The Freedom Trajectory – Turmoil To Transformation – with Dr. Michael P. Farris – [Ep. 249]

Linda J Hansen:  Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 Breakroom Economics® Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101, Job Security Through Business Prosperity, the Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck® and the creator of the Breakroom Economics® Online course.

The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on prosperity101.com. I seek to connect boardroom to breakroom and policy to paycheck. By empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful®.

I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit prosperity101.com.

Thank you so much for joining with me today, my guest is Dr. Michael Farris. Dr. Michael Farris is someone you may remember from being on other podcast episodes I've had, but most likely you know him from other things much bigger than what I do.

Dr. Farris is someone I first got to know many years ago when he was involved as a counsel for Concerned Women for America back in the early 80s. And then he was one of the founders for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, which I'm so grateful for because it really helped me as a homeschooling pioneer. He and his wife, Vicky, set the tone for much of the homeschooling movement. I'm so grateful for that. 

He also went on to start Patrick Henry College, and he is general counsel here at the National Religious Broadcasters where we are today. In addition, he just recently stepped down from leading Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that many of you may know has been at the forefront of protecting our religious freedoms, not only here in the United States of America, but around the globe.

Many of the cases you've seen in the news and have heard about where people's religious freedoms, their freedom of speech were greatly curtailed, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the forefront. This is something that Dr. Farris has been fighting his whole career to protect freedom. So thank you so much for joining with me again.

Michael Farris: Good. You forgot to say that I was a point guard for the Spurs and that I saved a South American village with duct tape and a Q-tip. 

Linda J. Hansen: OK, well, we'll make sure that gets into the transcript. In addition, Dr. Farris is married, as I mentioned, to his wife, Vicky, and if people think I have a large family with six children, grown now, but he has 10, they have 10 children. What a beautiful family they have, and what a reason to fight for freedom, for your children and grandchildren. 

Michael Farris: Indeed, we have a lot of those too, 31 grandchildren, one great grandchild.

Linda J. Hansen: Wow. And here we go. It's precious.

So I'm always grateful for his ministry to my life, but even more so is the ministry that God has allowed him to have around the world, fighting freedom and really defending the gospel around the world. So that's amazing. But now we've gone through some really rough times here and in other nations.

We've recently gone through the elections. Obviously, Donald Trump is really gaining steam in his second term. And I'd like to hear your thoughts.

We've been in this business a long time and there's been so many changes with the different administrations, different legislative agendas over the years. Tell me your first thoughts on how the direction of the country is going now. 

Michael Farris: Well, it's complicated to comment on the trajectory of Trump's first month or so in office. I think the trajectory as a whole is fantastic. There are so many attributes of it that I don't feel comfortable saying that I endorse every single thing or every single statement that has been made. A lot of it I just don't know the details about.

So what's the trajectory? We can see that. I love the idea that the government is too big because there's only one person who could decide to spend each dollar, who decides how this dollar is going to get spent? It's decided once. Now, obviously, we certainly recycle in that process.

But who decides where my kids are going to go to school? When the government decides things, it's not freedom. When we decide things, that's freedom. When we see them tearing down things that have been hornets nests and rats dens and just horrible places that have been created, not just in the last Biden administration, but over decades and decades that it's going to look like chaos when you try to tear all this apart and figure it all out.

But it's the right trajectory. We're going in the freedom direction because we're going in the less government direction. That's just encouraging. That trend is terrific, encouraging. At the same time, a lot of the issues I've worked on over the years, education and parents' rights in particular, are decided principally at the state level. That's a mixed bag.

There are some states that are going in a better direction and other states that are going in a really bad direction. Washington state is on the warpath against religious freedom. Absolutely.

California is on the warpath against anything, sanity, any freedom, sanity. But even there, there are hopeful signs of what Jack Hibbs is doing with his church and he tells me; I talk to him face to face here and there, to watch out for the midterms in California.

There's an undercurrent of good things even in California. The opportunity for evil to triumph is present and it's dangerous. The opportunity for good to triumph is also present and it's encouraging.

So we're in a really turbulent time because the gray is gone. For the most part, there's a lot of black and white and we need to stand up for what's right and stand against all that's evil. There's plenty of opportunities to do just that.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, exactly. And as you think of these states, it's 50 laboratories of democracy. My friend from Alec, Jonathan Williams from Alec, often says that 50 laboratories of democracy and we can begin to see what works and what doesn't.

You know, and we've seen the exodus of people moving out of these low freedom states, these very controlling states and high tax states moving into the more free states. Interestingly enough, we talked about this in midterms in California, if we can fix voter ID issues, I think that there'll be a big change in California.

I mean, if you look at the map of where Trump won versus where Kamala Harris won and you look at the voter ID laws in those states too, there's a whole nother issue. So I'm glad that is coming to the forefront and people are paying attention to it. There's so many things you mentioned, like it can be chaos.

We just actually remodeled our bathroom and we did all the work ourselves, which I don't always recommend. 

Michael Farris: But, that's not something that I should do. 

Linda J. Hansen: Well, we can't all be lawyers.

Michael Farris: I mean, there are lawyers who are good. I'm not one of them. I'm terrible.

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah, well, he was great.

Michael Farris: I can change lightbulbs. 

Linda J. Hansen: That's good. But it was such a mess. There was a part of the time we had a toilet in the living room and we had a vanity in the living room and toolboxes everywhere. You had to take a shower somewhere else. I mean, it was just crazy. But that's the chaos on the way to better.

It's like cancer treatment. If you have a tumor, you have to identify one of the symptoms, find the cause of those symptoms and then treat the symptoms. Right now we are in this chaotic time of, we've realized symptoms over the past several years. We're starting to identify the symptoms with DOGE and other things. We're identifying the horrible corruption that we knew was there, but we didn't know all the details. And now we have to treat that.

That, again, brings chaos because there's change and people don't like change, especially if their pockets have been filled with corruption. 

Michael Farris: Yeah, it's people need to have principles in mind that are bigger than what benefits me personally. 

Linda J. Hansen: Yes.

Michael Farris: And so there are good people who are going to lose their jobs. There are people that probably go to my church. They're going to lose their jobs because of these cuts in government.

But we have to look at what's good for the whole country. I pray and believe that God will help them find appropriate good other positions and they'll land well. But nonetheless, there's far too many voters making decisions by, is he going to give me more money for Medicare or not more money? You know, no.

The principle is, is he going to put my grandchildren deeper in debt or not? 

Linda J. Hansen: Right. 

Michael Farris: That's a bigger issue than how much my prescriptions are going to cost. 

Linda J. Hansen: Right. And so and will our children or our grandchildren be able to choose the educational choice for their own children? Will they be able to choose where they want to work, where they want to live? You talk about the globalist agenda with the 15 minute cities and the global control and all of that. We're fighting. I mean, I always say this, but we're fighting against good and evil.

I mean, this is a war. It's a spiritual battle we fight.

But, Billy Graham said we must work like he's not coming for a thousand years and pray like he's coming tomorrow. So we just continue this afternoon.

Michael Farris: Yeah.

Linda J. Hansen: And that's the thing is like those of us who have been in this battle for decades and we have seen so many changes and had so many hopes for government turnaround and for freedom. Now we look and we see there's people that really weren't helping. They were just helping in name only.

It's so heartbreaking. But there's something really happening now. There's also the spiritual revival happening.

Not only are we getting more transparency and accountability in government, which praise God for that, but there is a spiritual revival happening. I think that is just the most exciting thing. We really can't change the trajectory of the country for long unless we change the spiritual health of the country.

Michael Farris: I agree. Some people think it's an either or thing. We can't work on the freedom issues, we need to just preach the gospel. Well, it doesn't work that way. It's like saying I'll teach my children math once they've mastered all of English literature.

No, no, it doesn't work that way.

You need to be working on a lot of different threads at the same time. From a church perspective, people will often say, well, if you get involved in talking about abortion or gay rights or transgender issues, people will be turned off and won't come get the gospel. My experience is just the opposite.

In fact, I was a beach lifeguard for four summers and made about 300 rescues. About two-thirds of those were preventative where I could see that the people were in trouble, but they didn't recognize it. When I would go jump on my surfboard or otherwise go get them, sometimes they resented it. But the third that knew they were drowning, they always were very appreciative because they knew they were lost. The churches that won't teach about abortion and other issues of the day aren't willing to take a stand on sin.

Unless people know that they're sinners, they don't know that they're lost. They don't know that they need a savior. And you're talking to them about something that it's impossible for them to truly respond to the gospel unless, they know, I'm a sinner. There's a consequence for my sin. Jesus is the solution for my sin. I need to accept Jesus as my savior for the forgiveness of my sin as a gracious gift from God. If you don't know that whole story, you don't know the gospel and the churches that won't teach about sin won't stand on the issues and people aren't getting saved. 

My church got fined by the IRS for preaching about the Republican platform against the Democratic platform and comparing it to the Bible. Our church routinely, at Christmas time, five hundred, seven hundred thousand people get saved at Christmas time. Similar numbers at Easter. On an average Sunday, 50 people get saved. You know, it's a big church, it's a big church.

But nonetheless, people are getting saved at a church that takes an adamantly strong stand. People are in the parking lot with Kamala Harris bumper stickers. They're coming inside and getting saved.

Linda J. Hansen: That's great. 

Michael Farris: And so the churches that take a stand are leading people to Christ. And it's not just our church. There's dozens of examples of that same principle. 

Linda J. Hansen: Well, it's so true. And churches that take a stand, individuals that take a stand, government leaders that take a stand. It's so refreshing right now to see President Trump speak about God. It's refreshing to see cabinet officials pray. It's refreshing to see children again, families, make families great again, make children great again, all of it, you know, make this whole spiritual life and family and biblical lifestyle great again.

It's so exciting. It starts with a relationship with Jesus and it starts with relationship too, with each other. When we show them we care about them like you rescued them, like Ronald Reagan was a lifeguard.

But you rescued them. We do that by showing that we care. And that's one of the things I try to get employers to do with their employees is let their employees know they care. That is why they want to share this information. Like I have an employer say to an employee, I will never tell you who to vote for. I won't tell you how to vote. I want to give you this information so you can think about the issues that are important to you, so you know how you can make your own decision when you go to vote, you're better informed and it really opens up that communication line. And then for a Christian employer, it opens the communication to hopefully be able to share the gospel.

Michael Farris: Well, there was a recent, very lengthy article in The New York Times, an interview with one of the few Christian conservatives that sometimes writes for them, interviewing I forget the name of the tech mogul. It was a guy who had made billions of dollars in the tech world and he had been a strong supporter of Democratic candidates and he flipped.

And they were talking about why he flipped. It was because he realized that the reason he was supporting the other side is because he wanted to be nice. There's this overwhelming desire to be nice.

Then he realized that wasn't the real agenda, that the real agenda was the destruction of freedom, including the freedom to make products, to sell products, make a profit and help people. He believed he was helping people by making products and services and making profit for himself and his employees. And the people he was hiring out of these colleges, he said the Ivy Leagues are broken. I’m hiring people that ultimately want to destroy my business. Especially the people working in human relations. 

If I was running a big secular company, the first thing I'd do is probably fire all the HR department, especially if they're recent grads and they've come out of this woke mentality, because they have a different agenda than making our company economically strong and in delivering good products, excellent service to customers, being good to people in that sense.

And no, they want to use that as social engineering. You know, companies aren't there for social engineering, right? They're there to make products and profits and give people life. That's a good thing. Giving people honorable work so they can feed their families and do more and prosper and grow. And some of them will spin off and make other businesses. 

That's good. And it's a societal good that needs to be celebrated. But when we're hiring people and that's why we're seeing some light in the CEO suites, not completely there, but getting away from the DEI and all of that.

DEI is not designed to help you make a profit. It's designed to be social engineering, and so we need to get back to let's hire the best person. We'll never discriminate against anybody on any external kind of factor. But we will hire the best person. That's the principle that Martin Luther King advocated, that was being advocated by Frederick Douglass. 

I read two books this last year about the Reconstruction era, leaders in that era. They're noble, godly people that were leading that. And it was, give us a chance. We're not here to ask for equal results. We just want an opportunity. 

If we give people equal opportunity, then great things happen. 

Linda J. Hansen: Great things happen. Innovation begins. And people say, what if the government doesn't do it? If they don't help them, they'll be limited. You know what I say? It's actually racist and discriminatory to say they couldn't rise without the government's help.

You know, that's like saying you're not able, so we need to hold your hand and help you along. No, we want to empower everybody to understand and for employees to be able to understand.

Basically, like you were talking about, it's very noble to have this company. This company does a very great thing. To have that kind of ownership perspective is incredible because really they're all owners of their own life, too.

Michael Farris: The best book I ever read on that theme that you just addressed was Clarence Thomas's autobiography called My Grandfather's Son. He went to Holy Cross undergraduate school, did very well at Holy Cross, which is a good school. Patrick Henry has faced him in moot court and they almost beat us.Not quite. We're the best in the country. We beat Yale in national finals this year for our 14th national championship.

So anyhow, he went to Holy Cross. He went to Yale Law School, did well at Yale Law School and couldn't get a job because everybody assumed he was an affirmative action beneficiary. They said, well, you're not the kind of person that could get a seat at Yale unless you were just given that because of the color of your skin. It's why he detests affirmative action, because it demeans people in the end.

They doubted his abilities because of that. Now, obviously, he was great. He is great. He's actually my favorite justice in the last 50 years of the Supreme Court. That's the example and if you read his book, it teaches how bad racism has been and can be. But he also gets it right about what the solution is. The solution is to get the government out of the discrimination business either way. You don't fix discrimination in the past by more discrimination in the future. 

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah which is what we're doing right now. So one last question. If you were going to tell employers how to explain these concepts to their employees, what's some tips you would say? 

Michael Farris: I say just get your program and use it. I mean that's the basic answer. I mean, anything else I could do would be that. But, why? Should I just address why should they do that? Why should they?

The why, is if they want their company to excel, then having people that get the big picture helps them excel. The big picture gives them the why. There's a good book in business called Start with a Why. When people ask why is it my company exists? Well, bigger than the why, why company exists is, why does this economic system exist? When they get the why, when they see how our company fits into the grander scheme of freedom and prosperity for the nation as a whole, it elevates their thinking. To me, it provides a greater sense of motivation.

So if you want to do something good for your employees, good for the country, but good for your company, teach them the why. Your course is the best I've ever seen. on teaching them the why.

Linda J. Hansen: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Just melts my heart.

It's something. I thank you for always giving me your opinion on how to make that accessible to people, like helping them understand. I would say the things that you've written, can you share the books and things that you've, there are too many but how to get to them. 

Michael Farris: OK. All right. Well, the book that's the most accessible is my book on the history of religious freedom, which the reason I wrote it is to prove that the Enlightenment had nothing to do with the advent of religious freedom. It was Bible believing Christians, not in the mainstream denominations of the day, but the home churches and the little Baptist chapels and other people that were putting their lives on the line for religious freedom.

They were the ones that caused me to start in the 1550s with William Tyndale. I take it to the adoption of the Bill of Rights with James Madison in 1791. So the subtitle is From Tyndale to Madison, but it's called The History of Religious Freedom. That's Amazon or wherever you want to go of that nature. You find it is the history of religious freedom. I've written all kinds of other things. But I have a new civics program that's a video course called American Civics with Michael Farris, so if you just put in American Civics in and my last name, it'll come up. It's all digital downloads. So it's very accessible, that would be something I would recommend as well. 

Linda J. Hansen: That's great. Well, and his constitutional law course that I have taken and all of my kids have taken is something I would highly recommend as well. That's still something used by many students and families and I recommend it.

You don't have to go to law school to understand a lot about our constitution. Thanks to great people like you, who help us understand. So thank you so much for your faithful service to the Lord, to our nation, over a long career that has just been a blessing to many. And thank you for being here today. 

Michael Farris: My pleasure. Thank you.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity101® podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library, to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity, the Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck®, or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics® online course.

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