0:05

This

0:05

is the Daily Signal podcast

0:08

for Tuesday, May 30th. I'm

0:10

Tyler O'Neill. I sat down

0:12

with Mark Meckler, president of the Convention

0:15

of States, and Michael Ferris, also

0:17

a leader at the Convention of States, a senior

0:19

advisor. He's also the general counsel at

0:21

the National Religious Broadcasters, and

0:24

founder of Patrick Henry College

0:27

and the Homeschool Legal Defense Association,

0:30

many great organizations. My

0:33

interview with them took place at

0:35

the National Religious Broadcasters Convention.

0:37

We talked about the headwinds

0:40

that conservative Christians face in the public

0:42

square, why we should speak

0:44

up

0:45

anyway, and particularly some

0:47

of the encouraging things we saw at NRB

0:52

Take a listen right after this. For

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slash job dash bank.

1:34

This is Tyler O'Neill, a managing editor

1:36

at The Daily Signal. I'm joined by Mark

1:39

Meckler, president of Convention of States,

1:41

and Michael Ferris, a grand poobah or

1:43

former grand poobah of NRB, ADF,

1:46

COS, and homeschool parents everywhere.

1:49

In all seriousness, he is the general counsel at

1:51

NRB and senior advisor at Convention

1:54

of States at the moment, but he's founded

1:56

so many organizations it's hard to keep track.

1:59

It's an honor being with you.

1:59

with both of you. It's really an honor to be with

2:02

you. Thanks, Tyler. It's great to see you. Yeah.

2:05

So I was chatting briefly with Mark

2:07

about the state of the culture and

2:10

how, you know, we've kind of seen a sea

2:12

change in the past year with

2:14

a huge rise. I mean, we're at the National Religious

2:17

Broadcasters Convention, and we've

2:19

seen really a flourishing of Christian

2:21

culture in, you

2:24

know, at this convention and throughout.

2:26

And I'd like to hear more about what

2:28

that feels like to you and what

2:29

sort of hope that brings you. So

2:32

for me, last year was my first NRB, and

2:34

I was blown away by how good it was.

2:36

I was very impressed. I didn't really know much about

2:38

it. I saw what was going on in the culture. But

2:40

I would say I could sum up sort of

2:42

Christian media culture last year, a

2:44

year ago, by saying The

2:47

Chosen. Like, that was the phenomenon,

2:49

right? And in my family, it was a phenomenon. Among

2:51

my friends, it was a phenomenon. Still is. It's

2:54

an awesome, incredible series changing

2:56

the cultural landscape. This year

2:58

at NRB, you come back and I would describe what's

3:00

about to come out of NRB as a

3:02

supernova. You know, the star is collapsing

3:05

in on itself. If you're here, we're at the white hot

3:07

center of it. We're seeing so many

3:10

high level productions being

3:12

introduced here that are about to come out of NRB. Some

3:15

of them already launched. It's going to be hard to

3:17

know what to watch. I feel like we're

3:19

actually, as Christian, is going to have a selection of great

3:22

quality culture stuff that also carries

3:24

our values. Yeah, that's

3:27

amazing to see. But we're also at a

3:29

point

3:29

with the Biden administration cracking

3:32

down on pro-life Americans citing

3:35

the Southern Poverty Law Center, getting an

3:37

SPLC attorney confirmed

3:39

to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And

3:42

how is convention of states, you know, this movement,

3:45

you've been spearheading, you know, I've

3:48

heard it can hit a plateau, but it's

3:50

still growing. And how

3:52

does it respond to sort of

3:54

the rot we're seeing in our institutions today?

3:58

I think it's actually one of the core responses.

4:59

So

6:00

that's sort of a separate approach at things.

6:03

And there's a limited amount

6:05

of angles at it from a constitutional

6:08

perspective. I would say they're broader,

6:10

generally speaking, than what Project 2025 would be working

6:12

on, which is much

6:14

more specific. We're saying remove authority

6:17

for these agencies. So really, you

6:19

can paint with a pretty broad brush. Gotcha.

6:22

And Mike, you founded Convention

6:25

of States and Patrick

6:27

Henry College and the Home School Legal Defense Association

6:29

and led

6:33

ADF for years. Where

6:35

do you see the culture right

6:37

now and the struggle that

6:40

conservative Christians have living

6:42

in America? Well, I agree

6:45

with Mark in part, and there's another

6:47

side of the coin. And that is, I think the middle is

6:49

emptying out and the bright

6:51

is getting brighter and the dark is getting darker

6:53

all at the same time. And

6:56

so one of the side

6:59

points of the COVID mess was

7:02

people found out what was going on in their schools a lot

7:04

more. And a lot of people turned to homeschooling

7:07

and parents' rights movement

7:09

rose in a big way because people said,

7:11

I don't like this. And they're doing

7:13

something about it. And so the

7:16

left is apoplectic

7:19

about all this. They just can't imagine

7:21

a school system that they don't totally dominate.

7:24

The parents actually have some say over what's

7:26

going on. And so I

7:28

think that getting parents

7:29

more involved in every form of education is

7:32

a good thing. Now, of course, homeschooling

7:34

is my favorite, but still any form

7:36

of parent involvement in education is a good thing.

7:40

And so the

7:42

number of Americans that are waking up and saying, I

7:44

don't like what's going on here and I want to do something

7:47

about it, that's a very encouraging sign.

7:50

But at the same time, that movement is facing

7:52

a lot of demonization, a

7:54

lot of attacks. I just saw that the

7:57

state of black America report. where

8:00

an SPLC staffer wrote

8:02

for that report and said that this

8:05

is the new uptown clan,

8:08

the parental rights movement. Well,

8:11

they want to, you know,

8:14

they play with words. You know, they played with the

8:16

word marriage. Now they're playing with the word

8:18

men and women. They're playing with, you know, all

8:20

kinds of words. They're changing the meaning of words, changing

8:23

the meaning of ideas. And anybody that does

8:25

that is bought into a movement that ultimately

8:27

leads to totalitarianism. There's

8:29

a very interesting

8:29

older book called The Origins of

8:32

Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

8:34

that was written in the 60s. Very prophetic

8:36

book, wonderful. And there's a new book that I'm reading

8:38

was published a year ago by

8:40

a Dutch psychologist and

8:43

professor that

8:45

is called The Psychology of Totalitarianism.

8:49

And we see this going

8:51

on in the United States right now. And

8:54

changing words, changing meanings, changing

8:56

morality is a part of the totalitarian

8:59

culture because they have to rip everything

9:01

down in order to build up the new country,

9:03

the new agenda, the new culture

9:06

that they want. And it's a world without

9:08

God. It's a world without freedom. I mean,

9:10

they openly disagree with freedom. Louis

9:12

Michael Seidman teaches constitutional law at Georgetown

9:14

University, wrote an op-ed in the Washington

9:17

Post right after two cases

9:19

were decided by the court in 2018. I

9:21

argued in one of them on free speech

9:23

for pro-life pregnancy centers. And he said, I've

9:26

given up believing in free speech

9:28

anymore because it doesn't advance progressive ideals.

9:32

And so if you got a constitutional law

9:34

professor at Georgetown say free speech is a bad

9:36

idea, progressivism is worth the

9:38

cost of jettisoning the First Amendment. You

9:40

see the regular old

9:43

American traditions being emptied out. I

9:45

think they've out punted their coverage and it is more

9:47

and more Americans realize what they're saying,

9:49

what they're doing. The more we're going to see

9:52

the shift of the culture, the shift of the country in our

9:54

direction. Yeah. Well,

9:56

I think we've seen institutional capture

9:58

on.

10:00

tremendously shocking level from

10:02

hospitals endorsing, you know,

10:04

these radical experimental treatments

10:07

on children. They'll leave them scarred and

10:09

infertile. And to all

10:12

of these institutions you've been mentioning that

10:14

are stifling dissent, how do

10:17

we retake some of

10:19

these institutions or at least restore them to

10:21

uphold the traditional American

10:24

views on free speech? Well,

10:27

it's a multi-front attack. We

10:29

sue them.

10:30

We don't let

10:32

them, you know, go. We

10:35

teach them the lesson that Budweiser beer

10:38

is learning right now. It is

10:40

a bad decision economically.

10:42

But I would say the hospitals in

10:45

the transgender arena and in the

10:47

COVID arena were driven by this one thing,

10:50

money. They made money

10:52

by classifying deaths

10:54

as COVID deaths. I mean, people go in with

10:56

a heart attack and they classify it as a COVID death.

11:00

You follow the money and you'll see a lot of what's going

11:02

on. And that's why the convention states

11:04

gets that kind of money out of the system. You

11:07

know, the federal government shouldn't be paying people

11:10

to give medical care based on their favorite sickness.

11:13

You know, it's craziness. And

11:16

the craziest thing I've heard lately

11:19

is the front page of the Washington

11:21

Times declared that the FBI

11:25

no longer uses race,

11:27

gender or any other protected

11:30

characteristic, including disability for

11:33

apprehending suspects. So if a white

11:35

guy in a wheelchair robs

11:38

a bank, the FBI can't say,

11:40

look out for the white guy in the wheelchair. They have to

11:42

say a person robbed the

11:44

bank. Now, if that's

11:47

not the definition of utter

11:49

insanity, I don't know what is. But

11:53

most Americans think that's stupid. And

11:56

the consequences of that are horrible. And

11:59

I think that

13:59

other because half of us are going to be mad

14:02

at any given time roughly. And so

14:04

if you go back to federalism, I think we can keep

14:06

the country together. We can cool, take

14:09

off a lot of the heat, cool a lot of the pressure out

14:11

of the system by just saying New York's

14:13

New York, California's California and

14:15

the conservative states or whatever they want to be. That's

14:18

the solution. And the only way back to that that I'm

14:20

aware of is to call a convention of states,

14:23

rejigger the jurisdiction, bring the power

14:25

back to the states and let them be who they are.

14:28

So Trump 2024, Biden 2024, DeSantis 2024 or convention

14:30

of states. Yeah,

14:37

look, I am not in the business of predicting

14:39

elections. Every time I've tried to do it, I'm wrong. So,

14:42

you know, I hope and pray

14:44

that we end up with a conservative in the White

14:46

House. That's really what I'm looking for. I hope

14:48

and pray that we end up with somebody with the fortitude

14:51

to emasculate the administrative

14:53

state. To me, that's one of the most important issues

14:56

of our time. The administrative state is

14:58

largely, in my opinion, unconstitutional.

14:59

It should have never been created

15:02

in the first place. And we're going to have to get rid of it if we're going

15:04

to restore liberty. So somebody conservative

15:07

and somebody with the backbone to stand against

15:09

the administrative state, that's what I'm looking for, regardless

15:11

of who ends up being the Republican candidate.

15:14

Definitely, I don't think that's going to be Joe Biden.

15:17

Well, but if Joe Biden is president,

15:20

the goal of convention of states, you know,

15:22

if he wins again, God forbid,

15:25

you know, would be to hold

15:27

Washington accountable regardless.

15:29

Right.

15:29

Yeah. You know, although

15:32

I would argue it doesn't change whoever's

15:34

president. Maybe it becomes more urgent if Biden's

15:36

president. But the reality is, and

15:39

this might be unpopular for me to say this, I

15:41

don't want Trump or Biden

15:44

or a Republican Congress or DeSantis

15:46

or any of those people in D.C. to

15:49

hold that much power over the rest of us in

15:51

the states. We are supposed to be

15:53

have a very weak central government

15:56

and most of the power is supposed to be out in

15:58

the states. And that's going to be true.

16:29

or,

18:00

you know, talk about what the hours

18:03

of operation for the national parks are. Okay,

18:05

you can do that administratively. But when you're telling

18:08

private people how they run their businesses, how

18:10

they raise their kids, how they spend their money,

18:13

what you can grow in your garden, that's

18:15

not an administrative function.

18:18

If that is all within any government's

18:20

jurisdiction, it's a legislature

18:22

that you can vote out of office if you don't like

18:24

what they're doing to you. Yeah,

18:27

no, I think that's a very key point and too many Americans

18:29

are unfamiliar

18:29

with the way that Congress

18:32

delegates saying, we want clean

18:34

air, you administrative agency actually

18:37

create the laws, then we're not held accountable

18:40

when it messes people up. But

18:43

is there anything else you'd like to add about

18:46

what Christians are facing in the world

18:49

today and, you

18:51

know, what NRB means to you? I

18:54

can just tell you a story. In 1984, I was picking

18:56

a jury in

18:59

a

18:59

criminal case in San Diego County. I

19:02

represented a Christian mom who

19:05

was being charged with kidnapping because

19:08

she took a little extra time on visitation

19:11

after a judge awarded custody to

19:14

her ex-husband who was a homosexual. And

19:17

so she ran and hid with her son for 18 months and

19:19

she was being charged with a form

19:21

of kidnapping. And in picking the jury,

19:24

I asked every juror, do you know

19:27

a born again Christian? Do you know

19:29

a homosexual?

19:29

This isn't recently, this is 1984 in San Diego. And

19:35

every juror knew a homosexual.

19:38

One juror knew a born again Christian. Now

19:41

what that taught me was this, they

19:43

had to know born again Christians. They just

19:46

didn't know that they knew born again

19:48

Christians because homosexuals were

19:50

more open and obvious about who they

19:52

were than the Christians are. And

19:55

people, when they make public policy decisions,

19:57

personalize it,

19:58

you know, my uncle's a whore.

19:59

homosexual, my

20:02

aunt's a lesbian or whatever. And

20:04

they, you know, or that I know Ellen DeGeneres

20:07

from television, they personalize it.

20:10

And if Christians are

20:12

an abstraction, no wonder our rights

20:14

are under siege. The best thing

20:16

that people can do to embellish

20:19

the rights of people like us

20:21

is to start, first of all, be nice to

20:24

your neighbor. You know, be a real neighbor

20:27

and be a good person. You know, you coach the little

20:29

league team.

20:29

You're not the guy that screams at everybody. You're

20:32

the guy that inspires the team. You go win,

20:34

but you do it kindly. And

20:37

when we live that way and we

20:39

tell people who we are, that's

20:41

the most important single thing I think we can do

20:43

because until people know

20:45

that there are good people in this country who

20:48

believe like we believe, our

20:50

rights really are in jeopardy because of our own silence.

20:54

Wow. Yeah, I

20:56

think you really hit the nail on the head.

20:59

Mark, do you have anything

21:03

else to add about Christians

21:05

in the culture? I think the biggest thing

21:07

is don't give up. Have hope. I

21:09

mean, first of all, we have the ultimate hope, right? So

21:11

we should never give up because we know the end of

21:13

the story. But I would say here

21:16

in the here and now, don't give up. We're

21:18

not called upon to sit and wait

21:21

and watch evil take over the earth. We're called

21:23

upon to take territory for the Lord. And

21:25

we should be doing that in every day and in

21:28

every way we can. And so I'm hopeful,

21:30

I'm a happy warrior, I'm out there. I'm

21:32

gonna fight for something that I believe in every

21:35

single day of my life. And if

21:37

all Christians did that, we

21:39

would be winning every day. We would win the elections.

21:42

We would win the cultural fights. We

21:44

have to be willing to engage in those

21:46

fights. You're here. Well,

21:49

thank you so much again, both of you for

21:51

joining me. Thank you very much.

21:55

Thanks again for joining us and listening.

21:57

Again, that was Mark Meckler. I'm

22:00

Michael Faris and I'm Tyler

22:02

O'Neill. If you appreciated

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