What's Happening with The Economy?

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Is this a government orchestrated kind of move toward socialism, or is this just good policy? Let's ask a man who loves Jesus, who's the head of the School of Business at Liberty University, Dr. David Bratt. Sir, it is an honor to have you back on Truth Talk. Thanks, Stu. Great to be with you. I got a promotion a few weeks back. I'm now the Vice Provost for Engagement, so I'm going to be engaging today. I like that.

Man, every time I talk to you, you're on the rise, brother. You're making it happen. We are grateful for you. You've been a faithful contributor to this show.

You've been on all kinds of bigger shows than this. Tell us, Doc, your passion. Tell us a little bit about your passion, why you're having all kinds of students up at Liberty University.

The School of Business is just amazing. I've been in there. I've interviewed you in your office. You have CEOs come in and do these things from all over the country.

You've got a big one coming up in October. What is it that drives you with all of this before we get into the nitty-gritty of our economy? Yeah, well, my biography is kind of what drives me at the school to this day. I went to seminary. I was going to teach systematic theology.

I went on a D.C. semester and learned that systematic explanations of the world have to include economics. Some people say, why did you go from theology to economics? God's sovereign over all of it, not just theology. We need more people in business out in the mix sharing God and the truth in all realms of life. It doesn't just show up on Sunday. We're supposed to be at work Monday through Saturday as well for God's kingdom.

I'm not sure if enough of the country believes that anymore. We've got to work on that. At Liberty, our students are just the cream of the crop. They come in with a strong faith. They get even stronger. They learn knowledge, grow in wisdom and stature. That's what we do at Liberty. Thanks for asking.

Yes, sir. It was so encouraging. I want to talk to you about this, because I know we've had you all before and you've spoken about how the Christian worldview, it impacts everything. It impacts economics.

In other worldviews, which have been tried and haven't done so well, like communism and socialism, they also impact and have a baseline foundation behind them of either humanism and all that. Can you talk about the current policy? By the way, this is not a Republican-Democrat program. This isn't a red meat, conservative talk show. But people listening need to understand, our students, not at Liberty, but at many of these colleges, their teachers are right down the line with President Obama in socialism and the great Venezuelan experiment, which has destroyed that country and all these soviet bloc countries. And China, which by the way is becoming more and more, it's buying more and more of America up.

Dr. Brash, should we be concerned about that and talk about the underlying worldviews? This is not an indictment or an attack on any people. This is just what their philosophy is.

Can you speak to that? Well, it should be an attack on Marxism. Socialism was kind of understandable if you followed the logic of the old liberals. You could live with the liberals because they at least still had the vestiges of the Judeo-Christian tradition. They believed in the rule of law and they believed in some sort of market system. They just didn't understand it. The liberals just wanted a bigger government and they wanted to be charitable toward the poor. You could say they had good intentions but just didn't understand how the world worked. But the problem now is the liberals are all gone.

The JFKs, the Bobby Kennedys, the RFK Juniors are going to be interesting. But now there's been a clear movement toward Marxist thought. And then very interestingly, Marxist thought failed, right? And it failed for very interesting reasons.

It failed because it won. Marx was always a prophet for the underclass and he raged against the capitalists, the people who owned capital. Back in 1840, that would have been a tractor and a shovel.

But he was really mad at those people that owned shovels. And so he said the proletariat ought to revolt against the capitalists, have a revolution. And then he never made it clear who would take over. Somehow that would emerge and a utopian ruling class would emerge that loves everybody.

Well, that never happened in fact. But what has happened is now the left owns the Fortune 500 and the left owns the CEOs of all of the big tech firms. And the Marxists won over the healthcare sector 20% of the economy.

So they've won. So now it's not the old country club Republicans in khakis that are these country club capitalists. Right now it's the left, they own it. And so now the Marxists are in a real predicament because they ruined every big city in the country. They ruined the education prospects for all the young kids.

Look at K-12 and what is it doing? It's just creating chaos intentionally because what do the Marxists really want? They want a collapse where you can come in with a strong handed rule. So if you have chaos on your hands, like in France right now, you will find there'll be a movement for the globalists to come in with an iron fist and rule.

And we don't want that happening here. And so Marxists, the old classical economic Marxism failed on many scores. On moral philosophy it's just laughable. But on the economics it failed. There wasn't a class war.

It didn't happen. But now the left owns the means of production. So it's embarrassing. And so now the Marxists have to transform into neo-Marxists because they've still got to make you look bad. So now they put everybody in buckets and make fun of you based on your race or your gender or your pronouns and all this kind of stuff.

And it's very threatening. The ESG project, the Fortune 500 CEOs are clearly not Marxists, but they're under the gun that if you don't obey, you will be canceled. And there's a small but very effective and powerful and fully funded weaponized neo-Marxist crew going around securing the daylight side of everybody. I think we're starting to see the end of that. But that's the major worldview and it's hard to keep up with it because it does morph. The left is very clever and they're very effective, but the Christians just need to hold fast to their principles and to God, not just ethics. Don't use these modern secular terms like we've got to be ethical. There's no such thing. We've got to get back to God and that will produce the vibrancy that made this country great. Yeah.

Getting back to our roots, that was very well articulated. There's some instances of this. Bud Light has crashed and burned. They're laying off people now. They've lost millions. Disney has lost tens of millions on their movies. They're laying off people now at ESPN. Target is in a slump because they're putting content in their stores that attacks our children.

Why do these drag artists want to expose themselves, their nudity, to our children, Dr. Bratz? These all have economic implications. Of course, as believers, you expect the world to act like the world and we want to win the world to Christ. But we also are stewards and we can decide what movie to go to. We have a vote.

We can decide what candidate to vote to. But all kinds of believers went out and voted for the current president who basically spouses these Marxist policies. Again, I'm not attacking him. I'm just stating this is how he acts. President Obama is a very sweet man but pro-Marxist.

He's into this. For some reason, he's got to tear the country apart, racially divide us and all these things in order to take full control as though that's going to fix things. It just keeps getting worse. I think a lot of people, Christians and non-Christians like Dr. Bratz, are fed up. But let me ask you this.

What is the solution? Because we know that ultimately the kingdom is before everything. We're not politicizing our lives.

A good, right conservative can get in there and that doesn't mean anyone else is going to go to heaven. But it's a little bit like common sense. What principles are we espousing? What is the solution? What do we do?

Prayer? What is it that you tell your students? You're putting them out there. The next executive might be coming from your business school. A lot of this I throw at the feet of the wine and tea set in the suburbs. The well-to-do, highly educated couples who know better. And even the senior Christians who are funding Harvard, Yale, Princeton and all this woke stuff right now.

These billionaire guys, wealthy folks, you've met some of them too, they're funding the ideology that is opposed to the founding of America that made us great. And they kind of know it. And parents for a generation were sending their kids to these universities and back then it was just the liberal arts. They're learning crazy leftist theories on this, that and the other thing. And the parents were like, well, isn't that cute? Look what my kid's learning.

Well, it's not cute anymore, right? And so this popular set of parents just wants to be popular still. It's like they're still in high school. And they want to gel and, hey, I don't want to be a Puritan. That's the worst thing you could be is judgmental. But that generation needs to grow up.

It's not a matter of being judgmental, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. And once the courage is contagious, once that crew with the wealth decides to grow a backbone and start acting like adults, that will turn the culture back in the proper direction. And you'll get Johnny and Mary in the proper school and the billionaires will put fun in the grotesque ideology I just described. And we've got to get back to it. In the Christian church, my word, if the preachers aren't lighting it up, then you're going to the wrong church right now, I'll just tell you that. Well, start by preaching the Bible and let it stand on its own feet and study the Bible and present some powerful messages from the word, not your opinions and not your cute stories, but the word itself and speak to the issues of the culture. Hang on, folks, back with Dr. Bratt for just a couple of minutes after this quick break.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Dr. David Bratt, I put you on the I put you on the hot seat. He's the he's the I got to get your new title right. Vice president of engagement for the school of business, right? Don't put me in charge.

Don't put me in a title company. I'll fail. I love it. So you're working with all the school. You're working with all the D's and what a blessing you've been in my life. A lot of what I know and learn and speak to the culture. Dr. Bratt has been a faithful steward of God's word and impacting these students to be champions for Christ. Dr. Bratt, I asked you a tough question about what do we do? And you went right to the heart of education.

And I believe it was someone one great philosophy could have been somebody said that whoever writes the textbooks and whoever, you know, teaches the next generation will change the culture. And so these these conservative, even Christian parents that watch the news, like how can those kids be burning up, burning down businesses? Yeah. You know, the horrible right.

They literally. Where have you been, friends? Chicago run by the left.

Crime has never been higher. Baltimore, it's been in the toilet. Education is in the toilet in Baltimore. Go to these cities like inner city Seattle, go to San Fran, where all the retailers are leaving because they're being because they have policies that you can't confront a shoplifter. And so, like, Dr. Bratt, all of these leftist towns, I mean, when are they going to get the memo that if listen, if a conservative if a conservative Christian was running Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, Detroit, these cities that are burning up and being where the murder rates are, we would we would fire that conservative Christian yesterday. Get them out there.

Bring someone in who can, you know, but so I don't know why the strictest gun laws have the most murder. And so but Dr. Bratt, you talk about education. The parent watches the news. They say, why are these why is my kid coming home like this?

Well, my question is, Mom and Dad, respectively, why are you sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to send your kid to a college because you like their sports team and their coach? And because you went there. But you don't pay. Well, they've got to be a witness.

They might be the only Christian there. Well, you're to be a witness everywhere you go. Right, Dr. Bratt? But you pay someone. If I send my kid to Liberty, for instance, to your class, I am paying you to teach my kid. I'm not paying my kid to teach you. Can you give us a little common sense on this, sir?

Yeah, well, that you know, there's something to that old argument. You want to be in the midst of the culture, but not anymore. Right now, you got to be concerned with the maintenance of your kid intellect and soul.

And if you send them off to a place that's too stiff and too concentrated with the opposition, you might lose your kid. And so you better put that in the weights and the measures there as you analyze what's going on here. And, you know, this I was kind of reviewing the move from liberalism to Marxism. And if you look at, you know, what the left used to pay attention to the liberals, they used to care about the poor. And they would always talk about the distribution of income.

And that, of course, is related to the to the inner cities and the progress of impoverished kids trying to get an education. And they would also always bring up the poor around the world. And they had a legitimate care and concern for human rights around the world.

And so if you'll notice, none of that is present. The liberals are gone. The Marxists do not seem to have a heart. They don't seem to have any system of ethics that I can detect. Right.

The liberals used to mouth off, you know, a little bit on Aristotle or the Utilitarians or Immanuel Kant. And of course, none of those schools have any followers either. All of the followers of ethical systems that they live out on a daily basis are religious.

Right. The Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism. They're all religious.

The secular systems don't have any followers. And so the old liberals, they used to care about humanity, at least the humanity. They're gone.

And so I don't think the parents have figured this out yet. Right. So now what you're getting at school, you're not getting what you grew up with, the cute little liberal stuff. Right.

Where you could, you know, kind of claim, well, at least they're well intentioned, even if they don't know any economics. Now they know what they're doing. And it's a war. And the war is to inculcate chaos in your society. Because if you inculcate chaos, then someone has to come in to control things. And that's what's going on.

Well, here's my thought. If a school's not smart enough to know the difference between a man and a woman, why would you pay them, you know, half a million dollars over four years to indoctrinate and to fill your kid's mind with sewage? I mean, for Pete's sake, like, you know, it's God's money. And of course, your kid's supposed to be a witness.

Your kid's supposed to be a witness the second they walk out the door of their house, wherever they go. But when there are godly institutions like yours, you know, schools that are non-woke, like Bob Jones, schools that have academicians that are solid teaching English and teaching Bible, teaching solid theology, teaching economics, teaching medicine, schools that are solid, why would we want to fund them? You know, so, and I'll just push you a little too, on the, you know, the kids, the kids are kids, you know, they can minister as best they can, but where are the parents ministering? Where are the op-eds in all papers across the country from Christians? Where's all the local oompah people? Half the evangelicals don't vote.

I think it's 40%. And so it's like, okay, you can say all these things about the kids should do all, oh my word, if the adults would do any, you know, we'd turn around the country in five seconds. I went to a small, obscure Christian college and I had adults that laughed about me under their breath or behind my back.

Same here. And I'm not saying, parents, hear me clearly, I'm not saying unilaterally, every kid, every time should go to a Christian college, I'm saying pray about it. I'm saying back up and ask yourself, why am I going to college? You're not going to educate the college, you're not going to change them, you're going for them to change you. So why not sit at the feet of a C.S.

Lewis, of a Tolkien, of a genius, of a Luis Pascal, you know, a modern version of that, as opposed to a Karl Marx, as opposed to a Stalin, and a Hitler, and a Mao, and an Obama, and someone that has a philosophy that is absolutely opposed to what God's word is. Why pay them to teach your kid? And I'm not saying don't expose, but they're not going to get exposed to that.

Just walk outside the door, turn on the TV, you'll be exposed to it. And what you're saying there, a lot of people assume you're still reading the great books, so you're getting exposed to conservatives and the left. That is not true. There are no great books left, there are no great figures that your kid is learning, there's no American history, two-thirds of the people over the Fourth of July were polled and they don't know what the Declaration of Independence is. And so, two-thirds. And that's about the number of Christians around the country still, right? A knowledge, right?

It's probably 60-70%, somewhere in that ballpark. So it's at our feet. We are failing.

We're failing to educate ourselves, we're failing to know what educators are doing to our kids. The moms are starting to light it up, right? The Moms for Justice and some of these crew, Tiffany Justice and all that, they're doing great work.

And they're spreading the fire. And so parents really need to take a hard look before you start throwing 50 grand a year at some school and supporting them. And they're funded, right? The big dollars are coming from billionaires, liberal foundations, and they're not liberal anymore, right?

They're leftists verging on Marxists. And that's the main message I'm trying to get through. And this is how you know, it's one thing to say, hey, I still love you even though you have a completely perverted anti-God view of gender.

I still love you, I'll still be your friend. But as soon as I say I disagree with you, I am called a hate monger, a racist, a bigot. And that is not free speech, that is Marxism. When I got a little thought puzzle for you too, it's we're not Jesus, right? He had a unique ministry that none of us have.

We're not God, we're not the Son of God, period. But he uniquely could read into the hearts of man and see very clearly what was going on. And it's not my impression that he loved the Pharisees in the way we think of it today, right?

Like I love my Subaru, right? He was warm and fuzzy in this. He may have loved them because he's an identity with God the Father. He may have loved them with a rat that they need. And you just never hear that from the pulpit anymore. Jesus was very clear.

He would walk up to all of them and call them names and say, it wasn't I love you in this modern gushy thing. It was some serious business and he was up to his business. Okay.

Well, Dr. Bratt, you're a blessing. How can people learn more about you and about your big event coming in October too for CEOs? Yeah, yeah. We'll be exposed to some kingdom minded guys.

Yep, yep. We got a CEO summit. And so if you're friends with CEOs or C-suite folks, you know, chief operating officers or heads of HR for big firms that hire our kids or whatever, we have a CEO summit. And so just contact me at dabratt.liberty.edu.

If you've got friends, email, introduce me to your CEO friends, the folks who run companies, especially in technology. We're having The Chosen with us, this new movie, The Sound of Freedom. Christians need to pay attention to this even though it's just rough business. But the human trafficking, the Christian church needs to bring it to an end tomorrow. Interesting though that all of these movements of evil from all different varieties, God has used believers.

God has used Christians like William Wilberforce, who inspired Newton to write the song Amazing Grace. The hot pulpits of America, you know, preached against this stuff. Slavery has ended, thank God. And by the way, racism is ending. But you know what, as long as men are evil, they will be racist. And there will be people in the same race that still kill each other.

People in the same race will murder each other today in Chicago because the heart is deceitful. That's why we've got to get the gospel to these people and that's why we've got to train young people under people like Dr. Bratt. Go to classes with him. Take a class there. Go to a school like this where your young person can be trained to be salt and light.

You spend four years training to be 40 years a warrior for Christ in whatever field he calls you. Dr. Bratt, you are a blessing. We'll talk again soon. Thank you, sir. Thanks, brother. Keep it up. Keep the faith. God bless everybody. Thanks.