me for help. Not one of them asked me to help them.
What they wanted was someone to listen.
And this is the tragedy of what happened, Peter, is all of the people that were supposed to be there for them had turned their back.
The church pastors, the mental health counsellors, most of the politicians, a lot of people's families had all turned their back on them to the point that they were digging up the contact details of a YouTube political commentator and pouring their heart out to me in emails and messages.
Such was the isolation that they experienced. So in that context, you can understand that the protests remained very, very small for many, many months.
We saw violent arrests where if someone was known to have been organizing protests, the police would show up at their door at six o'clock in the morning with a battering ram, smash their way through the door, violently tackle them to the ground, hospitalizing them in some cases.
We saw extreme levels of violence that we're not used to in Australia. This is not the kind of place where these things happen.
And so that kept our numbers really small, really down in the few hundreds.
And myself and a number of other courageous people, we kept on getting out there and kept on doing it anyway, knowing the risks and getting attacked by riot squads and attacked by police on horses, and threats of arrest, and all sorts of things. And then the government made a tactical mistake.
There was a woman by the name of Zoe Bueller, and she was out of town.
She was outside of that ring of steel that I mentioned earlier. She lived in a rural town, and she said, hey, let's get together and do a protest at the local park during our one hour of yard time.
Now, the thing with her was where she was, that was actually legal.
But the police arrested her anyway.
They went into her home and her husband live streamed, or she live streamed on her phone, her arrest.
And that was her, you may be familiar with it, in her pyjamas. She's pregnant.
There's a couple of kids in the home.
And she's saying, being arrested for what?
They were arresting her for incitement, the very same charge that they later charged me with.
And that video went viral.
And that really turned the movement from just a couple of hundred hardcore people doing what our conscience required us to do against all odds and all of a sudden we were getting a couple of thousand people.
And then there was a year or so of that on and off increasing police violence ultimately leading to them shooting us with rubber bullets and then finally their conscience that they were shamed effectively, by us refusing to back down and their conscience got the better of them and the police finally said: hey we're not doing the violence anymore and then all of a sudden our numbers exploded into the hundreds of thousands it's.
That accidental leadership which I think has been intriguing and probably is at the heart of what makes the establishment afraid, because when you look at all different demonstrations they kind of come from organizations that then push that agenda, that idea, and then arrange demonstrations, arrange rallies, arrange protests but this had; I mean the people that I'm sure it's same for you, that I've met, who've come from sports, from music, from different industry, from never done as you said a protest in their life suddenly come out.
And it's been fascinating that accidental leadership that we have seen worldwide.
Yeah, and you're absolutely right this is what makes them afraid.
It's the hydra.
And this is this really came out to me and I really bring this point out in battleground Melbourne the documentary which you can watch for free at battlegroundmelbourne.com The thing that I really wanted to bring out there was this isn't my story.
I had the privilege of being the storyteller, but it's not actually my story.
I didn't write that.
That was written by the people of Melbourne, the people of Victoria, and the courage that they showed.
And what we see time and again, the theme that I really sought to bring out in that documentary was we kept on being knocked down.
And then without any structured leadership, there was no board of directors making decisions.
People just got creative.
And somehow the movement as a whole stood back up again.
It might have been different people.
It might've been in a different place and it might've been in a different form.
But every time the government thought they'd finally knocked us down, we reappeared as a movement.
We reappeared in some new form and we were continuously adapting our tactics and they were continuously adapting their tactics.
And in the end, they got to the point where they couldn't escalate any further.
And we still hadn't gone away.
We still hadn't backed down.
They literally got to the point where the only thing left for them to do was to start shooting with live ammunition.
That was their last option.
They had done everything else up to that point.
Tear gas and riot police and mounted police and home invasions and rubber bullets onto, you know, shooting people in the back, unarmed people in the back with rubber bullets at the Shrine of Remembrance, a war memorial of all places.
I mean, absolute disgrace.
And then after doing that, thinking, oh, we finally got them.
They're going to run away scared now.
Well, then along came nurses and teachers who completely transformed the whole way the movement looked.
They showed up in parks in their uniforms, wearing masks, socially distanced, with writing on their tops saying how long they'd been a teacher or how long they'd been a nurse and these sorts of things.
And they just stood silently in the park.
So, all of a sudden, now that they'd gone to the rubber bullets, et cetera, gone was the rabble rousing and the chanting and everything else.
Now, all of a sudden, they're faced with a bunch of young women, mostly incredibly courageous, standing in parks, socially distanced, wearing masks and silent.
And they show up with the rubber bullet guns and they show up with the riot police and they show up with the horses.
And I think finally, it was like a mirror looking back at them. And suddenly they saw themselves and realized what they'd become.
And it was shortly after that that they released, they leaked this letter to the public, which they'd sent to the premier saying, we're not doing this anymore.
It's time to put away the tear gas.
We're not doing the violence anymore.
It's exactly what you're talking about.
The way I paraphrase it is this.
We were ordinary people who were faced with extraordinary times.
All we did was make the decision to do what was right, even though it was our government that was wrong.
That's it.
That's it.
That's all we are.
Because there were enough of us and because we had the courage to keep coming back and to keep getting back up in spite of what we faced, in the end, we won.
And that, I think, is a massive lesson and for all of humanity with everything that we're up against, because a leaderless, decentralized, organic movement is unstoppable for as long as we don't stop.
It's up to us to just go, we're just going to keep going.
A movement with leaders can be stopped if you take out the leaders, you know, strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.
But what if there's no shepherd? What if the sheep have started to think for themselves?
And that's what we created here in Melbourne.
And I think that's a model.
That's not to take anything away from people who do step into leadership, but I think that's a model for us.
We become unstoppable if we adopt that model.
And I want to pick up one of the two things we've learned.
And I'm asking you that not just because it's a historical event that we can learn a lot from, but here in the UK, we right now have the COVID inquiry.
I think in the next day or two, it's going to release its first findings.
And the figures on the COVID inquiry here in the UK, it's thought it'll be the most expensive inquiry in British history.
It's just going to be under just under 200 million pounds for the whole inquiry.
I think I read something like cost of £130,000 or £140,000 a day.
So, I'm asking you your experiences, because we are going through this charade of a COVID inquiry.
Has there been, and of course, that's not going to lead to anything. But in Australia, have there been questions?
We've seen a kind of slow change in the media on the right, but getting to say, actually, you know, we were always saying we shouldn't buy onto this.
I said, uh-uh, no, you weren't.
You had like an article every two months that might touch on another side.
But what about you in terms of reckoning for the media, in terms of reckoning for politicians on what Australians were put through?
Nowhere near enough.
We've had a couple of really good politicians, particularly a couple of really good senators who have been relentlessly pursuing this.
And they've had some small wins.
But one of the things that is just a reality that we have to be willing to accept and push our way through is that the powers that be have a lot of layers of defence.
So, they'll try and stop an inquiry from happening.
And then once they can't stop the inquiry from happening, they try and rig the inquiry by, you know, rigging the terms of reference or rigging who the commissioner is or these sorts of things.
We've just seen unfolding right now in Australia, we have a senator for the United Australia Party called Ralph Babbitt, Senator Ralph Babbitt, great guy.
He managed to get a, I don't remember the technical term for it, but it's some form of inquiry and a bunch of people made submissions to that inquiry.
And then the person running the inquiry has just announced they're not going to publish a lot of those submissions.
They're taking them as almost like comments.
Right.
And they're not actually publishing them as part of the inquiry.
It's like, well, no, you don't get to silence the Australian people like that.
And so now Senator Babet is taking up that particular fight to try and make sure that this actually gets done properly, et cetera.
So, they kind of have defence in depth, because there's a lot of tricks and tools that they get to use.
And every single one of them is a new layer that we have to battle our way through.
What I think though is is going to happen much faster than we've seen in history, so in history we saw for example the thalidomide debacle where for a very long time if you know thalidomide being dangerous was considered to be misinformation and you were uninformed and ignorant if you said that it was, or asbestos, and then all of a sudden everyone always knew that it was dangerous.
Right?
That was you know we saw that trend and we're watching that happen in some parts of the media now: oh, I've always said that we should be careful about an untested vaccine. No you didn't, you told everyone to go out and get jabbed, right?
Yeah.
So, we're seeing that revisionism is kicking in.
But it took 40 years for thalidomide to finally get apologies and compensation and these sorts of things.
But that happened before the internet.
And that happened when we weren't as able to communicate with each other as what we are now and able to dig and discern the truth.
The gatekeepers of old are no longer, they no longer hold the level of power that they used to have.
And that allows us to accelerate the timelines.
The other comment that I'll make, Peter, is people only start to pay attention to politics once it starts to hurt them.
There's a thing called rational ignorance. It doesn't make sense.
It's not rational for us to pay lots of attention to something that we can't really influence.
Influence if we don't if we can't really control it well we should spend our time and focus you know invest that into the things that we can have more control over.
So, there's a level of rational ignorance when it comes to politics.
Why would I pay attention to politics when I can't really change anything anyway.
And most Australians have that attitude until it hurts them and then all of a sudden they arc up.
And then they can't understand why they can't get help from anyone else, well because it's not hurting them.
So, the silver lining of something as tragic as what what we've seen during COVID, the silver lining is that it hurt a lot of people simultaneously.
And a lot of people at the same time all stood up and said, hey, this isn't okay.
I'm not happy with this.
And then when they looked around for support, there were actually other people out there to support them because there was a lot of people standing up at the same time.
And what's important now is that we maintain the rage, to use a tired old phrase.
We cannot let up on this.
We cannot let people take a revisionist view.
Oh, we did the best we could with what we knew at the time.
Any of that sort of, we cannot accept any of that.
And we must just continue to relentlessly pursue justice and understand that this is a long-term project.
We're not going to win this overnight.
But what's happening now is we're getting organized at a level that we've never been before.
And our pushback is getting sophisticated at a level that it never has been before.
And more and more people are willing to take risks.
And I'll use a local example to you, you, Peter.
It would have been unimaginable in the 2000s for a situation to arise in a city like London where the ULEZ cameras would have been being vandalized on a widespread scale.
That's unthinkable.
The Blade Runner phenomenon, again, an example of a leaderless organic movement that just popped up where people used the internet and our ability to communicate with each other to find these cameras, to map them, to publish those maps.
And then other people looked at those maps and made decisions about what they were going to do.
I'm not condoning anything of course but observing what's happened that was unthinkable 20 years ago and now it's an ongoing phenomenon.
So, I'm actually quite hopeful that a lot of these petty tyrants, these people who want to control and tell us how we're going to live, are going to find themselves bewildered by this array of pushback that seems to come out of nowhere.
And they will go looking for the enemy and say, who's organized this?
And the answer is no one.
And that makes it really hard for them to stop.
So, I'm actually really optimistic.
And I think it was actually in the end, a good thing that COVID would hurt so many people and not good that they were hurt but it's good now that we live in a world where ordinary people are standing up in a way that we have not seen in my lifetime before.
And that fits into your your book: Good People Break Bad Laws.
Up until this point good people follow the law, good people call the police if there is a problem, good people vote for the the party that they think is best.
Good people use the legal system for solutions to problems.
And there's a whole list of what good people, and I always looked at CND, the anti-war people, or kind of stop oil people and thought that's so disruptive.
How dare they do that? And now...
Either maybe I was dumb, maybe I didn't get it before, maybe I trust the institutions.
But I think a lot of people, certainly more on the right, trusted the institutions to a large degree.
Now that trust has completely gone.
That contract, I think, with the government has been completely broken. And we've gone from good people follow the law, even if it's not necessarily the best law, you do what you do as a citizen, to hell no. we're going to break.
That's a huge change in society, in a democratic society.
That's a massive change.
Yeah, there's a number of layers to this.
First and foremost, pretty much everybody on all sides of politics acknowledges that civil disobedience has been the right thing in various moments in history.
One of the most obvious being, of course, the civil rights movement to end segregation in the US.
That's sort of a pretty obvious contemporary example where we say, Martin Luther King and even many people, Malcolm X and a bunch of others, yes, that was the right thing for them to do.
Civil disobedience, breaking those laws was a good thing for them to do.
And when you look in a historical context, there's almost universal agreement about that.
But there is certainly on the more conservative side of politics, a real discomfort about it in real time.
And that's simply because conservatives have been used since the end of the Second World War to being the ones in charge, which means that when someone is disobeying, they're disobeying the conservatives, right?
They're disobeying the establishment and the conservatives identify as that.
They're disobeying us.
What a bunch of rabble-rousing ratbags.
Well, there's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it.
And just stop oil, et cetera.
We see them doing it in very, very destructive ways.
And my book does address that.
I talk about the right way and the wrong way to do these sorts of things.
But in principle, doing what's right is always right, even if the law is wrong, right?
And we have to accept an uncomfortable truth for a lot of conservatives.
And like I said, I'm a libertarian, so I have no issue with this, but a lot of conservatives struggle with this.
When you change the law, you do not change what is right or wrong.
What is right or wrong is already right or wrong.
And when we change a law, we're either admitting that it used to be wrong and now it's right, or maybe that it used to be right and now we've got it wrong, or maybe that it was wrong both times.
But we can't pretend that just because some people in a room stood around and approved the change of wording that we've changed the laws of nature and morality and what's right and wrong.
We haven't.
So, when we write laws, our task is not to define what's right and what's wrong.
It is to discern what's right and what's wrong and to align the law as closely as possible to that.
And that's a matter of conscience.
And I have to do what's right according to my conscience, even if the people in that room have written laws that disagree with that particular point of view.
And this is necessary.
This is essential.
People say: oh, we can't all just run around doing whatever we think is best. No, no, no. We all have to live our lives doing what we think is best.
Because guess what?
When I stand before God, I can't turn around and say: oh, but Peter made me do it.
Peter told me it was the right thing to do.
Nor can I say, oh, but a whole bunch of Peters in a house called parliament told me that it was the right thing to do.
No, I don't get to outsource my morality.
I'm accountable for my decisions, for the moral outcomes and the morality that is represented in the decisions that I make.
And that's true, no matter what the law says.
So what conservatives have to accept is that they are no longer in the majority.
Okay.
The cultural war has been lost.
That's not to say that it's permanent.
It's not permanently that way. But think about the sexual revolution and the aims of third wave feminism, the sexual revolution.
They got everything they wanted, right?
What we call conservative politics now is unrecognizable in the world of the 1950s.
What we call conservative politics now is radical, progressive Marxist ideology.
And we call that conservative now because we've completely lost track of how far we've slid.
Conservatives have already lost the culture war.
The culture war is over.
Conservatives lost.
What has happened now is that people who who believe in God. Who believe in family, who believe in what we would consider to be basic decency, basic morality, Judeo-Christian morals.
We are now the revolutionaries.
We are now the beatniks.
We are now the hippies of our age.
And we are the ones who are actually trying to bring about a revolution against an establishment that has rejected all of that morality. And we have to accept that that means that we need to adopt the tactics of the revolutionaries, the rebels.
We're the cool kids now.
That's the good news, Peter.
We get to be the cool kids for a change rather than the stayed old, you know, the pearl clutches.
The pearl clutches now are all on the left.
Oh, you used the wrong pronouns. Oh, my heart, right?
That's them now.
We get to be the cool kids. And what that means is we have to accept and we have to move on from a lot of these old mindsets.
And one of those mindsets was, oh, but it's the law.
We all need to do what the law says.
Well, that was always the wrong perspective.
But not only now is it the wrong perspective, but it's also incredibly unhelpful.
If the law is wrong, we have no obligation to obey and to do what's wrong.
And in particular, I look at Psalm 94, I think it's verse 12, where it says that crooked leaders cannot be your friends. They use the law to cause suffering. And this is one of,
I propose two tests for what a bad law is in my book, Good People Break Bad Laws. And one of them is a practical test, and one of them is a principles test.
And the practical test is based on that verse in Psalm 94. Does this law cause suffering?
Because that's the definition of a crooked ruler.
A crooked ruler is someone who uses the law to cause suffering.
And if the following or enforcing of a law causes more suffering than the breaking of that law would cause, then you are looking at a candidate for potentially a bad law.
There's more to it than that. You have to read the book.
But that becomes a candidate for this might be a bad law.
And actually, my conscience might require me to disobey this law in order to do what's right.
How, I will say I have not read the book, but I will be reading it.
I'd encourage others because we are in different times and it's fascinating.
And your comment about individual consciousness, individual responsibility, we seem to have contracted that out to a government that actually you're the ones that will decide what is good and what is bad, what's right and what's wrong.
I no longer have to and we are in a completely different generation than previous generations in that there is no accountability.
There's no right and wrong there's no accountability, and it's; yeah we have it we have to learn how to live as individuals within that new paradigm of actually people don't take personal responsibility for anything.
And we'll see that in the COVID inquiry people say: oops. And what do you mean "oops"?
How many people's lives were damaged?
Destroyed? Kill?
How many people were killed?
This is not an oops and yet that seems to be where we are that there is zero personal responsibility for anything and certainly we see that in this in the States on obesity where actually you just take a drug, because that's just not nothing to your fault. And you just take a drug or it's your genes.
No what about personal responsibility for lifestyle, but But that seems to have gone out the window completely.
Peter, it's worse than that.
So, I'm working on my second book, which will be out before the end of this year, which is titled Good Christians Break Bad Laws, Obeying God in a Fallen World.
And it's specifically on the theology of civil disobedience.
It looks at everyone from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other sort of World War II heroes right back in history and then obviously diving deep into Scripture itself, Old Testament, New Testament, the words of Christ, et cetera, on this topic of obedience to government.
Yes, I deal with Romans 13, 1 Peter 2. All of that is covered in this book.
The reality of our situation, Peter, is that we actually now worship the government. And unfortunately, I have to include the church in that statement.
What we saw during COVID, and I can't speak for where you are, but certainly where I am in the city of Melbourne, was almost every single church with a vanishingly small number of exceptions allowed the government to dictate to them whether or not they would open their doors,.
Whether or not they would help the poor, whether or not they would gather and worship, whether or not they would take communion, how many people were allowed to sing etcetera.
And and what they did was they turned around and said: oh no it's okay because we can we'll have a tiny skeleton crew in the building and we'll live stream church.
You can do live stream church so this isn't a violation of our christian principles this isn't a violation of you know of the exhortation not to forsake the gathering together of the saints, because you can watch a video online.
And of course when we look at the example: I'll just pull one example out, look at okay so we know that Daniel would pray multiple times a day he would open his window and he would.
We pray in full public view.
And when it was, I think, Nebuchadnezzar, I can always get mixed up between Darius and Nebuchadnezzar and all the others.
I think it was Nebuchadnezzar was convinced by his secular advisors, his pagan advisors to make a law that said people could only pray to Nebuchadnezzar.
Daniel didn't choose to keep praying in the privacy of his room and keep the door and the shutters closed. He could have done that.
And he could have said, oh, well, I'm still practicing my religion.
I'm just doing it in a way that's not going to provoke trouble.
I don't want to cause any issues here.
No, no, no.
No, he opened those shutters and prayed in the same spot in full view because to go into hiding and say, oh, I'm still practicing my religion in secret is still saying to the government, you have the right to tell me that I can't do that.
You're still conceding that ground to the government.
And that means that you're giving the government more authority over your faith walk than God has.
So, I believe that the church's biggest problem, and this is so funny because as a kid, you'd You'd read the Ten Commandments.
You're like, oh, the idolatry one's out of date.
Like, that doesn't apply anymore.
Actually, I've realized, no, I'm completely wrong.
Idolatry is the number one sin that we are facing in the church and in secular society here today.
Specifically, we've made an idol with our own hands. Look at what the children of Israel did.
They made calves with their own hands, and they fell down and worshipped them. When God designed government, God designed the system of judges.
There was enough law that they could read it in three days, the whole thing.
And they had a dispute resolution process.
They could go to a judge to have a dispute be resolved.
There was no other law and there was no other mechanism to make more law.
And during the time of Isaiah, the children of Israel decided that that wasn't enough and they wanted a king.
And they went to Isaiah and they demanded, oh, Samuel, was it?
Excuse me, in the time of Samuel, I think it was.
They demanded a king and they ended up getting Saul.
When they went to Samuel and said to give us a king, Samuel was upset because he's being rejected as a judge and his children who are ungodly were being rejected as judges.
And he takes it to God and God says to him, listen to what they're actually saying.
They're not rejecting you.
They're rejecting me as their king.
And I'll cover all of this in the book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws.
As their forefathers did in the wilderness, building golden calves and worshipping them.
That's what God says in response.
They are rejecting me as their king, as their forefathers did, building golden calves and worshipping them.
God immediately equates creating a government that is beyond what God designed with idolatry.
He immediately says, this is like worshipping a golden calf. And that's exactly where we are today.
Look at the names of God in the Old Testament. Jehovah Jireh, my provider.
Who do we look to for provision now?
You know, the very Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah Tzidkenud, all the different names of God.
They all have different meanings.
My healer, my giver of wisdom, my protector, my refuge, my provider, et cetera.
We look to the government for each and every one of those things now.
We've literally worshipped government and allowed government to usurp God in every single part of our lives.
And if it wasn't already obvious enough, it became glaringly obvious during COVID.
And I think one of the most urgent needs in the world today is for Christians to get on our knees before God and repent of idolatry and worshipping government and obeying government, even where the government is the one causing misery.
Even where the government has become crooked, like what Psalm 94 talks about. We've obeyed government instead of God.
And the most urgent thing now is repentance in the church.
I wasn't expecting us to go down this angle, but I'm enjoying this.
You mentioned about not forsaking Hebrews 10, 25. It said, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.
And how much closer are we to that day 2,000 years later?
And there's no opt-out. The Bible is full of laws, of ideals, of examples, of guidelines for us to live by because God knows best because God made us, and therefore he's the one that knows the best way to live.
There are no opt-outs. And certainly I remember being in one church, Church of England Church, and they said, oh, we need to wait until the government announce their guidelines later this week to know if we can meet and sing in the park this weekend.
I think, well, we've already been told not to forsake gathering.
What's wrong with meeting out in the open?
I mean, Jesus didn't stop going and speaking in synagogues because people had leprosy. Actually, no, he went there. And there were so few.
I think in the UK, I don't know of any church that actually, there was one church that had a legal fight, but they still shut the doors.
I know I went to a big event with a Pentecostal preacher, Rodney Howard Brown. He was the only person, I mean, the first pastor in America.
And it was interesting that the more traditional evangelical part of the church said, we need to be good citizens, and that means doing what we're told to do.
Then you have the more Pentecostal or charismatic said, no, no, no, the Bible says this, so we do this.
I was interested in seeing that division.
But certainly, I've seen hook, line, and sinker that churches across the UK accepted everything the government told us to do.
And you're saying you saw exactly the same in Australia.
And there's been no change of that.
There's been no apology.
As you said no repentance for saying we got it wrong but if this happens again we will follow god's law not man's law yeah this
Is such a crucial thing, it's such a tragedy that I actually know the names globally of most of the pastors that really did stand up.
John MacArthur in the U.S and I think he was in California.
Arthur Polowski a Polish immigrant to Canada.
Bishop Marmari in Sydney who actually since got stabbed.
He survived and thankfully he's okay, but he was one of the correct, he was a Coptic, I think, no offense if I get this wrong, Bishop, but I believe he's a Coptic or an Orthodox Christian and was really speaking up.
There was a Catholic church in Jindera that was really good in a remote Australian outback sort of town.
But these are the exceptions, right?
I shouldn't be able to name the ones that stood up and did the right thing.
When I challenged my own pastor on this, he said, Topher, I can't do what you want me to do, because the government will take away our funding for the soccer academy that we run for the migrants.
Right?
Now, I, I've read my Bible from cover to cover in a couple of different translations.
And I, I just, I've tried, but I can't remember the verse that says, go ye into all the world and run soccer academies.
I've, I'm going to have to go back and just study again and just try and find that verse because what's happened now.
I mean, there's a reason why Jesus specifically warned, warned us and said, you cannot serve God and mammon. Why did he pick mammon? You can't serve God and sex.
You can't serve God and bar.
You can't serve, you know, God and your belly. Why did he pick mammon as the thing?
Well, because that's going to be the key core temptation.
And this is what we see, particularly in the established churches, because the business of church and the property and the building and the maintenance and the tithes and everything else is such an important thing.
Governments have been very clever.
They turned around a hundred odd years ago and said, oh, instead of you being excluded from the tax code entirely, let's give you a special charitable tax exempt status that brings you into the tax code.
And then you'll be eligible for government funding for programs, for charitable stuff, right?
We're doing it to help you.
We're going to give you money and you can do more ministry, right?
And luring churches with money into compromising and contracting with government and becoming just another civil, just another corporation, really, that just has a few special perks.
Fast forward a hundred years and we get to a situation where pastors aren't willing to speak on transgenderism or abortion. Oh no, I better not talk about anything political.
Oh no, I better not stand up for our right to actually worship God during a pandemic. I better not do those thing, because I'm going to lose these special privileges that the government has given me.
Well, excuse me, who's your provider?
What does the Bible say about that? And this is why I say, and I've ruffled a lot of feathers.
I've got a lot of people's noses out of joint because I speak at the church and state conferences in Australia and elsewhere.
And I challenge pastors and I challenge church guys.
I'm not trying to cause damage to the church, but please hear me out.
If your pastor compromised during COVID and has not repented, all right, I'm all about forgiveness, all about second chances.
Is if your pastor made mistakes and then went, guys, I got that wrong. I'm so sorry.
This is what I've learned.
This is what I'm going to put in place to make sure I never do that again.
Great.
Great.
All for it.
But if your pastor still insists that shutting down was the right thing to do and turning away people who were in desperate need of help was the right thing to do right at a time when people needed the church the most.
I mean, if your instinctive reaction when there is a threat to people's temporal lives is to lock the doors of the house that has eternal salvation, if that's your instinctive reaction, then you don't understand what it is that you do as a Christian pastor.
You hold the keys to eternal life. When there is a temporal threat, when there is a pandemic, if it's the Black Death, for goodness sake, you should be throwing the doors of the church open, wheeling the speakers out onto the steps, cranking that thing up as loud as you can and saying: come one, come all, repent for your day of judgment could very well be at hand.
And if you get word from the government, there's a pandemic coming and and your reaction is to shut your doors and turn people away, I put it to you that you are probably in the wrong profession.
A hundred percent.
We have pastors who want to be liked more than they want to do the right thing.
And I'm a grew up pastor's kid.
I've been involved in huge churches.
And when you get to see behind the scenes, it is a desire to be liked and to do what you think the government.
But it's this issue of which I think is the key issue and it's an issue that we will face here in the UK in the next five years.
It's the tax exempt status. It's the charitable status, it is the money in the UK you get tax back. So, if you're a taxpayer, you give your 100 pounds to the church and then the church gets an extra 20 back.
And most churches survive on that and if that was taken away they couldn't survive and this is why I've been at churches and pastors have have apologized for suggesting that abortion may be murder.
They've apologized for saying that actually transgenderism may be wrong. I had a pastor who told me the way he combats the attack on sexuality is he has a bookmark in his Bible with man and woman in it.
And that bookmark means that he is speaking truth.
And of course, in the COVID, that's time and time again.
And I can see, certainly in the UK with the Labour government, which we have a uni party, of course, it's no different than the Tory Labour Party.
This is not on one side. It's the same thing.
But I can see churches being told, unless you sign up to these pledges, the good citizen pledges, then you will lose your charitable status.
And 99% of churches will happily sign up for the money. So you're 100% right.
And this is the tragedy.
So in Australia, we had a referendum recently around whether the government should redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, all right?
And a lot of Christians, because the result was, yes, we should redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.
And a lot of Christians said, oh, no, we lost the marriage debate.
I say, well, no, no, no, hold on.
We lost the marriage debate back in the 1950s when federal legislation was passed to create a federal marriage certificate.
Because before then, you got a marriage certificate from your church.
The government had nothing to do with marriage.
And then in the 1990s, maybe early 2000s, then Prime Minister John Howard introduced legislation to introduce into the wording of the Marriage Act, man and woman.
Because it didn't actually have it.
It was assumed in the 1950s.
They didn't have to define that in the 1950s.
And then the church in the 1990s is like, yes, yes, yes, we've won.
No, no.
What we've said, what we've done is we've taken a sacred institution, marriage, and we've put it under a secular governance now.
We've said this thing that God created can now be defined and redefined by government.
I don't care whether you like the government's definition right now or not, the minute you concede to them the power to have a definition, then you've lost.
And sure enough, 30 years later, there was a referendum and the definition was changed and all these Christians are like, oh no, we've lost the marriage debate.
No, you lost that in the 1950s.
We need to stop taking things that are sacred and putting them into the hands of secular governments.
That is idolatry.
We are worshipping government and it has to stop.
Have you always been, I mean, from the beginning focused on the church being engaged and involved in society, because I think a lot of people have seen the collapse of the church during Covid, but then you go back further and you see at separate points in history of each of our countries you see the capitulation of the church to state mandates in varying degrees.
But I've, it's you kind of, we've seen it very starkly with, we all thought, we all believed, actually, the state will not stop churches meeting.
That'll be the last, you know, they may come in on what we believe on doctrine issues, on the culture wars, but actually, we'll still be allowed to meet on Sunday, so it's all good.
And suddenly, that key right for Christians to gather together, share fellowship together, that's now taken away.
Has that been partially the the last straw in people's engagements.
I mean, how have you seen it in your involvement along that journey?
Yeah, I'm going to answer something else before I answer your actual question.
Let's stop and think for a moment what a low bar that is to set.
Oh, at least the church allows us to meet.
Well, the church in China is allowed to meet, right?
You can be a Christian in the UK and in Australia and in Canada in exactly the same way that you can be a Christian in China.
Just don't say the things that the government says you can't say.
Your doctrine just has to to be the government approved doctrine.
And then you can be a Christian.
You can show up to church, you can wear a cross, you can call yourself a pastor, as long as you only preach the things that the government has approved.
Look at how low we've already set the bar and what a terrible compromise that is.
To your question, I was raised as a, I'm a pastor's kid.
I'm actually, I'm a pastor's grandkid on both my mom and my dad's side.
Both of them were pastors.
My dad was a pastor, was raised in the church, of course, went through my phase of rebellion and trying to figure out what I actually believe, blah, blah, blah.
And then I tried to prove that God didn't exist and I failed miserably.
So, I've had to accept that he actually is real. And that the best thing I can do with my life is to pursue him.
And as imperfect as I am and as flawed as I am and as a million different ways that I stumble, that's my life mission now.
But I considered myself a political commentator.
And then over time, I began to realize you can't, there's so many problems in politics that you can't fix without reference to faith, without reference to the underlying values, that inform political policy.
So, I started to call myself a political commentator who's a Christian or, you know, a Christian political commentator. And I'm starting to realize, actually, I just need to drop the word political.
And I think I'm actually, I actually just need to say, no, I'm a Christian commentator. And because that faith, what you believe about God informs what you believe about everything else.
It involves culture.
It involves politics.
It involves commerce and employment and healthcare and anything you might want to commentate on is downstream of your belief in God.
And so all I am is a guy to drive forklifts, who made a video, who somehow people found my work and said, hey, you keep talking.
And now as I've pursued that, I've come to realize the most important thing that I can talk about, the most valuable thing that I can be talking about is faith and God and how best we live in a fallen world.
And that's essentially the mission that I've set out to do. So that's why Good People Break Bad Laws is my first book is becoming Good Christians Break Bad Laws as my second book is the realization that I have to talk about the faith side of this, not to the exclusion of the politics.
The politics does matter.
The culture stuff does matter.
But it's all informed by what you believe about God.
And that's ultimately where the truth lies. And that's what we need to be talking about.
Last question is in terms of you kind of don't think of Australia as being a out-and-out Christian country.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. Never been down under, so I could be 100% wrong.
But are we moving towards a church that is that is underground, a church that actually needs to separate itself from the state in a way that we haven't seen?
I mean we have a we have a state church in the UK: church of England.
And that's meant that the state have had 100 control and we now have 24 bishops in the lords that are wetter than any pathetic liberal you'll come across and are more concerned about environmental issues and plastic bags than they are actually about God and his position in society.
Do you think in Australia you're moving towards actually the church will have to be underground and fairly separate?
I think we were headed that way, but I think God is on the move.
And I'm going to shamelessly name drop for a moment. Tucker Carlson was in Melbourne recently, and he met with me backstage.
My wife and I chatted with him for about 25 minutes.
Lovely, gracious man.
I was very generous with his time.
And we talked mostly about God.
That was the number one thing that he and I, that we discussed.
And he commented on how dark Melbourne felt spiritually compared to the rest of Australia.
And he's absolutely right.
Melbourne is a broken city, and there's a spiritual oppression, a spiritual aspect to it.
But he also said, do you feel like God's doing something?
I said, yes, thank you.
We're not the only ones.
And all over the place, I'm seeing what gives me huge encouragement is all over the place, including in my own personal faith walk, I'm seeing God calling people to prayer in a new and a fresh and a more powerful way than has been the case since probably the charismatic renewal.
And prayer almost always precedes revival.
Find me a revival that didn't have an enormous amount of prayer invested into it before it happened.
I don't think there is one.
And I believe that we're in a phase now where God is calling people to prayer and faithful people, the genuine Christians, the ones who aren't compromising, are coming to prayer.
And yes, a lot of the church is falling into apostasy.
A lot of the church is walking away from the basic fundamental tenets of the Christian faith and becoming more concerned about social justice and all this sort of stuff.
And there will be a split.
There will be a bifurcation.
But I actually think there's going to be an enormous renewal and an enormous number of people who are just seeking the truth, seeking meaning, recognizing the meaninglessness of third wave feminism, culture war and politics and so much of this stuff, sport, money, all the rest of it.
The meaninglessness is becoming really clear for a lot of people now.
I think we're actually about to see an enormous revival where an enormous number of people are going to have a come to Jesus moment in the most real and literal sense.
Yeah, 100%.
I agree with you.
And when it gets dark, it's time for the light of Christ to shine brightly.
So, we are in that moment, certainly. Topher, really appreciate you coming on all the way over from down under.
Thank you so much for your time, sharing a little bit about your story and fascinating how you see the church getting engaged, involved, and where that...
Your book, you can obviously get as an e-book, you can get as a paperback. It's available here in the UK.
As it will be down under.
I'm sure it's available in the US. And Battleground Melbourne, what's the website again?
So, the website for the book is goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.
You can order it from Australia along with shirts and hoodies and things like that.
Or you can go to Amazon and get it, and it'll just get printed in your local market, and you'll receive it that way.
Or you can get an e-book, like you said. You can go to battlegroundmelbourne.com. Now, Battleground Melbourne is my multi-award winning documentary.
It's an hour and 40 minutes long.
It's a feature-length documentary. It's very high quality.
It's won 14 awards around the world, and it tells the story of what happened in Melbourne at the most locked down city in the world.
You can watch it for free.
I don't need your money
I don't even need your email address. Just go to battlegroundmelbourne.com.
It's there. You can watch it.
I highly recommend everyone do that.
You will be shocked.
Even people that lived through it in Melbourne but didn't step outside of their homes, they just did what they were told, they watch it and they're shocked at what happened on the streets of their own city on the other side of that door.
And for people in London or around the world, the US, etcetera, I think it's worth seeing because this isn't unique to Australia.
This is something that our governments all over the world, including in the US, would have loved to have done if they thought they could get away with it.
And it's up to us to make sure that they know that they can't.
100 percent.
Topher, thank you for joining us.
And all the links for those are in the description.
However, you're watching or listening to the podcasting apps.
It will be all there in description, just click on and you can get the book, you can watch the film and everything is there.
So don't for thanks for your time.
Such a pleasure Peter.
Thank you.

Damani Felder - Trump Assassination Attempt: Trump Fights for America, So I Will Fight for Him

⁨Join us as we welcome Damani Felder to Hearts of Oak. Damani has developed a unique perspective on the world.
He discusses his skepticism towards identity politics and emphasizes the importance of judging individuals based on their ideas rather than their characteristics.In this thought-provoking conversation, Damani and Peter explore the political climates in the US and the UK, challenging norms and advocating for discernment in politics and faith-based decision-making. They delve into the complexities of political ideologies and the need for unity and inclusivity in society.Damani discusses the recent assassination attempt on President Trump and expresses his disbelief and emphasizes the importance of coming together as a nation during such trying times. He also shares his media journey, including his involvement in the WalkAway movement, and expresses his hope for positive societal change through resilience and divine providence. Tune in to this powerful episode to hear Damani's inspiring story and his message of hope and unity.
Damani Felder was born in November 1991, as the second child of USAF veterans Eddie and Valerie Felder. Growing up as a military child, he learned how to adapt to new surroundings quickly, moving roughly once every 1-2 years. His mother chose to leave her military career and home-school him and his siblings, which she continued for the next 30 years. Education is her passion, and she worked tirelessly to equip him and his siblings with the knowledge necessary to become leaders.God has given Damani the opportunity to use the skills He's blessed him with to reach millions of people around the world, he's had the chance to speak out confidently and share hope and inspiration with others.He has been invited to the White House three times, attended and spoken at CPAC, participated in the WalkAway March on D.C., and delivered many speeches in and around the state of Texas. 
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Interview recorded  18.7.24
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Dr Sebastian Gorka - Trump Assassination Attempt: An Inch From Civil War

A warm welcome for the return of Dr. Sebastian Gorka, as he discusses the recent assassination attempt on President Trump, criticising the left's normalisation of violence and The Secret Service's diversity hires over security competence. He delves into 'conspiracy' theories, border policies' impact on law enforcement morale, and praises President Trump's leadership during the attack. The conversation extends to political implications, examining JD Vance as the VP pick, media reactions, and critiques of the January 6th committee and FBI tactics. Dr. Gorka emphasizes resilience, core values, and the transformative power of adversity in shaping the political language and enforcing the MAGA message.
Sebastian Gorka, PhD., served as Deputy Assistant for Strategy to the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and is currently a presidential appointee to the National Security Education Board at the Department of Defense. He is the host of AMERICA First, a nationally-syndicated radio show on the Salem Radio Network, and The Gorka Reality Check, the newest show on the cable news network Newsmax TV. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book “Defeating Jihad,” and “Why We Fight.” His latest book is “The War for America’s Soul.”
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Interview recorded  16.7.24
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Pastor Mark Burns - Trump Assassination Attempt: The Spiritual Aftermath

We are honoured to have Pastor Mark Burns join us to discuss the recent assassination attempt on President Trump. Pastor Burns emphasizes Trump's love for the nation and humanity, and highlights divine protection. He delves into Judeo-Christian principles, stressing faith in God in adversity. Pastor Burns then shares his journey from supporting Obama to advocating for Trump and challenging the Democratic Party's control over the black community. He encourages gratitude and focusing on blessings over lacks, addressing the spiritual battle in current events and the role of faith in turbulent times. Pastor Burns concludes the podcast by emphasizing the importance of gratitude and trust in God. 
A lifelong resident of District 3, born in Anderson, SC, raised in Belton, SC and currently lives in Easley, SC; Pastor Mark Burns, labeled by Time Magazine as "Donald Trump's Top Pastor" and named one of the "16 People Who Shaped the 2016 Presidential Election" is the Co-Founder & CEO of The NOW Television Network, a Christian television network based out of South Carolina that reaches 236 million homes in the US & 83 countries including sub-Saharan Africa & Western Europe on digital cable television, satellite, Apple TV, Amazon, Android App, ROKU & online at theNOWnetwork.org.Pastor Burns has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, Al Jazeera-America, BBC, ABC News, CBS & National Public Radio (NPR). Many articles have been written about Pastor Mark Burns' ventures including Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo News, Bloomberg News, Vice News, and others...Pastor Burns is a renowned motivational speaker that has energized audiences across the country with stories that inspire greatness out of anyone listening just like his "All Lives Matter" Speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention which has inspired the world.After serving six years in the South Carolina Army National Guard, Pastor Burns founded the multicultural, non-denominational contemporary church The Harvest Praise & Worship Center of Easley. Pastor Burns has been blessed with seven adult children.
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Interview recorded 15.7.24
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Martin Sellner - Europe Wakes Up: A Call to Defend Freedom

Martin Sellner, co-founder of Generation Identity, joins Hearts of Oak to discuss the patriotic youth movement's formation in Europe.He emphasizes nonviolent activism to counter mass migration and preserve national identity, despite challenges like bans and media demonization. Martin underscores the importance of cultural preservation and combating negative migration effects while advocating for truth and moral superiority in right-wing movements' arguments. His activism includes writing books and organizing demonstrations against multiculturalism and diversity agendas, highlighting the group's goals and challenges in the face of political and media scrutiny.
Martin Sellner is an Austrian patriotic activist and author and fights for the preservation of his homeland. Actions and theory, truth and resistance, determine Martin's life.  
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Interview recorded  15.7.24
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The Week According To . . . Callum Smiles

We are delighted to be joined by Callum Smiles, 'The Unconventional Journalist' to help us pick through the past seven days news, headlines and talking points from across the web.Callum is a rare breed. A journalist who seeks truth and we always find his commentary refreshing, so we look forward to his thoughts on tonight's topics, including...- Bat-Shit Bonkers Britain: Couple fined £1.2K by council for clearing up rubbish in street- Minister of State for Gaza- Swear on The Bible? Our MP’s don’t even speak English anymore- History Erased: Another church in France up in flames- The new Labour government: "There's not a huge amount of money" But "£3 billion a year to Ukraine for as long as it takes."- Moscow issues warning to new Prime Minister Sir Keith Starmer, saying there would be a response if the UK allowed Ukraine to strike Russia with British weapons- Virus with 50% mortality rate takes 'dangerous' step towards spreading in humans simply by breathing- PM Keith Starmer could let out 40,000 inmates early to ease prisons crisis
Callum Smiles Media is an independent media outlet with only one agenda: The Truth.Having started a career in acting, Callum gave acting up during the draconian “COVID” era of ever expanding government and the tightening of the leash on the lives of the general public to focus on more important matters, finding the truth.Callum began to put his head above the parapet by conducting public debates called “Convince Me Otherwise” under Frankly Speaking Politics with Corrie Legge as well as performing comical politiskits to bring people’s attention to important matters through the medium of laughter, for example opening for a live AJ Roberts show with Matt Le Tissier as “Boris Johnson“.This led to being spotted by Rebel News where Callum worked for 9 months as the UK and European reporter, creating unique news packages and documentaries, such as going undercover in migrant hotels and migrants camps as well as the famous walk and talk with Greta Thunberg in Davos 2023.Callum left Rebel News in May 2023 to work independently, creating Callum Smiles Media.
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Recorded 12.7.24
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Links to topics...Couple fined by council https://web.archive.org/web/20240710221731/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/10/couple-fined-stoke-on-trent-council-clearing-up-rubbish/Minister of State for Gazahttps://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1809636477392867523MP’s don’t speak English anymorehttps://x.com/HeartsofOakUK/status/1811478381189267513Church in France up in flameshttps://x.com/HeartsofOakUK/status/1811361463551856838No money lefthttps://x.com/hector_drummond/status/1811500514472861877Russia vows to retaliate https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13619421/Russia-vows-retaliate-UK-allows-Kyiv-strike-territory-Storm-Shadow-missiles-Starmer-insisted-Ukraine-decide-use-long-range-weapons.htmlVirus with 50% mortality rate https://www.gbnews.com/health/bird-flu-symptoms-pandemic-2024Starmer could let out 40,000 inmates https://web.archive.org/web/20240710233248/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-could-let-out-40000-inmates-early-to-ease-prisons-crisis-r68zq2vfq