 You know how they tell you to never meet your heroes? Well, don't follow them on Twitter either. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense. And as you probably know by this point, I'm a huge fan of history. If you are a fan of history and you have not listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Podcasts, you are missing out. It is most likely, debatably, but most likely, the greatest podcasts done on history, period. Hands down. They're amazing and they're wonderful and he does a fantastic job of bringing you the visceral pain and feeling of history. And he covers a lot of battles, a lot of empires, lots of great stuff that really makes you feel the pain. And it's really enjoyable in that sense. So I would highly, highly recommend you listen to those podcasts. If you're a fan of history. That being said, Dan is also a kind of middle-of-the-road lefty and as a result, of course, is subject to all of the trappings of, let's just say, communism. So recently, he tweeted out this banger, if I told you the most pro-American, patriotic thing you could do for the USA was to find common ground with your countrymen over politics, could you do it? How patriotic do you consider yourself to be? How deep does your love of country go? When I initially read that, I just thought, Dan, why? Not that I'm too surprised, but it hurts a little bit. And the more I thought about it, I thought, this actually is a great example of the problem of this country. Here you have a guy, again, middle-of-the-road lefty. And I think Dan is being genuine here. I don't think that he's being malicious. I do think there are people who are malicious with this, but I don't think that's him. I think he's just bought in. The reason I think this is such a great microcosm of the problem is because it illustrates a couple of things at once. The first thing is, what it's illustrating here is that you on the right need to compromise with us on the left. And when they say compromise, what they mean is just agree with me. Just move further left. They don't mean compromise, like I give up something, you give up something, you know, we both don't get exactly what we want. However, it's a compromise, right? We're able to work together. We both give a little to get something. That's what a compromise is, traditionally. When people on the left say compromise, what they mean is just agree with me. Just abandon your positions and your beliefs, philosophically, politically, whatever, and adopt mine, and then we can compromise. That's what they mean when they say compromise. You see this again and again on things like gun control, it comes out pretty explicitly. However, it's a recurring theme. And so when by the time it filters down to, you know, everyday middle of the road normies, like Dan Carlin, you're saying, look, why can't we just compromise here? Like, that's the important thing in this country is to get along, right? We need to come together and compromise. Which leads me to the second thing that I think this tweet illustrates, which is this idea that we all just need to get along, that we need to be on the same team and be America again. The problem with that is we are split over several, not just one, but several completely irreconcilable issues. For example, you have abortion, right? One side would say, hey, we of course have the right to abortion. Obviously we can do that whenever we want. What's the problem? The other side would say, no, you're literally, actually for real, murdering babies. There's no middle ground there. There's no like, well, how about you just let us murder babies a little bit? Because of course the other side would say, no, that's murder, we're not allowing even a little bit of murder. Zero murder, that's how much murder we want, that's how much compromise we're willing to give. Zero, zero murder, that's the amount of compromise. And the other side would say, well, of course that's being ridiculous, this is our right, you know, up till nine months and maybe a couple days after, et cetera, et cetera, and the debate goes on. The same thing can be seen in gun control, right? You have one side that's constantly saying, we just want common sense gun laws, but whenever they pass laws or they enact laws, it's a start, that's a good place to begin. We just need to go to the next step and of course that train never ends until there are no more guns left. So you can see this on several issues where they're completely and utterly irreconcilable. There's no core common belief. The reason we used to be able to get along in America is because there were some core beliefs. Like, hey, we all believe in freedom. We're all suspicious in general of government. There used to be some binding values. However, we reached a point culturally in America where there are zero, and I mean zero, common cultural bonds that hold us together. America is a country built on ideas, ideas like liberty and freedom and the idea that the government should be allowed to tell you, should not be allowed to tell you how to live your life. However, not everybody agrees with those ideas. And if you need any further proof of that, I simply ask you to look at the last two years. The third thing that I think this tweet illustrates, and again, I don't think Dan Carlin is being malicious here. I think he's being genuine. However, I think that he's bought into the lie where the left will use your values against you. And he does that with saying, how patriotic do you consider yourself? Don't you love your country? Like, if you did those things, then you would just agree with me. That's at the end of the day, what he's saying. He's using your value of being patriotic or loving your country and using it to try to shoehorn you into a place where you have to agree with him. This is a common leftist tactic and has been for a while. See again, the last two years where they were telling you what would Jesus do and Jesus would wear a mask and love your neighbor and wear a mask and all kinds of other things, whether what they're trying to do is to use your own values to manipulate you. Typically people who do that are for real, like psychopathic, sociopathic, who don't actually have moral values in and of themselves at all. They just say what they need to say in order to get you to comply. And this is a, again, I think Dan's being genuine. I don't think he's being malicious. This is an example of that, where what we're trying to do is use your values in order to get you to comply with my perspective. So I wanted to point that out because I think you can see this come out in a myriad of little interactions all the time throughout your day. You probably know some people who say things like this from time to time. And again, I don't think that they're necessarily being malicious. There is someone at the top who comes up with these ideas who is being malicious. But in the day to day, every day, normal people, I don't think they are. I think they just think that that sounds nice. And wouldn't it be nice if we could all get along and just agree with me? They don't really consciously think that part, but that's where it leads, and agree with me. And if you loved America, will you just agree with me, right? You have to remember that these people don't actually believe in common values in America. They believe in their values. And anybody who wouldn't believe in their values, they tend to think is just a horrible person. So we'll wait and say, you love America and you seem like a nice guy. So I don't understand why you don't agree with me. Is often the emotional starting point for most of these people. I hope that's helpful. And I hope that helps you think a little bit about where the nation is at and where it's going. At the end of the day, I of course am not interested in compromising on multiple of these issues. We've compromised enough. Look where that's gotten us. We have problems there. Furthermore, we are no longer going to apologize for liberty or valuing freedom or not wanting the federal government to be a bloated monster that seeks to crush everybody under its weight. Those things we're not interested in. And so of course, we're not going to participate in that program. Do brave deeds and endure.