RLL 43 Conservatism: An Autopsy

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00:23

Hi everybody, it's Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me today for Radio Look Solicit, episode 43.

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The title of today's episode is Conservatism and Autopsy. And I'd like to welcome also everyone who's watching via live stream.

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I'm streaming right now live to Facebook and to Twitter and to YouTube. So welcome to those of you who are watching this live.

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Well, you know, I'd be tempted to say I hope everybody had a good week this week.

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But, you know, I don't know, somehow that just doesn't seem very adequate or very appropriate given the events that have gone on this past week.

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And of course, I'm referring to two things in particular. The elections that were held on Tuesday, the

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January the 6th, or 5th rather, and, you know, the fact that you had a couple of pretty hardcore liberal

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Democrats who were elected in Georgia. And then you had the disastrous

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Trump rally the very next day on the 6th in Washington, DC.

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And we're going to talk a little bit about that. And I want to focus in particular on the events on Wednesday, because when

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I saw that, when I saw what was going on there, I just, my heart sank. It really did.

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I mean, I looked at it, and it was pretty evident that that was just about the worst possible thing that could have happened.

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And I guess a few things, what I would want to start off with is just by saying, you know, that those people who rushed the

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Capitol, they shouldn't have done that. And those who did do that, well, you know, they're going to be punished, and they will be justly punished.

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And I don't have any argument with that. That's as it should be. But what troubled me was the most about all of is what the fallout is going to be as a result of that, because it's not going to just be a few perpetrators who here and there who get punished.

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But there are going to be some major consequences for Republicans, for conservatives, for anybody who's a

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Trump reporter, for anybody who really, you know, what

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I would call themselves is an American patriot. You know, I think that there are going to be some very serious repercussions.

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And I mean, we were going to have a tough time under a Biden presidency anyway. But with this, it gives them an opportunity to have the moral high ground to take some steps that I don't think they otherwise would be able to do.

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Now, one thing, and I've had a chance to do some reading and do some thinking about this the past few days,

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I haven't really commented on the events of Wednesday. And I kind of wanted to avoid doing that, because sometimes you can, it's easy to give a hot take.

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And then you come back a little bit later and you say, Oh, well, you know, maybe I need to correct some things that I said.

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So I wanted to take some time to think about it, to read about it, to have some time to ponder it, turn it over in my mind a little bit.

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One of the interesting takes that I found on the violence at the

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Wednesday rally actually came from Dr. Ron Paul, from the

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Ron Paul Liberty Report. Now, if you don't watch the Ron Paul Liberty Report, do so.

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You have to do this. If you're someone who loves limited government, sound money, liberty, freedom, these kinds of things, you got to be a part of the

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Ron Paul Liberty Report. It's one of the best programs that you find anywhere on the internet. He broadcasts every day, live at noon, noon

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Eastern time, on YouTube. But he's also puts his work out on a number of other venues.

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I believe they're on BitChute for one, and they may be on some others. They're also on Parler as well.

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So that's another place where you can get the Ron Paul Liberty Report feed. They're also, of course, on Twitter. But the way things are going, you wonder how much longer they're going to be on YouTube.

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And in fact, it was interesting during the discussion, this was the program from Thursday. And I'm going to put a link to that program in the show notes.

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His co -host Daniel McAdams made the point that they are currently under scrutiny with YouTube. So I mean, it's possible they could be gone at any time.

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And the way things are going right now, it wouldn't surprise me because there have been some massive purges of conservatives on some of the big social media platforms.

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Especially Twitter seems to be very active in this regard. They banned the president. They even banned

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Rush Limbaugh. I think he's only been on Twitter for maybe two or three months now. And of course, if they can ban the president and they can ban

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Rush Limbaugh, well, they can ban pretty much anybody they want to, including you and me. So anyway,

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I would really encourage you to sign up for the Ron Paul Liberty Report. I think it's an outstanding program.

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And it was interesting to listen to Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams discuss the events on Thursdays.

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And one of the things that they put forward is they floated the idea that some of what went on there may not have been what it appears.

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You know, one of the points that they made was, you know, there have been maybe dozens, maybe a hundred,

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I don't know how many Trump rallies there have been over, you know, since 2015 up until the present, but there've been a lot of them.

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And to my knowledge, to their knowledge, I don't think there's ever been any serious violence ever attributed to Trump supporters.

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Now there have been Trump supporters who've violently attacked. There's lots of videos from that from 2016, but there isn't video of Trump supporters carrying out acts of violence.

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Now myself, I've been to Trump rallies on three occasions.

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I saw Donald Trump twice. I saw him once in October of 2016. Now that was actually during the presidential election.

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And I saw him again a couple months later in December of 2016 after he won, he came back into town and he was doing a thank you tour rallies in a number of cities.

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So anyway, he came in December of 2016. And then I also saw him again in October of 2018 when he came into the area, he was doing a rally for, you know, it was for the midterm congressional elections.

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And in all three cases, you know, I went to these rallies, you didn't find people who were a lot of crazies, violent people.

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They were just normal people. They're just normal American people who were, you know, people who, who worked their jobs and took care of their families.

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And, you know, they didn't have a third eyeball in the middle of their forehead. They weren't a bunch of crazies. They were just regular

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Americans who came out to support Donald Trump. And they were completely peaceful rallies.

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And this is one of the points that Ron Paul and Daniel Adams made. And the fact that you had so much violence all of a sudden break out at this, well, you know, you have to ask yourself, you know, some people have been saying, well, you know, that that there was, you know, there were some agent provocateurs, there were people there who were, had infiltrated the rally with the idea of carrying out violence.

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Now, I don't have any proof that that took place other than to try to kind of think through some of the events that happened.

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And again, you're looking at a case that as far as I'm aware, there's no other Trump rally where you've seen violence.

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Out of the Trump supporters. Now, you could explain that in other ways. But there were additional things too, that they brought up.

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And I would encourage you to watch the video. I think it's pretty interesting. And by the way, by saying that there were possible, the possibility that there were infiltrators among the pro -Trump crowd that instigated some of this, that doesn't let people off the hook for doing the things that they did.

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I mean, if somebody went into the Capitol, somebody smashed up stuff, if somebody carried out, you know, acts of vandalism or violence or this type of thing, well,

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I mean, those people deserve to be punished. You know, whether they, you know, regardless of what the reasons were that they were carrying that out,

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I don't support that kind of thing. And the other thing is, I don't think that that most people who are

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Trump supporters would countenance that type of thing. But I mean, the one of the one of the things that really bothered me about that entire episode, though, was that in looking at, you know,

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I just knew for as soon as I saw that, that there were going to be serious repercussions, not only for Donald Trump, but also for those people who were his supporters.

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Oh, and by the way, before I move on here, I wanted to mention there's another article that I found that discussed the possibility of infiltration in the

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Trump rally. It's written by a fellow named Steven Lenman. Now he's an old school leftist.

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I mean, he's not a conservative. He's not a Republican. But it but he actually talks in here about some things that he believed that indicates that that the rally may have been infiltrated.

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And the fact that he is a liberal, that actually makes his case a bit stronger. I'm going to put that link in the show notes as well.

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I think you might find that interesting. So what were the fallout of some of the things

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I mentioned, I was was very concerned about what went on on Wednesday on the on the six with all the the happenings at the at the

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Capitol. Well, it didn't take long for all my fears to be realized. Twitter, for instance, permanently banned

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Donald Trump. His at real Donald Trump account is gone. He can't post on that anymore.

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And I think they've removed all of his tweets as well. I think I went and I checked that yesterday and it's it's all shut down.

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And a number of his supporters have been shut down as well. Very prominent people have been kicked off of Twitter. Among them, probably the biggest name on that was

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Rush Limbaugh. I mean, Rush Limbaugh has been an absolute bedrock,

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Republican advocate, conservative, public personality for over 30 years. I started listening to Rush Limbaugh in the late 80s.

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OK, I mean, he's been doing this a long time and. You know, he's you know, he's kind of considered mainstream.

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I mean, he certainly is a veteran. I mean, he received the fact that the State of the

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Union address, he was given an award by Donald Trump. I can't remember the exact award that he got. But anyway, he's a very prominent guy.

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I mean, he's been around for literally for decades. And yet he can't stay on Twitter because I guess for he said something that he apparently shouldn't have said in the eyes of of the of the technocrats that that now seem to run our country.

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So, you know, you've got increased banning on social media. Of course, this has been going on now for what over over two years now and even longer than that probably goes back four years.

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But it really started in earnest in in August of 2008 when they they banned

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Alex Jones. And it's just continued that way along those lines ever since.

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Now, one thing's for sure is is by banning Donald Trump, that tells you something about where the real power in this nation lies.

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It doesn't lie with the elected officials. I mean, if if social media companies are able to ban a sitting president of the

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United States, well, they can ban any other public official as well. And they can certainly ban you and me.

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I mean, we don't have anything remotely like the kind of power and influence of of a president.

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So, I mean, it really kind of suggests that the public officials, the elected officials of the

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United States of America, aren't really calling the shots. That's a big problem.

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One of the other things that that came out of the violence on on Wednesday was calls to remove

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Trump from office. Now, there have been some people who've called for invoking the 25th

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Amendment. Now, if you're not familiar with the 25th Amendment, that's basically an amendment that says if a president becomes incapacitated in the you know, mentally incapacitated and in the judgment of, you know, the cabinet, that that he can be removed.

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And now the vice president actually has to be give his okay to sign off on that whole thing.

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And Mike Pence has said he's not going to do that. So probably, that's probably not going to happen.

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That's probably not going to happen. You're probably not going to see the 25th Amendment invoked. On the other hand, there are calls for impeachment.

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And it's actually quite amazing how vociferous the

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Democrats have been when it comes to trying to impeach Donald Trump.

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And here's an article. I'm going to see if I can do a screen share here. Just a moment.

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Um, let's see. Here we go. Yeah. Now, here's an article.

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This is from a liberal website called Vox. And it's got a headline. It says, Will Trump be impeached or face removal under the 25th

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Amendment? And they talk here a little bit about, you know, politicians are increasingly considering whether to take against Donald Trump before or take action against Donald Trump before his term office expires on January 20th.

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In the wake of Wednesday's presidential, presidentially incited chaos at the Capitol. Well, I don't know that that it actually was presidentially incited.

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I believe Donald Trump, and I didn't see the speech, but I've heard people talk about it. And he told them,

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I believe that they were to go to the Capitol and that they were going to protest peacefully. And I think he explicitly said that when he was giving his speech.

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So no, I don't know that you can say that it was presidentially incited, but this is Vox. And I mean, then they, they, you know,

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Vox, um, as does most of the media is going to put the worst possible construction on anything that Donald Trump says.

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But they talk in here about the possibility of the 25th Amendment. And also they talk about the possibility of that doesn't work, um, that they're going to impeach him or that they, they, that's what they claim they're going to do.

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Um, and, uh, you know, all this is going on here with just what's this, uh,

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I'm recording this. It's, uh, it's about 1130 on January, Saturday, January the ninth. Well, his term ends on, on January the 20th.

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So we're talking here 11 days from now. Um, but they can't seem to wait.

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You know, he's got to get out of office now. Now, of course, some people, this has raised some questions in some people, okay.

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In some people's minds. Okay. So why are they so desperate to get rid of him? And this is one of the things that Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams discussed on their program from, um, from last

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Thursday. Yeah. And it kind of makes you, you know, they seem like they're afraid of something and, you know, various people have floated ideas about what that might be.

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You know, they're concerned that maybe Donald Trump might declassify some documents that show, um, maybe some criminal activity on the part of certain people that don't want that criminal activity exposed.

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I don't know. I mean, that, that is, is a, uh, is a possibility.

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So we'll have to wait and see. I, I think there's a very good chance that the next,

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Oh, next week and a half could, uh, could be very interesting. And maybe, uh, you know, we'll be discussing some of that, uh, this time next week.

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I don't know. We'll see. Um, another bit of fallout from, from the, the, uh, the rally violence on Wednesday, uh, uh,

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Tucker Carlson made this point in his show. And he, and he said this, he said that, that the people coming to power, uh, they actually want to hurt their political opponents and they're going to use

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Tuesday's, you know, the, excuse me, they're going to use the events that took place on Wednesday, uh, as, as justification for doing that.

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Um, one of the, there was a journalist by the name of Rick Klein. Now Rick Klein is, is not, not a nobody.

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Rick Klein is the political director of ABC news. So he's, he's a big shot, you know, he's a big shot, uh, mainstream media guy.

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And he wrote a column. I think it was maybe, it may have been on Wednesday. It may have been on Thursday.

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Um, not long, I think after the, uh, the events on, on the, at the Capitol. And this is what he wrote quote, even aside from impeachment and 25th amendment, uh, then 25th amendment,

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Trump will be an ex -president in 13 days. The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy part.

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Cleansing the movement he commands or getting rid of what he represents to so many Americans is going to be something else.

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Now, now get a load of that, that language cleansing the movement he commands. Now, what does that mean exactly?

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Um, I think he got some heat for that. And in fact, if you, that's the original wording on it.

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If you go back and you read, there was a, another edition put out, maybe it was a few hours later. I don't know, but it, it softened the language on it a bit.

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Um, but nevertheless, um, you know, Rick Klein wrote what he wrote. That was the, that was his original, his original wording.

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He's talking about cleansing the movement. Now, I mean, that sounds like something that you would expect out of, uh, out of some leftist dictatorship, you know, we're going to have a political cleansing.

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Uh, you know, and that has some very, uh, very nasty overtones to it. And this isn't coming from an obscure guy either.

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This is coming from a very prominent fellow. Now there was another piece.

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In fact, this was a piece that was, um, it's not by Glenn Greenwald, but it was, it was written about him.

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And, uh, maybe I'll go ahead and, and share that, uh, that particular piece as well here on screen.

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Just a moment. Let me get that done here. Yeah. There's a, a, a piece that appeared and this was on a website

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RT and it's got a headline media and Democrats are launching second war on terror against Americans.

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Glenn Greenwald warns. So what they're going to do is they're going to use the, uh, the events, the, that took place on Wednesday to say,

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Oh, well, we need a new war war on terror, but this time it's going to be directed domestically as opposed to abroad.

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And read a little bit of this here. It says, uh, some of the very same people behind the original war on terror are now helping to start a new one against Americans.

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Journalist Glenn Greenwald warned amid a rising crackdown on free speech, following the chaos at the

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U S Capitol. Now, again, Glenn Greenwald is, um, you know, he, he's not a conservative partisan.

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He's, um, he's pretty much straight down the middle. I mean, he's not, uh, I wouldn't say he's somebody that he maybe leans a little bit liberal.

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I don't know, but he's a good journalist and I've read his work over the years and he's somebody whose analysis, um,

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I trust. And, uh, here's a tweet that he put out. This is in the article.

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He says, there's absolutely a new war on terror being initiated. It'd been lurking for a while, but it's accelerating now for obvious reasons.

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The new one is aimed inward domestically. It entails many of the same frameworks. They're saying that explicitly.

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And he quotes, he has a quote here from the wall street journal, and he has a highlight here. He says,

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Mr. Biden said that he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism. And again, this is all in response to the events from Wednesday, January the 6th.

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And he says, I spent the first decade of my journalism career devoted to exposing and denouncing the excesses of the first war on terror.

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And I see exactly the same tactics forming the Democrats behind it.

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Won't even need to study the tactics of neoconservatives from the original war on terror as neocons are their full allies.

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And all this noted, anyone who has questions or concerns about it will be demonized as a terrorist sympathizer.

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So if you say, Hey, you know, um, pushing all of this, this domestic war on terror, you know, aren't you maybe, isn't that getting a little scary?

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Isn't that getting a little bit like, uh, like a dictatorship? And of course people, you know, the supporters of this, um, this new domestic war on terror are just going to say, well, you know, the only reason you're saying that is because you're a terrorist sympathizer.

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And he cites a fellow by the name of David Frum. Now David Frum is a very prominent, uh,

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I guess you'd call him a neoconservative writer, intellectual. Um, he's probably best known to the

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American public back during the original war on terror. He talked about the axes of evil. You might remember that particular turn of phrase from back,

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I guess it was in 2003 in the run up to the war in Iraq. And, and he's very well known for, for that.

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He was a speechwriter actually for the Bush administration. Um, but now, you know, he's out there criticizing, uh, say

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Tucker Carlson for bringing up the risk that is the genuine risk that people who are say

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Trump supporters, conservatives, what have you, are facing as a result of the, the activities that took place on, on Wednesday.

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And, and he talks about the, uh, these, uh, these conservatives. In fact, he even brings up a

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Glenn Greenwald's name. He says, they talking about the, the conservatives or others who are, are criticizing the, uh, the second war on terror.

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He says, they lament the real victims of the attempted violent overthrow of a U S election, uh, will be, uh, those who sympathize with that attempted violent overthrow.

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So, you know, here they are there, you know, he's, he's saying that, you know, that, um, the people who that is

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David Frum is saying that, uh, people like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald are lamenting that, uh, the victims, uh, of the, uh, the attempted overthrow would be those who, who, uh, who sympathized with that overthrow.

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So, you know, he, you know, David Frum thinks it's, it's all well and good to go after. And he doesn't quite come out and just say

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Trump supporters in general, but you, you kind of get a sense that, that that's he's, he's talking about here.

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So anyway, that, oh, and here's, uh, another one. There's, uh, CNN. Uh, this is a tweet here by Tom Allen.

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He says now CNN's Oliver Darcy is going after cable companies for carrying Fox news. And apparently they're also going after cable companies for carrying other conservative political outlets.

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So, I mean, the, the censorship, uh, is, uh, is increasing. It's not getting less.

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It's not getting better. This is something that's becoming, uh, consistently worse. You know, the, the first amendment, the idea of free speech is definitely under attack.

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Now let's take a look here. You know, the, the question of course, you know, and I think one of the questions that we need to ask ourselves, of course, is how did we get here?

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How on earth did, did we, the United States get into this position? And in, in my view that the bottom line with, with the loss of the presidential election, the loss of the

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Senate, the aggressive discrediting, discrediting of patriotic Americans by the, the mainstream media, by major corporations, by the schools, by the universities, by the entertainment industry.

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In other words, pretty much by the entire American establishment. Uh, I think perhaps it's time that, that we

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Protestants started asking ourselves where we went wrong. You know, where did we go wrong?

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You know, the prospects of our nation are not getting better. Yeah. I mean, you know, you back in the day, you know,

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I remember growing up and, uh, this was maybe in the late seventies, early eighties, you know, there was always this talk about the, the evangelical right or the religious right.

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Well, nobody even talks about that anymore. Um, you know, there were, you know, organizations such as, you know, the moral majority and, you know, that was with, uh, it was led, headed up by Jerry Falwell.

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There were others, but that was one particular prominent one. Um, but it doesn't seem that the

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Protestants have any influence about what goes on in this country at all anymore.

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Um, not only thing in our country, it's not getting better. I mean, things are not getting better.

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You know, the moral climate of the country isn't better. The political situation isn't getting better. You know, we're not becoming more free.

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We're becoming less free. We're not shrinking government. I mean, that used to be something that, that conservatives at least to, to, to pretend that they, they supported, but government's not shrinking.

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Government's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, just think about what happened here, you know, within the past year and then say in 2020, um, there have been a number of financial commentators have pointed out that about 25 % of the, the, the dollar currency units that have ever been created in the history of the country were created within, in 2020, 25%.

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Now that's an extraordinary amount. I mean, that tells you how fast government is growing, how big it's getting.

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So it's not getting better. You know, we like to tell ourselves, oh, you know, we, you know, we spend all this time, we spend all this money and, and, and you know, we're, we're, we're improving the moral climate of the country.

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Well, it's not improving. I mean, I can tell you this just in my own experience here locally, where I live.

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I mean, I live in the, uh, the greater Cincinnati area in Hamilton County. Now, when I was growing up,

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Hamilton County was a Republican bastion, famously so. I mean, it was, it was known that way.

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It was one of the, the, uh, the, the Beloit, you know, really, uh, Republican leaning counties in the state of Ohio.

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Ohio's kind of interesting that way because Ohio, um, if you go up north, say into the, uh, the

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Cleveland area, um, that's a much more Democrat area and it historically has been, but if you live in, in this part of the state, in Southern Ohio and in, in Cincinnati is in Southwest Ohio, Hamilton County is an extreme

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Southwest Ohio. Uh, Hamilton County is where Cincinnati is located. Um, we're actually right.

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I mean, if you, if you look at a map of Ohio, we're the, as far Southwest as you can get in Ohio, we border Indiana, uh, on the, on the

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West side and Kentucky on the South. And this part of the state is actually historically very

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Republican. Um, but Hamilton County no longer is.

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Hamilton County has gone Democrat. And now they're the, the surrounding areas around Cincinnati are still very

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Republican, but Hamilton County no longer is. And in fact, just to kind of prove to you what

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I'm talking about, Hamilton County just, um, I don't know what the right word is installed or swore in or, or what have you, a new sheriff and the sheriff is a, she's a, she's a lesbian.

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Now it would have been unthinkable. Oh goodness. Even just a few years ago to see

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Hamilton County with a Democrat lesbian sheriff. But that's what we have now. And, and that's, that's what the voter base of Hamilton County has changed, has become.

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And that, I mean, that was never the case, never the case when I was growing up. I mean, I think even five or 10 years ago, that would have been unthinkable.

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Um, but that's what it is now. And it doesn't seem to be any, any stopping of that despite all the conservatives and Republicans and the money spent in campaigns and all of this other stuff.

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Um, there was a tweet that I saw this past week.

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I thought it was, was very telling. And it was by a fellow named Dave Weigel.

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He's a political reporter for the Washington Post. Again, he's a prominent guy. He's one of the blue checkers on Twitter.

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You know, if you go on Twitter, you know, you got these people, these special people with the blue check mark, uh, next to their name.

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And that means they're verified. It means they're kind of a big shot, you know, and they're typically people who are, you know, prominent politicians or prominent journalists, things of this sort.

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And Dave Weigel is, is somebody who's a, he's a writer for the Washington Post. And this is what, what

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Dave Weigel said. He said that, and this was on January 6th, he said, Protestants locked out of the top offices for the first time ever.

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And by top offices, he, he expands on it. He means things, he means president, chief justice, speaker of the house, majority leader.

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Now I suppose maybe you could argue, say, oh, oh, well, well, well, Kamala Harris is, is, is a

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Protestant. Well, you know, maybe in some nominal sense,

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I think she's a Baptist, but, but she's, she's not a Christian. And I think that's very obvious from, from the comments she makes and, and from the, uh, the policies that she supports.

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No, she's, she's, she's not a Christian. I mean, she's maybe nominally an evangelical, but, but she's, she's not a

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Christian. And in the, someone commented on Dave Weigel's tweet, this fellow named

30:24

Jesse Curtis, who, uh, bills himself. Apparently he's a, a professor of history or history professor.

30:31

And he said this, I thought this was an interesting comment too. He said, the decline of Protestant supremacy, both as fact and ideology is really something.

30:40

Less than a century ago, this would have been front page news and major social tension. Now it's just quaint trivia.

30:48

So, I mean, that, that's what's happened. I mean, the, the United States was, uh, I think 98 %

30:53

Protestant at its founding. And, and it was really the, the, the

30:59

Protestant faith, the Calvinism of the, uh, the people of the United States that gave the nation the shape that it has.

31:06

Um, but that's changed, you know, and we've gotten to a position now where, you know, Protestants are, are pretty much, or to a very substantial degree, locked out of the top, uh, leadership jobs, uh, in the

31:19

United States of America. And, and you have to ask yourself, well, what happened? You know, how could that possibly happen?

31:26

And I think to help answer that question, you can go and you can actually turn to, uh, the book of Isaiah and Isaiah, he, he wrote this about Judah in his day.

31:38

This is what he wrote your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire, your land strangers devoured in your presence.

31:46

And it is desolate is overthrown by strangers end quote. Now the people of Judah and Isaiah's day were experiencing the covenant curses that God had warned them about when they came into the promised land.

32:00

You read that back. And I think it's in, I think it's in Deuteronomy, you know, when they had crossed into the promised land and, and God, um, spelled out for them, you know, blessings and curses.

32:11

I mean, if, if you, uh, obey my word, if you follow the, the covenant that I've laid, uh, set forth for you, you're going to have all of these blessings.

32:20

But if you don't do that, you're going to get all of these curses. And, and, you know, the, those curses were, you know, they would become few in number, you know, that they would become despised, you know, that, that strangers would, uh, would take over the land that, that they would go into exile.

32:36

Now, all of those things happened too, because of unbelief. Now, Isaiah, it was, was still about a hundred years or so before the, uh, maybe a little bit more than a hundred years before all of those, those curses finally came fully to fruition.

32:49

But the nation was already seen at that, at that time. And the reason that they were experiencing that was unbelief.

32:57

And I think that, that as Protestants, I mean, we can look at that in our own time and say, well, how is it that we find ourselves basically substantially dispossessed in the country that, that our forefathers founded?

33:13

Well, it's because of unbelief. Same thing that happened to, uh, to the people of Judah. I mean, I think you're seeing that happen to, to us, uh, in our own time.

33:22

I mean, in, in the, from the time that this country was founded until today, you know, what is it, you know, 200 and, you know,

33:29

I guess what almost 240 years now, um, over 240 years.

33:35

So, you know, in that time Protestants have turned their back on the

33:40

Calvinist biblical faith of their forefathers and, and have largely become, uh, unbelievers.

33:47

I mean, it used to be in mainline, uh, mainline, uh, Protestant churches, you could hear the gospel.

33:53

And I'm speaking here as a Presbyterian, I'm a Presbyterian, so I make, I can, I can criticize, uh,

33:58

Presbyterians a little bit more easily. Um, the, uh, the Presbyterian church

34:04

I belong to, the Bible Presbyterian church, uh, is an offshoot of the old mainline

34:09

Presbyterian church. And the reason the people left was because of, uh, the unfaithfulness, the unbelief, the liberalism of the mainline

34:18

Presbyterian church. And this dates back to the 1930s and 1920s. And even really before that, the fight started in the late 19th century, uh, liberalism, you know, versus biblical, you know, the liberals versus the, uh, the fundamentalists as they used to, to frame that back, uh, back in the day.

34:35

And the, the liberals really gained control of the mainline

34:41

Presbyterian church in the 1920s. And they really solidified that in the 1930s.

34:46

Um, one of the things that, that kind of marked the end of, of the, the fight was when they, they booted, uh, um, uh,

34:55

Mencken, not Mencken, uh, Machin, excuse me, I'm confusing my people when they, uh, uh, kicked out, uh,

35:05

John Gresham Machin, uh, from the, uh, from the Presbyterian church. And then he went on, he founded the

35:11

Orthodox Presbyterian church, uh, from that and, and from the Orthodox Presbyterian church, that's where the, the

35:17

Bible Presbyterian church came. But, you know, these groups, you know, had to leave the mainline

35:23

Presbyterian church because it had become so corrupt. And, and of course, now today, instead of hearing the gospel in the mainline

35:29

Presbyterian church, what do you get? You get, you get gay, gay weddings. And in fact, I had a family member, um, some family members of mine, they, for a long time attendees of a, of a, uh,

35:41

PCUSA, that's the main, the old mainline, the biggest Presbyterian denomination in the United States.

35:47

They attended the church there and that entire congregation left the PCUSA here just within the last few years.

35:53

The reason for that was over the whole same sex marriage thing. You know, the PCUSA embraced it, the church said, we don't want to go that way.

36:02

And to their credit, they left. Yeah, I'm glad that they did that. But, you know, the, the

36:08

PCUSA is still the biggest Presbyterian church in the United States. And when people think about Presbyterians, a lot of times that's what they think of, you know, and you read this stuff in the paper and, oh, they've got all this really obviously unbiblical stuff going on.

36:20

And they think, well, all Presbyterians are like that. Well, they're not. I mean, there are still Presbyterians who actually do believe the

36:26

Bible. And there are Presbyterian denominations that do teach the gospel of justification by belief alone.

36:35

There are Presbyterian denominations that do uphold the infallibility and the inerrancy of Scripture.

36:41

They do. There are. There are faithful Presbyterians. But you're not going to read about them probably in the headlines of your newspaper or maybe headlines on the internet now.

36:52

I guess newspaper almost sounds kind of old -fashioned, doesn't it? Who reads newspapers anymore? But yeah,

37:01

Protestants, they've abandoned the Bible as their source of knowledge about matters of salvation.

37:09

And not only that, but they've also abandoned the Bible in matters of about politics and economics as well.

37:18

And what I wanted to do was, you know, I titled this episode, you know,

37:24

The Conservatism and Autopsy. Now, that particular title comes from an essay that was written by someone who has had a huge influence on my life.

37:37

If you've watched my blog or listened to any of my podcasts, you've probably heard me talk about John Robbins, the late

37:43

Dr. John Robbins. And, you know, I think he was a truly extraordinary Christian and a wonderful teacher and someone who has had a profound influence on my own thinking.

37:55

And I started reading his work back around the year 2000. And the essay that I'm going to talk about here today,

38:03

Conservatism and Autopsy, was an essay that he published in 2002.

38:11

And I distinctly remember when I read that, and it had a very powerful impact on me.

38:16

In fact, it was one of the very few things. I remember I sat down in front of my computer to read it. And after I'd read the article, and I stood up,

38:26

I was a different man. You know, I had changed between the time I sat down and the time

38:31

I stood up. It had that kind of an impact on me. That was a permanent change. I mean, I've never gone back to thinking the same way

38:38

I did before I read his essay, Conservatism and Autopsy. It really slammed home some truths that I was kind of getting at a little bit on my own.

38:51

But this essay really put those together for me. And I wanted to share a little bit of what he said here.

38:59

Now, I can't go over everything that he talks about in that essay just in our discussion here today.

39:06

But I think we can at least talk some about it. Let me go ahead and get that here on the screen.

39:15

Little screen share here. All right. So here's the

39:21

Conservatism and Autopsy. And there's an editor's note.

39:27

This particular essay was originally published in 1978. And he went back and he republished it in 2002.

39:37

And he actually expanded it a bit from the original publication. That's one of the things he talks about in the editor's note.

39:45

Let me go ahead and just start here from the very first paragraph, and then we can kind of break it down a little bit.

39:51

This is what John Robbins wrote, quote, It is not the purpose of this essay to provoke an altercation with any conservative or with any

39:58

Christian who believes that conservatism is good and ought to be defended. This essay is rather a recognition of an already existing state of hostilities between Christianity and conservatism.

40:10

Hostilities initiated by the conservatives themselves. It may come as a surprise to some readers that there is a distinction between Christianity and conservatism, let alone a state of hostilities.

40:23

And for that reason alone, this essay is necessary. Now, I remember when I first read those words,

40:29

I just, wow, I've never seen anything like this. Now, one of the things that I learned from reading this essay, or maybe

40:41

I should say this, just to kind of give you a little sense of my thought process leading up to this essay.

40:47

I had, really from my youth up, I'd always been someone who favored limited government, free market economics, and capitalism, those kinds of things.

41:02

I didn't have a great philosophical grounding in them, but it always seemed to me that I've always been someone who favored freedom, favored liberty.

41:11

And I remember I first kind of got a little bit more sophisticated in my thinking about that when

41:18

I started reading Walter Williams. This was back in the early to mid 80s. He's an economist, actually just recently passed away.

41:24

And I did a podcast on him about a month, month and a half back or so. Someone that really is an intellectual hero of mine and has been for many years and will continue to be.

41:35

But I first started reading him, and he was a libertarian. And I love the way that he argued. He argued very systematically, very persuasively for limited government and for sound money, these types of things, for liberty, for capitalism, for political freedom.

41:56

And I actually became, I literally became a card -carrying member of the

42:01

Libertarian Party for a while. And after a while, though, I started to get a little bit uncomfortable with libertarianism, because I'd look at it, and some of the conclusions that libertarians came to troubled me.

42:17

I wasn't a Christian at that time, but the libertarians, as you may be aware, they have this thing, most of them, the centerpiece of their philosophy, something they call the non -aggression principle.

42:30

And the non -aggression principle, I don't have it here in front of me, but it states basically that you're not allowed to initiate violence against someone.

42:42

And this is really the fundamental principle of their philosophy is this non -aggression principle. Well, I mean, it leads to all sorts of things that I wasn't very comfortable with.

42:53

I mean, it would lead to things like, say, permitting abortion, for example. I know there are libertarian thinkers, major libertarian thinkers, like Murray Rothbard, for example, who believe that you can justify abortion based upon that.

43:09

You can justify all kinds of things like, say, same -sex marriage and open homosexuality as a result of that.

43:17

You can do that, and that's all justifiable under libertarianism. And I just wasn't super comfortable with it.

43:22

As I said, I wasn't a Christian, but those things troubled me. And so I started to look for something else, and I came across some of the writings of Bill Buckley, and in particular the

43:35

National Review. And I started reading that, and this was a long time ago. I mean, this was maybe in the 1990s.

43:43

And I became a conservative, or I was certainly very much influenced by conservative thinking.

43:51

But over time, I started to get a bit uncomfortable with that. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in time.

43:58

But by the time I read this essay in 2002, I was at a point where I was just like, you know, there's some things about conservatism that leave me troubled.

44:08

And this essay, when I read it, Conservatism and Autopsy, it kind of just kind of gave one final last big shove to my conservatism and kind of pushed it over the edge permanently.

44:23

And I don't, I mean, sometimes I'll call myself a conservative. I think a lot of people would say I'm a conservative, but I really don't think of myself that way.

44:31

I don't claim to be a conservative. And some of the reasons for that, I think, will become evident as we talk a little bit about this essay.

44:38

So, you know, we had this first paragraph here where, you know, John Robbins talks about, oh, you know, he makes the point, you know, that conservatism and Christianity are not the same thing, and that there's a state of hostility that exists between them, and that that state of hostility was initiated by the conservatives themselves.

44:56

And he goes on to talk in his essay. Let's go ahead and get that back up on the screen here.

45:02

There we go. Okay, yeah, there we go. All right. So we got that essay back up on the screen, and he talks the first sort of subsection, he talks about conservatism as non -Christianity.

45:14

And he says, the trouble with conservatives is the same as the trouble with liberalism. It is not Christian. If one were to scrutinize the index of George H.

45:22

Nash's classic, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, you'd be hard -pressed to find even one Christian listed there.

45:28

It is safe to say that of the 24 contributors to an anthology of conservative thought edited by William F.

45:36

Buckley Jr., not one, including Buckley himself, is a Christian. Now, this is one of the things that kind of began to bother me about conservatism, and that is there weren't any

45:50

Christians involved. I mean, you would read through it, and you would find Roman Catholics, you would find Jewish authors, you would find atheists, for example, but there weren't any

46:00

Protestants. They weren't there. They just didn't exist. I kept asking myself, well, where are the

46:05

Protestants? Where are these guys? Well, they didn't exist. And it was interesting to finally come along and to read what

46:12

John Robbins said, and he says, yeah, they're not. I mean, these people are not

46:18

Protestants. They're not Christians. They don't believe in—and when I say Christian, when

46:25

John Robbins talks about this, he means that in one of two senses. He means either, number one, someone who is a genuine believer, that is, one who is justified by faith alone, through grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, someone of that sort.

46:43

I mean, that's the biblical gospel, justified by faith in Christ alone, and that faith is a gift of God's grace.

46:51

Or someone who is maybe not a Christian, but inconsistently accepts the political and the economic ideas taught by Christianity.

47:00

Now, Christianity has a distinct view on politics and economics.

47:07

John Robbins, in another one of his books, In Ecclesiastical Megalomania, he talks about this. He called it constitutional capitalism.

47:14

You know, that is, that the political view of the Bible is a constitutional republic, and the economic system of the

47:21

Bible is capitalism, the system of free enterprise. And he called that complex the two constitutional capitalism.

47:28

That's the view of the politics and economics of the Bible. And of course, that's what we had at the foundation of the

47:35

United States of America. We had a constitutional capitalist system. And there are people who are not

47:42

Christians who actually do inconsistently accept that. And unfortunately, there are also Christians, and I think even people who are—I'm saying people who are genuine believers, who are really ignorant of what the

47:54

Bible teaches on those subjects. And as a result, I think sometimes get pulled in one direction or another, kind of away from that, because they've never, ever had anyone teach them about what the

48:06

Bible says about politics and economics. But one of the things I was coming to, and this was at a time when

48:13

I—I became a Christian in 1996 at the age of 30. So I was reading Buckley, I was reading the conservatives right about the same time that I became a

48:22

Christian. And then after I became a Christian, I became even more and more concerned about some of the things that I was reading.

48:29

And the fact that there weren't any Protestants, it didn't seem like, who were major conservative theorists, that troubled me.

48:36

Why is that, I said to myself? Well, we find in John Robbins' essay that it's because philosophically speaking, political conservatism is not only is not

48:47

Christianity, but it's actually hostile to it. And the next sort of subsection in his essay here is called,

48:53

Conservatism is Anti -Christianity. He says, conservatism as a political movement displays as much variety of thought as liberalism.

49:01

Yet both liberalism and conservatism are united in their anti -Christianity. Both are tolerant, but neither will tolerate

49:07

Christianity. It is a mistake to think that conservatism, conservatism, as opposed to liberals and liberalism, are neutral on the issue of Christianity.

49:15

There is and can be no neutrality. The conservatives seem to recognize this, but unfortunately

49:21

Christians do not. Many Christians still believe that politics is an endeavor that can be pursued shoulder to shoulder with conservatives.

49:29

They believe that there's common ground upon which both Christians and conservatives can stand and build or rebuild a free society.

49:37

So this is, you know, this is a serious problem. You know, I asked before, you know, a little while back, you know, so how did we get here?

49:46

How did we get to this situation where basically you've got the

49:51

Democrats, the liberals, the progressives, the social justice warriors, the wokesters, all these people.

49:56

How is it that they're running the entire country now? They say they're in power, not just in government.

50:02

They have the White House, they have the House of Representatives, they have the Senate. But it's not just that.

50:08

I mean, they have all the major corporations, they have the schools, they have the universities, they have all of the media outlets, you know, the newspapers, the

50:16

TV stations. They have, you know, all of the big tech companies out there in Silicon Valley.

50:23

They're all woke. You've got the entertainment industry that's dominated by the wokesters.

50:30

You know, in Christians, it's almost like they don't even exist. You know, how did we get to this point? Well, in one way,

50:37

I mean, of course, large numbers of formerly faithful churches abandoned the gospel of Jesus Christ.

50:43

They abandoned the Calvinism of the people who founded this country. But even beyond that, you know, the faithful remnant, you know, even people who are genuine believers have found themselves led astray and end up trying to pursue, you know, building or rebuilding freedom in the

51:05

United States with conservatives who are actually philosophically hostile to them.

51:11

Instead of relying on the scriptures, you know, they turn to these men who are very clearly people who are hostile to biblical

51:20

Christianity. And John Robbins, he goes and he talks about this. He talks about some of the individuals and some of the really derogatory comments that they make about Christianity.

51:32

And these individuals he talks about, people like, say, Eric Vogelin. Now, that may be a name that you're not familiar with, but he's a major conservative political theorist.

51:42

And so what he says is something that has a tremendous amount of effect on the intellectual climate, on the conservative intellectual climate, and even on people who, like I say, who've never heard his name.

51:57

That's one of the funny things about philosophy and about academics and scribblers, what have you, as some people call them.

52:06

You know, they can have an effect on people who've never even heard their name, but these ideas just kind of get out there.

52:13

And Eric Vogelin is an example of this type of thing. One of the things that, and he quotes him,

52:19

I'm just going to kind of paraphrase it, but John Robbins quotes him, he talks, this

52:24

Vogelin fellow, he calls Calvin's Institutes a Gnostic Quran. I mean,

52:32

I think that's a pretty derogatory way to refer to a man who did more to systemize biblical

52:41

Christianity, probably than anybody else, at least certainly in modern times.

52:46

I mean, I think he's the greatest systematic theologian, or at least

52:52

I think you could certainly argue that he is, of all time, you know, it was John Calvin. And yet he refers to Calvin's Institutes, which is

53:00

Calvin's main work of theology, as a Gnostic Quran, and he has nothing but contempt for it.

53:06

And again, this is a major conservative theorist. One of the main points that John Robbins makes about the conservatives is he says that, you know, there is their denial of total depravity, and this is one of the ways in which the conservative movement, not just individual conservative writers, but the conservative movement is actually hostile to Christianity.

53:29

He says, conservatives are fond of saying that they, unlike liberals, believe that man is depraved, that he is not by nature either good or perfectible.

53:36

It is not enough to say that man is depraved, however, when one is discussing the relationship of Christianity to conservatism.

53:43

The question is whether conservatives accept the biblical doctrine of man's depravity, and the answer is that they do not.

53:50

This can be seen most clearly in two areas, epistemology and ethics.

53:56

Okay, so I know everybody wants to just run away now. Oh no, he said epistemology. Epistemology, I know that that can, you know, if you haven't had philosophical training, that might sound like a pretty intimidating term.

54:10

Basically, epistemology is simply the, is a branch of philosophy that answers the question, how do you know?

54:18

You know, when any of us, when we make a claim to knowledge, someone can always come and say, well, how do you know?

54:26

You know, I could say the sky is blue, and someone could say, well, Steve, how do you know that? I could say, well, I look out the window and I see the sky is blue.

54:35

Or I could say the grass is green, and someone say, well, how do you know the grass is green? I could say, well, I'm looking out my window and I can see that the grass is green.

54:42

You know, so in a case like that, I'm appealing to sensory experience, and I'm saying that my senses, my eyesight is the basis for my knowing the color of the sky and the color of the grass.

54:56

And epistemology is simply, you know, answers that question, how do you know? Now, I don't want to get deep into, to epistemology here today.

55:08

I don't, that's not the point that I'm driving at here. But when it comes to answering that question, how do you know, conservatives usually give, they give an answer.

55:19

They say, well, okay, we can come to knowledge by some combination of science, revelation, reason, tradition, and sensation.

55:32

But Christianity teaches that we know what we know, not through any combination of science or revelation or reason and tradition, all these other things that that the conservatives like to cite.

55:44

As Christians, we say we know things because the Bible teaches them. Either they're expressly set down in the scriptures, or we can come to a logical conclusion based on the statements in the scriptures, the 66 books of the

56:01

Bible. So in terms of how we know things, Christians and conservatives give very different answers to that question.

56:09

And then there's also a matter of ethics. For instance, the conservatives tend to be natural law people.

56:16

In other words, conservatives say, okay, how do we, you ask a conservative, how do you know right from wrong? How do you know what the right thing to do is?

56:24

And usually their site, you know, well, you can go out and observe nature, and you can derive, you can decide what to do or what not to do, or what we ought to do, what we ought not to do, based on an observation of nature.

56:40

But that's really, and John Robbins makes this point in his essay, he says that's really a type of idolatry, because it's a sort of creature worship.

56:48

You know, but in scripture, we're not told to worship the creature, you know, we're not to worship things that are created, we're to worship

56:56

God. And for Christians, where do we get our ethics?

57:01

You know, how do we know what is right to do and what is wrong to do? How do we know what we ought to be doing or what we ought to avoid doing?

57:09

Well, we know that by the law of God. I mean, the law of God is summarized in the Ten Commandments.

57:14

You know, we don't look to nature to try to determine right and wrong. I mean, nature's under a curse, right?

57:21

I mean, when Adam and Eve fell, I mean, all of creation is under a curse. And there's a lot of things that go on in nature that are pretty terrible.

57:31

You know, nature's red in tooth and claw, right? That's what some people would say. And you can learn all kinds of terrible lessons by looking at nature.

57:39

You can't determine what you ought to do by observing nature. But yet, conservatives, the people that believe in natural law, and conservatives tend to be natural law people, will tell you that you can.

57:51

You know, in the Bible's teaching on what is right and wrong, well, that's ignored or even at times it can be denigrated.

57:59

Now, I say there's a lot in this essay that I can't cover here today. But what

58:05

I did want to do is I wanted to focus and leave you with the, maybe a comment here from the end of the essay.

58:15

Because of course, you know, as I said, we've gotten to a point here where Protestants have become almost, it seems like non -existent, a non -existent force in the running of this country.

58:30

They've almost disappeared. And, you know, what is to be done? I mean, do we have any chance of preserving the freedoms that we still have?

58:39

Do we have any chance of enhancing or expanding them? Well, if any of that is to happen, if we're to have any kind of a future at all, we have to get back to believing the things that the people who founded our country believe.

58:56

We have to get back to the Calvinism of the people who founded our nation. And let me read, here's a brief quote here from John Robbins.

59:08

He says this, quote, conservatism has no ideology, no systematic thought, but the

59:13

Christian system is Christianity, not the compromised Christianity of the Judeo -Christian tradition, or the superstitious

59:20

Christianity of the middle evilists, nor the irrational Christianity of the ersatz evangelicals and Romanists reformed, but the clear, logical, and robust Christianity of the

59:30

Reformation. The proclamation of that Christianity must begin with the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

59:37

What we call Western civilization, including the freedoms we still enjoy in the United States, is the product of the bold proclamation of the gospel in the 16th and 17th centuries.

59:47

If the freedom we still possess is to be kept and enlarged, it can be done only if Christians clearly teach, and the

59:54

Holy Spirit makes many believe the gospel they hear. That is the way freedom emerged the first time, and that is the only way it can be maintained.

01:00:02

To quote Whitaker Chambers in one of his more lucid moments, political freedom as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the

01:00:10

Bible, but freedom is first a soteriological reading of the Bible.

01:00:17

End quote. So I think, you know, I mean, we live at a time right now things look pretty grim.

01:00:23

You know, things look pretty grim. You know, you can, you know, we look around at the political situation and we see people who are, you know, as Christians we see people who are hostile to everything we believe, and they seem to run everything.

01:00:39

And, you know, it can be, it can be intimidating, and you can almost feel like, like maybe everything is kind of slipping away.

01:00:48

Now, you know, ultimately, you know, you and I, I mean, this world is not our home. As Christians we know that, but that doesn't mean that what goes on here doesn't matter.

01:00:58

I mean, it does, and I would much rather live, and I think most people would much rather live and see their children live in a country that was governed according to Christian principles than a country that was governed according to non -Christian principles.

01:01:14

The fact of the matter is most people in most of history have lived under oppressive governments.

01:01:21

You know, we here in the West have had a tremendous, extraordinary privilege of living under governments that are substantially influenced and formulated under the ideas of the

01:01:33

Word of God. And if we're to preserve or enhance any of that, we're going to have to get back to preaching and believing the

01:01:42

Gospel of Jesus Christ, and not only just that, but also the whole counsel of God. In other words, we need to get back to being

01:01:49

Protestants, and I'm afraid that we've gotten far away from that, and we're seeing the results of it every day all around us.

01:01:58

Well, that's about all I had for this week, so I just wanted to say thanks so much for joining me for the podcast. For those of you who have been watching on the live stream, thanks for joining me for that as well.

01:02:08

I hope to be able to do this at least once a week. I know I've been doing it on Friday nights up until now most weeks.

01:02:16

I've been doing it on Saturdays here the last couple weeks. I'm still trying to find out what works best with my schedule. But anyway, thanks so much for joining me, and I hope to be able to come up with maybe a regular day and a regular time at some point.

01:02:29

If I do, or when I do, I should say, I'll let you know. Anyway, again, thanks so much for listening and for watching.

01:02:35

I really appreciate that. I look forward to talking to you next time. Until that time, may the Spirit of truth guide you in all truth as you read and study