#26 - Should the Government be Allowed to Control Information in Books & Social Media?

00:00:00 - Radell Lewis Welcome to the Purple Political Breakdown. 00:00:04 - Jonathan Kutz There is a difference between what is good and what is bad, and we can know that difference. And we should strive to be good. And so we should strive to vote people in who are not ideologically captured but are earnestly seeking and desiring to find truth. 00:00:18 - Radell Lewis Once they start establishing a precedent where I want to pick and choose the ideologies that the people of my state can observe and learn. When does it stop? And that's one of the biggest things for me. When establishing laws and when establishing certain type of quotas for how people should be, is the precedent it will set potentially moving forward. 00:00:41 - Radell Lewis Do you want a great website like this? This is my podcast website where I direct the audience to come to watch the content, listen to the content, read the blogs and much, much more. 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Pod Match is similar to any other kind of matching site for the most part and it's super easy. You just $6 a month. You can have a guest for each. 00:02:13 - Radell Lewis And every podcast episode that is tailored. 00:02:16 - Radell Lewis To your specific topic. So again, join the link in my description and join Pod Match now. Ladies and gentlemen, how's it going? 00:02:26 - Radell Lewis We are back, as you can see that I have rebranded, retooled, upgraded a lot of the things that I'm doing on the podcast and that includes with the new cover art and kind of other new stuff that's going on. In addition to that, I'm also planning to change the upload schedule relatively soon. I'll start uploading twice a week in terms of podcast episodes every Monday and ideally every Thursday episodes will drop coming soon and just more content for the people of course. And also coming, as you guys can tell, I have a person here with me in addition to guests that come on who contact me and want to come on to that show or I want them to come on the show because I deem them interesting. I'll try to have co hosts moving forward. That's a new experiment I'm going to try who can offer an interesting, maybe different perspective than myself. And the caveat with this, the reason why I'm doing this is because all you know that I ride for the middle, for the most part, I try to use my own brain to kind of coincide my different beliefs and different positions. But I wanted someone who leans more right and I wanted someone who leans more left to come on the show consistently and also provide their perspective on these different issues too. And that nuance is going to be very important. So today I have one person of the potential cohost I'll have moving forward, and his name is Jonathan. Do you want me to pronounce it as Koots or Cuts? 00:04:02 - Jonathan Kutz It is Koots. 00:04:04 - Radell Lewis Okay. That's what I assume. So I have here Jonathan Kutz, and I'm going to allow him to introduce himself. 00:04:12 - Jonathan Kutz Well, hi, folks. As he said, my name is Jonathan. I certainly lean a little bit more on the conservative side. I have a podcast as well on the side, but I try to stray away from politics on that one. So I'm excited to join Ridell on this venture of his. And I am very interested in politics, so it's not like I am unaware of politics, but I talk mostly on my own podcast about philosophy and history and all that old stuff. And I think that really informs the way I view politics in a very different way, which is hopefully a unique perspective that I can give to all of you. 00:04:55 - Radell Lewis All right, excellent. And what is your podcast called? 00:04:58 - Jonathan Kutz So my podcast is called The Classic Life, and it is all about how one can lead and revive that classic life. 00:05:09 - Radell Lewis All right, excellent. If you are interested in those topics that stray away from politics to an extent, make sure to go check out his content, obviously. So with that said, we're going to start diving in today's episode of discussion. And before we do that, per usual, I'm going to drop a review person. You drop a review on Apple podcast or any other different platform, you drop a comment that you want to be read on my podcast and I'll read it out. Rate it five stars. Obviously four stars is okay, but preferably five stars. And this is from Jenny of lovely. They said, interesting perspective on divisive issues, good explanations for big topics. Ridell is a great host and explainer appreciate it. That is what I try to do in each and every one of the discussions that I have, of course. So appreciate you. Of course. Again, drop a review and you can get shouted out to a future episode. So what you need to know, kind of a current event that people should be up to speed about is I'm not going to go into depth because I don't want to, because inherently, I don't care that much about him as a person. But Donald Trump, donald Trump mr. Trump is facing potential criminal charges because of we all know about what he did with the porn star, obviously, but this is not that. This is more so involving classified documents at his home and the potential legitimacy of having them there. And there's a whole lot going into it. So this could either kind of all be thrown away because I've heard different arguments on, oh, it's not a big deal. Look at I hear see people say, okay, compare this to Hillary Clinton and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Regardless, he had classified documents. He had no interest in giving them up. So that doesn't bode well as of right now. And I think they released some type of manuscript of his conversation with someone. I forget which person this conversation was with, and it was pretty damning. So we're going to see what happens to Trump. Will he actually run for presidency with this looming over his head? I don't know. Maybe this makes it easier for DeSantis. Who knows? We'll see. 00:07:30 - Jonathan Kutz It does. 00:07:31 - Radell Lewis We don't. Why? 00:07:32 - Jonathan Kutz I don't because it seems I recall from, I think, his campaign during 2020, where he remarked that I could shoot someone in the center of Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose a voter. For some reason, in this escalated climate of partisanship that we have, every time the left intends to or attempts to indict or cause problems with trump these far right radicals and just people on the right in general, I wouldn't even call them radicals. Just conservatives in general tend to like that more because they feel as if well, if the left doesn't like this person, then we automatically should like them. Which obviously is not rational nor reasonable, but I think it is a fact. So I think the more they attack him, the more he actually looks good to the people who are going to vote for Trump, because the people who are going to vote for Trump are going to vote for Trump. The people who are going to vote for DeSantis will vote for DeSantis at this point. I think with this hyperpartisanship that we have, the more people attack Trump, the more certain people will like him. 00:08:45 - Radell Lewis Yeah, I mean, you do have a point there. I've seen it all the time, that these Trumpers absolutely love the guy. Regardless, at this point, regardless of what he does, they kind of stem it up. Even if the evidence is in front of you, they kind of stem it up from the left trying to frame him in a bad light. And they have done that to an extent, but they think it's a big old conspiracy against Trump at the end of the day. So, like you said, it's relatively irrational. I'm very curious to see how this presidential election is going to go. I mean, the Republican Party is I mean, it's down to two people. It seems. It's DeSantis or Trump. As for the left, I'm not really sure. Joe Biden, he says he wants to reelect. He might win the primary for himself, but it'll be. 00:09:41 - Jonathan Kutz I hate to bash our president. Even though I am conservative, I still try to respect the office and whatnot and try not to demean the poor man, but I don't know how he could run the government. I don't know how he could I mean, he's obviously not campaigning. He's announced this campaign, but he's not campaigning. I actually feel bad for him at this point because he has no idea what's going on. 00:10:08 - Radell Lewis Yeah. I will say that in terms of how he performed, I think there's an argument to be made that he actually didn't do a terrible job by any means. But at the end of the day, the man is old. Like, he's extremely old. To think that he'll be able to run four more years at a sane, consistent basis is pushing it. I don't think we should have a leader that is like knocking on, sorry to say, death door. So it's like, probably should get someone younger. But as of right now, on the left, I don't even know who that person is. I don't see any decent candidates on the left right now. 00:10:51 - Jonathan Kutz Yeah, the only one that I think is a very potentially good candidate is Robert Kennedy Jr. But I don't think the far wings of the left will go for him because he's too antivaccine. Yeah, very antivaccine. 00:11:08 - Radell Lewis Yeah, I don't know about that either. I initially thought because of how antivaccine he is and all the conspiracy theories I hear from him, I initially thought he was on the right, but he wanted to run for the Democratic nominee. I'm like, interesting. I don't know how that's going to go, but we'll see. But obviously he has a lineage being a Kennedy, so we'll see how that kind of works out. All right, so let's dive into the topic of the hand. Today. We're going to be talking about the legitimacy of content moderation. And what I mean by this is when it comes to certain things and we're going to make a delineation between objectively, morally bad content that shouldn't be aired out for public use versus ideological content that is potentially banned or moderated due to more political and ideological purposes. So that would include, like, a book ban. And as of right now, that would also include social media content ban. And this is stuff that needs to be brought up for a good reason because it is something that a lot of states are actually thinking about. As of recently, Illinois decided to ban book bans. So they're going in the opposite direction by that. They ban the idea of they banned any kind of library trying to ban books. And the way they do this is, if the libraries do not put a policy in their constitution indicating that indicating that they can't ban books for their public library, then if they don't do that, then they won't be getting a certain status and all the benefits of the government. I forgot the exact verbatim, but obviously that's important stuff you would need to have in terms of your legitimacy as a public library. So they did this mostly, it seems, for like LGBTQ books. And we could talk about that, of course, but regardless, they want to make sure that notebooks should be able to be banned. And then we have places like Texas who want to potentially ban specific social media content that is more ideologically driven. And this also tends to being around LGBTQ content. But again, this is more of an ideological situation. So this is something that is definitely happening. And we're trying to figure out should they even have the right to do this in the first place? So what do you think about the banning or the content moderation from these state governments? 00:13:53 - Jonathan Kutz I kind of lean more towards the concept that you can ban things because certain things, like you pointed out, certain things certainly deserve to be banned. When you're trying to put essentially child porn in libraries or in bookstores and things like that designed for kids. I don't think that's a good thing. And I think they have every right to ban those. The problem is, well, I should preface it with this. The reason it's okay to do that is because inherently, I do believe that we can and are capable of discerning right from wrong. And when we can figure out what is actually right to do, then we can figure out what is wrong to do. More precisely. One of the things that we have in our nation, one of the things we are good at, is finding things that are wrong to do. It is wrong to do this, it is wrong to do that. But we don't start first with what is right to do. This is what I believe. And because we don't know what is right to do, inherently, we've kind of lost that in the postmodern world that we live in, people are now unable to actually face the what is correct to do with what is wrong to do, and vice versa. So we're looking at things that are wrong to do, but we haven't lined it up with what's right to do. So what is wrong to do can be anything. That's a much lesser level of determinant than knowing what is right to do. And so I believe that we can inherently there is an objectionable or an objective good. And when we can find out what that is, it is appropriate to ban certain things based on that higher model. And so that's a little bit of a tirade, but I do think banning certain things is certainly good and politics as a whole as like a category is meant to be something that is wielded by the public. I mean, obviously we are a self governing public republic. That's kind of what the founders set for us. But the state, quote unquote, I think, can be based in good things. And when it is based in good things, we can know what the bad things are. And so when we see something like child porn put in school libraries, we should certainly ban those when we find, I think, very debauched books. Like, there's lots of books out there that not even like pornography, but just books that probably shouldn't be around because they're scandalizing. I think we should get rid of those too. And I don't think that anything should go, certainly not. So I think to a certain extent, yeah, I think books can be banned. I think books should be banned if they're scandalizing. And we have a lot of scandalizing books out there. 00:16:58 - Radell Lewis So you brought up a lot of interesting things. And I want to preface this by saying that I also agree that we shouldn't have a system where it allows everything to go right. I've said this before, probably my last episode, which actually was about social media laws and their legitimacy, especially from the right. And the idea that you can have a free space to say and do whatever you want, it doesn't create any type of order of fact. It just creates like anarchy and nastiness. We see that in the initial, the implementation of something like Kick, for example, and we just have a bunch of people screaming racial slurs, pretending to be Nazis. 00:17:52 - Jonathan Kutz Can I give something interesting on kick? 00:17:54 - Radell Lewis Go for it. 00:17:55 - Jonathan Kutz So I worked for about a year and a half at a research lab on my college campus and we studied police officers that commit crimes. The only national level police crime database, it is called the Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database if you want to look it up. So you know, I'm not lying to you. And I was responsible for reading and vetting all the cases to make sure that they met our inclusion criteria for the study. And overwhelmingly, police officers that were arrested for child porn used Kick. So hundreds and hundreds of police officers in that database used Kick to get child porn. 00:18:38 - Radell Lewis The streaming service. What? I don't even know how that works. That's interesting. I thought Kick was pretty new. Has it been around for a while? 00:18:49 - Jonathan Kutz Hang on. 00:18:53 - Radell Lewis Okay, you're thinking of the texting service. I remember the texting service. 00:19:00 - Jonathan Kutz It's called kick, right? I'm not crazy. 00:19:02 - Radell Lewis No, you're not crazy. 00:19:03 - Jonathan Kutz Okay. Is there something else called Kick now as well? 00:19:07 - Radell Lewis Yeah, so to distinguish these two platforms exactly. So back in the day, there was this texting service kind of similar to I guess similar to discord in a way. It's similar to WhatsApp? That's a better comparison. It's very similar to WhatsApp you create an account and you can message people. Now, I actually did use Kick when I was extremely young and Hindsight 2020. A lot of very bad things happen on Kick. I'm just saying, I'll be completely honest. So Kick was kind of free reign and you encounter a lot of different people. That's the only thing I'll say about that. So I'm not surprised that a lot of these they use Kick to do these nasty things. Actually, now you bring this up. The platform that I'm talking about is Kick, the new streaming service. Kick. Kick. 00:20:04 - Jonathan Kutz Okay, I apologize. 00:20:06 - Radell Lewis No worries. But that was an interesting bit of information that I didn't realize and it brought up the old better. I'm sure that kind of rings some people's ears when they heard, oh, I remember Kick. I'm sure. So, yeah, Kick.com is the streaming service kind of the challenger to twitch as of right now. And they kind of incentivize. They're doing a lot of interesting stuff right now. I mean, they're trying to kind of establish an hourly wage and all this stuff. But the initial premise on why I was so gracious is because they had much more lax content moderation in comparison to Twitter. 00:20:41 - Jonathan Kutz No, that you say that. I have a friend that streams on Kick and he was telling me about it. They pay a lot higher too, don't they? Or at least they did initially. 00:20:51 - Radell Lewis Yes, they take a less of a percentage in terms of not commission, but like streaming income, I guess. 00:21:01 - Jonathan Kutz Yeah. 00:21:02 - Radell Lewis So a lot of people want to go to Kick for good reasons, but they have to continuously work on their content moderation. So it's not filled with just weirdos who want to be racist or homophobic and all that stuff. But another thing that I want to add is even though I think that content moderation should be there, I think we should definitely establish like the lines. Right. So the first thing I want to do right now is establishing what is the objectively bad material that society as a whole, America as a whole can agree that we don't want people to see. Right? So one example I would say is you don't want any person and I also eventually want to dive into the difference between age groups and demographic and what they should or should not be saying too. But in all groups, we probably don't want to see both in books or social media, like you said, explicit child porn. Objectively, you see this and you can honestly say, yeah, this is child pornography. So that's something obviously we don't want to see people to see like mutilation or torture things on these different books or social media and anything else that you have. 00:22:26 - Jonathan Kutz I would say those are the main ones. So I said at the beginning, people don't really know what scandalizing really means anymore because we've become kind of desensitized to a lot of things. But I would say like scandalizing material, which is something that causes you to go astray, is what scandalizing really means as its root word. So when it says, for instance, in the Bible, don't scandalize little children, don't lead them astray. Don't cause them to stumble. And so when we see things, that causes us to stumble in some way. I'll use explicitly religious symbology at this time because it explains the point the best, right? When someone sins, that's technically it's an archery term. So when you sin, it's when you miss the mark. Okay? So when you're shooting for a target and this is what the Bible intends, when it says that when you're shooting at a target and you miss the target, that's what a sin is. In tournaments and stuff, when they're having arch convictions, they would say sin if you missed the mark. And so when it says don't scandalize the kids, don't cause them to stumble, don't cause them to sin. It's when you have an objective and you see something, you observe something, you behold something that causes you to stumble and miss your mark. So when you're gaining for absence, when you're gaining in something, when you're gaining for chastity, that's what you're attaining and striving for. If you were to stumble and miss because you saw something, I think we should keep that from people. I think we should make sure that nothing is going to cause people to stumble. And so I think one of the most obvious examples of that would be pornography in general, but specifically child pornography is where I think we should start, especially keeping that away from the hands of kids. 00:24:13 - Radell Lewis Yeah, we could definitely agree to there. I want to dive into that a little bit more. But every person in whatever spectrum probably can agree, unless they're a psychopath, that these two things that we mention are objectively things that we do not want to showcase the public. If you want to bring anything else, then I feel like anything else is worth debating for a good reason, obviously. Sure. And that's why when people see material, they will immediately try to equate it to one of those two things. Because the moment you bring up one of those two things, we automatically know that it will have a negative or bad connotation and nobody wants to agree to those things if they quantify those things. Now, a different argument can be made what makes these types of material, and that I would be willing to go into that case by case, but I think establishing at the very least those two things as things that we don't want people to see is important. So with that said, after we establish that and that's why I kind of hope that the Illinois Book Ban or Ban on Book Ban Law does establish a means to say, okay, but this material, we don't want to ban books based on ideology. But in terms of this material, we obviously will have bans. We're not going to have child pornography. We're not going to have people mutilating themselves or torturing themselves or talking about torture or any of that stuff on our platform. So hopefully Illinois kind of establishes that precedent. I feel like sometimes for a lot of these politicians and a lot of these people into politics, it's either black or white for some reason. But it should never be that way. Most have nuanced. Most have a gray area that you can kind of dive into. So with that said, now, I do want to establish that different material and different content should be allowed and not be allowed to be broadcast to specific demographics. So what I mean by that, I think the easiest way to do this is through age groups. So obviously we got your elementary, we got your middle school, high school, and then college, right? So in your opinion, I think wanting to go top down because I think once we get to children, I think that we'll have a little bit of a back and forth regarding that. So in terms of college students, college students and adults, basically all adults, right? Everybody above et. Is there any content other than the two things we mentioned? We just got to leave that out. That's not allowed on the overall board. Is there any content, do you think any adult shouldn't be allowed to see or read or see on their social media that a state can legislate? Not if they want to ban it themselves. Who cares? 00:27:11 - Jonathan Kutz Sure. See, I have an interesting perspective on this because like I was saying, I think there's objective goods that can be found, that can be measured. And so I would say there are certain things that people just shouldn't see in general, like porn in general, this very grotesque violence. I don't think if it's not good for kids, I don't understand why at some point it would then be okay for adults. If it's bad, it's bad, is the perspective that I take. Right. So the problem is because of our current political climate, because of the current existence of our state, I don't necessarily trust them to do that. I don't trust them to be objective about it and define that and make sure, because if we see this over and over again, rewording of definitions to include more things to make it a little bit more vague. And so if we were to trust that to the state, I don't trust that they would execute that with diligence and with excellence. So at this certain point, I would say no, I don't think it is proper at this point in time to allow the state to ban things for adults. I think there should be plenty of things that are banned. And I am hoping and I hope that our government gets to a place where I would trust them to do that. Because like I said, I think there are certain things that should be banned for adults because if it's bad for kids, I think there's obviously some sort of nuance there and level that, yeah, obviously not everything that is kids content is good for adults. Like, obviously I'm not going to read The Iliad or The Odyssey to a kid because it is violent and there is sex in it, but it's not this overtly, repulsive kind of sex in there. It's not this overtly, repulsive kind of violence. So that's good for adults, but not necessarily good for kids. But I do think there is a certain level in which if this is so objectionable that we are not going to let young adults and young kids see this, or so objectionable that we're not going to let a wide swath of people see this, then we should just get rid of it for everybody. 00:29:34 - Radell Lewis I definitely see what you're saying and like a utopian world and maybe able to agree with you in terms of establishing the negative things, in terms of things for humans as things that we probably shouldn't allow them to have. But as you said, I don't even think it's just a state thing. I think it's a human thing that it just will never work. Because at the end of the day, if you have a good leader, a good couple of leaders, because the American political system allows a lot enough checks and balances to make sure that one person can't take over the country, right? So if we have a good couple of leaders for like, I don't know, two terms, then what happens in the term after that? If they use the same precedent that they did and they use it negatively, what's going to happen? 00:30:26 - Jonathan Kutz We could get into a whole discussion about executive orders. And all that is lunacy because the way that our system is supposed to be is the decrees of the president are to some extent lasting. That's why there are such checks and balances and why the executive orders is such a crazy, bat haired idea that the executive is now a legislative branch as well. It's crazy. But I totally agree with you. In a more perfect world that it would be, I think our government could operate much better and more justly than it does now. 00:31:06 - Radell Lewis Yeah. So with that said, I agree with the sentiment that adults, for the most part should be allowed to absorb whatever content they feel. In terms of the liberty aspect, we're not diving into our own probably not good for you, probably not. In terms of the liberty aspect here and the objective aspect here, there's really no good argument to kind of ban these type of content for adults that you can really make at this point. With that said, what about high schoolers? So let's go 17 years old to what, like 1414 years old is like high schoolers. So do you believe that there's any content. For high schoolers that should be banned. 00:31:57 - Jonathan Kutz Yeah, I think we should certainly ensure that they do not get their hands on porn. I think there's lots of studies, lots of science coming out that is showing it's very bad for brain development. I don't want to quote too much statistics and studies because I don't have them on hand. So I don't think you need to necessarily take that tact because it's just not very edifying for people. And my parents are marriage counselors, and they've talked about this issue with me and my brother at length. It creates a lot of false expectations when they view that that ruins and totally destroys and implodes marriages on a wide level. And obviously, we can kind of see that play out in the general statistics of marriages. Marriages are going down in a rate, and divorces are going up in a rate that is very similar along the curve of the wide availability of porn. So I definitely think that porn should not be allowed for that particular age group because there's a lot of development. 00:33:09 - Radell Lewis That happens there that is very interesting. So when it comes to high schoolers, I definitely see what you're saying. In terms of overall, I don't think there's a legit argument where anybody I don't think any rational person would say, yeah, porn is probably good for kids. They probably would say, inherently, porn is not allowed for high schoolers. Right. I mean, when you go to certain porn sites, we know it says, are you 18 enough? So we know that inherently you're not. These teenagers in high school, there's codified law for that. 00:33:49 - Jonathan Kutz Right? 00:33:50 - Radell Lewis Say that again. 00:33:52 - Jonathan Kutz Pretty sure there's codified law, which is why they have to give that disclosure, I guess. 00:33:58 - Radell Lewis I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, you want to make sure you're trying to they don't do a good job to stop them, but they don't want to be held liable for any potential situation. So with that said, if you want to make the argument that high schoolers in terms of social media, when they establish a social media account or go on the Internet, I think Utah is actually trying to do a porn ban as of right now. 00:34:27 - Jonathan Kutz That would check out with Utah. 00:34:29 - Radell Lewis Yeah, Utah is doing a lot of interesting things. And then in terms of books, you want to like, all right, you're a high schooler, you want to get some books, but you won't be able to get, like, porno magazines. Right, obviously. So with that said, how do you enforce it, really? And what punishment can you give this high schooler? I think a lot of the responsibility, obviously, would be put on the parents in terms of something that's much more individualistic. The parents will probably establish a certain type of quota or rule that, yeah, I don't want you watching porn. I do think to a certain extent, once they start going through peer breeding everything and start experiencing sex, there is going to be a lot of parents, and I won't know until I'm a parent myself. If I have a 16 year old who starts learning about their body and all that and they start masturbating, I don't know if it's smart to just say, oh, yes, stop. That's bad. I think you would have to have the birds and the bees talk. You would have to kind of help them understand. So in that situation, how do you enforce it to the point where these teens can't do it? And in the situation, once they learn about sex and learn about all that stuff, should we be educating them in these spaces? If porn is banned, should we go into details about sex and stuff if we're trying to ban porn? 00:35:51 - Jonathan Kutz I think there's already some precedent for especially when you're talking about, like, the birds and the bees talk when classes there's many schools that have the policy. When the birds and the bees talk is being done in schools, parents can request their kids be taken out, and the school has to obey that and remove their kids from that class at that time. When it comes to checking books out of the library, there's a very easy way to ensure that they're checking things out. Everything that they check out, you send to their parents. So I had to get a library card. I'm one of the strange people that still actually has a library card on my keychain. And when I got that library card, my mom had to be there with me, and she can access my account and look at every book that I've loaned. And especially if it's a school library, I think any book that a student checks out, a report of that can easily be sent to the parents, say this is the books that they've been checking out so their parents can know, because it's the parents responsibility when it comes to things like getting hands on porn and punishments involved. I don't know if it's appropriate for the state to go around and punish a child without the parent unless it's a criminal thing. So I don't know that this should necessarily be like a criminal offense. 00:37:24 - Radell Lewis Stop right there. Yes, this is a little mini ad. Don't skip. Don't skip. All I want to tell you right. 00:37:31 - Radell Lewis Now is that at the end of. 00:37:32 - Radell Lewis The day, when it comes down to. 00:37:34 - Radell Lewis All the discussions I want to have. 00:37:35 - Radell Lewis I want to be able to communicate with you, the audience. I want to be able to relay a message and receive a message from everyone and try to come up with these great solutions that I keep on talking about. So if you want to be part of the community, make sure you go to the website and sign up for not only the email list so you can get weekly emails from me for the podcast, episode, informational sessions, all that great stuff. But also sign up to go on my discord. 00:38:04 - Radell Lewis So you could be part of the. 00:38:05 - Radell Lewis Discussions, debates on my live streams. 00:38:08 - Radell Lewis So be sure to go to the. 00:38:09 - Radell Lewis Website www.purplepoliticalbreakdown.com and go to the email list. Sign up and go to the discord and join the server. 00:38:19 - Radell Lewis Now back to the episode. 00:38:24 - Jonathan Kutz I don't see how that would be just to punish the child for something that like you said, that's very instinctual, especially at that age. It's instinctual to look that thing out, to desire those sorts of things. So I don't know if that's why. 00:38:39 - Radell Lewis I'm curious about Utah situation. It's like, okay, you plan to ban porn, okay, you find a 15 year old or 16 year old who have porn on their phone, what are you going to do then? Are you going to find the parents for it? If a child does that, are you going to put a charge on the 15 year old? What do you plan to do? 00:38:59 - Jonathan Kutz One of the things so I guess I can give right now I am in school for criminal justice, and what I'm going into is law. We talk at length about laws and how law works and the social contract. And in my policing classes, of which I've taken numerous, we talk at length about the ethics of law, right? And when you have a law, the law gets ratified by the people and the police officers. When you swear in, you swear to uphold the constitution, the highest law of the land, and the local and state constitutions and their laws. And so if the law gets passed, then that is in essence society. And so this would be a state law. Obviously that is the state of Utah and its society has agreed that this is wrong and therefore punishment should be requisite for that. So if they do pass this law or this ban on porn, then police officers do have the obligation and the right to enforce that law. And so if that is what that state decides, that's kind of the point of federalism is one state can decide we want this and another state can decide we don't want this. Then if you decide to stay in Utah at that point, then you are in essence giving yourself over to that agreed law of the land. And I think if you are found in Utah with a porn magazine, if it has been banned, then yeah, I think you should be held liable by their laws. And if that's the law they choose to have, then I think whatever they decide the punishment can be or should be, I think they have every right to enforce that. 00:40:39 - Radell Lewis But what would the punishment be though? 00:40:43 - Jonathan Kutz That's a difficult thing to decide right now. I work in our municipal court here in my city, and a lot of times the judge has a lot of discretion. I would assume it would be something similar to like a marijuana like charge so low class, maybe middle to low class misdemeanor, sometimes it can be higher depending on the state. But with those types of things, there's lots of discretion. Right. So it'd probably be a fine. So in my state, low class misdemeanors are, I think, the highest misdemeanor charges 1000, like $2,000 is like the maximum that somebody can get for a misdemeanor of the first degree, which is the highest level misdemeanor. So it'd probably be a fine of some kind. And juvenile justice is a whole different thing, though. Yeah, that's a whole nother beast. We can untangle that if you want to, but I'd assume if it is a younger person, then their parents will bear a lot of that responsibility. I would assume, especially in a state like Utah, that's a pretty Mormon Christian state. I'm assuming the parents would hold a lot of responsibility for that. 00:42:04 - Radell Lewis Yeah, that's what I assumed. Right. So with that said, I do agree that states should have a certain level of autonomy, but in terms of putting my personal ideals in the forefront here, I don't agree with someone being found with a porno mag or someone being found on pornhub at the even at the age of 15 or 16 being able being fined or their parents being fined. I don't think that's a legitimate way to kind of enforce that situation. Especially, like you said, teens start getting very experimental, start learning all about these things. You're not going to be able to keep them unless you're super religious and completely navigate their entire life, which I don't agree with. I don't think that's a good way to parent. Unless you do something like that, then more than likely at someplace, whether it's school school is probably the most obvious place they're going to learn about this. Or their friends. Wouldn't they go to a friend's house or after a sports game, they're going to learn about this stuff. So if porn is banned but 16 year olds start having sex, what is the difference? What's the difference between a six? Are you going to criminalize a 16 year old having sex like you're criminalizing them watching porn? And I want to establish this. I don't think it's necessarily good for teens to be having a lot of sex or seeing a lot of porn. I don't think it's necessarily good in terms of generality's sake. My position in terms of how you would kind of navigate this personally is instead of some type of kind of, like, potential misdemeanor charge or the parents getting a fine or anything like that, I think some things that you said could be worth looking into. Like, for example, with okay. And this is we're specifically focusing on content, and it's the content moderation aspect. Okay. If they want to check out a book at a library until they're adult, the parents at the very least, could have the ability to know what books they're checking out, to know what is going on in that situation. 00:44:24 - Jonathan Kutz Yeah. 00:44:24 - Radell Lewis Okay. In terms of social media, I've had a discussion with someone on my last episode in terms of all right, there may be laws where parents will have full access to their child's social media account. And he was making interesting arguments. But one of the things that I told him is like, I don't necessarily know the difference between them having access to their social media account virtually or physically. If they found out they're doing something, they're going to take their phone away. There's really no difference. So might as well allow them to have this access if they want to create if a teenager that's in high school wants to create a social media account. So by giving parents access to the content that they're accessing, that will kind of allow them to be more involved once they start learning about something like porn, for example. So I think that's probably the route I would go because I think anything more gets in territory that is I think too much in terms of states influence. 00:45:28 - Jonathan Kutz Sure. I can see that as a pretty solid rule of thumb. I guess. I would say it's a good place to start. Obviously, I'm a little bit more on one side of this issue than you are, and that's totally fine, but I would certainly say that that is a reasonable position to take. 00:45:48 - Radell Lewis All right. Yeah. So with that said, high schoolers, very interesting person because that's when they start establishing their own individuality, kind of finding out who they are. Obviously very important progress in determining their rest of their life. Right now where it gets an interesting territory is when we're talking about middle schoolers and children that's like below. So basically 13 and younger, I think we'll just put them all under one umbrella. 13 and younger. How do you see the content moderation in terms of social media? 00:46:21 - Jonathan Kutz The Internet and books, I think very strict, very strict. I think social media should pretty much be off limits for that age group. There should be a very strong effort to make sure that they don't get social media. And I can pull up studies on this and how damaging I mean, we know it intuitively that social media is obviously designed to be addictive. Just like a lot of these video games, the color schemes, the noise sounds, the way that it automatically swipes for you essentially at this point. So it keeps you on those TikTok videos, keeps you on those videos. We know that Instagram and all these things are designed to be highly addictive. And grown, grown men, grown adults find themselves addicted to this. So just imagine the malleable, attention seeking, affirmation seeking brain of middle schoolers. I absolutely think it should be off the limits for young people to especially these 13 and younger to get social media. All the festoons of debauchery that can be found on there obviously should be off the table for them. And as far as porn and stuff, absolutely not. Absolutely not. 00:47:44 - Radell Lewis Yeah, I'm kind of similar vein. And I think I should have brought this up when we were talking about the high schooler aspect, because I do think there's more than you could probably argue more things in terms of content that they probably could be. Navigated or be kind of not controlled, but informed or educated or put in an environment that's a lot more inducive to understanding what's going on or potentially taken away altogether. I think I've heard arguments in referencing self harm so it doesn't really step the territory of torture or absolute mutilation, but learning more, getting access to content that's talking about suicide, for example, and all these very deep and depressing, overly violent, probably content. Now finding the line between overly violent because some people say you may have an argument on Grand Theft Auto or a Call of Duty, but I do think there probably is a line that is interesting to follow. So at the very least, the standard that I said earlier with having the parents being very much involved into the content that they're absorbing kind of applies to a lot of these situations. But back to the kids situation, I think I agree in terms of social media, I don't think they should have a social media account. There's really no reason for it. I mean, if they need to contact anybody, they can go through their parents. I'm sure there's an argument at a certain age you may want to give your kid a phone to contact certain people when they're out because they're going to be out and about doing certain things, but you can have certain controls to make sure they're not going into anything terrible. But with that said, social media, I think it's pretty obvious on both of our kind of mindsets right now, it's just such a big open world that they probably don't need to experience that yet. But books are a different story. They obviously will read books, they obviously will get access to books. So what type of books do we want them to have access to? 00:49:58 - Jonathan Kutz So here's something where I will say obviously things with graphic pictures in them should be kept away from them. But this is one of the beauty, I think, of books, and maybe I'm wrong, so this is my opinion, but I think with these age groups, the kind of stuff that is written in books, especially the good books, we should very much encourage them reading books of all kinds, as long as they're not like these overtly erotic books. But a lot of the stuff when I was 13, I started reading books that were probably way ahead of my capacities and the posts that I don't comprehend, I just didn't comprehend because it wasn't written for me. And so I would read these action adventure books and when there was a scene that probably wasn't the best at that age. I didn't really understand it. But what it did is it kindled the love for reading and words and adventures and mystery and beautiful language and these sorts of things. And so when it comes to books for this age group, I say try to get them to read anything that they're willing to read. Obviously there can still be some objectionable content in the form of these very erotic novels, 50 Shades of Gray, that sort of thing. But inherently kids aren't going to be drawn to that book anyways. It'll bore them. That kind of book will be very uninteresting to them. But when you read these very classic adventure books, michael Crichton novels, the Sherlock Holmes books, which is obviously for an older category, but nothing really reprehensible in there. Some things that maybe you could argue they couldn't read, it's all about murder and mystery and stuff, but the sense of murder and violence, I think will be very lost on kids of that age, and they'll just see the cool adventure and the cool mystery solving thing. So I think when it comes to books, try to get them to read as much as they can, as much as they're willing to. 00:51:55 - Radell Lewis So the value of books I definitely think is losing its meaning to a certain extent with this society. And I can't speak on a high pedestal because I didn't really read books back in the day. So with that said, I do think there is a value of reading. I'll probably read things that are interesting to me. So you made a great point in the fact that you don't want to show them things that are interesting. And there are things that is inducive to a younger audience, probably reading for good reasons, because whether or not it has cool action, colors, pictures, it makes it exciting for the younger audience, even older audiences. But we're focusing on younger audience right now. So with that said, what is your opinion about their access to comic books and manga? Because I definitely read manga, and I do think there's sections of manga, I don't know if you know what this is, but I don't want a kid reading something that is Berserk, for example, because berserk is as graphic as it can be, bro. It's not something a kid arguably, it's not something a teenager probably shouldn't read. So there's definitely those lines, but things that are much more arguable. For example, like Naruto, which is a popular anime that a lot of kids love back in the day, or Dragon Ball Z, but a lot of those things have lots of violence and it can be very erotic in terms of the drawings of the characters. Same with comic books, for example. So what is your opinion about that? 00:53:43 - Jonathan Kutz I don't really know. I don't read much manga or comic book. I love Batman, I love DC Comics, but I don't read much comics these days. So I don't know what's in them, per se. I've noticed a general thing because I'll go through and look flip through the comic book section and flip through DC Comics. I've noticed there's certainly a sway if you go back from the comics to current ones. Much more suggestive and character curvature, let's say. 00:54:14 - Radell Lewis Yeah, for sure. 00:54:15 - Jonathan Kutz And I don't think that's necessarily appropriate. I think old comic books are great and so I can totally have my mind changed on this. I don't like anime personally because I don't care for the drawing style. I don't care for that kind of animation. But I have heard that there are some fantastic stories in those animes. I'm not familiar with many of them. I have heard of, obviously, manga, and I know there's more risque styles and types of it as you go along. I've not heard of Berserk before, but I can guess on the name that it's probably not good for kids. 00:54:58 - Radell Lewis Oh, yeah. It definitely does not hold back on how brutal it is, but it's probably one of the more well written stories you'll see. It's really about how bad it can be when it comes to being a human. But I will say this, there are some anime that's very risque and annoying, and I have called the anime community degenerates because of it. But I do think there are a lot of anime that is focused on storytelling. There's only one anime that I have a manga for and that's called Attack on Titan for good reason, because I think that's one of the best stories. Good things about that amen the story, the narrative telling. I'm big into storytelling. I'm a big storyteller guy. So I like writing in terms of storytelling, in terms of writing styles and writing a cohesive narrative. So I think certain series I actually do. I actually have been writing a light novel personally. And I don't know if I would say it's not bad in terms of it's not explicit for kids or anything, but I also don't hold back in the material that I'm talking about in terms of swearing. 00:56:08 - Jonathan Kutz I am also. 00:56:11 - Radell Lewis A writer. 00:56:13 - Jonathan Kutz Yeah, no, go ahead. 00:56:15 - Radell Lewis Oh, that's basically you. No, that's basically it's good. 00:56:19 - Jonathan Kutz Yeah. I'm also a writer. If I could reach it, I have a type copy of a book that I have coming out soon. It's a collection of short stories, so I usually introduce myself as a writer because that's what I see. You can't see it, but it's just off camera. But I have a typewriter in front of me that I still write everything on because I'm like a huge old fashioned kind of person. You couldn't tell, but I love writing. I've written a novel that I also wouldn't classify as a kid's novel because there's nothing sexual in it, but there is violence in it that probably is. One of my things is I think if you're a good enough writer, you can write these sorts of things in a way that is still readable for kids if you have a grasp of good language. There's some pretty overt stuff in like, The Iliad and The Odyssey and those classics, but they don't shy away from violence. Like in The Canterbury Tales and Crime and Punishment. I mean, they don't shy away from violence, but like I was saying earlier, if you're a kid, you don't kind of grasp it like in Hamlet or I have here King Lear, there's no shying away from violence, but if you're a kid, you don't really pick up on that as much. It's cool to see that you're right. I'm a huge focus on storyline a lot as well. I get kind of bored when it comes to just action and people getting thrown through buildings nonstop. It's fun for a little bit, for sure, but I prefer good narrative story plots. So that's why I've heard good things about anime. I've also heard, like you said, that there can be some degeneracy there as well. 00:58:08 - Radell Lewis 100%. A lot of degeneracy. All right. So with that said, I think we established a lot of very definitive lines in terms of, at the very least, the different demographic age groups that should and shouldn't have content or should and shouldn't have access to certain content, and how we would approach either from both our perspectives on kind of navigating their access to said content. With that said, taking a real look on states power and what they have the ability to do in terms of state legislation when it comes down to it, to things that are more ideologically driven when it comes down to talk about both sides, whether it's a state, like California super Libby State, who wants to, like yeah, I don't want kids to read this religious book. Maybe it's the Bible, maybe it's the Quran, it doesn't matter. I don't want them to read these religious texts that kind of say things because they may be kind of anti LGBTQ, for example, or it's a state like Texas who goes to their libraries like, oh, I don't want them to read this LGBTQ book. It's not inherently shows anything weird. Like, I know there are some books that show actual sex scenes in a children books. That doesn't make sense to me, but there are some LGBTQ books that is just telling the narrative, but also kind of spreading awareness. And it's not inherently explicit by any means, but because it's spreading that agenda, I don't want that there. So in these two scenarios, these states are choosing which books and which ideologies they want to put in front of people, which content, social media wise, they want to put in front of people. So what do you think about the legitimacy these states have in doing so? And also kind of a secondary question, does that infringe on the First Amendment rights of the people that is in these states? As well. 01:00:16 - Jonathan Kutz So there's a fine line, I think, between that. First Amendment rights gives us particularly it's the right to criticize the government, the right of religion, the right of freedom of religion, not necessarily the right to say whatever you want to say. We had very strict speech laws, like, obviously, George Carlin Wright very famously arrested for doing the seven words you can't say on TV because there was very strict speech laws, right? So I have interesting statistics here that I found for an article that I wrote that talks about sense, especially, particularly when George Carlin did that, the F word, specifically in the mother effort in books in popular culture is 678 times more likely to appear, particularly in novels. And that's in 2010. So from when George Carlin did that to 2010, just imagine 2023 now 678 times more likely to appear. Because after he did that kind of comedy setting, the speech was kind of slowly they didn't get off the books, they just kind of stopped being enforced. But we had very strict speech laws for a long time. And so I don't think the right to say MFR is not enshrined in the Constitution anywhere. So I think if a state decides that they want to ban this, that's why we're a federalist nation, at least we were, they should have the right to do that. So if California wants to ban the Bible, I don't think, or the Quran or the Book of Mormon or whatever it is, I don't think that's the most prudent thing in the world to do. But this is America, and they do have that right. I don't necessarily think they should. I think it's better to be based off of this underlying narrative that the Bible offers or whatever it might be. I think it's better to live that kind of life. But if they want to ban that, certainly their right to do so. Freedom of religion, they might have issues with that. When it comes to banning overtly religious books, they might have some issues constitutionally with that. When it comes to banning forms of porn or these sorts of things, certain like speech and certain age books like the MFR or these other things, I think there's more leniency. I don't think that would encroach upon their First Amendment rights. If a state like Texas, if a state like Arizona wanted to ban those sorts of things, I think they should have the right. And if you don't agree with that policy, that's why there's this mobility between states and still you're still an American citizen, but certain states want certain rules and regulations, and that's why we're a federalist nation. 01:03:09 - Radell Lewis So you brought up some interesting things, and I wish I had time to kind of dive into the inherent state rights. I've definitely looked into it before, but I should have refreshed myself a little bit more in terms of the inherent states abilities. They are elicited, especially. In the Bill of Rights to an extent. But I do think there's probably more things to kind of go into to really kind of fine tune this exact point because I'm really not sure if states have the ability. At the very least, I'll come at it from my perspective. What do you think about the aspect of state government specifically controlling the information that people are seeing? Do you think that is manipulative or do you think that state should have that certain level of kind of autonomy over its people? 01:04:04 - Jonathan Kutz So are you talking small estate or big estate? State is in federal or state is in state government. Okay, so state governments I think it is manipulative. But like I said kind of at the beginning, if it's coming from what is objectively good, I think then it is objectively good. And so you can censor certain information that's simply not edifying for people. Is that manipulative? I guess, yeah, I would say it can be. But if it's a good thing to do, then it's still a good thing to do, right? And when it comes to state rights, I believe Pennsylvania had a state religion up until the 1980s. There is no ban in the Constitution for individual states that have a state religion. So the Constitution, the First Amendment keeps the federal keeps it from the United States of America from being have a declared religion. But states actually do have the right to declare a state religion in their prospective states. And so if that state religion, the Catholics are kind of notorious for banning and censoring certain information and we can have a discussion about that if that's morally right. But I think in the sense of liberty, I think our liberty and our desire for freedom isn't always inherently virtuous. It can lead us our desire for liberty and freedom and lack of restraints can sometimes lead us away from what is virtuous to do. And if a state is attempting to help us be virtuous by censoring certain information, then I would say it is better to have a lack of that information than to pursue that lack of shackles, just total freedom. I don't think total freedom is necessarily a virtue. 01:06:05 - Radell Lewis Okay, so I'm going to ask one more question. I'm going to kind of pitch in. So what do you think about the idea that obviously when it comes to the state, there's two prongs to look at it the state officials and the ideology they're pushing and the people and the identity they want to propose on the state that they're living in. Right. So in terms of that and the argument in terms of certain influential factors, especially like the internet or social media, what do you say about these? If people of said state choose a specific kind of ideology that they kind of wouldn't admit moving forward and voted certain ways to push said ideology and then ban other ideologies and now we only want to think this way for this state. Do you think that is something that should be allowed or good or what is your opinions on that? 01:07:13 - Jonathan Kutz I think it should be allowed if they want to do that. Right. I mean, we kind of see that already in California. That's pretty much unanimous. I would say it's kind of a religion. Like California has a state religion in a way because they vote in those people. If they want those people in, who are we as another state, as the federal, to say, no, you are not any longer allowed to be a representative democracy. Like if they want those representatives, they want those representatives. I think there is a delineation between what is good and what is bad. And if they're voting in what is bad, we have that free will. We are a representative democracy. People can represent who they want. Because if they truly do the problem is if these people are getting voted in and they actually don't represent the state, if they're finding ways to fudge numbers as infamously LBJ did in his election in state in the state of Texas, fudge the numbers, stuffed the ballot boxes. If those sorts of things happen to a wide extent and people really are not being represented, that's not a good thing. And we should try to prevent that. But if it is, honestly, they really want those people voted in, they really do feel represented that way, then they have that right. As I've said a couple of times now, I think there is a difference between what is good and what is bad. And we can know that difference. And we should strive to be good. And so we should strive to vote people in who are not ideologically captured but are earnestly seeking and desiring to find truth. And we should get those people in. And with that, with the truth, will come a certain ideology of its own. But really truth is the perfect form of ideology. Ideology is something you essentially subscribe to because you believe this will kind of help you take you on your journey of discovery. But what it is, is a mimesis or mimicry of what truth is, which is something that actually helps you become a better person. But ideology is a kind of quick way, a quick way to get that same feeling as pursuing actually the truth. And so we should vote people in who are not ideologically captured, but captured by the truth. Or one could say in love with the truth and desiring to be the truth, to be a philosopher, which is what philosopher means love of truth, which is what Socrates is. That's what they killed Socrates for, actual love of the truth. 01:09:51 - Radell Lewis I definitely agree in terms of that aspect. But as of right now, we both know that all these politicians are ideologically captured. We all know this, or at the very least, most of them. I don't want to put a huge umbrella. I don't like doing that. So with that said, from what I'm looking at, so my personal feelings regarding this is that I believe that it's important in terms of individuals to gather a certain level of perspective and knowledge and understanding about all these different viewpoints to really find the truth that you're referencing. Right. I think once you start controlling the ideologies that they're kind of garnering, I don't think you'll be able to find said truth. You'll be kind of shaped in a specific way of thinking, which I don't think is conducive to anything productive in terms of that understanding or finding truth aspect that we're referencing. So when I'm seeing states like, well, I don't know if California is actually banning Bibles, but I know Texas is definitely trying to ban certain LGBTQ books. And I do think there are some books that is way too explicit and shouldn't be shown to kids, but I don't think all of them are. So I don't know if they're trying to kind of establish a huge umbrella to all LGBTQ books, they're all gone. Or only these type of LGBTQ books, they're gone. But I feel like from what I've seen, texas is going to try to just ban them. All that any that has that type of moniker of that ideology is all gone. And the problem with that is for me is that one, the aspect in terms of the ideology itself, the aspect that there will be, there will be people who either are a part of the community or have an association to aspect of the community. So they may be gay, they may be trans, they may be lesbian, but not necessarily part of the woke lefties. So they may just at the very least, want to be informed. And I feel like some books probably could help them with being more informed about who they are. Because sometimes, whether it's mentally, whether it's born out of child abuse, or maybe that's just how they are, you won't stop these people from existing. So I think that type of information, that type of understanding, that type of truth that they can find, they will be able to find from either social media content or the books or the information that is in front of them. And if they're banned from that, I think that's potentially problematic in terms of this individualistic scenario. But taking a step back, my bigger issue is when does it stop? Once they start establishing a precedent where I want to pick and choose the ideologies that the people of my state can observe and learn, when does it stop? And that's one of the biggest things for me when establishing laws and when establishing certain type of quotas for how people should be, is the precedent it will set potentially moving forward. And I won't say obvious. I won't say it's like 100% factual that okay. The moment Texas does this, they're going to turn everybody into just redneck Republican conservatives slowly and steadily. I'm not saying that will ultimately happen, but I'm just saying it could happen at the end of the day. Well so that's another big issue I have with these type of things. 01:13:24 - Jonathan Kutz I totally agree with that sentiment and in large part we see this all the time. We see this. I'm obviously a conservative. I am not necessarily a big Donald Trump fan. And one of the reasons I'm not is if you look back ten years, he was a Democrat, he's always been a Democrat until he decided to run for president. And when he ran president, all of a sudden there's this big change and who's to say if he really had a quote unquote come to Jesus moment and really did change his beliefs or if in large part he's just playing that part because he is not necessarily ideologically captured but ideologically pandering. I think this is one of the problems that we have with our two party system. Almost exclusively. All of our founding fathers warned about the two party system george Washington infamously warned us about in his presidential address when he was retiring from president, warning us and was devastated when we became a two party system very shortly after the signing of our Constitution and he was very disturbed by that. And the Federalists, it warns us about the two party system and many of the letters it warns us because it motivates politicians to especially right now we're having this discussion in primary season which is infamously over the top. So each candidate is running way farther over the line on what they actually truly believe because they're trying to over Democrat or over Republican each other. That way they can get that nomination and then they usually mellow out to a certain extent to appeal to the larger masses. So we're having this discussion now, which is something we have to keep in mind when we're talking about this particular subject. But still in large part, in general, the two party system that we have motivates people to be more ideological, and it motivates people who don't necessarily actually believe what they say they believe, but are really just playing the part of it. And they have the motivation to do that right, because they know if they stop once they get elected and they stop behaving that way, they're obviously not going to be reelected because they're no longer representing. But the issue comes especially as conservative and as Republican. We see this, particularly myself, when we have people voting in the Senate, voting in the House, people who nominally run as Republicans but really squish when it comes down to it, when there's a really important vote. They don't actually side with what they say and they vote Democrat or they vote or they abstain from voting at that particular time, which is upsetting for people who voted them in. So that they could be represented. And that's when we see this conflict. That's when we see a lot of this hypocrisy, a lot of the scandal that comes when people who are running as Republicans are running as Democrats, but really aren't, and they're just running on the concept of ideologically pandering. 01:16:36 - Radell Lewis Yeah, I definitely think that's a problem as of right now in terms of elections and candidates, which is very unfortunate. This will go into a future episode if I if we can get the other co host on where we kind of talk about kind of the cause of the political social divide and how it kind of turned this way. And eventually I want to have an episode kind of discussing very interesting two interesting points that you mentioned was in referencing what the actual state powers and federal powers are. And then another thing is the two party system. I've had an episode before I had someone come on, and he kind of pitched his idea for the three party multiparty system. And I didn't necessarily disagree because I'm also really not a big fan of the two party system. I see. Obviously, we need a party system where it's not just one party. I mean, obviously, right, but I'm seeing, like, I don't see why we don't have at least a third party. We technically do, but that third party has no influence, no power, no say in politics. 01:17:47 - Jonathan Kutz Technically, we don't have it in China, anywhere that there's only two parties. Right at the outset of the nation, there's several parties. Republican Party was created by Abraham Lincoln GOP. He was the first, actually, Republican. But they got so big, backed by a lot of massive donors and everything like that. And we have other parties. They just haven't and I think I'm not sure I don't pay attention to the third parties as much as I probably should. As I understand, they're getting bigger and they're definitely holding more sway. Do you know if that's true or not, or am I just making something up? 01:18:31 - Radell Lewis Well, I think one thing that is helping a lot of these parties, obviously, a lot of people are kind of getting fed up for both sides. So that helps, obviously, but also the social media, and that is a big help. 01:18:43 - Jonathan Kutz I'm sure Joe Rogan has done wonders for third party people. 01:18:46 - Radell Lewis Oh, I'm sure. I'm absolutely sure. So we'll have a future episode regarding, that for sure. So I guess the final thing I want to say in referencing the situation between the content band, I think at the end of the day, most people probably would agree that other than the exceptions that we laid out that are objectively bad, that information and knowledge should be appreciated. Learning different perspectives, trying to understand different perspectives. I'm not big into that. And I wish our current public education system was much more inducive to ideas and trying to understand these different perspectives. That's another episode. My disdain for the current public education system and why I think it's super inefficient. But with that said, I think these ideas can be very conducive to a lot of productive solutions and discussions and conversations. We don't necessarily fall under the same ideological umbrella and I'm going to have another person also doesn't fall in the same umbrella as both of us. And we're having a productive conversation, we're having a discussion and we're talking about potential solutions for the people in the country. And at the end of the day, the fact that people don't agree is where the best conversations can be found in terms of the overall. So that's why I'm always in favor of more ideas, more perspectives, and limiting that I don't think will be productive for humanity as a whole. 01:20:34 - Jonathan Kutz Yeah, I totally agree and you made a great delineation. I spent a lot of time talking about what can be considered morally reprehensible or morally not okay, and we should ban those sorts of things. But you brought up a great point, which is information should not be banned when it comes to actual academic literature, knowledge, things that are not in any way like having to do with the moral sense of living, but just pure information. In China, you can't look up Tiananmen Square, nothing will come up. And that's purely political banning purely political censoring, that should never be allowed. You should never like, I don't know if you know who Alexander Soldier Nietsen is, but he was a Soviet and he wrote a book called The Gulag Archipelago, which exposed the Gulag Archipelago all the gulags in Russia, and they tried to kill him for that and they tried to censor it and they ran campaigns. They even recruited his wife to make up stories about him so that he was perceived as a fraud. And he obviously wasn't. And that sort of thing, we can't get into that. And what's really concerning is when we see things censored information, censored that puts us on the same level as that sort of thing. That should never we talked about it was one thing we did absolutely agree on, is the pursuit of truth should be our primary objective. And when things get in the way of that is when problems really start to arise. 01:22:09 - Radell Lewis Yeah, there's a lot of interesting conversations to be had, especially with humanity continuously progressive, and it will just be a lot of truths can be, a lot of new ideas can help humanity because it's entering territory that's unprecedented with, for example, AI, artificial intelligence. The conversation behind the legitimacy behind AI and whether it'll help or destroy humanity is an important conversation. The conversation of elongated, extended, I'm going to say extended youth with now they're doing studies about how they can potentially repair skin cells. The evolution virtual reality is another one. The evolution of humanity. 01:23:05 - Jonathan Kutz Have a long conversation about VR. 01:23:07 - Radell Lewis Yeah, see, these are all important conversations because we got to be prepared to deal with what's coming next, but for some reason everybody wants to just focus on stupid stuff. Honestly, stupid stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. I think this is a great conversation being tuned for more great conversations moving forward. Obviously you can check out his podcast. 01:23:35 - Jonathan Kutz That is called The Classic Life. 01:23:39 - Radell Lewis The classic life. Make sure to check out his podcast and check out all the things that he talks about, of course. And be tuned for the next episode every Monday. We'll eventually start getting Thursdays on as well. And a lot of great conversations to come. Rated five stars per usual. If you enjoyed the conversation and if you got something out of it. And make sure to sign up for the email list so you never miss the next bit of information that is coming out for the podcast. Any last words? 01:24:11 - Jonathan Kutz No? I really appreciate you having me on. I hope this works out and I can see again. I hope everybody appreciates what you do. Truly having this rational and reasonable perspective. It is rare these days. So I really appreciate you having me on and I hope all of your listeners appreciate what you do. 01:24:30 - Radell Lewis Yeah, thank you. So with that said, hope everybody has a great day. You all have a good one. Take care and peace. 01:24:36 - Radell Lewis I am glad you are here and I'm glad you're listening to today's podcast episode. My mission in each and every one of these episodes is to really focus on the solutions to some of the biggest questions and most controversial topics going on in our current society. I feel like most of these conversations are not truly being discussed in a more logical and respectful manner due to the political toxicity that goes on with both the left and the right, both the Democrats and the Republicans in this podcast. I don't care about any of that. I am focused on the solutions. I'm focused on bridging gaps. If you want to join me on this journey, if you want to discuss some of the most important topics, if you are tired of the political toxicity and negativity from both sides, please support this channel, share the podcast and go to my website www.purplepoliticalbreakdown.com. I appreciate the support. I'll continue to make content and hopefully we can start bridging these gaps and focusing on real issues is going on in our world.