China's death spiral; Why man needs God (04-18-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:30] Elizabeth Stauffer writing over at Legal Insurrection about Trump's tariff war. I thought that this was... Oh, I... Yeah, hang on a second. I'm busy. Wait. Something's going on with all of our phones. They're all busy. What's going on? All right, there we go. Sorry. So she writes that China has several tools at its disposal to retaliate against the United States.

[00:01:00] It's already taken steps to restrict the export of critical rare earth minerals and has attempted to rally support among allies and neighboring nations. But, she says, as the junior power in the U.S.-China relationship and as the surplus nation whose economic rise has been fueled in part by intellectual property theft and other coercive practices, China also faces significant vulnerabilities.

[00:01:27] The Trump administration is currently engaged in trade negotiations with representatives from 130 different nations. Okay? Now, keep that in mind. Because in an op-ed on Monday, Victor David Hansen made the case... He's a historian and conservative commentator. He made the case that China will lose the trade war with the U.S.

[00:01:51] And that it would happen gradually and then suddenly. I've talked about that pattern, too. It's a cascade effect, slowly at first, then very quickly. When nations are forced to choose between a rogue economic actor and a flawed but fairer partner with unmatched global power, they are far more likely to choose the latter, which is us.

[00:02:16] China has behaved very badly in international trade. And every other country that does trade with China knows this. Hansen concedes that China can inflict short-term damage on the United States, particularly through a halt in exports of pharmaceuticals and rare earth metals. He writes, quote,

[00:03:09] China is running a trade surplus with the world, which is the result of market manipulations, product dumping, asymmetrical tariffs, patent theft, copyright theft, tech theft, a corrupt Chinese judicial system. What you might call bullying. Okay?

[00:03:36] This will make it difficult for China to claim victimhood when the tariffs and surpluses illustrate a contrived trade aggression by the Tricoms. He goes on to say, this again, Victor David Hansen, if the Trump administration can conclude first round good enough but not yet perfect trade deals in the next couple of weeks,

[00:03:57] and they get these deals with major EU countries, Japan, other Asian and Pacific powerhouses, and then they can redirect to China, the administration will gain both political support and economic advantage. Now, again, this is from Legal Insurrection by Elizabeth Stauffer or Stauffer.

[00:04:24] She says, beyond China's current economic troubles and Trump's newly declared tariff war, China faces a deeper challenge, a more intractable one, one that no amount of control by a communist, you know, authoritarian government can actually resolve. It is a demographic death spiral. Demographic death spiral.

[00:04:51] This is what happens when the replacement rate of a nation is not high enough, and the demographers, people who do demographic research and stuff, and they know what these numbers are, and they know when your fertility rate goes too low, then you're not replacing your population, and your population dies out. And you'll recall, this has been a problem.

[00:05:21] I think people have long recognized Japan as one of the worst afflicted nations regarding the demographic death spiral. Because, again, like you start, the numbers go down, and then, you know, slowly at first, then very quickly again. It's because as your population ages, there are not enough people to take care of them. There are not enough people in the workforce to be able to afford all of the government services and stuff, and everything starts contracting.

[00:05:51] So there was an op-ed written by a Chinese demographer, author, and activist. The guy's name is Yi Fujian. And it was called The End of the Chinese Dream. And he talked about, you know, the comparison between Japan and China. And he talked about how, and I remember this as, when I was growing up, you know, that Japan was going to buy everything, they were going to take over everything.

[00:06:21] They bought Rockefeller Center, and oh my gosh, they're taking everything over, you know? And people were really worried about it. Because by 1995, the GDP of Japan versus America had grown from like 9% in the 60s up to 73%. They were catching us, right? And they were growing faster. And we were like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

[00:06:49] Just as we consider China to be our chief rival today, back in 1989, Americans were more worried about the threat posed by Japan than the military threat posed by the Soviet Union. But it didn't work out that way, right? They learned the hard way in Japan that demographics matter. Japan's ratio of working age people to those over 65 years old fell below that of the U.S. in the 90s.

[00:07:17] And that's when their GDP growth slowed down. That's why, like, I've seen stories of these, you know, Japanese warehouse workers that are being equipped with exoskeletons, robotic exoskeletons, so the robots actually do the lifting for them because the workers are too old. They're in their 60s. And they cannot lift the heavy weights

[00:07:46] any longer in the warehouses. And they don't have enough people to go to work in the warehouses. And so they're developing this technology that they then, you know, strap on these, like, arm attachments and back attachments and leg attachments and you kind of walk around like Iron Man. And then the machine does most of the lifting. So this demographer emphasized that while comparisons to the 1990s Japan are frequent,

[00:08:15] China faces an even bleaker future because its fertility rate is even lower than Japan's. In 2000, 2010, 2022, so like in 10-year increments, the Japanese fertility rate was 1.36. That's children per woman. 1.36. It then went up to 1.39, then dropped back down to 1.26. China's, over the same three-decade comparative,

[00:08:44] China's was 1.22 back in 2000. It dropped to 1.18 in 2010. And right now it stands at 1.05. It's now struggling to stabilize its fertility rate, which is now estimated at 0.8%. So not even a one-to-one child-per-woman ratio. That's less than half of what's called the replacement rate. The replacement rate is 2.1.

[00:09:13] That's how you're replacing, right? Man and woman, they make two kids. Now you're replacing your population. That's the minimum. Its prime age labor force has been shrinking since 2012. Not coincidentally, when its three-decade run of double-digit GDP growth ended. Why? Well, again, for people of a certain age like myself, we remember China's one-child policy.

[00:09:44] You were only allowed to have one. And that's why they were murdering all of their female daughters. They were having abortions if it was female. If the baby was born, it was female. They would throw it away. They would discard it. They would kill it. Because they wanted the male. And that one-child policy ran from 1979 to 2015. And this is what she says is directly to blame for their 0.8 fertility rate.

[00:10:13] And that's a problem. That is a big problem for a very big country. All right, so spring is here. A time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by, are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, 8mm films, photos, slides? Are they preserved? Because over time,

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[00:11:39] in the United States illegally and therefore deportable? Please comment. Thanks and keep up the great content. If they have a notice to appear, so you say, so they've come in, I think it would depend on how they came in because there are all these different programs that Biden implemented through the app claiming asylum and everything else. So, yeah, I don't know.

[00:12:10] I don't know if they're immediately deportable before an NTA, a notice to appear, before their court appearance. I don't know. Again, I'm not an immigration attorney. So, the practical, you know, mechanisms that are at play here, I do not know the answer to that. But, I think, you know, a way to answer the question would be to ramp up the immigration courts to clear out the backlog. And the backlog exists

[00:12:39] because the system was purposefully, intentionally overwhelmed. Right? Now that the system is under control, the border is under control, now you can hopefully catch up. Like, that's the idea. So, yeah, it's a good question, Denny. I wish I knew the answer for you. All right. So, Daniel Darling over at the National Review had a really good piece and it's about

[00:13:09] the Easter reminder of why man needs God. He starts off talking about the Khmer Rouge, which is kind of a weird place to start, right? The Cambodian death cult, Pol Pot, right? One of history's bloodiest rulers. And he says, though, that the ideology that inspired him, right? Marxism, Karl Marx,

[00:13:38] the godfather of the ideology that would motivate Pol Pot, also Lenin and Mao and softer versions that have crept into the West. Marx famously blamed religion for holding humans back from their full potential, right? You've heard the famous opium of the people. The full quote is, religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium

[00:14:08] of the people, right? If we just got rid of that, then the revolution would succeed. But as the 20th century embraced those ideas and the body counts piled up around the world, it would be a Soviet dissident who expressed the cruel torture of the Gulag, who would understand the perversity of this entire project. The guy's name?

[00:14:37] Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He said, I have spent well nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution. In the process, I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up

[00:15:05] some 60 million of our people, I would not put it more accurately than to repeat, men have forgotten God. That's why all this happened. His words, according to Daniel Darling, were not merely a lament for his beloved Russia, but also a warning for the West. And he could not have been more prescient in the nearly four decades since he delivered his address,

[00:15:35] America and other leading nations have been pushing Christianity to the margins while living off the fumes of its benefits. It turns out that mere modernity, with its technological advancements, has left many people in a state of digitized misery, comforts at our fingertips, but missing the guiding hand of God. It's no secret that as church attendance has fallen, indexes of loneliness and despair have risen

[00:16:05] dramatically. The bonds of faith and family and community have been broken in our atomized world. The ordered liberty envisioned by the founders of America, the twin liberties of, sorry, twin spirits of liberty and religion that were described by Alexis de Tocqueville. Right? The guy who said America is great because Americans are good. We band together in civic organizations and churches. We see a problem. We get together with our neighbors. We go about

[00:16:35] fixing the problem. We don't rely on government to do it for us. That was de Tocqueville. But perhaps there might be cracks in the secular ceiling, so do not despair, where the light of the supernatural is breaking through. Since 2019, the decline in the number of Americans who claim religious adherence has leveled off. So it's not still dropping. It's plateaued.

[00:17:04] And there are signs that church attendance, especially among millennials and Gen Z, is now on the rise. You've heard stories, you know, anecdotal, but still. These like revival-like experiences that have been reported across college campuses. Darling says he's spoken with pastors across the country and he's hearing reports of overflowing church services on Sunday and dramatic conversions.

[00:17:35] What's more, he says, something is happening in the intellectual class, which was once overtaken by new atheism in the wake of 9-11. This was always one of those things, you know, the new atheist movement. They never did produce for us the infrastructure that they said could be produced absent God, absent religion. Whatever became of that.

[00:18:06] See, like, that's the whole point. Like, the whole idea, it's always interesting talking to atheists about, you know, natural law and stuff like that, because if you don't believe that you have inherently these rights because you are made in the image and likeness of God, right, then where do those rights come from? Why do you have these rights? Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina just a quick drive up the mountain?

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[00:19:31] 828-367-7068 or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. So back to this piece from Daniel Darling at the National Review. He talks about something happening among the, quote, intellectual class that was once overtaken by New Atheism. The most dramatic conversion story is that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was once a bright light among the skeptics

[00:20:01] and now a forceful advocate for Christianity. She is joined by Niall Ferguson, Rosalind Picard, Paul Kingsnorth, and others. Even Richard Dawkins, a virulent critic of Christianity, has admitted that he would rather live in a society that is shaped by Christianity. The intellectual reversals are met by a new openness to faith among the nation's top media outlets, particularly in the podcasting genre, where hosts like Joe Rogan and Sean Ryan regularly feature

[00:20:30] long conversations with Christian apologists, and one cannot dismiss the growing boldness of Christian athletes in college and professional sports. He goes on to say that the myth that societies can flourish without faith is becoming less palatable to a brand new generation. Humans, by design, are worshiping beings. It's in our nature. No matter what forces may align to crush faith in the supernatural,

[00:20:59] a yearning for God will endure. By the way, this is why I believe people behave the way they do with regard to climate alarmism. it's a supplanting of God. Gaia Earth, right? This does not mean that Christianity's adherents are always the best messengers.

[00:21:28] Part of what motivated new atheism were scandals of the institutional church and of religious fanaticism that manifests in violence. And what of the evil, like Pol Pot, that a good God allows, right? This is where the story at the heart of this season helps us make our way through the spiritual fog. He says, Easter is not the story of humans perfecting themselves through moral improvement, but the rescue

[00:21:57] of morally deficient people from themselves. Failing, flawed Christians are part of the plot. The passion narrative is God coming in the flesh to defeat the sin and death that humans themselves brought on the world. It is wretched sinners aware of their wretchedness at the mercy of a holy God. Easter, rather than paint pastels over the reality of evil, takes us into the heart of darkness

[00:22:27] on that dreadful night where the innocent Son of God is beaten and disfigured not for crimes He committed but for the sin that lurks in every human heart. Those who question the reality of God in a world of evil must not only recognize that the definition of evil comes from God but also that the Christian story claims Christ defeated evil on that day and that there is a God coming in judgment one day

[00:22:56] for the Pol Potts of this world who, rather than beg for mercy before a Savior, thumb their nose in opposition to their Creator. Easter matches the ugliness of the world with the ugliness of the cross and pairs the faint and false hopes of moral improvement with the triumph of Jesus' resurrection. This is what utopian Marxism can never provide. This is the longing that modernity and science

[00:23:26] and technology for all of their benefits they just cannot satisfy. Societies, of course, can find the personal salvation the gospel offers. faith can't be, oh sorry, societies cannot find the personal salvation. They cannot be forced. Faith cannot be forced. It's an act of your own, your conscience. But when people move away from themselves and towards God, that is good for the nation.

[00:23:57] You can read the whole piece at National Review, National Review online by Daniel Darling. It's called The Easter Reminder of Why Man Needs God. I wholeheartedly endorse it. All right, up next, we're going to have Brett Winterbull in studio, a little thing we like to call pre-gaming because I always join him for the first part of his show on Friday, which we call The Hangover because I hang over to talk with him, not because we're getting completely smashed. Although,

[00:24:26] that might make for an interesting segment. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events and I know you do too and you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at

[00:24:54] check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the

[00:25:24] Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. It's Friday final segment of the program and that means we do a little pre-gaming with Brett Winterbill you can hear him here on WBT immediately following my show in case you're listening right now on a podcast 3 until 7pm weekdays on WBT Brett Winterbill how art thou sir? It's great I'm awesome

[00:25:54] how are you? Well you're always awesome you are awesome well you are I appreciate it yeah you are and you are as well well thank you I appreciate that and I feel like you're just saying that because I said it first but that's okay I'll take it you're even more awesome okay now you're you gotta maintain your credibility so before you came in I was talking about this piece at National Review about the Easter reminder of why man needs God yes and in the piece they talk about

[00:26:25] younger people now starting to go to church again and maybe some of this is always the case in crises remember after 9-11 there was a lot of people going back to church but I got a message from Mark have you ever seen Jordan Peterson in person in one of his events I haven't seen him at his events but I've seen him like video and things like that right right right so he came to Charlotte and Mark said that he and his wife

[00:26:54] went there and saw him and they were amazed by the amount of young people that were there especially young men and in the piece they talked about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and she's now converted to Christianity right do you think that there is something happening where because Peterson has even now acknowledged he is Christian like he avoided it for a while but he's like now said yes I adhere to Christianity and he ties a lot of his

[00:27:24] you know talks about responsibility and what it means to be you know an adult and a man and all of this stuff to the Christian tenets do you think that we're seeing something shift in our society or maybe globally or something yes you know oh without a doubt absolutely without a doubt because we have lived in such a nihilistic environment yes for for I mean since Marx

[00:27:53] really since Marx that's true and you can only drive on that bridge for so long because we know what are the wages of sin death right and so if you turn your back on your faith and in this case I'm speaking about Christianity it will always come back to you you have the yearning in your heart for it you can ignore it you can

[00:28:23] do drugs you can be an alcoholic you can be crazy you can you know just not be able to connect to it or in my case all the above well that's that's that's that's entirely possible but I think yeah absolutely I believe it I mean I look I you know I I've got a lot of faith in the in the future like I don't I don't think we're anywhere near done like no way because we can people can come back do you think that's because you're just a generally optimistic person

[00:28:53] if you are do you think you're an optimistic I'm a really pessimistic person really by and large you don't strike me as a pessimist I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan okay well so am I I mean I was look I always expect to get just completely sold out and then when everything that's good is good yeah oh without a doubt I'm like yeah this is great so I mean if you're if you're if you're if you're par

[00:29:23] you're great I mean you're just par plus one you got it going on but I mean a lot of times you get you get this demoralized like looking at these crazy people that run around and do terrible things speaking of yes sir have you heard of the 24 year old American YouTuber named Mikhailo Viktorovich Pollyakovich or Polly how am I supposed to search that name yeah but he's a YouTuber okay 24 years old yep he got arrested

[00:29:53] for what for visiting an island which island is it North Sentinel Island North Sentinel so off the coast of India oh that's the guy who wanted to leave a Diet Coke yes did the murder they'll murder you if you go near them right okay didn't you talk about this no I saw the story today are you sure you didn't talk about this like a couple weeks ago no I'm positive wow why are you listening to other shows besides mine I don't watch I mean I don't listen

[00:30:22] to anything you know what for real I swear I could have no I haven't talked about this so the details are he has to appear before a local court in Port Blair the capital of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands he is from Scottsdale Arizona of course right Mikhailo Viktorovich Pollyakov classic Scottsdale name he was arrested March 31st two days after he set foot on the restricted

[00:30:52] territory of North Sentinel Island in a bid to meet people from the reclusive Sentinelese tribe yeah he left a can of diet coke and a coconut yes I where the heck did I hear that as an offering I swear it was on your so dang it but he failed to connect with the tribe which is actually a good thing because anytime this tribe encounters people that wash up on their shores they murder them yeah what do you think he was trying to do there I have a theory

[00:31:24] internet famous alright that's solid that's solid what's the last name Pollyakov well he was probably trying to get his Pollyakov oh my gosh alright that's I already shut down my computer I have no rib shot for you now you're now you're no longer an optimist now you're a pessimist because of what I just said so I don't know what he was trying to do what was he doing I have a theory diet coke and a coconut

[00:31:53] diet coke and a coconut I don't know if you could think of Hunter Biden no but you're close cocaine no that was not left it was a coconut or should I say a coconut I don't know honestly diet coke is associated with which political figure Donald Trump there you go okay so Donald Trump and what's the coconut for Kamala Harris wow

[00:32:23] in the coconut tree you hurt my head I think he was trying to like oh ask him like who do you want it could have been a poll he could have been polling them to find out who they liked or maybe it was like I don't want to offend either one of them like because they could be Trumpers they could be Harris heads I don't know did they so I'm going to give you peace offerings representing the two parts of American political culture okay so was the coconut cut in half like where you could drink out of it or is it

[00:32:53] that's a good question was it just a weapon maybe that's why they wanted to kill him do they have coconuts on North Sentinel Island because that would be kind of lame like you show up with a coconut but they got coconuts everywhere you're wrecking the ecology of that place it's a very special place you gave us something we already had are they cannibals I don't know if they eat the people I don't think so because in 2018 an American missionary landed illegally on the beach and was killed they shot him with arrows and then buried his body on the beach that's actually

[00:33:22] that's a pretty open minded kind of position because you're actually burying them you're not just letting them rot or eating them interestingly like this is a culture that has been cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years I don't believe that I bet there was somebody there in the 1800s that nobody ever said anything about I wonder that too because yeah it's like Ponzi schemes then had they come up with had they come up with North Sentinel Island because that doesn't sound like a thousands of year old name that's not what they call it what do they call it I don't know

[00:33:51] they call it whatever they call it in their own language you know I mean everybody's they killed two fishermen who accidentally landed on shore too I don't know if they buried their bodies or not but the guy this guy Polyakov he stayed on the beach for about an hour he blew a whistle to attract attention jeez what a nut got no response what a coconut he got spotted by some local fisherman who then ratted him out and that's why he's now in court that's it that sounds like that sounds like there should be a song

[00:34:21] played after that story all right that'll do it for this episode thank you so much for listening I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast so if you'd like please support them too and tell them you heard it here you can also become a patron at my patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com again thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone