Wesley Knight  0:00  
You're listening to local programming produced in KU NV studios. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Charles Stanton  0:18  
Good evening. This is Professor Charles Stanton. I'm a professor of Boyd School of Law,

Blanca Pena  0:23  
and my name is Blanca Pena. I am a third year law student at the Boyd School of Law, and this is social justice, a conversation, a conversation. Well, good evening, everybody. I hope you've all had a great week so far. I'm here with Professor Stanton, my co host this past week, we've, we've, we have a lot to talk about today. I think one of the things that stood out to me the most was the oral argument on the end to birthright citizenship that we just heard with President Trump being the first sitting president in history to attend. Mind you, he didn't attend the entire thing he did leave after his side went but I think it it hits me because, I mean, I wasn't even born here, right? So it's not that it really applies to me all that much, but it does put into question the stability of our government and how much the Constitution actually means, especially right now. And I think the symbolism of having an Asian American woman making the argument is a really impactful thing. But yeah, it I haven't had a chance to read the transcript or anything like that, but I think with everything going on, I I just so I have brothers who were born here, and my parents aren't US citizens, so this would affect them, if anything, if anything, were to change, right? And I know there's lots of people whose lives would change. I mean, I can't seem to wrap my head around how practical it would be to reverse such such thing that's been held for hundreds of years, right? Like, where would we start? And who does that include? And who doesn't it include? Does it include Baron Trump, given that he is her, his mom is Melania, who is not from here. Does that include, you know, people who have been here for generations like I can't even seem to fathom, but I even just above all of that, though, I think this country is really focusing on all of the wrong things at the moment where, you know, we have the president giving a speech saying, We can't pay for daycare, we can't pay for Medicaid or Medicare because we need to fund the military. IE, I'd rather fund wars and killing people than helping Americans survive. And I mean, it's not that I'm surprised. I saw it coming, but What? What? Where do we turn to now, if that's what they're saying to us, right to our

Charles Stanton  3:04  
face, yeah, yeah. Well, I I'm glad that you, I'm glad that you started the program tonight talking about that case, because I had the opportunity to listen to an audio tape of it, and also to read the transcript of it. I'm going to say, in my opinion, and I think it's, I think it's Lawrence tribe's opinion at Harvard, and the opinion of a whole bunch of people that in our lifetime, this is the most consequential case that the Supreme Court will ever Hear, because if the opinion of the court is that the birthright citizenship can be done away with, even though it is in the Constitution itself in writing and has been affirmed and reaffirmed numerous times in the history of our country, in the history of our court, if that, if that is eradicated, I really don't know where we go from there. And I think that, I think that if that, that wisely unsatisfactory and Ill, Ill, thought out decision would come. It would not it would not totally surprise me, because the Kerman court has made a number of decisions. Laws that are clearly against what the Constitution intended. And unfortunately, the people on the court, I think in many ways, have abdicated their responsibility. I think a lot of the people on the court, I think they, deep down, know that their that their decisions, a lot of the times are not, are not morally correct, at least, but because of the fact that they have aligned themselves with a certain philosophy, they're good with delivering these decisions. I one of the things that you know, as a as a, as an aside, one of the things that shocked me, also over this week, was the conversion case, yeah, where all these young people are going to be converted into what they should be and not what they are, because the supreme court basically said that, well, that it's a legitimate way, legitimate way of therapy or something. And I always, I always think about, you know that conservative ideology, where, where you know God comes in here, and you know that that to be gay, to be lesbian, to be whatever you are is against, is against the way of God. And so the people who are, who are gay, or, you know, lesbian or what have you, they're, they're defying the will of God, and we're going to make, we're going to make a correction. So we're going to correct them as to what they should feel, who they should be attracted to, who they should love, and all the rest of this, this insanity. But the thing that always gets me is, well, you know being of a mixed parentage, and you know being in the church and being in the shul and singing in a in a choir in a Dutch Reformed church, God created all of us. So if God created all of us, and all of us are in His image and likeness or her image and likeness, who is who are we to say? What is right regarding something like that? The essence of individuality of any person is their is their choice who they want to care about and who they want to love. How is it that the state could dictate that the love of of a person is wrong?

Blanca Pena  8:00  
I don't see that. I mean coming from me who doesn't believe in God. I think even just the mere fact that these other kinds of humans exist, and they have their own beliefs and sexualities and views on on life, that's enough for me without the need of religion without the need of a God to tell me how to love or who to care for, right? But without all of that, all of that to the side, it's like I can recognize a human for who they are and not let it bother me. That's something that I've always had trouble with, especially within communities that are really religious, but in a very troubling way, at least from my perspective on, on how people are so bothered by the existence of a of a trans person, or the existence of a gay person, or the existence of a black person, like, like, what? What's it to you? You know what I mean, like, what I I feel like these are just things that we cannot control. Like, okay, I was born Mexican and straight, okay, cool, right? And someone else was probably was born black and gay. Like, who cares, right? Like, if it has nothing to do with me, and if I'm not going into the same bedroom as them, it really should not bother me, and it genuinely does not bother me. And and when it comes to the government stepping in and saying things like this, I mean, I wish they had the same energy when it came to their pedophile politicians, yeah, I because if, okay, fine, let's say God does exist. Okay, God doesn't like pedophiles. So what are we doing with this president up here, when he should be in jail, right? Or when him and his friends should be in jail? It's like, I hate this, this cherry picking. It really bothers me, and I think that's, that's a big reason why. I mean, I think I've already said on the show, but I was raised Catholic, and I. I noticed a lot of hypocrisy growing up. I didn't really understand it, and I think that's one of the reasons why I just can't align with it, is the hypocrisy that that is so tied to it. But it's like, okay, so being gay is wrong. Okay, got it. But also, a lot of these people gossip, which is also a sin, or they also, you know, they say bad words, which is a sin, they lie, which is a sin. They, you know, it's all of these things. So it's either all or nothing. You're either gonna do all of what you think your God tells you, or you're not gonna do any of it, and you're just gonna look dumb, right? And so when it comes to these people, right? Because it's one thing to just be a hypocritical religious person, and whatever you think doesn't bother me and it doesn't affect me, but it's another thing to be that kind of person in a position of power, in a position where your decisions and your points of view get to dictate everybody else's life, right? And that's wrong, that that's where I think we need to be drawing the line. I don't think we should have the 10 Commandments in the school. I don't think we should be like being on the side of, oh yeah. Conversion to therapy is lawful because it's a it's a form of speech, no, no. It's not like, it's just I it's so layered and it's so convoluted, but it really shouldn't have to. I think we should all be able to genuinely look at each other with with care, and see each other as equal. I'm trying to remember that quote from from Animal Farm. It's like all animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others. That's, that's what it is, yeah. And it's, it's disappointing, yeah.

Charles Stanton  11:47  
Well, George, George Orwell was ahead of his time.

Blanca Pena  11:50  
Oh, yes, he was. I love that man.

Charles Stanton  11:52  
And, but, but what you say, of course, is true all those things, the privacy rights, the intimacy rights, it's nobody's business. It's not my it's not my business to know, nor do I want to know, or do I am inquisitive about it, or any of that stuff that's something like a sacred thing, what a person's sexuality is. And I think that, I think that there's a movement to, like, sort of install, install their morality, but the morality, the morality is hypocritical and false. Because while they're doing that, they're also, you know, putting all these people in these warehouses to ship them out of the country. They're doing all kinds of they're they're cutting medical care for the elderly. They're cutting they're cutting food subsidies for the children, and on and on and on. But they're talking, well, we have a we have a moral society our size, our society is just but look at, look at yourself. First, you know, in the Scripture, of course, in the Scripture, of course, one of my favorite passages in the Scripture was Mary Magdalene. And Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, and she's, she's living in one of these villages, and Jesus comes into the village, and he sees all these people arrayed there, and they have rocks in their hands. And Jesus says, What are you doing with the rocks in your hands? And he says, Well, Mary Magdalene committed, committed adultery. And he said. Jesus says, well, what's the penalty for adultery. And of course, Jesus knows what it is, but he says it anyway. Says, well, the penalty is that she should be stoned to death. And Christ says, he picks up the stone like he he rubs the stone and he says, Well, he says, Let the person who was without sin be the first one to cast a stone against her, right? And the Scripture, of course, recounts that they all leave, yeah, but, but it's true, though, we got to look at ourselves, see this is the problem that we have in America. It's I discuss it, you know, when I teach and everything and it cleanse yourself. Cleanse yourself. Cleanse your own being. Make yourself the best person that you can be, love other people, care for other people, do good. If we could all commit to that, we wouldn't have to be worrying about all these other things. But it's, I think a lot of it is, I think a lot of it is a bunch of people, in many ways, who just believe that they're entitled to say what's moral and not moral. And then, you know, a lot of those same people, you'll be reading about them in a couple of weeks, or something like that, that they were involved in all kinds of nefarious stuff, but they're the ones who are preaching to the to the. Yeah, the rest of the folks in the country right as to what's right. I mean, look

Blanca Pena  15:04  
at Christy nomes husband. I'm sure you heard about that, which, you know what I genuinely if he actually does what they said that he does, cosplaying as a woman, I would, I support that like that. That is okay. If he goes into his house and if he dresses up like a woman, that is okay. But then you have that hypocrisy component where he's married to this woman who is putting people in cages and is doing all of this other stuff. Exactly your point, Professor, like, look at look at yourself. Yeah, and he really shouldn't feel shame for it. Like, if this world was the way that it should be, he really shouldn't have to feel shame for it. Everyone has their thing. Like, I think as long as you're not hurting anybody, or you're not hurting yourself, like, just do what makes you happy. Like, I don't, I don't know what to say, you know, and and I think, like, I mean being at the public defender's office every day. I mean, I'm seeing people go to jail for simple trespasses or shoplifting a water bottle, like, like, things that, sure they're crimes, right? But like, what, what is a crime? It's something that humans made up, right? Like, they, they wrote it on a piece of paper that, and they said, like, oh, you okay, you can't, you can't steal, okay, fine, right? But it's like, I don't know. Sometimes I just look at these things as, like, very, as just concepts that are, that are almost like, you can, you can play with them, like Play Doh, and it just depends on who is holding the Play Doh that they get to decide, decide the shape of it right. So whoever the lawmakers are, they get to make the laws right. And it's like, well, back then, owning slaves was lawful. Now it is not. So these things are constantly moving. The pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth, back and forth. But right now, we're living in a world where I have to see a woman gets sentenced to even 30 days in jail, which is not a lot, but that's 30 days that the government took her Liberty away, 30 days in jail for shoplifting necessities to keep herself alive. And yet we have all of these horrible people, whether it's in politics, in Hollywood, across the world, wherever it is, who do heinous things to children, to women, to innocent people, you know, they do all of these things and they're walking free, yeah, and they're rich is, yeah, I know they're super rich, yeah. And, and they get to just go about life. What kind of society are we living in?

Charles Stanton  17:36  
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, you know, Socrates said. Socrates said, be true to thyself, and thou can be false to no one else. But you have, you have a world today of people who are largely indifferent to the to the plight of others. You can say yes that people in politics in our country are that way. You can say that our leaders are that way. You can you can say that the Supreme Court is that way. But I think it goes beyond that. You know, being, you know, living in our city here, as I do, and as you do, and you know in our observations, as we go around and travel and we see we see terrible things. Primarily, we see children who were abandoned. We see all these homeless people all over the place. We see dilapidated, unfit housing that passes as supposedly livable space for people who are, you know, basically destitute, and it's okay, because we've we've tuned out from everything else but ourselves. The society that we live in, in many ways, has become the Society of self. It's about what I need. What is about me. But when you have all these things around you, something should awaken inside of yourself and say, you know, yes, I need certain things. But I see a child on the street who hasn't had anything to eat. I see people who are poor and elderly, who cannot get medical care. When I see all these things, something should activate inside of myself and say, you know, I have certain things, but I need now to figure out how I can help other people, that they can exist and you don't see that. You don't see that. And I think, I think it's, it's just the society in which we live in. It's, you know, you talk about, we're talking about God and religion. Okay, some people believe in God, some people don't. But beyond that, beyond that, is a certain set of principles that you have to have. Hmm, whether you go to shul or church or you don't go, but you know certain things are wrong. Yeah, well, you should know. No, that's the problem. If you don't know, then you're then you're lost, then then you're exactly, exactly. Well, that was, that was the story that was told a number of years ago about this man who was Jewish, and he lived in he lived in France, and he was hidden by the people who lived in France from the Nazis, and they saved his life, and they did so at great risk, because if the Nazis had found out that they were harboring him, they would have been killed as well. Well anyway, at the end of the war, at the end of the war, he was going to leave and go back to America and where he lived. And he said to the he said to the people you know, was there anything that I could do to to help to make up for what all the good things that you did to me? And the man said, well, there was there was a girl here who was considered, was considered a saint of the church, Bernadette Subaru, who, according to, you know what these people said, saw the Blessed Virgin, and they said, Well, when you get back to Hollywood, could you make a movie about her? Write about her? So the man did that, made that movie and everything. And it was, it was very, very successful. But the key part of the movie was of this man who was, he was a writer, I guess, for a newspaper or something, and he didn't believe in morality. He didn't believe in anything. He was just, you know, the person who didn't believe. But anyway, one night, they had a procession, and they had all these people going into the church. There were 1000s of them.

Charles Stanton  21:46  
And the the weather where the cathedral was, it was up on like an incline, and the the cardinal was sitting there, and the man came up to see the cardinal, and he told the cardinal, he said, You know, I'm dying. I have cancer, etc, etc. I'm going to die very soon. And he's looking out over all these people who are going there, and he says to the he says, why are all those people going into the church? And the cardinal says, well, they're going into the church because they believe in a certain thing. And the man, the man says to the cardinal, he says, Well, he says, I don't believe in it. He says, but can you? Can you find the way that I can believe in it? And the cardinal says to him, the cardinal says to him, he says, he says, for those who believe, no explanation is necessary, and for those who do not believe no explanation is possible, that always stuck with me. But when I talk about belief, you know, to you and to other people, what I'm what I'm really saying is to move beyond yourself. That it's yes, you can do a lot of great things. Yes, you can achieve a lot of great things, but don't leave other people by the wayside. You see that, that because you've been gifted with so many abilities and talents and all the rest of that stuff, see what you can do in your way to try to do something for somebody and give somebody, give somebody some sustenance, give somebody some hope. Because Hope is the most important thing, and I think that's the problem today. We seem so many people seem without hope.

Blanca Pena  23:33  
Yeah, they're either without hope or they're very selfish, as we've already talked about. I mean, I it's, it's insane to realize that the reason why a lot of people are angry with President Trump isn't all the 1562 things that he's done wrong already up until this point, right? And I'm probably underestimating that. It's the fact that right now, gas is $5 like, that's the reason why that I've seen, I haven't seen that much outrage towards literally, not the 34 felonies, not the Epstein files, not the fact that he said, grab them by the P not, not him walking into little girls dressing rooms. Not any of that. It's the fact, it also not the fact that because of him, we've, we've killed a lot of people too. Not any of that. But it's just, it's the fact that people go to the gas pump and they have to pay 20, $30 more for a tank, for a full tank of gas, which, I mean, it's almost a privilege right to pay for the price of war and gas, and not your life or in gas, and not your family's lives or your community or anything like that. Like, I think people fail to see that. I think living in America puts you in such a bubble. And I mean, I can't really speak to you know. It's like outside of America, because I know that we're not the best, but we're also not the worst, but I do know just from having conversations with people who have gone outside of the United States and lived in other places and seen other things, we are kept in such a bubble. Everyone is so egocentric. Everyone thinks that their way is the right way, and different ways aren't right. And that that includes things like, like religion, for example, like people here love Christianity and Catholicism, but not Islam, right? Or Buddhism, or anything else, right? Even you know, seeing Zara Mamdani right? When? When people post videos of him and he's eating with his hands, right, which Americans also do with burgers and pizza and fries and whatever, but they see him pick up, you know, curry with some non bread or something, and then they're like, Oh, my God, he's eating with his fingers. And it's like, what is? What is wrong with you? Like, what? Just, just because it's different, it doesn't mean that it's inferior. Yeah, I think that's a huge problem that we have here, is the fact that everyone just thinks that it's their way or no way and and, yeah, I think that is why there's such a lack of empathy here. Yeah, because people see difference as as, again, somebody else being inferior and not and so once, once that belief is created that this other person is inferior to me, even if that person is suffering or a victim of war or rape or assault or whatever it is, the other person who has the upper hand won't help because they don't feel like they have to, yeah, well, I think,

Charles Stanton  26:45  
I think that's very true. I think the, you know, we talk about the racial divide in this country, which has existed for generations and generations and generations, that is the ultimate, the ultimate test, the ultimate test of our country is to treat other people as we would want to be treated, and to treat other people as no better than I am or no worse than I am, just as a human being. They're not black, they're not Asian, and not Latino. They're not gay, straight, whatever, whatever it is, they're a human being, and I want to, I want to give them and afford them the same respect that that I want to be get from them, that it's a mutual respect. And I don't know what what's in their lives. I don't know what's their story is, but they're a person just like I am. If we could just get to that one idea of just accepting each other for that, for that common humanity, I think we could make an enormous change. But to do that, to do that, to make that change, has to do with introspection in ourselves. We have to look at ourselves and what we are doing or what we are not doing, and that is the very hard thing for a lot of people to do that, to challenge yourself as to why you have those beliefs. Are they your beliefs truly, or are those the beliefs that were imposed on you by generations and generations of thinking that really didn't think through the ramifications of that kind of philosophy? Because that kind of philosophy, philosophy, ultimately, is why our country is so divided today. Yes, yes, it's republicanism, Democrat but more than that, it's that we don't respect each other. We don't care about each other, we don't use the empathy that we were given and you and replace the empathy with apathy that we basically don't care. So we tuned everything out, but by tuning everything out, we see the condition the country is in right now.

Blanca Pena  29:09  
Totally agree with you, Professor, thank you. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you next week. Good night. Yes, good night. God bless you.

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