And i have the privilege of his three massive dogs when he is out giving those lectures. Fourteen years as president of the university. He has beat known for his passionate defense of intellectual freedom. He advocates tirelessly for cultural courage with the timetested truth. His commentary on religion education and politics challenges the intolerance of todays academic community. At oklahoma wesley. He eds art were to lay featured in local and National News outlets. His most wellknown this is not a daycare is that the university has since gone viral and is not the basis for his new book. Along with their two sons seth and kobe had served as the first family since august of 2002. He actively participates in the community and the church. And serves on a variety of councils and boards relating to christian leadership Public Policy and community leadership. Please help me walk him dr. Everett piper. Delighted to join you. I would suggest the audience should know their speaker. Trigger warning. I do not shoot trigger warnings. I dont believe in safe spaces he is not safe but he is good i would argue that the great line of the academy of the university of americans and western universities and colleges. Should not be safe but indeed they are good. I dont believe that my feelings are yours are the final measuring rod of whats right or wrong. I actually believe education should be more about facts than feelings feelings lead to fascism and fax lead to freedom. Remember the basic fact that jesus told us up. I believe in ideas and i believe in words i believe that when we lose control of our words we lose control of our ideas. When we lose control of the debate we ultimately lose control of our freedom. For example when we dumbed down the definition of words like heat to nothing more than disagreement we make hate meaningless and disagreement dangerous. Words matter. Ids have consequences and one last word before i get into my lecture life is not about you. Education is not about you. It isnt about me. George mcdonald a writer from the turn of the 1800s to the 19 hundreds one that led to the conversion of the cs lewis if you well. Have this to say. The core principle of hell is i am my own i am my own king. In the center and im the object and i am the end. My judge it my judgment is there. Anything from marriage to morality from male to female anything from what it means to be good this claim of godlike deity can only lead to the ugly hell of our own making. The only repentance and confession. So im the guy this is the university its not a daycare. Let me give you a little bit of a context and then we will launch into a little bit as we go along also. I was just before thanksgiving 2015 they still have required chapels every once wednesday and friday. I received a phone call from one of my Vice President s. I did not go to chapel that day i have some thing else to do and he wanted to call me and let me know that there could be a problem. He said it is what you do not my our students after chapel came to me played the victimization card. He told me that i have offended him. And i have singled his peers out and he didnt like it. He did not like my chapel speech. First corinthians 13. For those of you who dont know first corinthians 13 is the quintessential love chapter of the bible. I ask this particular vp give me a copy of your sermon because i know he always speaks from a text. I know if i read it i would get exactly what he said. So i read through the sermon i was a very no political humor no sarcasm nothing whatsoever that could be deemed offensive other than first corinthians 13. So i was incredulous i thought to myself an institution like this that is bold and clear in our marketing white you should come here you cannot enroll without knowing who we are. You know that we have a center on capitalism Free Enterprise and constitutional liberties because we think those things are good not bad. We know that we see in for prolife and that we actually promote through our Nursing Program that god defined life you dont. And when you choose to pay to go there you are buying a product that is very will defined but in spite of that. We have a student same he did not like first corinthians 13. So i want to share with you what my response was. I actually published on the website and i also publish it and then the local newspaper which i have the routine of doing. I said to the sandman the feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon its called your conscience. An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel some degree of guilt. The primary objective of the church in the Christian Faith is your confession and that your self actualization. Let me offer you some advice. If you want the chaplain to tell you that you are victim rather than tell you you need virtue this may not be that university you are looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon and that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love this might be the wrong place. If youre more interested in playing the heater card than in confessing your own hate if you want to lecture rather than humbly learn if you dont want to feel guilt in your soul when youre guilty of sin and if you want to be enabled rather than confronted there are many universities across the land in missouri and elsewhere that will give you exactly what you want but we are not one of them. We teach you to be selfless rather than selfcentered. We want you to model inter personal reconciliation we believe in the content of your character and we think its more a pair port and the color of your skin. We dont believe you had been victimized every time you feel guilty and we dont issue trigger warnings before altar calls. It is not a safe place but rather a place to learn. To learn that life is not about you but about others that bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon its called guilt in the way to address it is to repent of everything that is wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that is wrong with them. This is a place where you were quickly learned that you need to grow up this is not a daycare this is a university. This caused a bit of a grass fire and before i knew it fox and friends and glenn beck and nbc today. Newspapers in Great Britain and the far east. Were all this and interested apparently many wanted to hear what i have to say. Apparently i said something that many were waiting for. The simple and brief response struck a chord. Many who even openly disagreed with what they called my religion and my politics wrote me to say thank you. This was is long overdue. Please carry on. We had 3. 5 million views in a twoweek time in 90 and percent of the comments were positive. There were dozens upon dozens if not hundreds of people that wrote in and texted emailed, snail mail called and said i dont like your religion and check you out. And i like your politics i read your website. Its about time some reset it. I believe its because we recognize as rational human beings we are made in the image of god that there is a great power in ideas at the end of the day they are built and cultures are conquered not so much by armies and navies but by speeches and lectures and blogs and books. By the power of ideas. Much more so than that of bullets. You guys know this you had been taught this 1948 Richard Weaver told us that ideas have consequences it was the title of his book. You hardly even need to read the book. Ideas have consequences ideas metal matter. If you years earlier. Or will the so education can be used of total power and total control. Ideas clearly do have consequences, good and evil people have a recognize this. Us. Good ideas lead to good culture bad ideas lead to the opposite. Your grandmother told you garbage and and garbage out. She was out she was right. I would argue today that education is a total mess colleges and universities are in crisis the contemporary university is no longer known for pursuing truth. And in the name of tar lawrence tolerance im told my intolerance is intolerable. This is nonsense i cannot tolerate your intolerance. Im absolutely confident there are no absolutes and i know nothing can be known. This is humorous. Its like watching a dog chasing its tail. The result of this nonsense is that the tradition of good teaching is actually become the dark flag of tierney almost overnight. Academic freedom does yesterday rather than celebrating liberals now demand conformity rather than we become bastions universities and campuses have become bastions of speech rather than bulwarks of free speech. They are more interested in trigger warnings than they are in pursuing truth. Colleges across the land have become indoctrination camps much more so than campuses of open inquiry. They now rule where they used to have a pursuit of truth. Our track record is terrible. We have taught the next generation that it doesnt matter what you believe as long as it works for you. If you guys ever say that she on you. We have taught you that all morality is relative and good and evil are merely subjective social contacts. That liberation theology is the only good. Day in and day out we have diminished excellence while installing entitlement. Where we surprised at the result. They have lost the courage. Our congress has lost the soul. Our culture is without a conscience. The lousy ideas that we had been teaching in our colleges and in our universities for the past several decades are buried themselves out daily before our eyes. I actually think there is a solution. And i to gets found in the historical liberal arts my first book which you can find and not a daycare. Com my first book was titled why im a liberal it was not apologetic. I am a conservationist i believe in conserving the environment and be a good steward of the water in the air. I am a conservationist but i also believe in conserving some other things that are timetested in true and perhaps even more important and more enduring truth those ideas that have been tested by time and confirmed by recent and given to us by revelation they are endowed to us by who. Someone bigger or better than you and me. Permanency of those things that should be conserved as a conservative ironically today i am more classically liberal than my left of center counterparts because i believe in a good Robust Exchange of ideas. I believe that there is a right answer and a wrong answer at the end of the hour. I think the truth is the judge not you not me not power, not politics i believe the truth is the judge of the debate. And that liberates me to engage. Other than confines me i am more liberal than those that often disagree with me. Because i believe in liberty with freedom and justice. I believe that if you go back a thousand years to the birth pace someone thousand years ago that the university was established to liberate us to educate us. So why do you believe people were so interested in what i have to say. Why were 3. 5 million youre here today to hear about it. Some two years later and later we were told by only by trusting in that paradox of liberty and law can we ever hope to protect our rights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not hapless but happy. Selfevident truths that are endowed from outside not constructed from inside. It was those fences around freedom that chesterton told us that you can have no liberty without law. And you you can have no freedom without fences. That is how we become a free people in a free country. Power, politics or penance freedom honors at the debate because they knows theres an answer a true north. Again chesterton. He told us when you get rid of the big laws this is good stuff. When you get rid of the big laws you dont get liberty you get thousands and thousands of little laws that russian to build a vacuum. We cant live as a culture any longer by ten simple laws. Thats all we needed. We have refused to live by those big laws and by the way jesus narrowed it down to two. We cant live by ten or to any longer they are rushing in to fill the vacuum. Were being produced in the city. Telling us how to do everything down to which bathroom to use. When you get rid of big laws you dont liberty but rather thousands upon thousands of little laws that russian to fill the vacuum. It has never been found in the roles of government. But rather in the few and simple laws of nature and natures god. There is a reason that dozens of universities were once emblazoned with the model. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. There is no freedom. If you stop teaching truths. The solution can be found in its endowed to us by our created it is entrenched in the arrogant and calloused human heart. And the laws of nature the truth of god is written on every human heart. For example if you want to dispute that, do we know that rape is run. Do we. Do we know it that the holocaust was evil. Do we know that slavery is a bad thing. We hold these truths to be selfevident not socially constructed. Because there is a creator and its not you. The solution is ever turn to teaching the laws of that make sense. Natural law leads to freedom. Minute maid laws bring nothing but more restrictions more fascism and less liberty it may seem a bit redundant but i would like to leave you as i get ready to wrap this up with a very simple and clear message. Culture is about ideas and ideas are defined by what, words. In other words words mean something. Sidebar always remember that he who defines the words wins the debate. Education is about words. Words mean something to guess what they have definitions. Words like marriage male and female moral and immoral. All words have meaning. And as thinking human beings we do know what the definition of is, is. We know Something Else very important it is changing and manipulating the meaning of words is called something. Its called line. We also know that defeat does bring consequences as were told by the prophet isaiah. Lying about words and with words turning them upside down is always wrong. As selfevident as it is it should be clear to all of us what im trying to challenge you with right now. Many history and against us those of us who care for religious freedom. They do so in the name of tolerance but their objection seems to be anything but tolerant. They say i cant tolerate your i know nothing can be known and im absolutely confident that there are no absolutes. They dont seem to recognize everything they just said a self refuting at every turn and makes no sense they soft the very branch in which they set. Waving the banner of intolerance. It does not make you a champion of your ideals. It makes you its executioner and doesnt take an eighth grade education to see this for what its worth. If anything any schoolboy can see that the premise proposed is never been about tolerance. Its really more about tierney and power at every turn we sit on our campuses and in our courts and culture. They are shouting you must agree with us. You must be one of us. If you dont, applaud what i say it when i think you would be expelled we do not want you in our culture and our community and surely not on our college campus. In the end their worldview is not about coexistence but rather as a poster child for cost prediction. Its about fascism here and simple. You may know this but it was a roman bottle sticks bound together so tightly that cannot be broken. I cannot break it. The power of the common that is where we get the word fascism. And today is likewise an unbreakable bundle of power. No dissent no differences no diversity. At several of the gang it is unquestioned and unchallenged power the call to arms of these modernday you must submit. So the question we face today is not whether we want to be ruled by the ideological fascism that has been prevailed across our land or do we want to enjoy intellectual freedom. Let me ask some questions just to point out headlines of the past couple of years. Students are supposed to but do we have freedom to believe and behave by the dictates of our conscience unimpeded by government. Should they have the power to force a jewish owner to process pigs. Should it have the government should they have the power to demand that the catholic owner sell bread and wine. Should the government be able to force the owner of a Billboard Company to sell his services to someone who wants to mock christmas or easter. If your answer is no and i hope it is how in the world can you possibly think that the government should now be able to force the owner of a flower shop in washington to participate in religious service that directly violates a key sacrament of her faith. When to the government get the power to define tech about a breach of a wall of separation. Should the government be able to force them to buy contraception that they dont want their catholics and their nuns. They dont have because they are nuns. They are celibate. Why would anybody preach supposed to tell these women what kind of pills they need to buy in the healthcare. What could possibly be more misogynystic than to ignore the empirically obvious pact of the female . Fact of the female . What is more insulting to a woman than to tell her shes not a fact . Youre no longer a biological reality. Youre nothing but a fabrication, a social construct. Youre nothing but the fantasy, the fabrication, the feelings of a disforric male who wants to raise his hand on a given day and say, i am one. Oh, but, by the way, im prowoman, and insulting you in such a way and suggesting anytime anyone else raises his hand and says i am a female even though genetics does not show it, chromosomes dont show it, its feelings and emotions and fabrications, it makes the woman, it makes the female less than a fact. Youre nothing but a remember rah cawn or leprechaun or unicorn anymore. Youre make believe. I would suggest that thats anything but being prowoman. But i digress. Lets get back to my point. Forced agreement is totalitarianism, to the not tolerant it is not tolerant. Requiring women to submit to the whims of a government hegemony is not feminism, its misogyny. It is not intellectual freedom, and its a clear example of the government establishing what religion is acceptable and then prohibiting the Free Expression of any religion that is in disagreement with that. Sound constitutional to you . So lets wrap this one up. Words mean something. As students, as leaders, as community members, hang on to your words. Define them. Defend them. Honor freedom and fight fascism. Stand for truth and fight tyranny. Stand for love and fight hate. Stand for the rights of women and fight against their subjugation. Stand for liberty and liberation. Fight licentiousness. Remember the words of bonhoeffer, they mean something. Not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act. Silence in the face of evil is evil it. One more time. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless. Be there is a reason that jesus is described in the gospel of john as what . The word. The word. He means something. He cannot be changed. Hes the logo, hes the way, h