Liz Wheeler: The State of Our Fractured Nation (Transcript)

Dr. James Dobson: Well, hello, everyone. I'm James Dobson and you're listening to Family Talk, a listener supported ministry. In fact, thank you so much for being part of that support for James Dobson Family Institute.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Welcome to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Dr. Tim Clinton, president of the American Association of Christian Counselors and co-host. Our guest today is Liz Wheeler. She's an author, television host. Let me tell you, she's a dynamo. New podcast, more going on. It's just amazing what God's doing in and through her. We are at the Washington, D.C. National Pro-Life Summit, hosted by Students for Life of America. It's an event where Liz just spoke this morning. Crazy, packed out audience. There's a lot of energy around this place. But Liz Wheeler is unapologetically one of the most boldest voices in the Conservative movement. From 2015 to 2020, she hosted the weeknight show Tipping Point with Liz Wheeler on One American News Network. In 2019, she published her first book, entitled Tipping Points: How To Topple the Left's House of Cards. In 2020, she left television to host her own podcast. It's the Liz Wheeler Show and she describes it as your wake up call to fight back against the destructive Marxist ideology that's out there. Liz, thank you for joining us here on Family Talk.

Liz Wheeler: Dr. Clinton, thank you for having me. What a wonderful introduction, and it is my pleasure. I'm delighted to be here.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Liz, as we get started, it's amazing, I said earlier, what God's doing in and through you. Everybody has a little backwater story, something that brings them to this place of passion and calling in their life. How'd you get involved in all this? And man, oh man, has it been a wild whirlwind?

Liz Wheeler: It's been such a wild ride. I mean, I'm having the time of my life doing what I'm doing. I mean, I hardly call it work because it's just such a delight to be able to be in this space, to be a voice for the voiceless at the March, to speak up in support of parental rights and education, to support and champion our Constitution and the principles that underlie that. I will tell you, it has been an interesting journey to get where I am, because I didn't intend to get into broadcast journalism. I didn't intend to get into television. I was going to be a swim coach. I was a competitive swimmer throughout my childhood and high school years and I loved every bit of it. That was my plan.

Unfortunately, late in high school, I was diagnosed with a cell disease. It's very similar to an autoimmune disease, and that was a very significant event in my life. A lot of people have autoimmune issues. You know what that's like to try to fight through that. There's not always medical answers and that put an end, unfortunately, to my swimming career. And I remember just sitting in my home, I would get IVs, I would be doing these treatments, and I would just pray. Not for healing. I did, of course, pray for healing, but I remember just praying, just pouring my heart out to God and saying, "Listen, Lord, I just want to find something that I feel as passionately about as I felt about swimming." Because I just loved swimming with every fiber of my being. And I thought, what could I ever be as passionate about as I was about swimming?

And for years I just prayed and prayed this prayer. I became very interested in politics so I really started reading up on everything that was going on, especially in the lead up to the 2008 election to Barack Obama. I just thought, "Listen, what this man is saying in these Primaries, this is nasty stuff. This is the antithesis really of everything that our country is standing for," especially, I mean, the pro-life movement has been one of my passions forever, and I thought, "I got to do this." So, I started reading every book I could get my hands on. Conservative, Liberal, listening to every speech, trying to understand every policy. And I thought, "You know what? This is where I'm meant to be. This is the fight that I meant to fight." And the rest is history.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Bold, strong, courageous, a lot of fire coming out of you. That's how people would describe you. In your book, Tipping Points, you say that there is a real radical agenda vision for the country. They're not just trying to push. They're trying to make it law. Explain that to us.

Liz Wheeler: Yeah. So, this is something that we're facing now that we have faced challenges before in our country. Of course, we have. We've faced horrendous things in our country. We freed the slaves. We made sure that women had the right to vote. We won World War Two. We fought these incredible battles, these incredible forces of evil, and I think that what we're facing today is the equivalent of that. We are facing a force from the Left that has overtaken the Democratic Party that is fundamentally Marxist. So, I'm talking the 1619 Project, which tries to revise the reality of our history to paint the United States as fundamentally racist. I'm talking about critical race theory, which tells white children that they're racist based on the color of their skin and black children that they're oppressed based on the color of their skin.

We're talking the transgender bathroom debate where little boys and girls are told that you can be a boy if you feel like a boy and you can be a girl if you feel like a girl. We're talking about the DOJ targeting parents, challenging school board members, calling the parents domestic terrorists. We're talking the Black Lives Matter movement, which is trying to undermine our entire criminal justice system. We're talking about Antifa, which is trying to unseat governments. All of these things are not isolated incidents. This is a concert. This is an outright attempt to destroy the institutions, both governmental, cultural, and societal, that underpin our nation. And the point of that is to destabilize our country. It is to tear down these institutions that make our nation what it is, because that's the only way that these Marxists, these Communists can then usher in their political ideology and make it into law.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Liz, we're in a place right now where the majority of the country are saying, "You know what? I don't like what I see. I don't like the direction it's going." Yet people struggle to find a voice because they feel like you're right. It's just this tidal wave coming against this. But wait a second. Aren't we massive in number? Why are we so spinning here? I guess we're operating maybe in silos. We're just not organized yet, but there's something that's happening. I really believe there's a stirring going on. Do you see it?

Liz Wheeler: Oh, of course. I mean, all you have to do is turn on local news, not the mainstream media, not the federal news. Turn on the local news and look at the school board meetings. Look at the parents who are standing up and saying, "Listen, I never involved in politics before."

Dr. Tim Clinton: Oh my goodness. They're showing up in mass.

Liz Wheeler: They are, and they're unseating these political operatives who have control of their children's education right now. The Conservative movement, in general, we are very nice people. Unfortunately, what we're facing in the Left is an ideology that wants to control and micromanage everyone of not only our movements and our actions and our behavior and our choices, but our thoughts and our beliefs. And so, I always say, there is a chair with your name on it in the Conservative movement. It doesn't matter your age. It doesn't matter your gender. It doesn't matter your race. It doesn't matter your skillset.

There is a place for you in the Conservative movement, because each and every one of us, you don't have to do it as your full-time job. You don't have to be a law professor to do it. You don't have to feel that you're the smartest person in the room. There is something that every person can do and the March For Life is a good example of that because the March For Life, think of all the people that turn out making an impact for 49 years. And perhaps then we're on the cusp of Roe V. Wade being overturned, perhaps we're facing soon a post-Roe America because of the activism in each and every one of these individuals.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah. Some people don't like the word politics, but, at the end of the day, it's all about policies. And these policies affect everyday life. There is a war going on. You see the attacks on religion. You see them in education. You see it in gender. You see it in the family and so much more, right?

Liz Wheeler: Oh, certainly. I mean, my views on this have even evolved since I gave birth to my daughter about a year ago. And every mom out there knows what a life changing event it is to become a mom and to see the world through the lens of how it impacts your child. Because it's different I think to look at the world through the impact of, oh, we don't want our children in the vague, faceless way to be impacted. But when it's your kid, oh my goodness, activate mama bear. The idea that my child could be indoctrinated with radical gender ideology or critical race theory, you see mothers who maybe used to say, "I'm not that interested in politics. I don't have that much time for politics," you see them saying, "Actually, now I'm going to be part of our self-governance. I'm going to make the rules because I will do anything to protect my child from evil."

Dr. Tim Clinton: Liz, you've been living in this lane for quite a few years now. You think, eat, drink, sleep it every day. I wonder what keeps you awake at night. Really, when you stand back and look and scan it all and you see these trends, what is it that has really caught your attention? You said, "If we don't get this piece right there straight, it affects everything else going over here or whatever." Have anything like that lodged in your heart and your mind?

Liz Wheeler: Yeah, I would say one long-term thing and one thing that has more immediacy. The long-term thing is the pro-life movement. If we are a nation that slaughters the unborn, if we allow almost 65 million unborn babies to be butchered in the name of convenience, I don't know how God blesses a nation that does that. I don't know how we can fulfill our legacy or have a legacy fulfill the founding principles of our nation when we are depriving these fundamental principles to a particular demographic of people based on their location in the womb. That's the first thing. The second thing, and this is something that's just come up the last two years, of course, is medical freedom. If we live in a nation where medical tyranny is accepted by people, and I actually put the onus on the American people for this, because if you give a politician the opportunity to abuse their power, it's not a matter of if they will abuse. It's a matter of when they will abuse it.

So, I put the onus on the American people, because I say, if we as a people allow medical tyranny to be waged over us, even in the name of an emergency or a pandemic and our Constitutional rights are violated and there's no limiting principle to the draconian mandates and dictates that we see from the public health establishment at the state and the federal level right now, then I don't see how we actually have any freedom left. Because this idea of exploiting a crisis or exploiting an emergency and using that emergency to tear down our rights, to violate our freedoms, they're going to reuse that. The politicians that abused their power are going to be emboldened if we allow that.

Dr. Tim Clinton: They will.

Liz Wheeler: We don't have any control over our bodies, over our children, over our families, over our communities if the government can forcibly threaten us with losing our jobs, losing our privileges to be about in society, unless we participate in a medical procedure that might violate our conscience, that we might not feel is necessary. If they can force us to do this-

Dr. Tim Clinton: Forced.

Liz Wheeler: Yeah, it is forced. Of course, it's forced. I mean, we're in Washington, D.C. right now. There's a vaccine mandate. You're not allowed to go to a restaurant unless you've taken this vaccine and there's no exceptions to this. I mean, it's absolutely outrageous, and if we don't put a stop to this, if we don't protect medical freedom, then I fear for our nation.

Dr. Tim Clinton: I wanted to ask you, when you look at the survey data, you realize that an overwhelming majority of Americans want some type of restriction on abortion. We know that. Saw a poll that came out recently that said 52% of millennials, they don't want just the restriction. When there's a detectable heartbeat, they're saying, "We want abortion abolished."

Liz Wheeler: Yes.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Now, in light of that, there are discussions that are going on, on the Left side, where they're talking about birthday abortions. It's like partial birth abortion, nobody even wanted to talk about it. Even presidential debates, they stayed away from it because it was so horrible to talk about. But now, no, the Left has gone to a place where they openly push, even the former Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam and that whole bit there. How does that stuff happen? How does that happen in this kind of a culture even when the majority of Americans want restriction and we're seeing the younger generations saying, "We're done with this stuff"?

Liz Wheeler: Yeah.

Dr. Tim Clinton: This is crazy.

Liz Wheeler: Well, it's so encouraging to hear that 52% of millennials want abortion banned after a detectable heart because, believe me, 52% of millennials are not Conservative.

Dr. Tim Clinton: No, they're not.

Liz Wheeler: Millennials are in their 30s and 40s and they're typically Liberal so we have this demographic of American who identify as progressive and Liberal, but they're also pro-life. But this is actually not an anomaly. If you look at the data, the vast majority of Americans, Republican and Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, pro-life and those who identify as pro-choice want abortion restricted. 80% of people in our country want late term abortion banned. 60% of our country want second term abortion banned. The only people who have a very, very extreme view on abortion, meaning they want abortion to be legal up until the moment of birth, are our politicians at the national level. These people are extreme. They're controlled by the abortion lobby, the Planned Parenthood, the billions of dollars.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Money.

Liz Wheeler: Yes, the blood money that comes from the abortion industry here. I mean, that's why the March For Life and other events like this are so important because we have to be able culturally to speak up and say, "Listen, you can be a Democrat if you want to be a Democrat, and you can also be pro-life and you should tell you're elected official not to be extreme because their views don't represent their constituents, even when their constituents are Leftist."

Dr. Tim Clinton: When I look through your book, your goal is to really use facts and to challenge the arguments of the Left. In the pro-life movement, we're winning. We see clinics being closed. We see legislation being passed and more. You spend some time in there just debunking a lot of the arguments like, "It's my body, my choice," all that stuff that we've heard through the years. But let's go to the legislation issue. The state of Texas passed a law, shuts down abortion in Texas. Gets to the Supreme court, they don't stop that from going into effect. Big statement. Now comes the Mississippi case. The Dobbs case hits the Supreme court. I mean, it made the media absolutely insane about what was going to potentially happen. Here we are sitting and waiting. Talk to us about the Dobbs case and what do we need to know? I know that you spoke a little bit on that this morning to the Students For Life group and more, but what do you see?

Liz Wheeler: Yeah. So, this is extremely exciting in a sense, extremely interesting, extremely nerve wracking. I'm in the prediction business, and even so, it's habit in our business, we'll call it, if you make a bad prediction to just brush it under the rug and move along. Because we're human, we can't predict the future. But I'm going to just issue a mea culpa here and say, I changed my mind about something. I was very pessimistic about the Dobbs case. I said, "I don't want to listen to it. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to get my hopes up because they're just going to be dashed because I don't have faith in the Supreme Court Justices." This is what I said on my show on my podcast the day before the oral arguments.

But then I listened to the oral arguments. It was about two hours, not too bad, and I was so surprised. I was so surprised at how weak the arguments were from the pro-abortion lawyers, from the Biden administration, and others, because their arguments were essentially that it's a woman's body and that, therefore, it's her choice, which you and I know that is ridiculous. This is both a baby's body and a woman's body. It's hard to believe that those on the pro-abortion Left are even making that argument anymore in the face of science and reality and ultrasounds.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah, they say, "Follow science. Follows science."

Liz Wheeler: Yeah.

Dr. Tim Clinton: The science is really on the pro-life side, period.

Liz Wheeler: Oh, of course it is. Of course, it is, and they know that. And their second argument was equally as ridiculous in a different vein. They argued that Roe v. Wade cannot be overturned, that the substantive part of the arguments don't matter because it's precedent, they said. It's settled law and it would make a mockery of the court to overturn it after all this time. In fact, there was one pro-abortion lawyer who actually argued that there has to be a larger compelling reason to overturn precedent than simply the fact that the precedent was wrong to begin with, which is mind blowing. It's ridiculous. So, what I found so striking though is that the Supreme Court right now, we sometimes think of it as being divided six to three, six Conservatives and three Liberals. But it's actually not. It's actually divided into three different segments, three Liberals, Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer, three Conservatives, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas, and then three that are in the middle.

And I know that they were appointed by a Republican President and I know they lean right, but what I mean by in the middle is these three swing Justices, if you will, sometimes view precedent on a higher pedestal than they do the Constitution. Whereas it obviously should be reversed, that the Constitution is the highest law in the land, and they are willing to defer to precedent just for the sake of precedent versus overturning a ruling if it may have been incorrect to begin with. And so, listening very closely to what Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, those are the three swing Justices here, what they said during these arguments I found to be very illuminating, I found to give me hope about how they might rule. Because Roberts was talking about, "If we abolish this standard that was invented by the court, the standard of viability, that you can't restrict abortion before this point of viability," which is just an arbitrary medical term.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Sure it is.

Liz Wheeler: Yeah, it's made up. It has no bearing on the humanity of the unborn baby. But he said, "What would be the other line here? What are we going to establish as a standard if we eliminate viability? And if it's about choice," he said, "why isn't 15 weeks enough time to make that choice?" Which I thought was very interesting because I thought he was going to be a little bit more focused on the precedent of the thing and he was more focused on, well, undermining the argument from the Left. Amy Coney Barrett too, she was very interesting. She was talking about the "burden of parenthood", that in our society today we have what's called safe haven laws, where if someone has a baby and they feel that they cannot take care of that baby, you can surrender that baby, essentially abandon it, but abandon it legally to these safe havens so you don't have to be a parent if you feel that you're ill-equipped to do so.

So, she said, "Now that we have that, why would we, even by your standards, need Roe v. Wade?" But the most interesting, one of all was Kavanaugh, because Kavanaugh issued this blistering, beautiful off the cuff, I can't even tell you how impressed I was with this, this paragraph talking about what a different place our country would be if we adhered to this idea that because a law is precedent, because it's been "settled law", even for long amount of time, that it couldn't be overturned just because it existed in this space for this amount of time. And he said, "Think about Plessy versus Ferguson. Plessy versus Ferguson, think about the Supreme Court rulings that allowed the segregation of black people and white people. Think about the laws that defined black people as not citizens of our country."

He said, "Think about Miranda rights, your right to an attorney, your right to remain silent. If the Supreme Court had not overturned these rulings, which were fundamentally unconstitutional to begin with," he said, "our nation would be a very different place." When I heard him say this, I mean, I got the chills because I didn't expect this from him. And I thought, "This is correct. This is correct and this gives me hope that Kavanaugh will vote on the side of the Constitution," that he will, in a sense, put the abortion argument, the morality of the thing aside for a second, because as a Supreme Court Justice, they should actually put abortion itself aside and just say, "Is there a constitutional right to abortion in the Constitution. Is there or isn't there?"

That's all that they should be evaluating and I thought, "That's what he seems to be doing here." He seems to be saying, "We can overturn it if it's wrong. How dare you tell us that we can't." And so, like I said, I can't sit here and predict that they're going to overturn Roe v. Wade. I hope they do. I pray that they do, but I will say, I have hope that they will after listening to those arguments.

Dr. Tim Clinton: And it seems with the heartbeat bills that are out there, that they're moving more and more in that direction and I can see this happening sometime in the near future. And what an amazing day it would be. It wouldn't mean the fight's over though. This means it simply would go back to the states and there's a lot of work to do in the future.

Liz Wheeler: I mean, in a sense, it would mean the fight is just beginning, right?

Dr. Tim Clinton: Yes.

Liz Wheeler: Because right now we think of this as being at the federal level. We think of it as a cultural battle since we can't do much legislatively. But if Roe v. Wade is to be overturned, it doesn't make abortion illegal, as the Left tells you. It sends it back to the states, as you said. And, interestingly, it's not just going to be a battle in Liberal states. I mean, California and New York are going to become essentially sanctuary states of abortion.

Dr. Tim Clinton: I saw that.

Liz Wheeler: The fight over life is going to happen in the deepest, reddest states because. All of a sudden, Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby that stands to lose millions and millions of dollars in profit, they are going to zero in on states that have the most restrictive abortion laws. So, we're talking the South. We're talking, I mean, even Texas. We're talking Alabama. We're talking Arkansas. We're talking all of these states that should be the stalwart of the Right when it comes to abortion laws and those people, people that live in those states, you're going to be on the front lines then of the abortion fight. And we should be very prepared to fight this fight legislatively but also culturally in states that have almost taken for granted the fact that they're pro-life up until now.

Dr. Tim Clinton: So, we need people who are bold.

Liz Wheeler: Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Tim Clinton: We need people who are courageous. We need people who will step up into these moments.

Liz Wheeler: We need everybody.

Dr. Tim Clinton: At the end of the day, too, elections do have consequences. Policies do matter and if we don't get after it, we're going to live the consequences is what we're going to do. What should we do?

Liz Wheeler: Oh, I mean, these are the American people that you're describing. These are the most important players. So, it starts with marriage. It starts with family. It starts with that union, that fundamental institution that's the underpinning of the greatness of our nation. It starts with how you raise your children. It starts with your community and your church involvement every single day. It's the education system. It's the parents who homeschool their children, who get involved in school boards, who take over localities, the seats in the government in localities who run for state office. People who write letters to their Congressmen. Never underestimate the power of that, by the way.

I'm friends with several members of Congress who say, "Listen, you'd be surprised at how members of Congress change their mind when they hear from constituents. Just a dozen letters makes them rethink what their actions might be here." So never underestimate the power of your voice. Educate yourself so that you can fight back culturally here. I mean, Christians and Conservatives, the pro-life movement, all of us across the country, those who want the Constitution to be the law of the land un-violated, we are the ones who actually make a difference. And there is room for everybody, no matter what you do for a living, no matter where you live, no matter your level of knowledge on politics.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Liz, your book, Tipping Points: How To Topple the Left's House of Cards, unique voice there. I mean, at the end of the day, your goal is to train people basically how to fight, right?

Liz Wheeler: Yeah.

Dr. Tim Clinton: You want them to be able to step up and have a reason for the hope that lies deep within them, if you will.

Liz Wheeler: Yeah. The word that I like to use is deputize. I get a tremendous amount of emails and messages and people coming up to me at events asking me what you just asked me, what can I do?

Dr. Tim Clinton: Sure.

Liz Wheeler: And so, my book is an answer to those people. This is what you can do. This is how you win. This is how you fight back culturally. I mean, it's one of the things that I try to do on my show, The Liz Wheeler Show, is not only identifying what the cultural ills are, we can all see those, not just discussing policy initiatives, but also saying, "Okay, so now that we thoroughly understand what the fight is, here is how to fight and here is your role in the fight."

Dr. Tim Clinton: The podcast, every day, video?

Liz Wheeler: It's a video podcast. It's three days a week. We also put content out on locals. lizwheelershow.com is where you can find everything, or lizwheelershow.com/locals. We put content out on a daily basis and talk to a lot of news makers, a lot of thought leaders. We talk about issues that big tech won't let us talk about, whether it's transgenderism, whether it's COVID, whether it's critical race theory, what have you. I feel it is my calling from God to use the gifts that He gave me to stand up for His kingdom, and we're a good example of that in the United States of America. His kingdom is under threat because the principles in our Constitution really uphold your ability and my ability to raise our families in a Christian ethic and live according to our religious beliefs. And so, I'll be here all day long fighting for this until it is good and protected.

Dr. Tim Clinton: Wow. What a delightful conversation, and we tip the hat to you and pray that God continues to bless and strengthen your voice. Thank you for joining us.

Liz Wheeler: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Roger Marsh: That was political commentator, author, television personality, and podcast host, Liz Wheeler with our very own Dr. Tim Clinton on today's edition of Family Talk. Tim and Liz covered a lot of topics, but if you only remember one thing, it should be that your voice matters. And to put it bluntly, the majority of people in the world don't have that same privilege to speak their minds freely. If you've been inspired by today's broadcast, think and pray about getting involved in local politics. That could mean attending a school board meeting, studying up on policies so that you will be informed when it's time to vote in the next election and we believe that God is calling specific people to run for office in your city or town. Well, whatever you do, let your voice be heard by the way.

If you'd like to learn more about Liz Wheeler, her new podcast, The Liz Wheeler Show, or her book, Tipping Points: How To Topple The Left's House of Cards, just visit drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. That's drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. Or give us a call anytime day or night, (877) 732-6825. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I'm Roger Marsh. Hope you'll join us again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.

Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
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