Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #394: When the American Dream Breaks: Affordability and the Church

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Being Catholic #394: When the American Dream Breaks: Affordability and the Church · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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on Catholic Spirit Radio, 89.5 FM and 92.5 FM in good old McLean County and Bloomington Normal,
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We're going to have a great show for you today. I'm here with my wife, Lynn.
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Remember always, we're brought to you by you and any donation that you can make
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is always appreciated, large or small.
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So if you can make a donation today, please do that.
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I said I'm here with my wife, Lynn. And before we start, I'll turn it over to
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her and see if she has anything to say.
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All I can say today is, brrr, it's cold out and the wind is blowing.
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It goes right through you. You know, we haven't gotten used to the cold.
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Or the warmth. I mean, it goes from one to the other so frequently that one
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day you can't wear a heavy sweater and the next day you wish you hadn't worn it.
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Yeah, it's crazy, crazy, crazy.
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But that's the least of our problems, really.
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It's just very cold. What you got on the agenda, Bob? Well, I'm going to talk
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today about America's affordability crisis.
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I mean, that's in the news, and it's something I think that affects the church.
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You know, we're having a crisis in America of marriage. Their marriage rate is going down.
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We have young people, I think, that are feeling alienated and feeling as if
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they're doing a lot of the right things and they're not getting ahead.
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And when that happens, people start to blame, and they put the blame in various places.
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But especially, they will put the blame on the political party that has promised
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a change, and they're looking for some kind of change. And that's a factor.
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And if that change doesn't happen, people start to become a little bit more extreme.
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They turn away from the regular day-to-day solutions of things.
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They start to look for someone who addresses their ideas. We see that,
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I think, in New York with Zoran Mandami being elected.
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And now we have a situation in which...
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Private property is threatened there. But people at some point,
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if they feel that their needs are acute and they're not being addressed,
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they will turn to other solutions, even if those solutions become extreme.
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And you can move from one extreme to another.
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It isn't that young people, especially
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our socialists or like socialism or communism or move along that line.
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But if people in those areas address their needs, and they feel as if their
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needs aren't being addressed elsewhere, they'll turn to solutions like that.
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And it's something that affects us all.
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And I think this article here, America's Affordability Crisis,
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incorporates what people need.
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And one of those things, of course, is a stable society and a strong church
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and churches that address some of the problems that they have.
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And they can go from one extreme to another.
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They can go to what we would call the extreme left or even to the extreme right.
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And so I'm going to do a series of articles here that talk about the situation
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and why it occurs and why in our society we're having such a multicultural push,
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why there has been such a push for immigration and why progressive liberalism
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has been the order of the day and what are the factors in our society that is
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pushing and causing these things.
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So we're going to start out with the problem itself here that needs to be addressed
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and then go into, in the next few shows, some of the reasons for that problem.
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Does that sound interesting, Lynn?
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Yes, yes. And it does affect the church.
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I mean, whatever is going on in society and the financial parts,
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it does affect what people believe and how they feel and whether they attend
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church and so on and so forth, especially for the young.
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I mean, some of them are lost without anything.
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Exactly. And it affects family. It affects marriage. It affects people.
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Getting married. Their country. Their feelings toward their country,
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their feelings toward politics in general, their feelings toward religion, church, and so forth.
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And the church is a large factor in this, as we'll see as we go along.
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So I think you'll find this first article very, very interesting.
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And so let's go ahead and just start. And the article that I'm going to read
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here and talk on is entitled America's Affordability Crisis.
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And it appears in a Chronicles magazine, a magazine of American culture.
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And the issue is January 2026.
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And it's written by Ryan Newhouse.
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And he is a former Heritage Foundation chief of staff.
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And he lives in Washington, D.C. And so he knows of what he writes and,
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you know, some of the trends that are going on in our society and the fact that
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people can move from one extreme to another.
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And we will deal with some of those various extremes as we go along over the next few shows.
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And one of the sub themes that I take from this article also that we should
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emphasize is that America is a place.
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You know, it's not just an idea, this idea that America is somehow a creedal
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nation and we can just have the idea of dedicating ourselves to a certain American
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creed or constitution and so forth makes America or makes a,
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you know, American culture is simply not true.
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We live in a particular place with a particular culture and with a particular
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neighbors and, you know, particular way of life and language and everything else.
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And people, when they see that beginning to vanish in multiculturalism,
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it's a very disturbing thing for most people.
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People basically, if we look at our whole evolution, people are tribal,
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and they have a sense of wanting to be unified and have a sense of unity,
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neighborliness, and familiarity.
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And when they begin to lose that, they become anxious, and we see a lot of that
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in our society today. So we'll plunge right in and read about this.
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It says here, politicos keep talking about an affordability crisis, and they're not wrong.
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There clearly is one, but the price pressures everyone is obsessing about sit atop something deeper.
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The truth is that the affordability crisis is the result of choices,
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policy decisions made over decades that reshape the country in ways that no
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longer reward responsible behavior.
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The crisis is not primarily about inflation or deregulation or unemployment
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or any other economic metric.
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It is about a generation of young Americans waking up and realizing that the
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path they were told to take no longer leads where they were told it would.
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We have built a country in which a young person can do well in school,
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take on debt to get a degree,
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work full-time, delay gratification, even postpone marriage,
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and still fail to secure a middle-class life.
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That kind of change doesn't just happen. It's a reflection of how the country
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has been governed for decades,
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and the truth beneath all the charts and numbers being thrown around today is
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that the affordability crisis is a governing crisis.
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And we see a lot of these statistics constantly thrown out on television and
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elsewhere that tells us everything is getting better, the price of AIDS and
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so forth, and everything is going down, this, that, and the other.
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But if young kids come out of school and can't get decent jobs and can't buy
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homes and can't afford to get married and all of the things they have been told
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can't happen, all of these statistics are meaningless.
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And if we don't have government that addresses these things,
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not only talks about them, but does something, then they are going to lose these
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people to people that will address these things.
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And some of these people may be extreme on one end of the spectrum or the other.
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And it says here, a failure to use power to deliver outcomes that make ordinary
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life better, and that's what a governing crisis is.
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It's a failure of people in power to use that power to make ordinary life better.
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And addressing all kinds of esoteric needs and so forth is not going to deal with a real problem.
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Our country isn't just dealing with mere financial problems.
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The way it is governed is becoming unaffordable.
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And because Republicans claim to be the party of order, family,
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and competent government, the failure to deliver outcomes lands on them with
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a special force. You know, this is whether they like it or not.
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They cannot afford to continue confusing restraint with virtue.
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The decision to refrain from using power is not moderation. It is surrender.
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And nowhere has that surrender been more obvious than in the refusal to fight
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for economic outcomes that would materially change the lives of young families.
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Over the last year, there have been many examples of where the Republican Governing
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Coalition has failed to help the president use the power of his mandate from the American people.
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Red states are declining to redistrict.
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Congress is refusing to impeach judges and codify executive orders.
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The Senate is slow-walking the confirmation of Trump appointees and refusing
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to meaningfully use strategic procedural maneuvers,
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even as they obstruct the president as he attempts to use his recess appointment power.
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Republicans in name only have thrown sand in the gears of federal reductions
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in force, and the president's impoundment authority, which would have allowed
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the administration to discipline Washington's insubordinate bureaucracy.
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The consequence of these actions is a widening gap between political promises
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and material outcomes, the kind of thing that young voters notice.
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Unless the American right decides to grow a spine,
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there's a risk that they will have accomplished very little at the end of President
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Trump's second term because it will have allowed so many of his actions to expire
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when a new administration arrives.
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This, despite having a majority in both chambers and a national mandate from the American people.
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Some will respond that Republicans are addressing affordability and point to
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the one big, beautiful bill, the National Defense Authorization Act or a possible American Care Act.
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The first is a package of legislation that only modifies mandatory spending.
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The NDAA, that is the National Defense Authorization Act, has passed every year
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for the last 64 years and does not reflect the administration's goal set out
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in its new national security strategy.
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And the last item extends the health care provisions provided to us by Obama.
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Together, these provide weak evidence of a governing coalition eager to assist
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the president in reshaping the country.
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Republicans cannot afford to let 2026 pass without pursuing an offensive legislative-related
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playbook for our nation's future.
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And when we're talking here about Republicans, I'm not trying here to be political.
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But the fact is, is this is what our young people are looking at.
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They're looking at the party in power.
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And we're looking at America. And we're looking at America's problems.
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And we're looking at the fact that politicos have to do something about those
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problems. and the people in charge right now are the Republicans in the Republican Party.
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This is crucial because as Democrats openly prepare to end the filibuster the
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next time they have unified power, voters are entitled to ask a simple question.
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If Republicans had the same 50-vote threshold, what exactly would they do with it?
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Today, the answer is not promising.
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As a result, Republicans in Congress cannot afford to enter a campaign cycle
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acting as if they intend to remake the country, only to be governing as if they
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are perpetually bracing for the next news cycle.
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The American people, especially younger voters, can tell when a party is fighting
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to win and when it is just buying time.
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And time is the one resource many young Americans believe our country no longer has.
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And the fact is, is that, again, take a look at what's happening in New York.
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I mean, by any standards, Zoran Mandami is an extremist.
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He's on the extreme left, and there are people that are also in this country
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that are espousing ideas on the extreme right.
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And people will move to these extremes if somebody doesn't act.
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And inability to produce transformational change that improves the lives of
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American families is pushing young Americans to look beyond traditional political actors.
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It is not because they crave upheaval, but because they no longer see a meaningful
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difference between the parties, which promise transformation,
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yet behave like reluctant caretakers of a system collapsing under its own weight.
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I mean, the fact is that look around us today and see what's going on.
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America is in trouble, and these things need to be addressed,
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and they need to be addressed in full by one party or the other.
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And right now, we have one party in charge, and it needs to address these.
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Many thinkers have taken the time to lay out how our country has arrived at this point.
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The uniparty, trade deals that hollowed out towns, financialization that turned
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life into a series of transactions,
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cheap money that inflated everything but wages and institutions that shed their
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purpose as quickly as they shed their standards.
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All of that matters, but the point is simpler than most analysts admit.
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The Republican Party has lost its courage. We're going to have to stop here
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and take a break, so stay with us.
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We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston. You're listening to Being Catholic.
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We're talking here about changes that the political parties need to make.
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And we're talking here about the fact that the Republican Party right now is
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in charge, But the Democratic Party also, if it were in charge,
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has to have the courage to make significant changes and talk about significant changes.
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And actually, either party is not really talking about the significant changes
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and the plain, simple changes that need to be made and the same simple problems
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that need to be addressed.
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Of course, these simple problems sometimes have complex solutions,
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but those problems need to be analyzed. They need to be aired and they need
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to be addressed and they need to be addressed by the party that happens to be
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in power at any given time.
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And that party right now is the Republican Party. And that's why we're talking about it.
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We're not advocating one party or the other. If the Democratic Party was in
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power, we would be saying the same thing about it.
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It's not doing its job either. It really isn't bringing up the changes that need to be made.
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And we'll go on here. And it says.
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For example, I'm talking about young people being disgusted with both parties
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and disgusted with what's going on in their own country,
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and they are looking to extremists for solutions because the regular parties
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aren't offering the solutions that they should.
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For example, entry-level jobs have been harder to secure as foreign labor flows into the workforce.
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In fiscal, and we're going to talk in the future here about why foreign labor
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is flowing into the workforce and why our society changed from a smaller business
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society and a smaller corporate society to a giant managerial corporate society.
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And that managerial society pushes for immigration in order to seek cheap labor.
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In fiscal year 2024, nearly 400,000 H-1B visa applications for foreign workers
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were approved, more than double the number in 2000.
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H-1B visas have become notorious as a tool abused by corporations to save money
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as they replace American workers with cheaper immigrant labor imported from abroad.
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And a lot of that is because the managerial society and progressivism go hand
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in hand, as we'll see in future shows here.
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At the same time, according to a recent analysis by the Personal Finance Publisher bankrate.com,
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more than 75% of single family homes for sale are now out of reach for a medium income household.
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And the typical American household needs to make at least $33,000 more annually
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to be able to afford a medium price home.
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And let's face it, that's simply beyond the reach of a lot of people,
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of a lot of young Americans.
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There's a lot of young men and so forth living at home.
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They can't, not only can they not afford a home, they can't afford even rent.
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That's right. That's very right. And with the utilities and stuff as high as
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they are, don't kid yourself. It's awesome.
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Exactly. And this is something for the church to be considered about also.
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I mean, this is the lifestyle and well-being of the very population that sits in the pews.
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On top of that, the overall foreign-born population, including legal immigrants,
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now accounts for around 15% of the total population.
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And these trends show that labor markets and housing markets have been reshaped
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in ways that tighten entry-level opportunities and compress affordability,
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not by accident, but by policy choices directly related to the immigration system
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that puts American families last.
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So this isn't something that's just happening by accident.
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The economic problems caused by mass immigration and globalist economic policy
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aren't new or a secret to those who have been paying attention.
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Individuals like Pat Buchanan warned us about these same issues in the 1990s,
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but few people listened.
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The problem wasn't acute yet at that time, but it was coming.
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Others labeled the conversation as extremists and took the debate out of the
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mainstream for fear of having the right labeled racists are xenophobic.
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And that's still going on for people, young kids and so forth that complain
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about the fact that their jobs and so forth are being taken by people coming
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in from other countries are often accused of being racist. They're accused of being xenophobic.
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And they begin to feel as if the country cares about everybody except them.
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The affordability crisis can no longer be solved with a few tweaks here and there in the law.
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Solving our problems today requires a governing class willing to confront a
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multitude of existential civilizational questions.
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The formative years of today's young Americans were defined by cultural instability,
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foreign intervention, economic crisis, and swift government action to tackle
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problems confronting their parents' and grandparents' generations.
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Because of this, they have learned an unmistakable lesson.
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When powerful interests are threatened, governments act.
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But when you and your family are in need, best of luck. Work harder, loser.
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Imagine a young American named John. He's 24 years old.
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He has a steady job, a good head on his shoulders, and did what he was told
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he should do while he was growing up.
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Yet he's only just scraping by.
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Rent devours half his paycheck. His car insurance spiked for reasons no one
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bothers to explain to him.
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He has no real savings to speak of and piles of student loan debt.
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When he's not working, he's glued to a phone he knows is making him miserable,
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where he finds himself swiping on dating apps, streaming shows on Netflix that
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really aren't all that interesting,
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and trying to resist ads pushing pornography and online gambling.
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When he scrolls through X or Instagram, he sees only the most carefully curated
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lives of his peers who somehow always appear richer, healthier, and happier than he is.
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You could pick almost any young American today and find a life story like John's.
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He's come to realize this is the reality for most of his peers at this point.
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His frustration is not confusion about how the system works,
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it is that the system no longer works the way it was promised it would.
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And it's no wonder that at the end of each month, John looks at what's left
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in his checking account, and he wonders how his parents, at his age,
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manage to get married, have kids, buy a home, and have hope for the future,
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when he can even barely stay ahead of his bills.
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These circumstances are common enough that a generation has begun to suspect
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that the American dream their parents described no longer exists for them.
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Certainly, if nothing changes, it won't exist for their children.
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The message is unmistakable.
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Our current mode of governing is unaffordable for those who will live longest with its consequences.
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For that reason, it should be of little surprise that more and more people are
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beginning to conclude that those they elect to represent them are perfectly
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content to manage decline rather than reverse it.
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To make matters worse, the institutions that are supposed to anchor young Americans
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in adult life—schools, work,
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church, and heirs' church—and civic associations have become ornate shells of themselves,
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beautiful in branding but thin on substance.
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Polling reflects this sentiment. A 2025 Harvard Youth Poll shows that more than
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40% of Americans age 18 to 29 are either struggling or just getting by financially.
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And one in four already expects to be worse off than their parents.
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I mean, that's not a very good outlook, is it, for most people? Not hardly.
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Pew Research reports that barely four in 10 adults under 50 still believe the
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American dream is achievable.
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I mean, that is, in effect, saying that there are more and more people that
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simply don't believe in our country anymore.
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And when people start not to believe in something and they start not to believe
27:56
in a country, it's not long before they also start not to believe in their church
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and they start doubting their God.
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They start doubting many, many things and they will turn to extremes for solutions.
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These numbers don't just reflect anxiety about economics.
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They're a referendum on whether the regime can still deliver.
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And there is a lot of anxiety in our society.
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I mean, it's incredible that you watch TV and you see all over people on both
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sides of the spectrum, left or right, you see them suffering from tremendous amounts of anxiety.
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And these multicultural and solutions that are talking about abstract concepts
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and things are not solutions.
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People have evolved to be tribal, to want other people around them to be like themselves.
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They want the familiar. They want their neighbors to be similar to them.
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They want to believe in things together, and they want a togetherness and a
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unity inside of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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It turns out to be mostly diversity, inequity, and exclusion is what it turns out to be.
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And these people are feeling left out. And when this happens in a country,
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it begins to fall apart and people will turn to solutions.
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When leaders provide stability and opportunity, people return trust.
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When leaders fail to live up to those obligations, or pretend to have met them
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when everyone can see that they haven't, that trust doesn't erode gently. It vanishes.
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People get angry, and our young people are getting angry, especially our young men.
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This is what is quietly unnerving many today. when civic society and government
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no longer produce solutions that meet basic needs like housing,
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wages, debility, and security.
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People don't have the patience to sit through another congressional hearing
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or wait for the next white paper from a think tank.
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They start asking who, if anyone, is actually capable of leading them.
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And again, and this is what we're hearing. We hear all these statistics and
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so forth coming down, telling everything is rosy.
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But if you're living a life that isn't rosy, you know that's a fact.
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And you can have inflation going down and becoming less.
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But when you walk into the grocery store, every time you go into it,
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it seems as if you have to spend more money.
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And again, we have laws all over the place, regulations and so forth,
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that make it impossible for people to expand and build new housing,
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especially out on the East Coast and other places such as New York.
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And you can see what's happening. They're on account of it.
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The West Coast, too. Look at the fire recovery.
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Nothing's being done because of all the regulations that they swore they were going to get rid of.
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Exactly. that both parties cater only to the status quo and to the people who are already,
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you know, have property and already rich in order to simply keep that property
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high and make the prices good for them,
31:16
the people coming up, the younger people coming up are going to feel left out
31:19
and they're going to be angry and you're going to cause a rift,
31:23
you know, among the different ages.
31:25
You're going to have younger people feeling as if they're at war somehow with
31:29
the older people. And instead of being loyal, they're going to be looking at
31:34
them as an enemy. This isn't good.
31:39
And increasingly, young Americans are asking that question of both parties, not just one party.
31:46
And both parties are not really giving any clear answers. They're talking about
31:50
all kinds of esoteric things that don't make a lot of difference to these people.
31:55
They're talking about transgender.
31:59
Does transgender make much difference to you if you can't buy a home and you
32:04
can't get married and you can't have a family and you can't go to church on
32:09
Sunday and can't feel as if you're part of a society that cares about you.
32:15
To be clear, it is not because the president has failed to act,
32:19
but because much of his own party has refused to match his urgency.
32:25
These problems are urgent.
32:28
It is the natural consequence of winning a trifecta during the 2024 election
32:34
and not delivering with it.
32:36
It becomes impossible to ignore the gap that exists between what members of
32:41
Congress, in particular, say they are going to do when they win and what they
32:47
actually deliver while they're in office.
32:50
Tragically, the habits of those running for office explain why this frustration keeps compounding.
32:57
Historically, campaigns have directed most of their attention toward the anxieties
33:03
and comforts of older voters, promising minor adjustments to Social Security,
33:09
caps on prescription drug prices,
33:12
tax cuts, and every imaginable assurance to those who already own homes and hold sizable assets.
33:20
What's missing is a serious attempt to invest in the generations that will inherit the country.
33:27
Young Americans are noticing this.
33:30
To preserve, let alone increase, the 47% share of 18 to 29-year-olds who voted
33:38
for President Trump in 2024.
33:41
Republican politicos must cease behaving as if governing is something closer
33:46
to managing a brand than running a country.
33:50
Boomers and Gen Xers should stop responding to the concerns of younger generations
33:55
with the same canned reassurances of the past that inflation is cooling,
34:01
gas and eggs are cheaper,
34:03
unemployment is low, or GDP is up.
34:06
Those things don't mean anything to young people if they, like say,
34:11
if they can't buy a home, if they can't pay off their college debt if they can't get a decent job.
34:18
As if pointing to a chart, GDP, unemployment, inflation, or whatever,
34:25
passes as the metric of the week, somehow makes a starter home accessible. It doesn't.
34:32
Resolves the fact that rent eats half a young person's salary.
34:35
It doesn't resolve any of those. You can sit and listen to those statistics all day long.
34:39
And if half of your salary is taken up by rent, it's still taken up by rent,
34:44
no matter how good the statistics are.
34:46
Or deports the millions of illegal aliens and foreigners who compete for entry-level
34:53
jobs and whose presence drives up the prices of basic goods and services,
34:57
and they're being catered to far more than our own young kids are,
35:01
or solves the fact that young people can't accumulate savings,
35:05
no matter how many hours they put into overtime.
35:09
To be clear, the issue isn't entirely one of citing statistics.
35:14
It's the political habit of the people waving them around in place of results.
35:20
You can wave the statistics and tell how great they are and so forth.
35:24
But if they don't result in the things that the young people need, they don't care.
35:30
And nowhere is that disconnect clearer than the way boomers and generators hide behind the GDP.
35:38
And we're going to have to stop here and take a break. So stay with us.
35:40
We'll be right back. You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston
35:43
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38:09
Hi, this is Bob Johnson. We're back from our break. You're listening to Being
38:12
Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio, and we're talking about the affordability
38:17
crisis and its effect on our younger people, especially young men.
38:22
And the fact that all the statistics that are being cited today by either party,
38:28
but especially by the Republican Party, since they happen to be in charge,
38:32
and I'm not here trying to take a stand on one party or the other.
38:36
We're just using an article here that's addressing the party that's in power,
38:40
that somebody has to do something to address the real problems that people have
38:45
and addressing those problems by citing statistics that don't really create
38:51
jobs or make it possible for younger people to buy homes, get married,
38:57
be participants in their communities and so forth.
39:01
If the statistics don't solve these problems, and they don't,
39:06
then the people are going to turn, especially the young people,
39:10
somewhere else for their solutions, and that somewhere else may not be places
39:14
where it would be good for society.
39:17
The article goes on here and it says, measuring the nation's success by its
39:23
GDP alone is like judging a football team by offensive yardage,
39:28
even if it only kicks field goals and never scores touchdowns.
39:33
If the high numbers don't actually benefit the team, then who cares?
39:38
True. GDP is only one illustration of the problem, but it's an important one
39:44
because of what it tells us when the nation is experiencing obvious cultural and economic strife.
39:52
GDP goes up when landlords hike rents. In other words, the GDP can tell you
39:58
that landlords are hiking rents, but this isn't good for the young kids that can't afford the rent.
40:04
GDP rises when families get divorced, which is not good for society.
40:09
And both parents need to work. It makes GDP rise.
40:13
So GDP can be misleading.
40:16
GDP increases when autoimmune diseases become significantly more common and
40:22
medical costs skyrocket.
40:25
Is that good? No, of course not. But it improves the GDP.
40:30
GDP improves when waves of illegal immigrants enter the country.
40:34
You can point to a chart, but is it good that waves of illegal immigrants enter
40:39
the country? And the answer is no, it is not. Not for the people that live here.
40:43
And they begin consuming goods and services. It isn't that we dislike immigrants.
40:48
This country has been a country of immigrants, but immigrants have to be under control.
40:53
In fact, we have one of the greatest historians, Samuel Huntington,
40:58
I believe his first name was Samuel, Samuel Huntington,
41:00
who wrote quite a bit about the history of the United States and the history of England,
41:05
and a very serious historical scholar who said that any time that the immigrant
41:13
ratio gets up to 15% of the population or more, it is very dangerous for a country.
41:19
And that's exactly where we're at.
41:22
We have reached a situation where our immigration and an illegal immigration,
41:27
uncontrolled immigration has reached a point of 15%.
41:31
And then the solutions in a welfare, We have a welfare state,
41:36
and those solutions in the welfare state take up a tremendous amount of resources
41:43
that immigration did not take up in an earlier era.
41:47
When immigrants came over in the early 20th century, they didn't receive all
41:52
the benefits that they receive today.
41:55
And it may have been in some places, in some cases, seemed unfair and difficult
42:02
and hard on the immigrants.
42:03
But the point is that it was a different situation.
42:06
And that situation today is costing the American citizens a tremendous amount
42:13
of money, and young people simply can't afford it.
42:16
A country can register growth on paper while its foundations erode right in
42:21
plain sight, and that's what's happening. The macro indicators that past generations
42:26
were told indicated national prosperity are incomplete.
42:30
Making them go up doesn't fix anything. They describe an economy on paper,
42:35
not the country that people actually live in.
42:40
Those honored with the task of governing must have the courage to finally face
42:45
something that has been avoided for far too long.
42:48
America can no longer point to GDP as proof of its vitality.
42:54
GDP flatters decay, the way so many of our celebrated metrics now do.
43:00
To those who just can't let go, it's time to hang up the cleats and pick a new career.
43:06
If America intends to remain the greatest nation in the world rather than a has-been,
43:12
it must stop mistaking consumerism for strength and begin examining the nature
43:18
of the lives of its citizens and the lives that they are living.
43:24
A country is not held together by quarterly earnings.
43:28
It holds because mothers and fathers believe they can raise children in peace
43:35
because young adults see marriage as something attainable rather than aspirational
43:42
because church views are full.
43:44
And those two things are certainly things that are of very vital interest to
43:50
the church, marriage and people attending church.
43:54
Because a young man in his hometown can imagine a future there,
43:58
rather than hitting the road.
44:00
Without those basic conditions, everything else is just decoration.
44:05
Our country needs a different scorecard. GDP was only ever a proxy and a poor
44:12
one for national well-being.
44:14
A better scorecard would track the most important parts of American life,
44:19
rather than the velocity of American consumption.
44:23
Additionally, it needs a different elite to read that scorecard.
44:27
Leaders who treat marriage, child rearing, church attendance,
44:33
stable neighborhoods, and livable wages as the real measures of national health.
44:38
And again, there's where Catholic Spirit Radio comes in, and there's where the
44:44
Catholic Church comes in.
44:45
The Catholic Church should be a leader in marriage, a leader in child rearing,
44:50
a leader in church attendance, a leader in stable neighborhoods,
44:55
a leader in livable wages.
44:58
There is only one question that really matters. Can Americans begin and live
45:04
out the kinds of lives a functioning nation depends on?
45:07
If that answer is no, then the direction of the market charts is meaningless.
45:14
In other words, all the statistics in the world don't mean much if it's not
45:18
a livable nation for its young people.
45:21
Imagine if our leaders in Washington had to publish every quarter the marriage
45:26
rate next to the unemployment rate.
45:28
Imagine if home ownership among young families were treated with the same urgency as inflation.
45:35
Imagine if the number of children born into a stable household mattered more
45:40
than whether consumer spending kicked up a fraction of a point.
45:44
It would reorder everyone's priorities overnight. The time is quickly approaching
45:50
when America will no longer be shaped by those who recite statistics or endlessly
45:57
celebrate metrics like the GDP.
46:00
The choice is simple.
46:02
Keep celebrating the metrics of yesterday as custodians of a dying regime or
46:08
produce for the families of tomorrow.
46:10
If we choose the latter, then the future will belong to leaders who decide to
46:16
grade the nation by what matters.
46:19
Whether Americans can form families, own homes,
46:23
attend church every Sunday, and plant roots in safe communities with work available
46:29
to them, those who anchor our country to these standards will write its next chapter.
46:36
President Trump's assent to the presidency beginning in 2015 was the first sign of the times.
46:43
He wasn't elected by political hobbyists looking for entertainment.
46:48
He was elected by millions of ordinary Americans, many of them young,
46:53
who had concluded that those serving in elected positions were incapable of
46:58
changing anything that mattered to them.
47:02
Trump's ascendancy was a condemnation
47:04
of the institutional actors who had become custodians of decay.
47:11
The same impulse appears to be on the rise on the other end of the ideological
47:15
spectrum, and that's what I was talking about.
47:19
Look at New York, where mayor-elect Zoran Mandami gained ground among young
47:25
voters who feel just as dismissed by the status quo.
47:29
They aren't turning to him because of some newfound love for socialism.
47:35
They're turning to him because he treats their material and spiritual concerns,
47:40
as real and worth solving.
47:43
In a political environment addicted to the chain-smoking habits of marketing
47:49
campaigns that deliver little more than retweets and press releases,
47:54
that feels like a brush of fresh air.
47:57
But look at what's happening now that Mondami is in there.
48:01
Some negative and bad things are happening at an extremist end of the spectrum.
48:07
Sam Francis, and we're going to hear more about him. Sam Francis wrote a book
48:12
called Leviathan and Its Enemies, and it talks about how the managerial society,
48:20
the managerial corporation grew and took over from the owned corporation and
48:27
how we have a managerial society.
48:29
And how it pushes multiculturalism, immigration, and all kinds of programs that
48:36
are good for it but negative for the society as a whole.
48:39
So we'll learn more about that. But Sam Francis and Pat Buchanan were both prescient,
48:45
spending many years warning that a regime exhausting its own legitimacy will
48:51
not choose its successors.
48:53
It will not be replaced by polite custodians of existing norms,
48:58
and Mandami is no polite custodian, really.
49:01
He might have sounded like it, but he isn't anymore. But by leaders who promise
49:05
outcomes rather than continuity and are believed precisely because they acknowledge
49:10
how and why the previous custodians failed to deliver.
49:15
A regime survives only as long as it delivers results.
49:20
To summarize Machiavelli, a ruler keeps his authority only so long as he provides
49:28
security and stability.
49:30
Aristotle says the same, but more gently, arguing that a regime remains legitimate
49:37
only so long as it serves the common good.
49:41
And this is one of the goals of the church is to steer society in the direction of the common good.
49:50
And so this is why sometimes politics and its results in a society are important
49:58
to the church and generate things that the church has to address.
50:02
When a regime stops meeting these basic obligations, whether through neglect,
50:08
incompetence, or exhaustion, people do what they have always done.
50:12
They begin to look elsewhere.
50:15
People turn toward anyone who seems capable of restoring order or offering a
50:21
future that feels plausible.
50:23
History is consistent on this point.
50:26
When a system falters for too long, it is not to caretakers of the old order who rise to replace it.
50:34
It is a figure to speak to the vacuum the old order created.
50:38
This is what sits underneath the national debate, whether some want to admit
50:43
it or not, and we had better look through what's going on on the surface here
50:48
and see that this is what's sitting underneath it.
50:52
What looks like financial hardship from a distance is something else up close,
50:57
a generation tallying the promises made to them against the realities they now face.
51:03
Their frustration isn't just an inability to see their dollars go as far as their parents did.
51:10
It's a verdict on a system that no longer holds up its end of the bargain for them.
51:16
While America is not out of hope, it is certainly out of excuses.
51:21
The Washington political class cannot keep hiding behind charts and talking
51:27
points while the spiritual, and there it is right there, spiritual,
51:31
and this is where the church comes in.
51:33
And material well-being of the American people continues to decline due to poor governance.
51:39
So we're talking here about both the spiritual and material, and they go together.
51:44
People are both spiritual and they are both flesh.
51:48
This is the real world
51:51
in time as well as looking to the
51:54
spiritual world in future eventually a
51:57
large enough coalition of americans will stop looking
52:01
for answers from the people content to manage decay
52:04
they will turn to those who speak plainly about what has gone wrong and just
52:09
as in 2016 they will offer an opportunity to someone new even if the solutions
52:16
that newcomer offers lie outside the boundaries the current elite deem respectable.
52:23
And there is, in a sense, that he's referring to a impossible threat,
52:28
I think. The fact is, is that.
52:32
The choices that people make under circumstances that are not addressed as they
52:37
should be are often bad choices, and we should be aware of that and make sure
52:43
that the good choices are available.
52:46
When that moment comes, the old guard won't get the selected successors.
52:51
In other words, the people in charge had better understand you won't be in charge.
52:56
It will simply wake up one morning and find out who has taken its place.
53:02
Well, it happens over and over again in cultures, in countries.
53:08
Happened before the Second World War. Happened before the First World War. Yes, it did.
53:15
We just don't seem to learn. And it can happen.
53:19
People take the status quo for granted, and they sit along, and,
53:23
oh, it'll pass over, and everything will be okay, and so forth.
53:26
And they don't take warning after warning after warning. So we're going to,
53:31
in the next couple of shows, deal with some of the forces in society.
53:35
We're going to talk about the managerial society and why large corporations
53:40
are inherently multicultural and liberal and find out why that's the situation
53:46
and find out how that can go very,
53:48
very wrong and can be very damaging
53:51
to society and that politicians and so forth have to be aware of it.
53:55
And it's something that the church should be aware of also and should be ready to address.
54:00
So these are things that are important to Catholicism and I think important to the Catholic church.
54:07
And I think that they're appropriate for discussion on this show.
54:11
What do you think, Lynn? Oh, definitely.
54:16
People need to be aware of what's going on.
54:20
Last week I said you need to listen to the words your politicians use,
54:26
and not only the politicians, but people that have their hand on the money.
54:32
Exactly. You got to listen to how they're using things.
54:37
You've got to be aware of, we can't go on through our life and not know what's
54:45
going on, just accepting everything. It doesn't work.
54:49
So at any rate, we'll go ahead and talk about these in the next few weeks.
54:54
In the meantime, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
54:59
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
55:02
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. and do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host,
55:08
by the power of God, thrust into hell, Satan, and all evil spirits who wander
55:13
through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.
55:17
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston. On Catholic Spirit
55:21
Radio, if you'd like to contact Bob, email bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
55:27
Again, that's bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
55:30
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