[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West. You are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. I'm with Zach Gillis and we're talking about this incredible Braver Angels conference that we're attending. And then the last episode or segment, if you will, Zach was kind of talking about this, you know, people are divided, so divided nation in the nation and in families. And I think that divides real. I think it's true. It's horrible.
[00:00:34] It's sad. You hear stories of children literally ghosting their parents, parents ghosting children, spouses, you know, in complete divide. I mean, it's just tearing families apart. And I think that's true. But one of the interesting things about Braver Angels is they're starting to spend money and efforts on research, Zach. And they came back with their research studies and said, listen, the divide's bad. Don't get us wrong. We're not dismissing it.
[00:01:01] But it's way worse in the media. And it's way worse if you hear politicians than it is in real life. So if you listen to the media and to the politicians, everybody's a racist. Yeah.
[00:01:15] When you look at reality, people are kind of it. I'm telling you right now, we dealt with black and white people all over Philadelphia and everyone was respectful. Women held doors for men. Men held doors for women. Black people held doors for white people. White people held doors for black people. Everyone said please and thank you. And everyone was, all I'm telling you is everyone was stellar in their treatment of those around them. Do you agree with that, Zach? It's true. Absolutely do. Have you heard the song? I believe most people are good. I don't know.
[00:01:44] Yeah. Great song. Look that up. That song kind of relates to this. Yeah. You know, that's a Brian, right? Oh, Brian, Luke Bryan, Luke Bryan. Okay. Luke Bryan. Nice. Yeah. I believe most people are good. It's a great song and it's a great point. And he's right. And I'm telling you in Philadelphia, brotherly love. We saw that in spades.
[00:02:07] It's so brave angels does a lot of this research and they say, you know what? We're not going to dismiss it. It exists. And it's a problem, a big problem. But you know what? It's not near as bad as we're led to believe. And the divide among people isn't as bad. The reason they're not talking is not because they really hate the other person so badly. More that they're afraid to engage because they don't want to be made fun of. They don't want to be mocked. They don't want to be canceled. They don't want to be.
[00:02:35] And so really it's more of fear than it is hatred or anger. The mainstream press and the media and everybody else, the politicians, they want us to believe that it's just anger and hate. Really, it's more of fear. People are like, you know what? I just don't want to say anything because I don't want to cause any problems. And they really brought some of this research out that I found fascinating, Zach. Yeah, and they put the research into practice in these workshops. One of the things going along with music, they created this song together.
[00:03:05] Over one day, they put, I think it was probably like four Republicans and four Democrats together in a room. I think they had some independents in there too. Some independents in there. But all kind of music-minded people, right? All music-minded. That were there by choice. Yep. They were artists. They were amazing. They put together this incredible song for the Braver Angels event.
[00:03:33] And they came together on what the lyrics should be. And anyway, it was very, very good. It was a takeoff of the song and the movie. The, it was in the movie. Wow. I can't remember. The Greatest Showman. Yeah, The Greatest Showman. There was a song in The Greatest Showman. And they basically took that song and then they rewrote lyrics that related to what we were doing. And the point was that we need to, you know, we need to get along.
[00:04:03] And we need to hold our tongues. And we need to listen. And we need to give people grace. And we need to realize that it's the triggering that's the biggest problem. It isn't so much that we believe differently. It's so in my story about this abortion person, you know, I could have been so easily triggered and just ripped on that person. How dare you want to kill everybody? And, but that isn't the response. By my kind response and by not being triggered and following kind of Braver Angels lead on this, I learned this guy was a very compassionate person.
[00:04:30] Now, I don't know that I, again, I don't agree with his conclusions. But he comes from a point of love and kindness that he just sees so much turmoil and sadness and trouble. He's kind of thinking, you know, maybe it's better that these people aren't brought into this. And I can see if you weren't maybe Christian or if you weren't as religious or as conservative as I am, how you could get there pretty easy.
[00:04:51] If you see turmoil and struggle and sadness and abuse and all these things around you every day, you could easily get there and be, I don't want to say justified, but it would be understandable that you would think that. Right, Zach? Yeah, that's right. I'm going back to kind of the statistics that you saw. Sure.
[00:05:09] The commonality outweighs the small, I'm not going to say small because these are big issues that we do talk about a lot on Liberty Roundtable. We talk about it all over in politics. But those issues are way smaller than the size of commonality that we actually have with people.
[00:05:35] And even though it doesn't seem like it because all the focus and all the rage is on those things. When you think about, you know, the Savior teaches this, you got this beam in your own eye and you can't see the moat in your neighbor's eye or whatever. And what, a moat's a little teeny thing and it beams this big old stick in the way. You know, and sometimes we reverse that and we kind of think that the divisions are so massive and so great. How could we ever get along? But you know what?
[00:06:04] We all really want the same things. And they really focused on this in a lot of the research that they delivered in some of the speeches and some of the events that we were at. We all really want the same things. We all want attention. In other words, you know, we're not trying to be rock stars on the stage, but we all want to be noticed. We all want to be acknowledged and heard. We all want to be loved and respected. We all want food and shelter and clothing and, you know, AC and heating. And, you know, we all want really the same things.
[00:06:33] We want to be happy in our family. We want to have people around us that we care for. We want to feel like we're contributing to the world in some way, whether it's through our employment, through our music, through, in my case, Liberty Roundtable or whatever I do to try to improve society. Everybody wants to be kind of recognized. They don't have to be rock stars, but they do want it. They want acknowledgement that they matter, that they're contributing, that they're.
[00:06:51] And really, when you think about it, whether it's racial differences, whether it's political differences, whether it's, you know, beliefs of male, female or transgender or any of those other issues, divisive issues, we could say. It doesn't matter. All of them, we still all really at the core want the same things.
[00:07:10] And if we hear people's stories, even though we may not agree with them, we will at least realize that most of them get there in very compassionate, very appropriate ways where they're there by, at least for a legitimate reason. Even if you don't agree with their conclusion, you go, okay, I can see that. And there were some lyrics to another song that they sung at the concert tonight.
[00:07:41] You can't, you have to change yourself before you can make a change, something like that. Anyway, I just thought it was. The idea is that you can't expect others to change. You know, we always want other people to change. You've got to be the one to change. But here's what's interesting. Here's the point they made with those lyrics. When you change, other people change too. It's not that the other people really changed.
[00:08:07] But if you change how you relate to those other people, well, just think about it. Instead of arguing with that guy, I listened to him. What changed? I did. I went. This guy at least means well. They showed quite a few different things. One was with Utah's Governor Cox and also the governor in, where was it? Minnesota.
[00:08:34] And they were, they came together and they were talking about how, yeah, they have a lot of differences in opinion. However, they still are friends. And they believe in America and they really want and they kind of highlighted the same things. And so there were so many different themes at this conference. It's really hard to even articulate all of them. But one of the big things, again, and I hammer this home.
[00:09:02] I know I mentioned it a couple of times, but I really want to reiterate it because I think it's critical. And that is this storytelling. You know, when you get a chance to hear people's stories, then you start to change and understand and identify with people. And people become human. Rather than just thinking there's some statistic, they're red. They're evil. They're blue. They're this. They're that. People become human. And so there was a movie in this, all the rage movie that's coming out.
[00:09:31] There was a girl that was mentioned there that's one of the leaders of Braver Angels. Sorry. And she, her name is Monica Guzman. And Monica is a very liberal, extreme journalist. And I say extreme, and I don't mean to portray her that way because I don't think she's that way anymore. But in her story, it portrayed her that way. And she said that she was that way. She grew up in Mexico as a little kid.
[00:10:00] She came here. Her parents are super conservative. She's super liberal. And she was, you know, experiencing after the Donald Trump win and the Hillary Clinton loss. You know, she was really kind of going, man, the world's over. And she was just freaking out and identifying with her friends. And then she realized, and she started to spend time and learn. And then she met Braver Angels, and it's kind of changed her life. She's still liberal. She's still blue.
[00:10:29] That hasn't changed. Nor does it necessarily need to. And that's kind of the point of Braver Angels. It doesn't need to necessarily. Okay, we would think it's a win if she all of a sudden went red, right? But that's not the point. The point isn't to win. The point isn't to convince people. The point is to listen to them. And so when I heard her story, it kind of made her human to me. Well, what's fascinating is before I watched the movie yesterday, we were forced. I shouldn't say forced. That's not right.
[00:10:56] We were encouraged to stand up and then meet a blue person if you're a different color. So I was yellow because I'm not blue or red. And the first thing is Monica walks up to me, and she's like, hey, who are you? She looks at my tag, and she says, hi, Sam. I'm Monica. And we talked. And she's this big leader at Braver Angels, Zach. Yep. I mean, one of the top people in the organization pretty much. Yep. I mean, she's well known. She does a podcast. She's in the movies.
[00:11:23] She lives and breathes and eats this stuff. And I commend her for it. And her and I had a tremendous discussion. Why do I spend time on that? One, her story is fascinating. It makes me realize that when she was a super liberal just melting down because Donald won, she might be a better person in terms of being educated of how to interact with me. And I might be a better person to learn how to interact with her. But we're still the same people. She's still blue. I'm still conservative as all get out. But we can talk.
[00:11:53] And we can be friends. And we can build this bridge. But we can still remain who we are. And that's kind of the brilliance of Braver Angels. So I bring this up because she still holds on to her beliefs. She's not different. She's still liberal. But here's the other point that I want to make about this. The Braver Angels people, you know a lot of times when you have organizations, the people at the top are kind of distant from everybody else, Zach. Oh, yeah. They're hard to talk to. You can't get to them.
[00:12:23] They're just rock stars. And that's kind of the deal. Braver Angels is the total opposite, Zach. They absolutely are. And you can tell in the leadership. And you can see a lot of events that me and Sam actually go to. You can kind of see, like, who's kind of the rock star or whatever. And that's just not – that's just not – I don't think it exists at Braver Angels. I really don't. Anyway. Actually, I want to go to something.
[00:12:51] One of the questions was – to talk to your neighbor. And one of the questions was, what is the most disappointing thing happening right now? And what brings you hope? Yeah. Something to that effect. Yep. And sadly, at the event, I think there were some people there because they wanted to see a fight break out. They wanted to see –
[00:13:20] Well, they were certainly disappointed, buddy, because there was nothing even close. But I'm just saying it's just so sad to see, like, you know what? That's what a lot of people want to see. They want to see the bread and circus. They want to see that just – Jerry Springer rolling in. And that's what they were kind of expecting, like, oh, man, I want to come to this thing because, oh, man, I can see it getting crazy. But anyway, going to – I don't want to be the downer.
[00:13:50] I want to focus on that hope. And I'm glad they said, well, what brings you that hope? For me, you know, I find hope in Christ. Amen. And I find hope at events like this because I am witnessing civility in action.
[00:14:10] I'm witnessing people coming together and striving to get rid of one of the worst problems that Satan is trying to bring us down on. And so I find hope in these kind of events. I find hope in the people that were there. One person had mentioned, I find hope because there are – there's a younger generation here.
[00:14:38] It wasn't necessarily a younger generation group, but there were some people in the younger generation. The younger generation really brings me hope as well. And I can relate to the younger generation a little bit more. I would love to see TPUSA and Braver Angels become partners. That would be incredible. And that would be just something to see.
[00:15:01] But the reason I mentioned that there's just not rock stars at this thing is because that's kind of one of the other points of Braver Angels is that you're not better than somebody else because you have different beliefs. Now, you might believe that your beliefs are right and they're more principle-based and more right than they are. But it isn't about that. It's about learning people's stories and learning – accepting people for who they are. And, you know, the Savior Jesus Christ was very good at accepting people for who they were. Yes, he called them out from time to time.
[00:15:31] I'm not saying he was 100%. But he mainly called them out in generalities for what they were doing, not who they were personally. So he was very direct on a general scale. But when he talked to people personally, he gave them plenty of grace, plenty of opportunity, plenty of, you know what? I know who you are and I see you and I, you know, think of the woman taking it into the ultery as a great example. You know, he's just like, hey, who's catching the first stone? Nobody. I'm not condemning you either. But you know what? Stop it. Don't do that thing anymore.
[00:16:01] So he's very detailed about not attacking an individual but more talking about behaviors. And I think we can do that respectfully and not make it personal and attack people and things. But the Braver Angels employees or leadership, whatever you want to call it, I mean, they were literally driving around carts so that people didn't have to walk. And then people pick people up and drive you somewhere and then drop you off. And we're talking about the leadership. So I'm like, well, what do you do? Oh, well, I'm a leader and this and that and that. But today I'm driving people around. Or today I'm, and they were holding doors for people.
[00:16:30] They were welcoming people to the event when you got to the lobby to get your registration. A ton of big leaders, well-known leaders were there to shake your hand and welcome you to the event. And the leaders are serving people food and they're just everywhere. Service seems to be a hallmark of Braver Angels, Zach. Absolutely. One thing I don't want to forget about is this jazz and blues session that we did. Oh, that was pretty sweet. This kind of relates to a lot of the discussion that we've been having.
[00:16:59] You talk about the blues and they were discussing kind of the hard times. But then they focused on, you know, music brings our nation together. It really brings good and love and joy into our lives. And another thing that stood out to me in one of the films that they showed. Before you go into the film. Yeah. Go back to the jazz and blues. On the jazz and the blues, I just want to say they tied it to the hardships that we all face. Yeah.
[00:17:29] Blacks, whites, everyone. Everyone has been oppressed at one time or another by somebody else. Everyone. The founding fathers had the struggle against the king. And they really compared all those struggles to blues and jazz. And the music reflects those struggles in very meaningful, very personal ways. But then they talked about the celebration side. And the joy that the music brings.
[00:17:51] And that the music helps us overcome and helps us conquer some of those fears and some of those horrible times that we all want to never repeat in history. And they really likened music to a patriotic viewpoint. I really was impressed with that. Absolutely. Now, before you get into the film, tell everybody about that artist that was drawing. Oh, my heavens. That was important too, I think. Every single one of the sessions that we had. Plenary sessions. Yeah, there was a plenary session.
[00:18:18] There was a guy there that was drawing the session out. He didn't talk. He didn't do anything. He just drew. That's right. He just drew while everybody was talking in their speeches and all the different things that were happening. He was drawing what was happening. He was documenting everything that was happening in the session. And I know he had it on a screen. I'm sure he'll do some sort of a time lapse.
[00:18:42] But he, in detail, drew and wrote key topics and points that were laid out on this massive piece of paper. It was just... It's like an artistic summary of each event. And then they put the events in the hall so you could see them in a row too, right? Yep, you could. You could see each session in a row just to kind of get a glimpse of like, oh yeah, this happened at this time. He was an artistic historian is the best way I can describe it. I think so. It was just tremendous. Anyway, do your film. I don't mean to ignore that. No.
[00:19:12] So I wanted to go into this part because they were in this film, they were discussing a true story about what had happened at the LDS church where a guy drove his truck into the LDS church. And there was a guy... And then he started shooting everybody and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, he started shooting everybody. We've heard the story out in Michigan.
[00:19:36] Anyway, there's a guy that felt like, hey, the shooter is now dead. Now his wife is still alive and has a child. And a son, yep. And I'm going to start a GoFundMe for them. And I had thought about this too during the Charlie Kirk situation. Yeah. And I had thought about Charlie's parents.
[00:20:05] I mean, the shooter's parents. The shooter himself. And it's a difficult topic that forgiveness. But God says that we got to forgive everybody. But one thing about this guy that did this GoFundMe, he set it up and he got hated. Yeah, everybody was attacking him. Like, how dare you? Who cares about those people?
[00:20:35] Well, the shooter's wife didn't do anything. She's suffering. The shooter's son didn't do anything. He's suffering. And so the idea that he would be in all this hate. But anyway, it turned out that 10,000 plus people supported him and he raised over $300,000, right? He did. And one way that they put it, he put it, he's like, I only put out there $50 just to kind of see what else we could get.
[00:21:00] And he said we ended up having 10,000 widow's mites donated. And I just thought that was just so powerful to hear that there is another side to things. These are real people in these situations that are so difficult. They're feeling it.
[00:21:30] Evil or whatever you might think, they're still God's children. Amen. Amen. And that's really, in my opinion, the point of Braver Angels is to really realize that we're talking to God's children, our brothers and sisters, not only in the United States, but around the world. And they're making a tremendous difference. I was delighted to be at their conference. I think their conference had tremendous, tremendous value. You know, they basically sang together. We all sang together. We ate together. We talked. We listened.
[00:22:00] We cried. We laughed. And to me, that's what it's about. And I'm hoping that Braver Angels can spread the word far and wide. And the last point I want to make is that what gave me concern or disappointment or hard, it's hard to start the conversations with people who you know are opposite. You don't want to trigger and make people mad. You don't want to get in a fight. Who wants that? The turmoil is not worth it. So people will be quiet. But that's the disappointment. The positive is, or the hope that I have was, you know what?
[00:22:29] Braver Angels and others are developing curriculum and guidance and training exercises and events and sessions to help people learn how to deliver messages in non-triggering ways and how to not be triggered. And if we can teach people that and we can bring back the humanity and the civility again, my call for civility. I've been working on the same project since 2016, just like they have.
[00:22:57] And so we intend to work with them and carry forward their message in a meaningful way. We intend to do our very best to partner with them and to bring this organization along because they're doing tremendous, tremendous work in my opinion. Now, it was the last point, Zach, that was interesting is TPUSA talked a whole lot more about God than these guys did. But these guys talked a lot about godly principles without directly pointing to God per se.
[00:23:24] And the principles they actually focused on is our country. And going back to 1776, because the whole theme was 1776 to 2026. Yes, sir. And they go back to the founding. And our whole founding was based on godly principles. Despite, you know, maybe they weren't mentioning God as much.
[00:23:51] They were focused on our true, the true principles that were, they talked about at the very beginning when this all happened. And when they were in Independence Hall at this Constitution Convention and not just the Declaration of Independence. Yeah, 1787, Constitutional Convention, yep. And they talked a lot about that in the Constitution. It was a tremendous event.
[00:24:21] They also created a pledge. And we don't have time to get to it this time. But I will be bringing it up on future broadcasts. And I'll be continuing to have on Braver Angels leaders. And I'll be continuing to have a great time. Several of them have agreed to join me monthly and become part of the podcast as well. Again, folks, we all need to learn together. We all need to think civility. We all need to set down our perceptions and learn to listen.