RLL 43 Conservatism: An Autopsy

Hi everybody, it's Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me today for Radio Look Solicit, episode 43. The title of today's episode is Conservatism and Autopsy. And I'd like to welcome also everyone who's watching via live stream.

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

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. And of course, I'm referring to two things in particular.

The elections that were held on Tuesday, January the 6th, or 5th rather, and the fact that you had a couple of pretty hardcore liberal Democrats who were elected in Georgia. And then you had the disastrous Trump rally the very next day on the 6th in Washington, DC.

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

I mean, I looked at it, and it was pretty evident that that was just about the worst possible thing that could have happened. And I guess a few things, maybe what I would want to start off with is just by saying, you know, that those people who rushed the 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. 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 it 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.

But there are going to be some major consequences for Republicans, for conservatives, for anybody who's a Trump reporter, for anybody who really, you know, what I would call themselves is a, you know, an American patriot.

You know, I think that there are going to be some very serious repercussions. And I mean, we were going to have a tough time under a Biden presidency anyway. But with this, it's just 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.

The Capitol Riot and the Coming Backlash

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

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

One of the interesting takes that I found on the violence at the Wednesday rally actually came from Dr. Ron Paul from the Ron Paul Liberty Report. Now, if you don't watch the Ron Paul Liberty Report, do so.

You have to do this. It's one of the, I mean, if you're someone who loves, you know, limited government, you know, sound money, liberty, freedom, these kinds of things, you got to be a part of the Ron Paul Liberty Report.

It's one of the best programs that you'll find anywhere on the internet. He broadcasts every day live at noon, noon Eastern time on YouTube. But he's also puts his work out on a number of other venues.

I believe they're on BitChute for one, and they may be on some others. They're also on Parler as well. So that's another place where you can get the Ron Paul Liberty Report feed. They're also, of course, on Twitter.

But, you know, the way things are going, you wonder how much longer they're going to be on YouTube. 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.

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. And the way things are going right now, it wouldn't surprise me, because, you know, there have been some massive purges of conservatives on some of the big social media channels, especially platforms rather, especially Twitter seems to be very active in this regard.

They banned the president. They even banned Rush Limbaugh, I think, who'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 Rush Limbaugh, well, they can ban pretty much anybody they want to, including you and me.

So anyway, I would really encourage you to sign up for the Ron Paul Liberty Report. I think it's an outstanding program. And it was interesting to listen to Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams discuss the events on Thursdays.

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. You know, one of the points that they made was, you know, there have been maybe dozens, maybe a hundred, I don't know how many Trump rallies have been over, you know, since 2015 up until the president, but there have been a lot of them.

And to my knowledge, to their knowledge, I don't think there's ever been any serious violence ever attributed to Trump supporters. Now, there have been Trump supporters who've been violently attacked.

There's lots of videos from that from 2016, but there isn't video of Trump supporters carrying out acts of violence. Now, myself, I've been to Trump rallies on three occasions. I saw Donald Trump twice.

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

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.

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

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

And this is one of the points that Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams made. And the fact that you had so much violence all of a sudden break out of 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.

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. 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 out of the Trump supporters.

Now, you could explain that in other ways, but there were additional things too that they brought up. 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.

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

But I mean, one of the things that really bothered me about that entire episode, though, was that in looking at, you know, 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.

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 Trump rally. It's written by a fellow named Stephen Lenman.

Now, he's an old school leftist. I mean, he's not a conservative, he's not a Republican. But he actually talks in here about some things that he believed that indicates that the rally may have been infiltrated.

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

I mentioned that I was very concerned about what went on, on Wednesday, on the 6th, with all the happenings at the Capitol. Well, it didn't take long for all my fears to be realized. Twitter, for instance, permanently banned Donald Trump.

His real Donald Trump account is gone. He can't post on that anymore. And I think they've removed all of his tweets as well. I think I went and I checked that yesterday and it's all shut down. 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 Rush Limbaugh. I mean, Rush Limbaugh has been an absolute bedrock, Republican advocate, conservative, public personality for over 30 years. I started listening to Rush Limbaugh in the late 80s.

I mean, he's been doing this a long time. And he's kind of considered mainstream. I mean, he certainly is a veteran. I mean, he received... In fact, at the State of the 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. 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 the technocrats that now seem to run our country.

So you've got increased banning on social media. Of course, this has been going on now for what, over two years now, and even longer than that. It probably goes back four years. But it really started in earnest in August of 2008, when they banned Alex Jones.

And it's just continued that way along those lines ever since. Now, one thing's for sure is by banning Donald Trump, that tells you something about where the real power in this nation lies. It doesn't lie with the elected officials.

I mean, if social media companies are able to ban a sitting president of the United States, well, they can ban any other public official as well. And they can certainly ban you and me. I mean, we don't have anything remotely like the kind of power and influence of a president.

So I mean, it really kind of suggests that the public officials, the elected officials of the United States of America, aren't really calling the shots. That's a big problem. One of the other things that came out of the violence on Wednesday was calls to remove Trump from office.

Now, there have been some people who've called for invoking the 25th 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 judgment of, you know, mentally incapacitated in the judgment of, you know, the cabinet, that he can be removed.

And now the vice president actually has to give his okay to sign off on that whole thing. And Mike Pence has said he's not going to do that. So probably, 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. And it's actually quite amazing how vociferous the Democrats have been when it comes to trying to impeach Donald Trump. And here's an article, I'm going to see if I can do a screen share here, just a moment.

Um, let's see. Here we go. Yeah. Now, here's an article. This is from a liberal website called Vox. And it's got a headline that says, will Trump be impeached or face removal under the 25th 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 in office expires on January 20th.

In the wake of Wednesday's presidential, presidentially incited chaos at the Capitol. Well, I don't know that it actually was presidentially incited. I believe Donald Trump, and I didn't see the speech, but I've heard people talk about it.

And he told them, 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. 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, Vox, um, as does most of the media is going to put the worst possible construction on anything that Donald Trump says. 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, they claim they're going to do. Um, and, uh, you know, all this is going on here with just, what's this?

I'm recording this. It's, uh, it's about 1130 on January, Saturday, January the 9th. Well, his term ends on, on January the 20th. So we're talking here 11 days from now. Um, but they can't seem to wait.

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. 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 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.

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

I don't know. I mean, that, that is, is a, uh, is a possibility. So we'll have to wait and see. I, I think there's a very good chance that the next, Oh, next week and a half could, uh, could be very interesting.

Maybe, uh, you know, we'll be discussing some of that this time next week. I don't know. We'll see. Um, another bit of fallout from, from the, uh, the rally violence on Wednesday, uh, uh, 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 Tuesday's, you know, the, or excuse me, they're going to use the events that took place on Wednesday, uh, as, as justification for doing that.

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

And he wrote a column. I think it was maybe it may have been on Wednesday. It may have been on Thursday. Um, and 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, and 25th amendment, Trump will be an ex-president in 13 days.

The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy part. Cleansing the movement he commands or getting rid of what he represents to so many Americans is going to be something else. Now, now get a load of that, that language he used cleansing the movement he commands.

Now, what does that mean exactly? Um, I think he got some heat for that. And in fact, if you, that's the original wording on it, 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.

Um, but nevertheless, um, you know, Rick Klein wrote what he wrote. That was the, that was his original, his original wording. 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. Uh, you know, and that has some very, uh, very nasty overtones to it. And this isn't coming from an obscure guy either. This is coming from a very prominent fellow.

Now there was another piece. In fact, this was a piece that was, um, it's not by Glenn Greenwald, but it was, it was written about him. And, uh, maybe I'll go ahead and, and share that, uh, that particular piece as well here on screen.

Just a moment. Let me get that done here. Yeah. There's a, a, a piece that appeared and this was on a website. RT has got a headline media and Democrats are launching second war on terror against Americans.

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

And read a little bit of this here. It says some of the very same people behind the original war on terror are now helping to start a new one against Americans. Journalist Glenn Greenwald warned amid a rising crackdown on free speech following the chaos at the U S Capitol.

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

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, I trust. And, uh, here's a tweet that he put out. This is in the article. 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. The new one is aimed inward domestically. It entails many of the same frameworks. They're saying that explicitly. And he quotes, he has a quote here from the wall street journal, and he has a highlight here.

He says, 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. 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.

And I see exactly the same tactics forming the Democrats behind it. Won't even need to study the tactics of neoconservatives from the original war on terror as neocons are their full allies in all this green wall noted.

Anyone who has questions or concerns about it will be demonized as a terrorist sympathizer. So if you say, Hey, you know, I'm pushing all of this, this domestic war on terror, you know, aren't you maybe, isn't that getting a little scary?

Isn't that getting a little bit like a, like a dictatorship? And of course people, you know, the supporters of this, 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.

And he cites a fellow by the name of David Frum. Now David Frum is a very prominent, I guess you'd call him a neoconservative writer, intellectual. He's probably best known to the 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, I guess it was in 2003 in the run up to the war in Iraq. And, and so he's very well known for that. He was a speechwriter actually for the Bush administration.

But now, you know, he's, he's out there criticizing say Tucker Carlson for bringing up the risk that is the genuine risk that people who are say Trump supporters, conservatives, what have you, are facing as a result of the, the activities that took place on, on Wednesday.

And, and he talks about the, these, these conservatives. In fact, he even brings up Glenn Greenwald's name. He says, they talking about the, the conservatives or others who are, are criticizing the, the second war on terror.

He says, they lament the real victims of the attempted violent overthrow of a US election will be those who sympathized with that attempted violent overthrow. So, you know, here they are there, you know, he's, he's saying that, you know, that the people who, that is David Frum is saying that people like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald are lamenting that the victims of the, the attempted overthrow would be those who who sympathized with that overthrow.

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

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

So, I mean, the, the censorship is, is increasing. It's not getting less. It's not getting better. This is something that's becoming consistently worse. You know, the, the first amendment, the idea of free speech is definitely under attack.

Social Media Censorship and the New Domestic War on Terror

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? How on earth did, did we, the United States get into this position?

And in, in my view, that the bottom line with, with loss of the presidential election, the loss of the 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.

In other words, pretty much by the entire American establishment. I think perhaps it's time that, that we Protestants started asking ourselves where we went wrong. You know, where did we go wrong? You know, the prospects of our nation are not getting better.

You know, I mean, you know, you, back in the day, you know, I remember growing up and this was maybe in the late 70s, early 80s, you know, there was always this talk about the, the evangelical right or the religious right.

Well, nobody even talks about that anymore. You know, there were, you know, organizations such as, you know, the Moral Majority, and, you know, that was with, you know, it was led, headed up by Jerry Falwell.

There were others, but that was one particular prominent one. But it doesn't seem that the Protestants have any influence about what goes on in this country at all anymore. Then not only think, in our countries, it's not getting better.

I mean, things are not getting better. 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, we're becoming less free.

We're not shrinking government. I mean, that used to be something that, that conservatives at least used to, to pretend that they supported. But government's not shrinking, 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. There have been a number of financial commentators have pointed out that about 25 of the dollar currency units that have ever been created in the history of the country were created within, in 2020.

25%. Now that's an extraordinary amount. I mean, that tells you how fast government is growing, how big it's getting. 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.

Well, it's not improving. I mean, I can tell you this just in my own experience here locally, where I live. I mean, I live in the, the greater Cincinnati area in Hamilton County. Now, when I was growing up, Hamilton County was a Republican bastion, famously so.

I mean, it was, it was known that way. It was one of the, the, the, the Beloit, you know, really Republican leaning counties in the state of Ohio. Ohio's kind of interesting that way, because Ohio, if you go up north, say into the, the Cleveland area, 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 Cincinnati's in southwest Ohio, Hamilton County is an extreme southwest Ohio. Hamilton County is where Cincinnati is located. We're actually right, I mean, if you look at a map of Ohio, we're as far southwest as you can get in Ohio.

We border Indiana on the, on the west side, and Kentucky on the south. And this part of the state is actually historically very Republican. But Hamilton County no longer is. Hamilton County's gone Democrat.

And now they're, the, the surrounding areas around Cincinnati are still very Republican, but Hamilton County no longer is. And in fact, just to kind of prove to you what I'm talking about, Hamilton County just, I don't know what the right word is, installed, or swore in, or, or what have you, a new sheriff.

And, and the sheriff, she is, she's, she's a lesbian. Now, it would have been unthinkable, oh goodness, even just a few years ago, to see 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. 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.

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. There was a tweet that I saw this past week, I thought was, was very telling.

And it was by a fellow named Dave Weigel. He's a political reporter for the Washington Post. Again, he's a prominent guy. He's one of the blue checkers on Twitter. You know, if you go on Twitter, you got these people, these special people with the blue check mark next to their name, 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. And, and Dave Weigel is somebody who's a, he's a writer for the Washington Post.

And this is what, what Dave Weigel said. He said that, and this was on January 6, he said, Protestants locked out of the top offices for the first time ever. And by top offices, he expands on it. He means things, he means President, Chief Justice, Speaker of the House, Majority Leader.

Now, I suppose maybe you could argue, say, oh, oh, well, well, well, Kamala Harris is, is a Protestant. Well, you know, maybe in some nominal sense, I think she's a Baptist, but she's not a Christian.

And I think that's very obvious from the comments she makes and from the policies that she supports. No, she's not a Christian. I mean, she's maybe nominally an evangelical, but she's not a Christian.

And in the, someone commented on Dave Weigel's tweet, this fellow named Jesse Curtis, who bills himself, apparently he's a professor of history or history professor. 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. Less than a century ago, this would have been front page news and major social tension. Now, it's just quaint trivia.

So, I mean, that's what's happened. I mean, the United States was, I think, 98 Protestant at its founding. And it was really the Protestant faith, the Calvinism of the people of the United States that gave the nation the shape that it has.

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

And you have to ask yourself, well, what happened? You know, how could that possibly happen? And I think to help answer that question, you can go and you can actually turn to the book of Isaiah. And Isaiah, he wrote this about Judah in his day.

This is what he wrote, quote, Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your land? Strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, is overthrown by strangers. End quote. Now, the people of Judah in Isaiah's day were experiencing the covenant curses that God had warned them about when they came into the promised land.

You read that back, and I think it's in Deuteronomy, you know, when they had crossed into the promised land, and God spelled out for them, you know, blessings and curses. I mean, if you obey my word, if you follow the covenant that I've set forth for you, you're going to have all of these blessings.

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

Now, all of those things happened, too, because of unbelief. Now, Isaiah, it was still about 100 years or so before the, maybe a little bit more than 100 years before all of those curses finally came fully to fruition, but the nation was already seen at that time, and the reason that they were experiencing that was unbelief.

And I think that as Protestants, 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 our forefathers founded? Well, it's because of unbelief.

Same thing that happened to the people of Judah. I mean, I think you're seeing that happen to us in our own time. I mean, from the time that this country was founded until today, you know, what is it, you know, 200 and, you know, I guess what, almost 240 years now, over 240 years.

So, you know, in that time, Protestants have turned their back on the Calvinist biblical faith of their forefathers and have largely become unbelievers. I mean, it used to be in mainline Protestant churches, you could hear the gospel.

And I'm speaking here as a Presbyterian, I'm a Presbyterian, so I can criticize Presbyterians a little bit more easily. The Presbyterian church I belong to, the Bible Presbyterian church, is an offshoot of the old mainline Presbyterian church.

And the reason the people left was because of the unfaithfulness, the unbelief, the liberalism of the mainline Presbyterian church. And this dates back to the 1930s and 1920s. And even really before that, the fight started in the late 19th century, liberalism, you know, versus biblical, the liberals versus the fundamentalists, as they used to frame that back in the day.

And the liberals really gained control of the mainline Presbyterian church in the 1920s. And they really solidified that in the 1930s. One of the things that kind of marked the end of the fight was when they booted Mencken, not Mencken, Machen, excuse me, I'm confusing my people, when they kicked out John Gresham Machen from the Presbyterian church.

And then he went on, he founded the Orthodox Presbyterian church. From that, and from the Orthodox Presbyterian church, that's where the Bible Presbyterian church came. But, you know, these groups, you know, had to leave the mainline Presbyterian church because it had become so corrupt.

And of course, now today, instead of hearing the gospel in the mainline Presbyterian church, what do you get? You get gay weddings. In fact, I had a family member, some family members of mine, they, for a long time, attendees of a PCUSA, that's the old mainline, the biggest Presbyterian denomination in the United States.

They attended a church there, and that entire congregation left the PCUSA here just within the last few years. 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. And to their credit, they left. You know, I'm glad that they did that. But, you know, the 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, and they think, well, all Presbyterians are like that.

Well, they're not. I mean, there are still Presbyterians who actually do believe the Bible. And there are Presbyterian denominations that do teach the gospel of justification by belief alone. There are Presbyterian denominations that do uphold the infallibility and the inerrancy of Scripture.

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. I guess newspaper almost sounds kind of old-fashioned, doesn't it?

Who reads newspapers anymore? But yeah, Protestants, they've abandoned the Bible as their source of knowledge about matters of salvation. And not only that, but they've also abandoned the Bible in matters about politics and economics as well.

Protestant Decline, Unbelief, and the Loss of National Influence

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

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

And I started reading his work back around the year 2000. And the essay that I'm going to talk about here today, Conservatism and Autopsy, was an essay that he published in 2002. And I distinctly remember when I read that.

And it had a very powerful impact on me. In fact, it was one of 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, I was a different man.