Classical Liberalism: Part III - The Postwar Consensus

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00:14

Welcome, once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, joined again with Ben Crenshaw and Timon Klein.

00:22

How are you guys doing? Good. How are you, John? Doing all right, except I just found out half an hour before recording that half my closet in my kitchen is rotted out.

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So I'm going to have to go in the rest of the day and do some very Christian nationalist manly work in there and figure out what's going on.

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That sounds like idolatry to me. I don't know. Yeah. Don't exert yourself too much. It's true. I could build them up.

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I mean, you should be, you know, seeking godliness. I should be. Why am I even on this podcast?

00:54

So anyway, all jokes aside, there is an issue right now, obviously, in the

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Middle East, and I thought it would be a good launching pad for this series. This is part three for those who are just tuning in on what are we talking about?

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Liberalism. I almost forgot what our subject was. I was going to say nationalism, not liberalism. And, you know, there's some interesting things, some almost like deep seated, it seems to be pathological things about Europeans and Americans that are being manifest right now.

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And I want to start the whole thing off. We're going to talk about Israel first. But Tymon, you posted this clip on Twitter.

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This is from Henry Kissinger, who, of course, was deeply involved in American foreign policy and government for,

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I think, what, since the Nixon administration? At least. And here's what he had to say. I'm assuming this is fairly recently.

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It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different cultural and religious and concepts because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that.

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OK, it's interesting coming from Henry Kissinger. It reminds me, who is the guy?

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There was a news anchor. Was it Brian Williams? A few years ago, his last segment, right, he was about to retire and he just decided to go off on how bad

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America was. And everyone thought at the time, like you contributed to the media being as bad as it is.

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And I get the same feeling. So, Tymon, why did you post that? Yeah, so, I mean,

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Kissinger, I mean, he's not beloved, I would say, by by a lot of liberals in the sense that he's he's blamed for a lot of the things that they dislike about the

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Nixon administration's subversion of the foreign policy establishment. And for better or worse, you know, the opening of China, what have you.

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You know, they do they do some things that are not acceptable to the establishment. And that's that you can you can read things about this.

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That's probably why Nixon met his demise. And Kissinger's kind of wrapped up in that, accused of war crimes and all kinds of things, even though he won the

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Nobel Peace Prize. But we know that doesn't take much. I mean, Obama got it, too. Right. So but anyway, so he but at the same time, in a weird way, he is still very much accepted by things like the

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Council on Foreign Relations and mainstream foreign policy blob academia.

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And he continues to pontificate on foreign policy pretty regularly. I think

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Neil Ferguson is still working on this massive award winning biography of him. And, you know, so he's kind of stuck around in a weird way.

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And what's strange here, though, is this was with Politico, an interview. I'm not I'm not sure exactly from when it is either.

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But it's fairly recent because he's he's very old. And it's the reason I posted it is because, you know, here's a guy that even though I think he would describe himself as a political realist in many ways, you know, is part of the construction of the postwar liberal national or international order as it stands.

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But here he is kind of, as I as I tweeted, discovering late 19th and early 20th century objections to mass immigration, which which are now completely discarded as being bigoted or whatever.

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And he's being a realist. He's saying, you know, you introduce these incongruent kind of commitments, beliefs, cultural backgrounds, whatever.

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I mean, it's only you can like them or dislike them. The fact of the matter is it's going to create disruption.

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And this is really stupid for countries to do at scale if you value the longevity and stability of your nation.

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So it's a very the point was this is a super rudimentary point to past generations.

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But here is, you know, a former secretary of state almost half a century after leaving office, declaring it like it's some kind of revolution that he's the revelation that he's discovered.

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And, you know, you can tell the guy interviewing him is kind of a bit uncomfortable with this, with the assertion.

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So it's it's it just shows the utter state of like the foreign policy establishment that they're just now starting to say, wait a minute.

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Oh, maybe, you know, there's there's there's facts on the ground. We have to consider in making these policies that have basically been on the leash for the past, you know, at least quarter century with reckless abandon.

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So I thought it was an interesting sort of cultural artifact to put out. Well, he's questioning one aspect of what we call some call the postwar consensus, that these different basically commitment to,

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I guess, multiculturalism or pluralism. And and he's saying, I mean, he's oversaw much of this.

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And now he's saying that maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Maybe it didn't work out so well. Maybe that produces conflict.

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And as I'm watching this video that you posted, I'm thinking about two hours south of me in New York City right now.

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There have been protests over the last few days, pro -Palestinian, pro -Israeli factions going at it on an issue that is really halfway across the world for them.

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Actually, it's around the world. It's the other side of the world. And and it's affecting us. It's affecting other

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European countries as well. We've seen the videos of college campus protesters in favor of Palestine.

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Obviously, there's a lot of pro -Israeli sentiment in especially elite circles, liberal or otherwise.

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And it just strikes me as interesting for a country that has an open border and many

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European nations do as well to be so concerned all of a sudden about what's happening in the

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Middle East to the point of wanting to put more money. We give them a lot of money anyway,

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Israel, and give them more money, just like we did Ukraine when we're in debt, when we have a crisis on our hands and our own inner cities, when we have so many things to be concerned about at home.

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It's it's almost seems insane or pathological, right, to be this obsessed because some people are not saying everyone, but to be this obsessed with what's happening across the world.

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And I'm sure some would argue that, well, this will affect us. The terrorists will come to us or whatever if we don't. But I want to get your takes on this, because I think it's this gets right into the post war consensus and we're seeing it on display in part, at least in front of us in the reaction to the

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Israeli conflict. Ben, we'll start with you. I mean, do you see this relationship? Yeah, certainly.

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I mean, if you you know, I like to beat up on the progressives because they had a kind of a rejection of America as it was founded and they had some pretty poor ideas politically.

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But, you know, not all of their sensibilities were wrong. Like they were actually, you know, American first nationalists.

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They had a healthy concept of nationalism. I mean, Wilson had his

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League of Nations and he wanted to flex American muscles abroad. And so did Teddy Roosevelt. And they did that, but they did it under the concept of kind of this uplift of humanity, which they were going to to raise everybody to America's standards.

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Well, what you have with the liberal consensus in the middle of the 20th century is a rejection of progressive nationalism for this kind of international order that downgrades any kind of American first self -identity, but at the same time, like just flexes raw

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American economic and military power to impose its will. So you have like a loosening of the bonds of America.

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At the same time, you have this, you know, this massive military international military order, as we see right now, which is carrier groups flung across the four corners of the globe.

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And we're just going to move them around like chess pieces on a board to bully other countries if they if they dare go against America's wishes.

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So it's a it's a strange kind of schizophrenic, incoherent policy in the middle of the 20th century.

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We see things like, you know, another another. A strength of the progressives was their immigration policy, in fact, they up till the 1965

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Immigration and Nationality Act. They actually had what was called a nation of origin quota system in which they required that, like 70 percent of all immigrants come from the

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UK, Ireland or Germany. And the 65

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Immigration and Nationality Act just destroyed that for a family's first immigration policy that pulled from a lot of eastern and southern

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European countries and especially from Asia and Latin America. So the liberal consensus by the by the 1960s in terms of a multiculturalism over and against nationalism and immigration policy just totally blew open the kind of consolidarity, the the solidarity, the common cultural linguistic customs, religion, norms, way of life that had centered around Anglo -American,

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Northwestern European life for basically three and a half centuries.

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And so that's in some ways like we're reaping the the consequences of this six years later, but it's something that that's started in the 60s.

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So, yes, it's it's it's both a domestic problem in America, a weakening of American identity and bonds and just any kind of just sensible national polity.

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It's like, in fact, there's never really been a purely a truly pluralistic state.

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It's always a phase you pass through. You know how like Marxism was like, you know, capitalism is a phase on the way to, you know, the socialist or communist brotherhood of of everyone.

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Well, pluralism is always a phase from some kind of unity, some kind of homogeneity to another kind of homogeneity.

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And so that's what's happening right now. We're we're passing from that older Anglo -American homogeneity into some other homogeneity.

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Who is going to be? Is it going to be some minority majority consensus later?

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It's hard to know, but it's I mean, it's already changed America in ways that we can't go back back on.

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And I think the last thing I'll say right here is, you know, others have pointed this out, but with this these attacks on Israel, I think, you know, once again, you see the neoconservative and the neoliberal, you know, kind of this projection of the love and the hope of nationalism onto Israel because Americans, we don't have that.

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We've been told that's bad. It's been ripped away from us. And so it has to be expressed with solidarity with Israel.

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And, you know, all these, you know, Nikki Haley and Ted Cruz, all these people are coming out,

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Mike Pence, like Israel's enemies are America's enemies and a fellow democracy.

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We must defend it. And all these statements. Well, that's a part of the pathologies of liberalism that began to break down in the late 20th century and the kind of multiculturalism and international order that's also just utterly corrupt.

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Now, this is just my opinion. I haven't heard anyone say this, Ben. I'm just curious if you think this is plausible, but Gone with the

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Wind was I think it still is the most popular or the box office profit is the most profit adjusted for inflation of any film.

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And of course, the book was a bestseller. And there was this period of time during the progressive era and even stretching into beyond that, that even for northerners, they would look at the

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South as this kind of with a nostalgia that there was this land of knights and almost a medieval kind of land that once existed not long ago that was destroyed.

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And and it's weird because it's it's almost like people who weren't on that side of the conflict are the ones who made these things bestsellers.

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And and there was a need it fulfilled. And I wonder, this is just my own personal thought, whether there's been a transference that sort of American folk culture, this kind of attachment to the homestead, the old ways, many of them

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Anglo -Scotch -Irish, that that attachment has been displaced.

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And now we're trying to find other places for a home. And right now, I think Israel could be that, that there's like this kind of like like they have something that we don't have and there's a hunger for it and we yearn for it.

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And I don't want to be too psychological about this, but you open that door. And this does seem to be a door that if this is true, that this is a postwar consensus thing.

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This is a this is an odd thing, really. It's weird in the grand scheme of history to be this attached as some of us are to a nation halfway around the world.

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And I know there's theological things that come to play in this, but do you see that maybe that transference from more of an

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Americana to now Ukraine or Israel or other places? Yeah, sure.

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I think that's probably has a lot to do with it. I mean, obviously, the Holocaust does have a lot to do with it.

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And the movement for a Jewish state starting in the 1880s and 90s, that's been a long time coming.

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And then, of course, it was the United Nations that basically created the partition plan in 1947.

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Israel accepted it and the Arabs rejected it. They immediately had a war. Israel won.

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So it was basically it was in one sense it was a it was a creation of the

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United Nations, which, of course, after World War Two, I mean, this was like America ran the world in both militarily in terms of our

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GDP, I mean, our economic strength and military strength. No one can match it. Europe was devastated.

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China and Japan utterly destroyed. The Soviet Union emerged as eventually as a competitor.

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But I think in like 1945, in terms of just raw numbers, like America's GDP was like four or five times greater than the

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Soviet Union's. So, I mean, in one way, like America created or brought brought to fruition the, you know, the creation of the

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Israeli state. And so there it does seem to be this kind of this pregnant responsibility, like this is our baby and we we must nourish this.

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And it coincided, of course, with the breakdown of of nationalist fervor in America.

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And of course, part of this was part was was partly due to American elites and academics who told us that nationalism was bad after World War Two, because, my gosh, it'll it'll lead to some kind of xenophobia and some fascism will happen.

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And before long, we'll be at each other's throats. We'll be purging the stranger and and, you know, descend into World War Three.

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So we have nationalism is bad. It's must be eradicated on our shores.

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The same time you create an ethno -national state of Israel. So, yeah, there's totally this transfer going on.

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The UN was right at the beginning of it. America's all in the middle of it. So so, yes, it's this thing that, you know,

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I don't I don't I don't deny or decry or hate the Israelis for having their own state.

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I mean, they have basically rallied around themselves. It's more like I want us to have that.

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I don't I don't begrudge them. I want America to have a nation, too, that has to be centered around some kind of commonalities, common language, heritage, culture, religion and so forth.

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You want to call that ethno -nationalism? That's I don't I don't care the terminology.

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I care more about the ideas. So so, yes, I certainly think there's a projection there.

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There's a historical inheritance and responsibility that we feel for Israel. And I mean,

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Israel has has fought valiantly and defended itself against aggressors.

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And that's how the world works. And here I'll say this one other thing in terms of Israel in the post -war era.

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There's been this, you know, this this hope for a for an international rules based order.

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That's a technical terminology for it. And which we're no longer going to have great power conflict like we did in World War One and World War Two.

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And we're going to govern ourselves through the UN and through peacekeeping troops and through these international agencies and NGOs.

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And we're going to have rules and everybody's going to abide by these rules. And if you mess up, then we're going to slap some sanctions on you.

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It's all going to be this kind of global economic capitalist blowback or something like that. And that's how we're going to run the world.

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And we're never going to go back to a kind of international global state of nature in which the strongest rules.

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Israel's never known anything like that. I mean, they they have lived this kind of Hobbesian state of nature decade after decade because they're surrounded by hostile nations that have basically pledged to wipe them off the face of the earth.

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And so, again, part of the schizophrenia is that from the American global perspective, you want a rules based international order in which we leave behind this older way of life, this great power conflict.

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So we're never going to have a world war again. At the same time, Israel's living this very kind of vicious war of all against all having to defeat its enemies and terrorists decade after decade, year after year.

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So it none of it makes sense. It's trying to make some force, some perfect reality state out of something that can't can't be done.

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And so it is it is part of the just incoherence of the political leadership, both in America and in the

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Western world. Time and just based on what Ben just said about Israel, maybe we can make a pathway for a broader definition of the postwar consensus.

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I mean, this is just one specific thing we're looking at. But what would you say if someone asked you to define that and apply it to various situations?

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What is the postwar consensus? Yeah, well, on a on a cynical reading, and Ben kind of already alluded to this, the postwar consensus is

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American domination in many ways. And in that respect, in a cynical reading of it,

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I don't begrudge it necessarily because you've set up a state of you sort of seized, you know, a an opportunity to to establish dominance where, you know, pejoratively, we would say policing the world.

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But what you would say positively is sort of running the world for for your benefit.

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And so much of what's going on in the Middle East since the mid 20th century has been for that reason.

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We've made a lot of stupid decisions, such as, you know, not realizing that if Afghanistan is too cold for the

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Soviets, it's probably too cold for us. And you're never going to defeat these people. But so lots of stupid, but the general idea is, you know, to run it for for your benefit under at the time in a progressive era, what was considered to be, you know, liberal, liberal values, liberal ways of ways of interacting while maintaining a sort of, you know, a lot of this goes back to the post

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Westphalian kind of order, although that was a little more a little more realist, in my opinion.

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So but the to be less cynical and more more descriptive, you know, the the postwar rules based international order.

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I mean, again, I think Ben's already already mentioned it a little bit of it's it's this idea that as we were talking about in a couple of our last talks, you know, the liberal ambition is to remove the need for conflict, the causes of conflict, which are rooted in as we were just picking up Reno's, I think, very good summary for this strong gods, strong loves.

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Right. You get rid of those, much of which has to do with nationality and everything that's wrapped up in that.

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So we don't have to unpack it again. And so what you do is establish at a global level, at least for the civilized world and progressives and liberals do still have that sense, even if they don't want to say it.

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The real participants, you will mitigate conflict by addressing any disagreements or inevitable micro conflicts through a sort of procedure which is wrapped up in these international bodies we set up after World War Two, which include a massive court system.

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Right. That it's it's very ambiguous. It's very unclear as international law as a discipline kind of always has been since the 17th century, but even more so now because there's a sense in the extent to which you try to formalize international law and makes it more and more porous and more and more ambiguous in a kind of counterintuitive way.

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But you have these court systems, international bodies that are supposed to set agreeable standards for a multiplicity of nations that will then, you know, again, mitigate against against conflict.

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And so it's sort of an arbitration of all, you know, international interaction.

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And this is run, of course, by the major powers more more or less. Right. The Security Council, whatever the big ones, even as some of them, you know, you have

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BRICS or whatever that have tried to form alternative blocks. But at the end of the day, you know, it's the big it really is still the most powerful people are running the world.

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So it's it's kind of a facade in that way. But the idea is we will run the world by rules.

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We'll run it by mutual, you know, sort of arbitration agreements, just like you'd have an employment scenario.

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So you don't actually have to go to the violent route of litigation. You just settle it in house. It's that kind of idea.

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And thenceforth, the the energy, most of the energy from the so -called international community, a term

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I just absolutely despise. It makes no sense, is to constantly rope in and force compliance upon nations that are have not yet fully bought in.

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Now, on the one hand, that includes places that subtly or not so subtly try to subvert this dynamic like China.

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But it also has vestiges of a colonialist attitude, even though they want to deny it and think they're solving that.

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And this is most manifest in conflicts in Africa, right? Trying to to to deal with those which operate at a level of such basic politics that the international leaders of the international order can't really understand them.

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And you see this over and over again, our failures in Africa and even saying that our failures in Africa is a nonsensical statement that only that only does make a semblance of sense within this international rules based order.

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So we're talking, you said rules based, I know, Ben, you said that as well, we're talking about something that would make it makes sense of a lot of the catchphrases and kind of attachments we have where we think democracy is the solution to almost any problem.

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If a culture or a civilization doesn't have it, then that must be their issue and they need it.

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And maybe even by force, we can we can not just set an example, but tell them that they're going to be democratic.

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And things like that where it's it's not so much your attachments to land or language or people, it's more your these this commitment to a rules based system of we want democracy, we want liberal individual rights being protected.

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That kind of thing becomes the standard by which we evaluate someone as whether they're a friend or a foe.

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And we make that distinction. And then they're not part of the international community if they deviate from that.

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That seems to be what you're saying. And I've heard this referred to as the the gay, right, the great

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American empire that is now, I think, probably starting to come to a close.

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That's what it seems like, at least a lot of these fissures in Ukraine and now Israel and pretty soon probably in Taiwan and other places are just foreshadowing of our dollar collapsing.

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And, you know, I don't want any of that. But it's just yeah, it just is reality.

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So Ben, real quick, just one thing to note there, as you were talking that that people should notice is, you know, as this thing thing emerges that we're talking about, that is supposed to establish and maintain global order, right?

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The scope is the globe or at least most of most of the globe that matters the way they are.

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They're able to sell it to people. And this is where the catchphrases come out, right, is not through you're not able to rally support in any in any country's domestic sphere by saying we're going to expend massive amounts of energy and resources and human lives to do this for the sake of proceduralism.

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That doesn't make sense to anybody. So what you do is you transfer actually the strong loves to a new plane and you say it's the international community.

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You're a citizen of the world. This is your scope now. So you broaden the scope and that has some intuitive sense to people because you do as soon as those sort of ideas, even if they've been adulterated, are put forward to you, you do you do have a sense of allegiance and you do feel a sense of belonging.

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And so what we're seeing is you're talking about the economic collapse, the sort of security state collapse in its reach, demonstrated by all of our activity now being completely reactionary rather than proactive in in seeking our interests globally, which is what it was all kind of about.

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You also see the slow collapse of the this is not necessarily pejorative, but the propaganda,

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I guess, basically having a hold on people. Right. So that was my only point. This is where you get the whole idea that attack on Ukraine or an attack on Israel is an attack on the

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United States. That's exactly my point. How is that an attack on us? But it is somehow.

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And then even those within the country who might have ancestors going back to the very period of colonization, settlements, founding, fought in all their wars, those people that have that that heritage might be considered outside of that, like like they're not as American or not as part of the international order as someone in Israel who doesn't even speak our language because they might deviate.

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You know, they're conservative or whatever. They don't. They believe that America's borders should be sealed and we should be an

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Anglo -Protestant country or go back to some tradition that's archaic or considered that now those people end up getting the shaft.

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They become like they're not actually included as part of the in group. So that us versus them always comes out, even though the whole point of the liberal order is to eliminate an us versus them.

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They just transfer it, I think, as you just said, Ben, to another plane. And it's still there. So, yeah, great points.

29:13

I don't know, Ben, if you had anything to add to the post. Yeah, I'll add a couple of things here.

29:22

Yeah, I think I agree with everything Tymon said, well said, you know, if you read somebody like Robert Kagan in his little book,

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The Jungle Grows Back, I believe he's married to Valerie Jarrett and she's right in the middle of all the stuff going on in Ukraine.

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And there's also family and heritage going on there. So don't think that some of the proxy wars that are going on that America is running is not part of personal grievances by the elite class going back generations.

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There's that involved. There's all kinds of corruption, money laundering, all kinds of things going on behind the scenes.

30:00

This global international community, blah, blah, blah is, you know, just filthy rich gets away with all kinds of things, all kinds of actual war crimes and human rights violations.

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All the same time, it's justified upon this discourse of human rights.

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And so what you have, just what Tymon was saying, is you have this kind of transposition of a liberal logic or a liberal discourse around natural rights.

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So you have the natural rights of human beings. Those are understood within the

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American Anglo experience and they're applied. Then this gets transposed into international human rights.

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So now all humans have these rights. It's, again, a part of the liberal universalization of, you know, kind of a political community.

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And so, you know, how dare this is where it gets its moral legitimacy, like, well, how dare you stand by while, you know,

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Rwandans genocide each other? Or I mean, this is the discourse right now. How can you possibly stand what

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Israel is now doing to its ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Gaza? And so even the like, you know, these student groups at Harvard or wherever they are, they're protesting on the basis of of this kind of global international liberal logic of, you know, you know, a global welfare state transfer of wealth from rich to the poor, a kind of decolonization, which is just the inverse of a liberal colonization of human rights violations.

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And yes, of course, this idea of, you know, you because you can't be part of your own national ethnic or heritage any longer.

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You have to love mankind writ large, a love for humanity, qua humanity.

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And and if the liberal can say if the liberal international can say, well, I'm on the side of humanity, then if you oppose them, by definition, you're on this you're an anti -human, you know, you you you hate humanity.

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I mean, if they can claim that for themselves, that can give them the justification to do anything, you know, of course, to wage forever wars across the globe in defense of humanity.

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It's almost as if like you're an alien from outer space if you oppose the international order because you're now an anti -human.

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So it's a totalizing, a globalizing. And I'll say lastly, it also has this transposition of wealth and affluence in terms of a capitalist order that was going to bring prosperity and free trade to individual nations and then was going to kind of take the place of of violent conflict.

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And, you know, America and China were going to get along now because China was liberalizing economically.

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And and this idea in the liberal international order is to use this wealth and influence to placate these strong loves.

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You know, if you can just give everybody not only this kind of this moral sense of profoundness, of loving humanity, and then you can give them everybody a house, you can, you know, raise their standard of living and feed them, they won't they'll be happy.

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You know, they won't care about these things that have long divided peoples and nations that have led to war.

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So it is a kind of international transposition of this affluence and global capitalist idea.

33:44

And for those who think that this is unique to the left or something, I'm remembering Ronald Reagan, who, of course, unfortunately, a lot of the things that are part of this, we can we can not that Reagan came up with them, but he allowed them to continue like amnesty.

33:59

But one of the things he said was, and I don't remember what speech it was, maybe some of maybe you do, but he said that if an alien from outer space came, an alien force, you know, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to see?

34:11

I'm paraphrasing humanity kind of come together to try to fend off that threat.

34:18

And I think that's what you're saying is that that is part of the liberal order. It's not aliens from outer space, but it's it's yet in the minds of the elites.

34:28

But it's other it's been other things. It's global warming is probably one of the big ones right now. It's like this is this alien threat that's coming against all of us that we must we have to band together our markets, even with the

34:40

World Health Organization. We must be under the same rules when it comes to even our personal health care. I mean, how invasive is that?

34:45

But it's all part of this order. And the umbrella of being anti -human, I can think of all the other leftist smears under that racist, misogynist, anti -Semite, all the favorite pejoratives the left likes to use homophobic.

35:00

It all really comes down to that kind of instinct of like you're against humanity. You hate humans.

35:05

We love humans and we're better and we're superior because of that. So there is an us versus them thing.

35:12

That's exactly right, John, if I just jump in on that. So it's not it's not missed the us versus them, you know, is a and this coincides with stuff we were talking about before with friend and enemy distinction, as Ben puts it, the return of, you know, politics, politics, the real kind of deal, substantive goals, ends oriented politics, whatever you want to say that has to take account of these these human realities.

35:39

The us versus them paradigm, friend, enemy distinction, it never leaves. It just it just changes forms.

35:44

Right. So in the in the liberal paradigm, the unique thing about the liberal paradigm is you perhaps for the first time have the benefit of telling yourself you're not doing this and that you are you are in fact defeating the us versus them, the friend, enemy distinction.

36:03

But the the paradoxical thing is that in order to do that, you must have perhaps the most the harshest and most inclusive friend, enemy distinction that's ever existed in terms of politics, because it encapsulates absolutely anyone who defies these these very idealistic on their face, altruistic priors such as I am for humanity.

36:28

Anyone who says maybe even just that's a stupid thing to say is now an enemy of humanity.

36:33

And that, again, is encapsulates a lot of people, as you just listed off the litany of liberal sins that you can commit.

36:42

And then the the basis for the basis for the friend, enemy distinction or some of these more aggressive, realist approaches to politics is always rooted in the protection, maintenance and longevity of your particular commonwealth and people, which is was previously considered a noble goal.

37:01

At this point, the goal that justifies the liberal friend, enemy distinction remains very amorphous.

37:10

And as you know, Ben was pointing out the sort of, you know, questionable motives for many of the policies that are that are justified by the pursuit of this.

37:19

So in that in that sense, it's it's even less defensible. It's at this it's blown up to such a scale of irrationality and over inclusivity that it actually has the potential to perform worse atrocities than than the liberal order was ever set out to put a stop to.

37:39

And I think you're beginning to see some of those things are inklings of those things. This is,

37:44

I think, very applicable for Christians who are listening in because and I want to put it the words in Ben or time in your mouths here.

37:52

You can feel free to chime in, but I'm just going to say it. I think some of the fractures that we're seeing right now in Christianity, even in reformed

38:00

Christianity, where you think that the theology is so similar, why can't these groups get along? They got along two minutes ago.

38:06

Why are they fracturing now? I think it has something to do with what we are talking about, that these fracture lines have developed.

38:14

And, you know, I'll talk about the G3 Christian nationalist controversy even in these terms.

38:20

You know, the theology between myself, let's say, and someone like like a Virgil Walker who just blocked me on Facebook or Twitter, right, is probably pretty similar when it comes to a lot of theological matters.

38:30

Why is it that, you know, he's offended by by me? Or why is it that Owen Strawn is offended by Stephen Wolfe or right?

38:39

Stephen Wolfe is probably the best example of someone who just wrote a book. And it's like everyone who even shared his reformed thinking on many things had to denounce him.

38:48

Why? And I think it comes down to this, that there is a friend enemy distinction going on. And even those within the faith, if you you could believe in the doctrines of grace and all the solos and be part of even the same denomination, right?

39:02

Anthony Bradley was going after Zach Geras just what, two days ago, because Zach Geras is supposedly a kinness.

39:08

Now, I happen to know Zach and Sean McGowan was to Zach and Sean are both in what many would consider interracial marriages.

39:16

I mean, I think they are, you know, and yet they're kinness now. Right. And why is that?

39:24

I think it's what you just said, Simon, the friend enemy distinction is coming out. And they are against this post -war consensus.

39:32

In all of these cases, all of us, myself, Stephen Wolfe, Zach, Sean, you guys, you're critical of this post -war consensus.

39:40

You don't think that there is an in -group. There should be natural organic attachments to things that we have experience with and shared experience with other people that have been built up over time, that that's something that's part of God's good order.

39:53

He made it that way. And there are those within our faith who don't see it that way quite. And and that's what

40:00

I think makes them so offended. So you don't have to say whether you agree with my analysis of that.

40:05

I know that could get you in hot water time and in the very prestigious position you're at at American reformer.

40:12

But but that's how I see it playing out. That's my only explanation for these fractures, because they don't make any other sense otherwise.

40:18

I will go. No, go ahead. Get yourself in hot water first. OK, yeah,

40:24

I'll I'll kind of I'll tread carefully first. So I was going to say something about this concept of Judeo -Christian

40:30

America, because I think a lot of times modern Christianity in America, you know, they they basically use a liberalism in America and then globally as a kind of on -ramp or expression of the hope of a kind of universal global commission.

40:53

This way of reaching the world, the kind of. Universal aspirations of Christianity align very easily with the universal kind of global liberalism and the values and the ideas they talk about, so you're not going to have like an

41:10

Olin Strand or someone who's going to talk they're going to talk about universal human rights. They're going to love that.

41:16

And the idea of a nationalism in a distinction between the rights of a citizen and the rights of a non -citizen not only threatens liberalism, but it seems to threaten the very kind of Christianity that they've come to understand that's really been packaged and brought to them as within this kind of like universal this liberal package.

41:39

And actually, this this concept I was talking to someone about this on Twitter the other day, trying to help them understand they did not this concept of Judeo -Christianity.

41:49

Yeah, right. This concept of Judeo -Christianity was actually is very different than the ancient understanding of by Christians favorable toward ancient

42:02

Hebraism, because we share, you know, the scriptures with the

42:08

Jews of Old Testament. And I mean, that's not necessarily paralleled by the

42:14

Jews, many of whom have rejected Christ, at least those who are practicing modern

42:20

Orthodox Judaism. But but there is this understanding of like, well, Christianity came out of Judaism, and so we share a lot that's different than what

42:29

I'm talking about here with Judeo -Christian values and Judeo -Christian democracy. This was a whole language and an ideology that was developed between World War One and World War Two, really kind of took off after World War Two, especially after the

42:41

Holocaust. And it was actually a means of by which, you know, religiously oriented

42:48

Christians were trying to find a pluralistic religious basis to defend

42:56

American democracy against communism and secularism. And because of the kind of just the material differences in America in the 20th century, lots of immigration, communications revolutions, financial revolutions.

43:10

There was a larger, quote unquote, community in America, and they wanted to find something more than just like the old

43:17

Anglo -White, Anglo -Saxon, Protestant community on which to ground

43:23

American democracy in the 20th century. And so they turned to this Judeo -Christian consensus. Let's make, you know, let's make this this big tent even bigger.

43:33

And this was how, you know, this was now the basis of democracy and how you're going to fight against any kind of authoritarianism or communism in the future.

43:44

And this is also, I think, a lot of kind of the the paradigms, the language, the thought in which like modern

43:53

American Christians are still thinking in terms of like if we try to separate ourselves as Christians from, you know,

44:01

Judaism, then we're betraying America and our founding and democracy and human rights.

44:08

So you have to try to separate genuine biblical theology and Christian practice prior to 20th century iterations and co -opting of that.

44:23

Yeah, I would just I would just piggyback off what Ben's saying there. There's a I would make the same distinction between what in historical kind of studies or historical theology is referred to as political

44:35

Hebraism. That is, you can you can identify, especially in 17th century

44:40

Protestant theorists. I think Todd Rester has written something very good on this. But anyway, which is the use of the

44:48

Old Testament for, you know, your political theology, that you're not just a

44:53

New Testament Christian, as people say today. You use the Old Testament, in fact, for the majority of the construction of your political theology, which is not the same as being a theonomist.

45:03

We'll leave that for another day. But and this is very different. I've I've I mentioned it all the time, but I've never mentioned on this podcast.

45:11

I'll do it again. One of my favorite, for so many reasons, cases of judicial opinions ever is a dissent in the

45:19

Van Norden versus Perry case, which was one of the two Ten Commandments cases in 2005,

45:24

I think. And it's just as John Paul Stevens just ripping to shreds.

45:30

And it's not the whole not the whole opinion is great because he's obviously a progressive. He he thinks this is that the majority of originalist opinion between Rehnquist and everybody else is bad because it's it's thwarting progress.

45:43

But what he does do is absolutely eviscerate their historical case for they call it

45:49

Judeo -Christian values at one point. Another point, it's all three Abrahamic religions. So now it's

45:54

Islam is in there. Right. And like all of this, yeah, you've got to which we can look at the current conflict and be like, that's even crazier to say.

46:04

What does that mean? And but just as John Paul Stevens uses musters a great amount,

46:09

Jasper Adams and all these early late 18th and early 19th century sources to say this is a very recent creation.

46:17

If you want to talk, if you want to be an originalist, have a historic and textual basis for this opinion, that it is perfectly constitutional to demonstrate or to to to show or have the

46:30

Ten Commandments and other religious sectarian sort of texts outside of public buildings, including courthouses, then you need to just ground it in the the

46:41

Christian Protestant or Protestantism in particular of New England and the and the other states and just say that's what it is.

46:48

But, you know, you can't get the votes that way. He like calls them out. He was like, so you've got to appeal to this bigger thing.

46:55

Right. So he's kind of cynical in that way. But I think it's based on what Ben was saying. I think it's there's a lot of truth to that, that that is what was happening in the postwar period.

47:04

And you continue to see its expansion from Judeo -Christian values to Abrahamic values after 9 -11, obviously.

47:12

Right. Now you've got to deal with that problem. And so it's just this continued expansion by neoconservatives in particular to, you know, to propaganda for particular ends.

47:23

And we should point out, as Ben did, and it continues through the early aughts, all of these ends are what the maintenance of the international global order.

47:32

They are not domestically related. You don't see any of them citing some sort of domestic strife that's that's organic and saying we've got to figure out how to integrate here.

47:42

It's all about defeating communism, defeating radical Islam, but not having, you know, war crimes at home or something like that.

47:49

You've got Abu Ghraib and these things coming out of the time. So it's all international. It's none of it is domestically centric.

47:55

And that's because the neocon liberal mindset about these things is very unconcerned with with maintaining the domestic, historically based domestic, you know, kind of people or nation there into the expansion of the international community, because that's what suits them for various reasons.

48:11

So I would I would totally agree. These are these are late creations that that are completely distinct from past Protestant use of Jewish sources, even,

48:23

I mean, of course, you know, the the rabbinical literature, all these things. This is a this is a liberal an aspect of liberal propaganda used for particular ends that subvert the national sovereignty.

48:35

Since we only have like 10 minutes to talk about probably 95 percent of what

48:41

Ben put on the outline, we're going to have to this series is going to have more episodes than I realized at first.

48:46

This will be our postwar consensus series or episode. I think we should probably end it with this because the human rights language is so prevalent in the postwar consensus coming out of the

49:00

UN. I mean, this is what the the Nuremberg trials were based upon, these violations of international law, human rights, these kinds of things.

49:09

And it strikes me as interesting that in Israel you have a class of people, Palestinians, right, so -called

49:16

Arabs, people like some of them different. I think they're mostly

49:21

Arab, if I'm not mistaken, but people who aren't Israeli living in the region. And there's a lot of complaints about the fact that some of them live in refugee camps.

49:31

They can't really get employment. They're not allowed to get employment. They're not allowed to carry firearms. They're not certain things that Israelis can do.

49:39

They are not allowed to do. Right now, this is called by some of those on the hard left, like the

49:45

BLM types, is this is modern apartheid, right? This is Jim Crow. This is all these these these things that people in Africa or of African descent have endured through the years.

49:57

That's the same thing happening to the Palestinians. But there isn't it's just interesting to me, liberal elites don't tend to accept that they tend to be

50:07

OK with Israel doing that, right, to another group of people. That's I've never seen it brought up that that's a violation of international law or human rights with neocons, with people who are on the upper echelons of The New York Times, etc.

50:24

They're not as concerned with those things. But yet at the same time, that's what they appeal to all the time to bash the domestic critics of their own innovative plans.

50:38

So what do you make of this concept of human rights? Like, where did it come from?

50:44

Why is this a biblical thing? Because so many Christians seem very attached to this notion.

50:51

This seems like a modern invention or a fabrication. So, Ben, I know you haven't talked for a while.

50:57

You want to give a shot at that since we have five, 10 minutes? Yeah, I mean, I I definitely think that the the language and discussion of human rights picked up tremendously in the 1930s in America under FDR's presidency or I don't know, imperial rule, you know, like 12 years.

51:21

And, you know, you could have some people argue that it's just another term for natural rights.

51:28

But the natural rights language coming out of, you know, the great international natural rights jurists, you know,

51:35

Christian Wolff and Hugo Grotius and Emmerday Vettel and James Wilson and those guys like they don't talk about human rights per se.

51:44

They talk about rights natural to the human being as created by God, a contingent being with these duties and these responsibilities, these loves, these both temporal and eternal ends created for happiness, created for relationship, created for political society.

52:03

Well, I mean, what you have, of course, is the expansion of the natural rights language to human rights.

52:10

And part of the reason for that was rights were added that were clearly not natural.

52:18

And they couldn't be justified on the basis of any kind of appeal to nature or appeal to tradition or history or scripture or anything like that.

52:27

These were purely conventional, purely positive rights created by both national and international bodies for the sake of justifying, you know, in America, it was a combo welfare warfare state in the 20th century.

52:45

You know, you have a right, you know, in his it's either his 41 or 44

52:50

State of the Union address. FDR says you have a right to be free from fear and free from want.

52:56

Now, if you have a right, a human right to be fear free from fear, I mean, like you can demand,

53:03

I mean, you can demand that people, say, respect your dignity and your and not offend your opinions and, you know, embrace and credential your identity, because if they fail to do that, then suddenly you've become fearful.

53:19

It opens the door for anything and everything. And then, of course, you know, the U .N. Declaration of Human Rights, when was that time?

53:25

Was that 48? I think it was 1948. Yeah. You know, it it has all the language of human rights, a right to education and a right to a job.

53:38

It's like his economic bill of rights. So we had a political bill of rights and we need an economic bill of rights. So this is where the language of human rights come from.

53:45

It really is a 20th century invention. And it's a it's a moral justification for 20th century liberalism and the international order.

53:54

This is, you know, if you have a human rights violation anywhere in the world, you can drone them or, you know, you can send a carrier task force.

54:02

You can have Congress declare war or you can just bypass Congress with the war power and say,

54:08

I'm president now and I'm going to, you know, I'm going to order a strike myself.

54:15

And so it is it's it's the basis of the moral legitimacy and justification of, you know, the global managerial liberal elites today.

54:26

And if you oppose it again, you're an anti -human. And how can you, you know, are you

54:31

OK with the abuse of human rights? Would you want your rights abused? So it's it itself is an abuse of rights, language and rights idea.

54:41

And here's what I would say, Ben, just to this affirms what Ben is saying. But this is my I don't know if anyone else has kind of done it this way, but this is my very brief explanation of what human rights functionally does, as Ben has described it, is you have everyone just take my word for it.

54:58

I'm not going to cite any sources, but the consensus would be natural law is is very, very basic.

55:05

There's very basic premises that such as self -defense, right, the right of self -preservation, very basic.

55:12

Now you've got to figure out how to particularize these things. And you come to secondary conclusions and applications.

55:18

And this is the job of human positive law and human rulers to say, based on these very high level things, which include, by the way, the law giver,

55:25

God himself. And, you know, that's never recognized by human rights theorists. You're not going to you're, of course, not going to name check, you know, the one who's giving you anything in this regard or any justification for use of power.

55:38

But but you've got to particularize them. And this was traditionally done through, you know, it's always done,

55:45

I guess, through context and prudence. But it would be it would manifest itself within particular traditions.

55:51

Right. So English common law, as congruent with as all just law should be, the higher natural law is a very particularized, historically developed form of natural law precepts.

56:05

And this is how Richard Hooker would justify it. And many, many others would say the common laws whole rationale is customs that stand the test of time are probably reasonable and just and equitable because they still exist.

56:17

Right. Otherwise, people would discard them. But every now and then you have a question of equity and that's when a judge comes in.

56:23

So but the point is, like the expression of English rights and liberties that the founders talk about, they are they are, you know, the trickle down of the natural law for particular people.

56:35

How do we apply this to us based on our history, our interactions and all these things? And there are other traditions that could exist, legal traditions that are no less congruent with the natural law because it's so basic, but are radically different from the

56:50

English system. Right. That's possible. Everyone recognizes that. So here's what human rights does. Human rights is a new tradition, new legal tradition that is sort of snuck in.

57:01

And it is a way to particularize law, positive law for people with the facade of even still at the time,

57:11

I mean, the mid 20th century, you still had a bit of legitimate natural law thinking.

57:17

It's kind of snuck in and under this facade to give it a higher transcendent basis that everyone intuitively kind of knows you need.

57:25

And but it's particularized for the new community, the global community. So this is it's an entirely new legal regime that discards actually all the particularity of organically grown legal traditions such as the

57:38

English system that Americans, of course, imported. That's somewhat convoluted, probably not that clear, but that's my best take on what it does.

57:46

I was I was appreciative you said that because that was going to be my question is what about inalienable rights and the natural rights people associate with the founding?

57:55

Isn't that part of Enlightenment thinking and liberalism? And how is that different? But I think you just summed it up pretty much like that is the difference.

58:03

And I think it's fascinating if you trace English common law, if you go back to, you know, Alfred the Great and the

58:09

Book of Doom and all and just go forward to the Magna Carta and Blackstone and all of that, you see this progression very clearly.

58:17

And it streams from biblical precepts, but applied in a unique context.

58:23

And it's not suited for every context. That's why democracy wasn't suited for the

58:28

Middle East or at least Iraq and Afghanistan and these places, they just don't have the culture that supports that.

58:36

So it's that's, I guess, part of the mistake of human rights and universalizing these things.

58:43

Well, it is we've been going about almost an hour and I know time and our Ben rather has to go.

58:48

So let's wrap it up. And since we have a lot more to get to, that means we'll probably have another episode maybe two, hopefully one, but maybe two before we do a

58:58

Q &A. And so if people listening want to do a Q &A, if you have questions about anything you've heard over this entire series of discussions, we will open it up.

59:08

And for as long as we have addressed those questions, so maybe save them somewhere on your phone so you have them in a few weeks when we're able to get to that before Thanksgiving.

59:18

I can I can assure you it will be before Thanksgiving. All right. Well, God bless and more coming.