Red Pills Without Roots & The SBC Leadership Crisis

Conversations That Matter

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On the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. And if you hear something in the background, like maybe some cartoon praise songs, that's because my wife is doing something outside of my little girls in the other room.

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I know, I know. Should we be doing that? I had this discussion with her. I was like, we don't really ever let her watch television, except for these little bitty moments when it's like,

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I'm doing something, she's doing something. And then it's like, well, what's the most Bible -based thing that we could put in front of her, right?

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And you know what I'm mindful of too? Some of these newer shows, I don't know if you call them shows, channels on YouTube, on whatever streaming service you have, they switch angles every second.

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And they're moving all over the place with bright colors. And when we talk about ADD problems with kids, and just so many kids seem to have problems concentrating,

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I'm like, man, I wonder why, I wonder why. So anyway, I'm mindful of that too. You know what's really good?

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And I had, she's not watching it right now, but I know my mom watched this when she was young.

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I watched this when I was young, but those old Davey and Goliath cartoons, cartoons,

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Claymation really is what it is, put out by the Lutheran Church. I think this was before the split with the

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Missouri Synod. So this was like, I don't even know what it was called, though, United, it was the Lutheran Church that was united.

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It was before that. It was like 1958 or something when they made those. And Claymation, Tim Bushong says, thank you,

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Tim. So anyway, I put those on and I'm like, this is great. This is teaching great moral lessons.

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It's Christian. They're not switching angles every two seconds. The colors aren't so bright.

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I think your kid will be smart if they listen to classical music and watch Davey and Goliath cartoons from the 1950s.

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All right, well, with that, this is kind of a loose show. I have two things I'm gonna talk about, but I'm willing to interact, take questions, comments, cries of outrage, whatever.

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Reminder, get the book, Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age. It's out, it's out on Amazon.

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It's out on Audible. I don't think I've said that yet. It is on Audible now, if you like listening to audio books. But if you want an autograph copy and it helps me out the most, go to johnharrispodcast .com,

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go to books, and you can order one right there. All right, where are we gonna start first? Let's start with the red pills without roots, red pills without roots.

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So what I'm gonna do, if you've heard, if you've heard, if you've, actually, you could have heard it because I guess now you can play articles.

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But if you've heard or read this article, then you might wanna tune out for the next,

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I don't know, 20 minutes as I read this. So I'm gonna, I will stop though along the way. So I'll try to make it worth your while and let you know what

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I was thinking. But I wrote this piece for American Reformer. I actually wrote it last week. And there's a few little tweaks, but overall,

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I was pretty happy with it. And a lot of guys I respect are saying great things about it, which is always nice.

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I mean, you don't always have that, but when you put something out there and you put your heart into it and you really are passionate about it and someone likes it that you respect, it just means a lot.

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So I know some of the guys, there was some private things sent to me, but some of the guys who are publicly saying that are like, you know,

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Nate Fisher and Ron Dotson. And I'm trying to think.

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I think, oh man, what's, I'm blanking here. Now I'm freaking out because I'm blanking on a name.

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It'll come to me. It'll come to me. But anyway, there's people that I respect weighing in.

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The great Tim Bushong. I'm pretty sure the great Tim Bushong put something on Facebook about this and I respect him a lot.

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So I appreciate that, Tim. Thank you. And there's more. I'm sorry if I've left you out, but yeah, there's,

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I'm just happy to see that because this is sort of wading into territory that is not being covered a whole lot right now.

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And I think a lot of people, my assumptions were correct. I think a lot of people don't know what to do exactly.

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They don't know how to navigate what's going on right now with this crisis that we're, it's like going towards the waterfall.

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Like you see it up ahead. You see the steam. You're just, you're like, well, we got the

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MAGA movement. We're kind of united. I mean, things are going okay, but there's this waterfall. And I just didn't know like how many people see it.

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The people who do see it, do they know even how to think about it, how to approach it? And this was just a lot of vindication for me so far.

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So check it out at American Reformer. If you haven't yet, let's see. I wrote down a few notes that I wanted to, now

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I can't find them. Let's see. Oh, here they are. Just like a few notes that I wanted to not forget as I go through this.

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All right, let's start reading. The crisis of the modern right. The crisis of the modern right is the first heading.

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I don't know if I actually put this heading in there. I think they put it in there, but I say that the greatest internal threat to genuine conservatism stems from modern ideological impulses that seek to reduce all human activity to simple precepts meant to explain the entirety of human existence.

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Now, you can call that a total critique. So there's a lot of examples of this, especially on the left, but you also have examples on the right of this.

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And it's all, I think, a product of modernity. It's maybe an easy way or the simplest way to parallel it for Christian audiences.

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It is like religion in a sense, but these are secularized religions. These are religions of the modern era where everything's boiled down to some kind of like an almost scientific principle.

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And if you understand that, you can transcend all knowledge and have the key that unlocks every door.

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And I mean, it's very tempting. I mean, this is the kind of thing that honestly can make us very arrogant and prideful.

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Sometimes when guys are super caged stage, right? We're like, wow, you gotta settle down. Like you're being arrogant. And that's the same thing we're talking about when we talk about ideology.

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It's a total critique. Everything relates back to this one thing. So think of the caged stage Calvinist. Every Bible verse, wouldn't you know it?

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It supports Calvinism. It's like years later after you pass through that stage or if you went through it, you're like, oh man, man,

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I was so stupid or so immature. I can't believe I did that. Well, we all mature, but I think ideology, it's for like feminists, everything's driven by the patriarchy.

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For critical race theorists, it's all race. It's all really social construct, but it's these power dynamics.

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For academia, all these different ideologies that seek to reduce everything to some abstraction, some basic principle of existence.

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And so like on the right, you often see like more, I mean, we sort of use this broad fascistic term, which frankly, a lot of this has lost its meaning just because the left keeps abusing these terms.

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But there's sort of like an, usually it's an answer to the left, right?

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With fascism, it's an answer to the left. The left is doing this. We gotta answer them and we gotta be strong about it.

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And we gotta do what's necessary to defeat them. All things that I believe are important to defeat the left.

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But what happens is some principle within that society, usually it's some like racial principles or something becomes like the uniting element that binds everyone together in a march to establish hierarchy and destroy the egalitarian utopians.

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And so fascism, Nazism being what an iteration of this is profoundly ideological.

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I don't see how you can't really read a lot of the literature from Nazi Germany and not come away with that.

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Like, wow, that was, it is reductionistic. It is relating everything to a struggle for, and much with evolution in the background, very much a struggle for a, not just,

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I mean, cultural survival is part of it, but it comes down to sort of like a biological determinism that determines other things downstream from a culture being one of them.

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So that's the principle. That's like the starting point. So that's, man, this is gonna be terrible.

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I've only, I've said one sentence. This is like John MacArthur when he starts an expository sermon and he's like,

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Paul, stop. Then he gives you a biography of Paul and he says, next week we'll get into an apostle of Jesus Christ.

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I don't wanna do that. I wanna get a little farther into this. All right, today this primarily takes the form of a neutralist liberalism masquerading as conservatism.

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In the post -war era, the conservative establishment increasingly compromised with liberal ideology to the point that before Trump, national politics had essentially become a choice between competing liberal visions.

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This dynamic gave rise to sayings like, there's not a dime's worth of difference between a Republican and a

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Democrat, and conservatism is just liberalism driving the speed limit. So you've heard those before,

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I think. And that's, I think this recognition, even if it's more felt than understood, that conservatism, whatever that is now, it's not what it used to be.

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And it seems a lot like liberalism. It seems a lot like what the left says the conservatives are saying in 10 years or five years.

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And what's the difference? They wanna spend, but just not as much, but it's still spending and spending us into debt.

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Even the MAGA movement seems to be okay with a certain level of spending. So all of these things,

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I think, point to the fact that modern conservatism is ideological liberalism for the most part, at least in the institutions.

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It's just a milder version of liberalism. And the left has kind of jumped the shark, and they're more post -liberal now.

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Like they've given up, at least in some of their halls of power, they've given up on the idea of neutrality.

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And they think that we should just privilege these aggrieved groups that benefit them, punish the enemies that they have, reward their friends.

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They don't like the neutrality thing. But you start talking to them, and they still kind of fall back into this posture of, we have the moral high ground because they'll justify it on some basis of neutrality.

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We're fair, we're equal, we're just, right? All these appeals that they make. And the right, modern conservatives in the halls of power, the elites, have pretty much bought into the same thing.

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And you can see it everywhere. It's like, the left calls you a Nazi. It's like, no, you're the Nazis. The left calls you racist.

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No, you're the racist. You just use, you're operating within the same frame, but you're just trying to convince others that no, they're the villains, right?

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And I think, especially younger Zoomer conservatives realize this, and they realize that this is not accurate.

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This is terrible. So that said, without,

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I get more into detail, peel up questions, but I continue, I say, sure, some paleoconservatives attempted to break into national politics, but they were often stopped short.

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Pat Buchanan and Mel Bradford come to mind. Pat Buchanan ran for president, worked under Reagan, was a speechwriter for Nixon.

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Mel Bradford was, what was it? The National Endowment for the

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Humanities, I think it was. I don't know why I'm blanking on this, but Mel Bradford was a

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Southern conservative, kind of well -known for now, opposing Harry Jaffa, who kind of started the Claremont Institute.

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I would recommend Mel Bradford. I actually really like Mel Bradford. He's one of the last kind of prominent

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Southern conservatives. But he was nominated by Reagan for this position, and then there was a cancel.

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It was like one of the first attempts at cancel culture, like cancel this guy, run him out on a rail, because he shouldn't be involved in polite society.

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He is, and basically the accusation was, like he's too critical of Lincoln.

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He's too, he's kind of neo -Confederate. That's the problem with Mel Bradford. You can't have him in these positions.

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And Reagan caved on that, and we got what we got. So these guys tried to make some inroads.

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They're just two that come to mind. Their vision of ordered liberty, rooted in a religious tradition, heritage, and social hierarchy, clashed with the liberal order's emphasis on neutrality, multiculturalism, and market participation.

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To the prevailing establishment, they represented a relic of a bygone era, one associated with patriarchy, feudalism, and other so -called bigotries, or at least that's how the story goes.

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It's important for me to say this, by the way, because I fashion myself as someone who has gleaned from a more traditional conservative movement, including those paleocon guys.

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And all the same, from a liberal frame, all the same remarks that are made about Nazis, all the things, the aversions they have to Nazis and fascists and that kind of thing,

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Kinnis, whatever, they're terrible. They have the same exact critiques for guys like myself, guys like Stephen Wolfe.

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Not that we're identical in every way, but Stephen's imbibed a lot of paleoconservative stuff.

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He reads Paul Godfrey, right? I mean, they'll critique him the same way and they can't really make any distinction.

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They don't see a distinction. But they'll criticize us. Some of them will even hint that Trump has these problems.

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And that's becoming harder and harder because Trump is so popular, but these guys were smeared in the way that the same way that like Hitler is critiqued by the left.

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It's like, we have blood and soil, people in place, rooting an identity and thinking in terms of groups and all these are all bigotry things.

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So I say everything seems to be moving along for these pretend conservatives, these liberals until 2020 shattered the mold.

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And it did. A generation of turmoil. Of course, the shift did not begin in 2020. For the past decade, the post -liberal left had been making significant strides, weaponizing the very things ordinary decent

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Americans held dear. Their heritage, sacred institutions and hard -earned success against them. That's exactly what happened in 2020.

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A lot of Americans came to figure out if they didn't know it before, okay, your success, your hard work is just privilege that's now odious.

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And you gotta redistribute that. Your heritage needs to be trashed. The monuments need to come down to your heritage, your people, and we're gonna put them up to our people.

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Your sacred institutions, those things are not sacred.

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Those things need to be scaled down, maybe destroyed. They're just the mechanisms by which you, you store your privilege and you oppress others.

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So I said that in this chaotic fray entered a younger generation of right -wingers who clearly recognize their enemies but carried their own burdens.

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So I think this is a hopeful thing. A lot of Gen Z sees this problem more clearly than I think in some ways an older generation.

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They know, for example, let me give you one. Sometimes older generations, like the boomer generation, and by the way, someone corrected me,

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John MacArthur, I guess, all right, he's not technically a boomer. He's a member of the silent generation. And I kept calling him a boomer in the last podcast.

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So my apologies to all the boomers out there. If I were you though, I don't wanna claim John MacArthur. He's a great guy to claim.

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But a lot of older folks, they remember when they were in school and they think, well, when I was in school, the problem is you just get

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God out of there and that's what happened. You put God right back in there, things will go better. You get the right leaders in there and that's their whole thing.

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And it's like, no, that's not how it's gonna work because you have a complete mechanism now that's in controlled personnel's policy by these radical social engineers, these radical activists.

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You try to force them to put God back in there and they're gonna put their crazy bafflement statue or something.

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I mean, that's where we're at. The whole thing is rotten. It's not a matter of like, oh, the system's still good. You just put someone in charge of it.

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So Gen Z sees this more clearly, which I think is a good thing. I'm not negative, by the way, on Gen Z.

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I think every generation can have pitfalls. And anyway, I said they resembled the generation from Exodus One who did not remember

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Joseph and found themselves trapped in a nightmare, not of their own making. I actually kind of regret that line.

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That's the one line I regret. I realized afterward, I'm like, why did... It's a little weird comparison maybe, but I mean, it makes sense.

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But then you're like, I'm actually saying like the Egyptians were part... Like, I mean, did they wake up in a nightmare? I don't know.

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I wasn't there, but they didn't remember Joseph and they had this very large population of different people and they're like, oh my goodness, they're gonna control things.

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And so what do we do, right? And of course they enslaved them. And that was, you know, I'm not trying to draw every parallel, but I'm just saying like they're cut off from their past.

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They don't remember why, what kinds of mechanisms, what kinds of relationships led them to the point they are now.

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So hold on one second. I hear my little baby in the other room and she is not happy.

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So I don't mean to do this on a live stream, but give me one second here. All right, well,

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I don't mean to do that again. Sorry about that. I don't know if I've ever done that. So I'm still getting used to having a kid here.

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So trying to let my wife know that she's not exactly happy.

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I don't know, I don't know why. Usually she's very happy. All right, all right. So where are we going here?

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All right, back to where we were at here. Many came from unstable homes raised by divorced parents and moved frequently in school.

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They were told they bore the stain of America's sins if they were white, male or Christian, unlike their fathers who found belonging in once thriving institutions like the

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Boy Scouts, sports teams and hunting clubs, they sought solace elsewhere, online through video games and chat forums, where others in similar circumstances offered them a sense of camaraderie.

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They watched as authority figures, their parents had taught them to respect teachers, pastors, community leaders, surrendered to the woke mob at every turn.

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They had no memory of stable households, functional communities, or the post 9 -11 era of American unity.

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They only felt the absence of those things as if something vital had been taken from them. Desperate for answers, they questioned why they couldn't afford a home, secure a good job or earn respect.

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In their search for explanations, they pointed to forces beyond their control, boomers, the deep state, the

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Jews, and others they believed had robbed them of the future they were promised. These are obviously generalizations, but they must be understood in order to understand what is happening now.

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So I think that is important, obviously. If you don't understand kind of the conditions that we're in, what led to this issue, that the rights having with an identity crisis, you're not even gonna be able to approach solutions to it.

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And I think that is a lot of what's going on. I even know, you know, people in my own family who are younger, it's like they're giving up the idea of ever being able to have a house.

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Like it's just, that dream seems elusive to them. They're ever having respect in society.

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I mean, the conditions, I feel so bad, honestly. And I feel in a sense, like not guilty, but I feel like I was just in this period of time where like I was able to buy a house at just the time before interest rates went up.

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And I sort of, on the last generation, the last gasping breath of the

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Cold War generation. And I was able to sense and see some of what a stable, orderly, and somewhat of a local hierarchy look like before it was destroyed.

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And that weighs on me a bit. I really realized that. And I think, especially for those who don't remember 9 -11, this is something that's somewhat foreign to them.

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All right, red pills with no anchor. Since 2020, people on both the left and right have searched for explanations as to why their lives are upended in so many ways.

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Both sides pointed to foreign interference, the left blaming Russia, the right accusing China. The QAnon conspiracy particularly resonated with boomers and older millennials, a generation that still trusted institutions, but not the people currently in charge of them, which

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I just explained. Meanwhile, many conservative -leaning Christians sought theological answers in more culturally aggressive traditions, such as theonomy.

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I think a lot of guys are on an arc. I've noticed this. There's a lot of guys that are like, oh no, my theology doesn't, what

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I was taught doesn't make sense of 2020. I wasn't able to actually meet the threats that occurred that year.

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I wasn't given the tools. Let me look elsewhere. So they get into like other arenas, right? So theonomy is one of them, or like a

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Kuyperian kind of direction, a right -wing Kuyperian direction, not the Keller type, where they,

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I don't know, some go EO, some even look in the Catholic tradition.

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They start branching out. Some think it's all eschatology if we were just post -millennial or something.

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And then a lot of guys, when they're going through this process, they start realizing that guys in those traditions were also compromising on all these things.

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And, or maybe they're making too much out of something like eschatology. Maybe that's not really the thing. And then they eventually land in some other ideology or they end up going towards more of like a traditional rooted

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American conservative. That's kind of what I'm advocating, American conservative direction. And it's interesting to see this.

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I've noticed this arc and I don't know if I, maybe I went through it, but just like a decade before this happened, because I was sort of thinking through a lot of these questions.

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I mean, who didn't have their little libertarian phase? I definitely had my little libertarian phase, my theonomy phase.

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Like I had these different, I'll be reading these different things. And then I'd realize, well,

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I don't know if that fully covers all of it. And anyway, on the political right, a significant divide began to emerge.

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Establishment liberals blamed the post -liberal woke left while a growing faction rejected liberalism altogether.

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Today, defenders of the liberal order label these dissenters the woke right. As both the left and an increasing number of young conservatives reject neutralist liberalism.

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A little word about this real quick. I know I've written so extensively on this. I've written all over my book,

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Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age about this. So you can go get that. And I don't wanna give you all my thoughts again on this, but I do wanna say one thing.

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There does seem to be overall an identity war going on.

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And this is like in very black and white terms, I'm not saying just like racially, but like very rigid terms.

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People are adopting like things that will try to bind them together. Anything when you're drowning, you'll find an anchor, right?

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And so some people will make like, oh, it's like your genetics, it's your white genetics. That's the thing. Or if you're part of a different racial category, you have people advocating for your group in those ways, right?

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Or it could be just, it's like Vivek Ramaswamy's propositionation stuff.

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Like there's this civic nationalism, he calls it, but it's basically, it's a fable. I wrote about this on X recently.

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Like it doesn't make any sense. Ben Crenshaw actually did a great article for American Reformer on this. It's historically, it doesn't make sense.

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And just from a, just a philosophical standpoint, it doesn't make any sense.

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Like you wouldn't apply any of this to your home and be like, well, our home is those who can come into our home and work the hardest and participate in the market of our home.

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And that's the only guideline we have for being a member of the home. Like it makes no sense, right? But somehow for a nation or a country, you're supposed to just make that the low ball, the low barrier.

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It's like, well, if you contribute to the economy, you're an American. Love yourself a little freedom and equality.

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You're good, you're good. That's all we are, nothing else. So like these are just like competing ideologies.

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And they're somewhat, they're abstract is what they are. Like they're not from shared experience.

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They're not from the things that normally confer identity. They're not from deeply rooted religious traditions.

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They're not from really any tradition. You might fool yourself into thinking that, but they're more like,

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I'll get into this actually. I should probably not get ahead of myself, but they exist because liberalism exists and there are alternatives to it.

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They're not really positive visions of their own. They're too simplistic for that. And they're just outside the scope of what an actual ontological nation, metaphysically what exists in the world, what confers identity to people who are part of a nation or a country.

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They're outside of that scope. And we have different layers of identity, that's true.

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So it's like, I am a white guy. Like, I'm not gonna say I'm not like of European stock and that there's not like, there are different categories

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I belong to. But the question becomes like for a country, what are the necessary components for people to share in common life together, right?

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That becomes the issue. What's the glue that you need? And if you don't have the right glue, if it doesn't stick people together, then it will come apart.

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And that's what we're seeing with liberalism. It will come apart. So liberals have stripped us.

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And I think what's happening now is you have, after the shattering of liberalism, these various competing elements on the right and the liberal guard, the old guard that's still there.

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And I'll be specific for the X world, right? For people on X, like people like Joel Berry and Neil Shenvey and James Lindsay.

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And you have guys who like to use the term woke right a lot. These guys are guarding a certain sense of a liberal order.

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I really think that's what they're doing. And some guys Christianize this and will even collapse it into like, well, this is because the church has no

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Jew or Greek. And that's why I think society should, we should not even think in terms of ethnicity at all.

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And like what they're doing is they are, they can see their ideology, but they can't see past it.

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At least that's, in my interactions, that's what it seems like to me, at least. They have a very hard time transcending their ideology and seeing past it.

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And so the guys who do go towards more reductionistic, racial ideologies or fascistic stuff, what ends up happening,

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I think inevitably, is they're so used to getting critiqued from liberals. They've never heard, or they're not used to hearing an actual traditional conservative critique of those things.

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It's just not something that happens a lot. And a lot of traditional conservatives who are skeptical of that stuff don't know what to say because it's been so many years since they've heard any kind of critique of that kind of thing.

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They're so used to battling liberals or the left. So that's why I wrote the piece

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I did for American Reformer last year, Conservative Nazi Hunters, where I resurrect some of these things. I show you from articles in, say, the

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National Review before it was compromised, back when it was actually conservative in the 60s and 70s. And even,

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I think I even pointed out some articles from the 50s of conservatives and what they had to say about what their distaste was for both totalitarian schemes, totalitarian total critique.

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I'm not saying authoritarian necessarily. I'm saying totalitarian in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, but any scheme that would flatline cultural distinctions that were deeply rooted, based on tradition, rich, conferred identity, and then just kind of like roll over those things and make it all one size fits all.

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That's what they were concerned with primarily. And that this did put the state in the, you could say that they were honoring

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God all you want, but it does inevitably put some kind of authoritarian figure in a position of almost a deity.

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And the thing is, we're coming to a place, I think, where if we do go down the waterfall and we really are that deracinated and that stripped of anything that confers identity anymore, and we're this lost, you either split into warring factions or you will have an authoritarian figure.

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I don't see a way around that. And the question is, what will that figure look like? Will that figure have the necessary virtue to avoid the pitfalls that so many 20th century dictators who did not have virtue found themselves in?

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That's a big question too, but that we're so far upstream from that question at this point.

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And a lot of things would have to change and a lot of things can change. And I'm trying to show a better way than that anyway, but I think that's what's going on.

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I think that the critiques that I'm bringing are kind of unique right now.

29:53

There's just, we haven't heard them for a while, but they've been there, they've been sitting there, but because the liberals have vanquished the traditional conservatives or the paleo conservatives, unless you're getting magazines like this, you're not even in touch with this kind of stuff anymore.

30:10

And for those listening, I just held up Chronicles Magazine, the latest issue. Okay, so there's so many more things.

30:18

I have notes that I wanna say, but I need to continue the article and then get to questions and then maybe if we have time, we'll do notes.

30:24

All right, as many predicted, the ideological right has led to a shattered and often disjointed understanding of the rights decline without a comprehensive framework to interpret historical developments, many anti -liberal dissidents piece together explanations in isolation.

30:38

Did things go wrong in 2015 with the acceptance of so -called gay marriage or was it the Hart -Celler Act? Was the real turning point the outcome of the

30:46

American Civil War or World War II or does every problem ultimately trace back to Jewish influence or universal suffrage?

30:53

Depending on which rabbit hole one goes down, there are countless justifications for each position fueled by an endless stream of online content.

31:00

With no trusted institutions to guide them, many rely on their instincts and the internet voices they're chosen to trust.

31:07

There is merit to many of these explanations. I have personally sought, and it's important to me to say that again, there is merit to some of these explanations.

31:15

I have personally sought to revive one critical strand, the exposure of the proposition nation fraud and its connection to the

31:21

Northeast's imperial spirit. Yet this is only one piece of the puzzle. To believe otherwise would be to ignore other significant forces at play.

31:29

So what I'm trying to say there is like, I'm critical of the descendants of Puritans in New England and the

31:37

Unitarians and Yankees that came from that who ended up putting America on more of this divine mission, this revolutionary mission to make things equal.

31:48

And this happened of course, before there were even, you didn't have large immigration of Ashkenazi Jewish people from Eastern Europe at this point.

31:57

This has already been in effect. And I'm critical of this turn. I'm critical of what happened even in the civil war.

32:05

I think it did change the nature of what the United States, rather the United States saw itself. And it forcibly united groups of people who otherwise were, and still are to some extent, we're still dealing with these divisions, but otherwise would have probably gone their own peaceful ways and didn't have a lot in common with each other, at least maybe enough to form a healthy government.

32:29

And we've been, I'm saying so many things I probably should expand on for those who aren't familiar with some of my views on this, but that's something

32:38

I've explored. And you can go look at the 1607 project and I talk about this, but I'm not foolish enough to think this is the sole explanation for why we're in this place.

32:47

And you heard a lot of this in 2020, you heard it's fingers pointing everywhere. It's this person's fault.

32:54

History is complex. There's usually a number of things that are happening to create conditions.

33:01

History is shaped by the convergence of multiple forces, but ideologues often fixate on a single narrative.

33:07

This is one reason why online discourse on the right feels so fractured. People are breaking free from an ingrained liberal framework at different rates, in different ways and drawing different conclusions about what a positive vision should look like.

33:20

At this point, the MAGA movement remains the only unifying force holding them together, however loosely.

33:28

I see some of the questions in here. I'm gonna get to those. I'm gonna try to speed it up here. The only poll left. In a clever attempt to counter liberal framing, the online right began using its own metrics evaluation rather than adopting the labels their opponents used against them, racist, misogynist, homophobe.

33:42

They started using their own language of critique, calling their enemies effeminate, cringe and gay. Likewise, instead of upholding liberal values or virtues rather like diversity and equality, they elevated terms like based, trad and chad.

33:55

While this was largely internet slang at its core, it reflected a rejection of egalitarianism in favor of hierarchy and order.

34:02

Of course, some people grasped these concepts more deeply than others, which is to be expected. But one quickly notices that these competing standards often exist only in relation to the left's destructive standards.

34:13

Something is deemed based simply because it transgresses woke egalitarianism, regardless of whatever it upholds, anything truly positive, or whether it upholds anything truly positive.

34:25

Like, and this is one of the, I thought this was probably the best example I could think of. I thought of a number of examples, but this,

34:31

I was like, this makes sense to most people because Andrew Tate's been such a big name. So Andrew Tate is based because of his views on women, according to some, right?

34:40

He is a chad. His lifestyle is trad. Yet his outlook blatantly contradicts the

34:46

Christian norms that once defined the West. He's really not any of those things. Tate recognizes that men and women are different.

34:54

Good for him. But his conclusions, glorifying a world of money, sports, cars, and exploitation, fail to offer a meaningful alternative to the liberal order.

35:04

His philosophy thrives in opposition to liberalism, but does little to establish a coherent vision of what should replace it.

35:10

Adolescent boys may find his persona appealing, but the issue for conservatives is not just that his worldview conflicts with their traditions.

35:17

It is that his vision is inseparable from the very liberal order he claims to reject. It both feeds on that order and defines itself against it merely because that is the prevailing system.

35:27

And of course you see this with like the materialism and so forth that goes with Andrew Tate. Like people like him, not just because of his advice that he gives.

35:38

And he admits, like, hey, you're a man, you have worth, you're not scum. Like he encourages men, which he does.

35:45

But he also like has sports cars and he works out and he's strong and like all, there's an image there that people are attracted to.

35:56

But that image has a lot in common with like what the market sells you. And Andrew Tate works the market.

36:03

You can't tell me a guy who has a sex cam business or did, isn't even selling people things that are not in their best interest, which is exactly what he does.

36:17

He gives you things that you want, that the market demands and they hurt you. They're not in your best interest.

36:24

And then he'll sell you the cure. Don't be addicted to pornography.

36:29

Meanwhile, he was doing a whole sex cam business. It's kind of crazy to me, but the pattern repeats across various ideologies vying for influence on the right, whether it's biological reductionist white supremacy or the

36:41

Nietzschean vitalism championed by Bronze Age pervert. These movements exploit liberalism's weaknesses, but exist largely as abstracted reactionary counterpoints rather than as fully developed alternatives.

36:52

Many who delve deep into these ideas find themselves increasingly detached from the people around them and from the tangible aspects of life that truly matter.

37:00

So I gave two examples, the Nietzschean vitalism and a Bronze Age pervert and sort of the biological reductionist white supremacy stuff.

37:08

So like there's all sorts of different flavors of these things and they all fight with each other, which is kind of a funny part to me in a way, but I mean, they're fractured.

37:17

They can't seem to, I was actually talking to like a political operative guy. That sounds kind of nefarious, doesn't it?

37:22

A political think tank guy earlier today who he's a younger guy and I was just kind of like,

37:28

I was asking him, I was picking his brain on the Republican party. Where are young people at in this? And this topic came up of like, oh yeah, on X there's a lot of like kind of Nazi sympathy stuff.

37:37

And he's like, yeah, but you know, the thing is, he goes, that's not showing up anywhere, at least where he is, in the mechanisms of the party.

37:44

He says, he's like, I'm more worried that the young people running the party who actually organize and lead and gain power are basically

37:53

Democrats. They love gay marriage. They hate Christians. They love abortion.

37:59

And they say they're Republicans. And he's like, I'm not seeing that. I see that online, but I don't see that in the party structure at this point.

38:06

And anyway, maybe he's wrong. Maybe he's somewhere where that's not happening or whatever. But I thought that was interesting.

38:11

And then he goes, he goes, look, these guys generally, they're so ideological. And one of the things, the giveaways, is like a group is very ideological is they fracture with each other.

38:21

You can't get along with them. You ever try to work with most libertarians? It's very hard. They're very rigid.

38:28

And you could have friendship that builds up for years with someone and shared experience. And it's like, you'll be cut off in an instant if you deviate just a minor bit.

38:36

And that's how ideology functions. That's how it works in the brain. And when you have guys who now, it's like their hardware can only take ideology.

38:46

It's very hard to get out of it. Then you just swap one for the other. And that's one of the things he was telling me too.

38:52

He's like, look, I know so many people that were going down this path, loved Hitler and stuff.

38:58

And he's got his pulse on young Republicans, this guy. Very much so.

39:03

And he's like, look, when you would see guys that didn't have influence, but they're kind of coming in with these ideas, he goes, you look at them a few years later and they're homosexual, they're communists.

39:17

And I've seen the same dynamic too. I'm not saying it always is that way, but there is an instability that kind of, when your hardware can only take a certain kind of software, you just trade one thing for the other.

39:31

This is why so many of the hardcore social justice warriors came from the most strict fundamentalist Christian homes sometimes.

39:38

And I know these guys personally. My wife does too. We've talked about this. We're like, man, that person came from like, I mean, it was like Amish level, they were separate.

39:46

And now total blue hair, earrings everywhere, tattoos of terrible things and hates

39:53

Christianity. What's up with that? The most hardcore anti -church people are the people that grew up in these very strict backgrounds often.

40:02

And it's like, they didn't change their enthusiasm or their spirit or their revolutionary mindedness of remaking everything.

40:09

And they're sort of like their obsession and their compulsiveness and like that all stayed there.

40:17

They just changed the law they operated by. They just changed the software they were running. The hardware is still the same. So the initial appeal of these ideologies often stems from a deep resentment toward the chaotic liberal order where men can become women, white people are blamed for all evil and nothing is sacred.

40:35

In an effort to escape young right -wingers push themselves to even greater levels of baseness. If something offends the left, it must be correct.

40:43

The more transgressive, the more true. A young content creator recently told me he used a

40:48

Nazi imagery purely to break the left's narrative. Since conservatives are already labeled as Nazis, he argued, why not embrace the label and neutralize its power?

40:55

In a certain sense, this logic tracks. But in practice, it elevates Nazi leaders as positive figures worthy of emulation rather than just tools for rhetorical subversion.

41:04

They cease to be historical relics and instead become a new standard of good simply because they stand in opposition to the left.

41:11

Yet as one can see their function in this framework is purely reactionary. They are not rooted in heritage tradition or a substantive vision of what should replace liberalism.

41:21

They are in essence, ideological scarecrows set up for the sole purpose of challenging the left.

41:27

The problem is that in this formulation, the farther one moves from liberalism, the more right -wing they are considered.

41:33

But liberalism remains the standard because right -wing in this paradigm exists only in opposition to it.

41:39

There is no independent poll on the right with a holistic vision by which to determine whether something is genuinely conservative.

41:46

It is simply a matter of negating the left. And as long as that remains the case, the right will continue to define itself on liberalism's terms rather than creating a meaningful alternative to it.

41:56

So I know someone behind the scenes really liked the ideological scarecrow.

42:02

Maybe that'll pick up. I don't know, it's kind of a mouthful. But basically, the other image

42:09

I thought of was like blowups. Like in Christmas time, you go around and you see these blowups in the yards and it's like Santa, but it's not really

42:15

Santa, right? Obviously, it's just this blowup. It's this plastic thing, rubber, whatever. That's the other image that came to my head is like a lot of the positive visions for like these younger ideologue types,

42:29

I suppose, that they're embracing, it promises to embrace, to give you something deeper and more rooted.

42:37

But oftentimes, it does function as like a blowup. It like with a string attached to the left's pole.

42:45

The left has a vision, right? They have the egalitarian utopian vision. And we need to oppose it.

42:50

We know it's bad. We know it's wrong. And so ideology in opposition to that is generally, at least from the recent experience, it's like taking one facet of reality, making it the whole thing, kind of pumping it up, making not,

43:12

I mean, like people who even share with some of these images and memes and things that are meant to provoke the left.

43:22

They're not sharing that from a place of like, this is my heritage. I belong to this. This confers identity to me.

43:30

This is something meaningful. It's not the feeling you get when you go and you find your grandpa's journal and you start reading it or you stand in Plymouth Rock and realize your ancestors came off there, which

43:42

I've done and my ancestors did. So like, it's not like that. That's not what you're doing.

43:48

You're doing something intentionally provocative. You're setting something up for the sole purpose of opposing what you don't like.

43:55

And I'm not even saying there's not sometimes merit to doing that. I'm not, I'm a little undecided, but what

44:02

I am saying is like, I know for a fact that that in and of itself does not confer identity and does not give you a cohesive basis for building any kind of social or political vision.

44:14

It's not a positive vision. And so that's, we just have to be clear on that, that that's like not what that's doing.

44:23

Okay, the airplane test. All right, this is probably the part of the article I'm most proud of, but I have to be honest,

44:29

I did not come up with it. I did not come up with it. C .J. Angle did, so I got to give him credit. It was recently that I was a guest on the

44:37

Contramundum podcast to discuss my new book, Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age. One of the hosts,

44:43

C .J. Angle, asked me a thought -provoking question that really gets to the heart of the challenge conservatives face within our own ranks.

44:50

He said, you know that feeling you get when you see a World War II plane. Naturally, I immediately imagined the pride and nostalgia that comes with images from America's past.

44:59

Then C .J. added, yeah, I don't think Zoomers feel that. And that moment struck me more deeply than any of my previous attempts to explain what is missing in much of the online discourse.

45:09

At one time, our grandfathers openly displayed their virtues for all to see. As the last breath of the

45:15

Cold War generation, I grew up attending air shows and patriotic events, sometimes with my grandfather, who served as an armorer in the

45:21

South Pacific. As the three of us on the podcast started geeking out about World War II, it occurred to me that although we challenged what our arena calls the post -war consensus, modern liberalism, the shared experience of our families bound us together in ways that are difficult to explain to deracinated

45:40

Zoomers. We had a shared heritage to protect and pass down. Our people did great things.

45:46

We remember when heroes walked the earth and we heard stories about those who no longer walked among us, their shadows still felt in our land.

45:53

This was not mere sentimentality. It was a connection to the foundation of a shared society with all its customs and arrangements.

46:01

But because our parents' generation failed to pass down the religion, legends, and folkways they once took for granted, we now find ourselves in a precarious moment.

46:09

Ideology becomes tempting to a deracinated people. As nature pours a vacuum, people will turn to a reductionist ideologies when they lack a meaningful tradition of their own.

46:21

As Russell Kirk wrote in The Conservative Mind, the Nazi and fascist parties were destructive instruments made possible by the hysteria and loneliness of the masses who enthusiastically supported them.

46:32

Though now and again these ideologies might endeavor to disguise themselves by talk of family and tradition, this was no better than sham.

46:39

Their nature and object was revolutionary. Similarly, Richard Weaver described European fascism as the rebellion of youth, the repudiation of bourgeois complacency, the attempt to renew the sense of holiness and heroism.

46:52

Even though it was fueled by resentment and inverted Christian ethics, it was still a vulgar substitute for the void left by a civilization bereft of transcendence.

47:00

And you do any study of Germany, by the way, one of the things I've noticed is, and this is important to point out,

47:08

I think it's fine to point out, like a lot of the emphasis on the Weimar Republic and how those conditions are parallel ours is like, well, you know, they were doing sex change operations.

47:17

The books they were burning, some of those were pornographic. Now, well, the scope went well beyond that, but yes, some of those books were pornographic books.

47:27

You know, they had economic issues that are similar to ours. They had lost their patriotism.

47:33

I mean, this is one of the things, I mean, even Hitler talked about, like he said that he didn't think Jewish people had represented themselves on the front lines in World War I, and I know there's studies today that say that wasn't true actually, no

47:43

Jewish people did, but this was the perception that there is a class of people and they don't seem to be very loyal and they seem to be subverting our culture.

47:52

And don't we feel subverted today in the United States in 2020? And all the great things that we once did, they're fading from us.

48:00

We're losing our history, we're losing a grasp on things. We're becoming sexually immoral. And there's so many things that parallel.

48:07

One of the things that I've noticed, I don't see it get brought up a lot, but it should be brought up probably by Christians way more is the fact that by that time in the

48:15

Weimar Republic, you had barely any kind of real church. I mean, you had a stronger

48:21

Catholic church than probably even a Protestant church at that point. And the church in Germany was, I mean, for all the things the liberals try to say about like, oh no, the confessing church, like they were the true examples.

48:35

Go look at what the confessing church was saying about Jewish people. Do you really wanna claim them?

48:41

I don't know. I don't know if liberals really wanna claim them, but they were neo -Orthodox on a theological level.

48:47

They were mostly neo -Orthodox. So you have on the left, if you wanna call it that, or those who were like theological liberals in Germany, you have them basically saying the

48:59

Bible's not even true. And then to combine it with the Nazi and the Volk stuff, like let's de -Judaize the

49:05

Bible. Let's get rid of anything that's Jewish. Let's get rid of our, let's purge our hymn books of anything that's

49:11

Jewish. I think they even wanted to purge a mighty fortress, I think it was one of the hymns, if I'm not mistaken. But let's just, and that's ideology for you, right?

49:19

It's this abstract, top -down, wholesale, disrespectful of tradition. Just come in there and kind of zap everything.

49:28

Make it conform to this rigid, abstract standard. And that's what you have going on in the church.

49:37

And I mean, I know there's sort of a revival of like positive Christianity and stuff. I mean, really like read that stuff if you're really curious about it.

49:45

Really read what was happening and realize the context was a, you were in a transitional moment going from what was once Lutheran land and Catholics to now a neo -Orthodox conservative wing and a total capitulated left church wing that's no better than the mainline church down the street that has a transgender flag.

50:12

I mean, they just didn't believe any of it. And the neo -Orthodoxy is honestly terrible.

50:18

It basically assumes that, well, the Bible's got this higher level of truth and that's what you need to be concerned about.

50:24

It doesn't matter if it's really not true. So they just gave up the battle. And that's how weak the church was in Germany at that time.

50:31

Some of this stuff was able to happen because they were already so separated from their past. They did not have a rootedness.

50:39

And that's the whole point is ideology does fill the void. And so some argue that we are approaching a time when simplistic answers and heavy coercion are necessary to reform identity and maintain order.

50:53

If it is the case that this is the only path open for civilization survival, it will not be met with joy from traditional conservatives, but tears.

51:00

John Wayne's comment in the film Hondo when he was confronted with the end of the Apache civilization would capture our sentiments.

51:06

Too bad, it was a good way. There's much to be encouraged about regarding the rights rejection of woke supremacy.

51:12

We were also in the midst of a profound identity crisis. What people feel when they see a World War II plane, hear the

51:18

Declaration of Independence read or smell Thanksgiving dinner should be of great concern. The answer will tell us whether American identity is even being passed down.

51:27

If it is not, then we no longer have a cohesive tradition or a people to defend. I added the

51:32

Thanksgiving dinner thing on purpose. I have a friend who's a chef at the Culinary Institute. And I asked him about this once.

51:38

I was like, is subverting a national cuisine subverting a nation?

51:44

And it was a thought I don't think he had ever considered. And I've been thinking about it since then. And one of the things

51:49

I thought of was Thanksgiving dinner. Like that is quintessentially American. There are certain sides that go with it.

51:56

Obviously Turkey's the main course. There are certain traditions that are unique to certain regions and families and so forth.

52:02

Some gun clubs do Turkey shoots. Some churches have services. There are certain hymns they sing. But there are certain things throughout this whole country that everyone does, just about everyone.

52:15

There's people living in like Dearborn, Michigan and so forth who probably aren't doing it. But this is one of the, again, this is one of those things that determines are you on the in group or the out group?

52:24

If you're an American, this is what we do. We celebrate this holiday at this particular time and we do it every year and we have this food and we do it because we're thanking

52:37

God. Now, this is obviously changed to, we're watching football and we're thankful for family and so forth.

52:42

But there's still the fact that the family gets together. There's still a heritage of Thanksgiving declarations that thank

52:48

God. There's still a certain sport we play. I mean, these are all very particular things and none of them have to do with DNA specifically in the sense that, what

52:59

I mean by that is like, all of what I just mentioned, you can have people participate in who don't share

53:08

Anglo DNA. I'm not saying Anglo DNA doesn't matter in the sense of ancestry and lineage.

53:14

I'm not saying that ourselves and our posterity don't matter. I'm not saying that religion doesn't matter.

53:20

I'm not saying that other things that confer identity don't matter. And there are many of them.

53:27

But that one thing, this one little thing, this shared experience is a big part and it cuisines part of it, of our national character.

53:37

You take that away. If you decided no more Turkey, right? No one's saying this, but Bill Gates gets in there and says, no more

53:44

Turkey, no more cows, no more, you can't do burgers on fourth, you can't do Turkey. He's subverting our national identity.

53:51

He literally is, right? Because even things like cuisine confer and tell us who we are and they're associated with so many other things, right?

54:00

So they are associated. I would say there is an association with ancestry there, obviously, because we're going back to events that happened in our past, whether it's

54:09

Jamestown or Plymouth. And we're saying, these are what the people who founded this place did and where we've added to it, but we're repeating a pattern that they've laid down.

54:19

But my point is though, I just talked about that for a while and I didn't even mention certain things that also can confer identity.

54:28

And that alone is part of this, I think, complicated matrix that honestly got established as part of his natural order.

54:36

It's part of the overall shared experience that does serve as a glue to bind us to each other.

54:47

And these things, if you disrupt them, you do have problems. And we are in the midst of disrupting a lot of these things, disrupting connections to land, disrupting connections to holidays, to traditions, forgetting things about our past.

55:03

We are, we're in a problem, period. So the path ahead, all right, we're almost there.

55:09

As I argue in my book, Against the Waves, political alignment cannot be measured along a single axis of right and left.

55:17

In the Anglo -American tradition, two distinct poles have historically shaped political thought, one driven by a progressive egalitarian impulse that often fuels revolutionary movements, and the other rooted in a deep respect for hierarchy and civil order, often expressed through populist resistance to change.

55:33

The former seeks to remake America or uphold an abstract, hollowed out version of its defining proposition of equality, while the latter strives to preserve the conditions that allow

55:41

Americans to fulfill their duties to God, honor their ancestors, and pass down their own unique heritage.

55:47

Now, someone who is reading this asked me about, what about markets and so forth or free market?

55:53

Well, that would be, I would include that in America's decentralized tradition, not in some kind of like an ideological, rigid, libertarian scheme.

56:01

So, you know, allowing Americans to fulfill their duties to God, that's the free market we've enjoyed, the decentralized tradition, that's kind of baked into this.

56:11

Anyway, conservatives should and still must maintain a unique positive vision. One should not be considered to the right of those who faithfully promote and protect traditional

56:18

America, simply because they transgress the left. What I mean by that is guys who are like, we're, you know, we claim the mantle of being the most right wing, but in the most far right, and I see this all the time on X, like, hey, there's

56:30

Christians to the right who are good and sometimes apply directly to guys who are basically ideologues.

56:38

And I'm saying, you know, I'm skeptical of this. Are they really on the right? What do you mean by the right?

56:44

If you mean they, you know, someone who's a warlord, who's raping women, let's say, it's hypothetical.

56:52

Are they on the right? They hate egalitarianism. They hate the left standard. The left hates them. I mean, and they're doing it in more brash ways than a

57:00

Christian would agree with the left. I mean, are they on the right? Are they farther to the right than me? Like, that's the question

57:05

I'm getting at. Like, who's to say what's right and what's left? If we're letting the left define this, then yeah, maybe.

57:12

But my question, and these are some concrete examples, were Bavarian Catholics who opposed Hitler positioned to his right or left?

57:19

And I link to a whole book on this, by the way. It's called, let's see,

57:26

The Hitler's Conservative Opponents in Bavaria is the name of the book by James Donoghue.

57:33

So you can go check that out. But were those guys to the left of Hitler or to the right of Hitler? Were traditional

57:39

Southerners who opposed fascism to the right or left of fascists? And I link to an article by Richard Weaver called

57:49

The South and the Revolution of Nihilism. And that's what he talks about in that article. So we're traditional

57:55

Southerners from the time period he wrote. He's probably writing in the, what, the fifties or so. I don't know if I had the date here.

58:05

1940, oh, I don't know, 1948. No, 1944, okay. During World War II. Were conservative

58:10

Southerners in World War II, were they to the right or to the left of those who they were fighting in Germany? I mean, you study even fascism in the

58:18

United States and you see where it takes roots even during that time.

58:24

It's mostly in the North and it's mostly in kind of like urban areas. And maybe you would expect that just because that's where people are, right?

58:31

The South was very resistant at that time to this. Why is that? Well, they had more of a rootedness, more of a tradition and a hierarchy that was still embedded in their society.

58:40

They didn't want something messing with that. That was important to them. That was, that's what they wanted to pass down to their children.

58:47

And I'm saying, I think all Americans should try to recultivate these ties, recultivate something of value to pass down, to get some thick society, some cultural depth here.

58:58

And religion, Christianity is part of this. It is perhaps the most important part of this.

59:06

All right, so we're in the homestretch. Conservatives do not adhere. Oh, sorry. These are questions worth pondering because the answer helps us understand what a truly conservative posture is.

59:16

So if you haven't thought through those questions, maybe reconsider your use of right and left. There is a positive vision.

59:21

In an American context, there has been a positive vision of what that means. And it's not ideological.

59:28

Conservatives do not adhere to simplistic totalitarian ideology, which is often misinterpreted as weakness today.

59:34

It's one of the things I hear a lot. Well, conservatives are weak. And often, you know, maybe that's liberals they're talking about when people say that.

59:39

But this is a question I have. Why not just be strong then? Why not just be strong?

59:46

You have to scale your power to meet the threat that's against you, right?

59:52

And I talk about this in the book, against the waves. I'm all for a localized society, but you have to do that in tandem with the fact that you have global enemies.

01:00:02

As Kruptas says, the tank problem. Your enemy has tanks. You have to make tanks. Your enemy is nukes.

01:00:07

You've got to make nukes, right? Your enemy is AI. You have to have AI. But to what extent does your civilization, are they shaped by these things?

01:00:17

And so this is part of the dynamic and the problem, or the challenge, I should say, that we have in the modern world in America.

01:00:25

We have the tank problem. But there has been a pull on the right.

01:00:31

There has been this traditional heritage, this Anglo -Protestant heritage that Americans of all regions have acquiesced to.

01:00:40

And it comes with law. It comes with songs. It comes with traditions. It comes with a language. It comes with a respect for Christianity.

01:00:47

It comes with all kinds of things. And those things have been weathered. As one reads older conservative thinkers, it becomes clear that there is no inherent aversion to using force when necessary.

01:01:00

This is a key thing too. I don't think it's, you know, the beautiful losers thing, right? That there are these people with these gentlemanly, conservatives have these gentlemanly codes of honor that don't fit in the modern world.

01:01:11

And so they ended up losing because they didn't play hardball. There may be some truth to this, but you gotta ask, was it their conservatism that did this?

01:01:21

Or did they just not read the times well? And should they have kept their conservatism while projecting strength in the arenas in which they still had power?

01:01:34

And that means doing some gatekeeping. That means kicking out people who are to your left.

01:01:39

And that would mean ideologues on the right and the left. Don't let them near the power.

01:01:45

If you have to play this game, you have, right? So is that the question? Were they just kind of like functioning on an assumed standard that everyone was operating by that they weren't anymore?

01:01:57

And I use Donald Trump as an example. More should be said about how to navigate such challenges, but Donald Trump who shares some of these conservative instincts, and I would say he's kind of a mutt.

01:02:07

Trump has some liberal instincts, but he does have a lot of conservative instincts, more than the neocons in some ways.

01:02:14

Like he gets some things that they don't get. And he is an example of someone who applies propriety in certain contexts.

01:02:22

Like that's the thing, Donald Trump, you don't get to where he is without some propriety. He can go to a charity dinner and he can have a certain level of propriety.

01:02:32

Looks good in a tuxedo and everything else. He can do that if he, he can turn it on if he wants, but he adapts when confronting threats.

01:02:46

So in press conferences, we're not playing by those rules. These are my enemies. He recognizes those are enemies. They don't get the same kind of treatment.

01:02:53

So that's what I think. I mean, that's the solution in my head. It's like, it doesn't mean you have to adopt in different ideology, just adopt strength, be strong.

01:03:02

All right, there is nothing innately stronger about adopting a leveling social theory in place of traditional ways of life.

01:03:08

Regardless, I believe our efforts should focus on reconnecting people to God's good order and the traditions that have sustained it.

01:03:14

This means understanding God and his order, remembering one's heritage and identity and engaging in community and leadership.

01:03:21

It also means adjusting our standards to this second, more grounded pole. We should view actions as based, trad, or whatever positive term we choose when they move the needle toward our vision of rebuilding our

01:03:33

Anglo -Protestant civilization and the hierarchies and arrangements that sustain it. I recently visited the great

01:03:38

American painter, Thomas Coles Homestead, only to find that half of it had been converted into an anti -American feminist art gallery with tour guides focusing as much on the slaves who live there whom we know little about as on Cole himself.

01:03:52

These are the kinds of things that must be reversed immediately. If we fix foreign policy, the economy, and even remove the

01:03:57

EI from our military without restoring the honor of our land, we will have been taken over without a shot.

01:04:03

And I'm serious about this. I think that this is maybe the Trump administration's blind spot. They've got to get this under control.

01:04:10

They got to reform the National Park Service. They've got to eliminate the National Endowment for the

01:04:16

Humanities if that's what it takes. They got to get rid of these things that are subverting us.

01:04:22

And those are the things subverting us more than anything else. This is worse than the economy, worse than other things, because this fractures our very identity, our ability to meet threats, our ability to even have virtue and examples of virtue, and it's pollution to our society.

01:04:43

This may sound dismal, but it is not because providence is manifest in history. When one takes a long view, one knows that sometimes people must go through the wilderness before they can enter the promised land.

01:04:52

History has always ebbed and flowed. This is no excuse for passivity. Rather, it is an encouragement that we have the amazing ability to save our land.

01:05:00

We have arrived at just the right time to make a real difference. I also find it especially encouraging that the transcendentals never truly go away.

01:05:07

God exists, and those things that are good, true, and beautiful reflect eternal realities that cannot be taken away, regardless of our present earthly conditions.

01:05:15

As traditional conservatives and Christians, we have a tremendous opportunity to offer something more fulfilling than ideology.

01:05:21

And with that, I end the article, and I'll take some questions. One of the things that I know

01:05:27

I've gotten that I wanna just address real briefly is, guys, I had someone reach out to me and say, John, like, I think

01:05:34

I've been deracinated. Like, I didn't even realize it, and you wouldn't, right, would you, right? But like, I don't have much to pass down to my kids.

01:05:41

Like, I don't really know much about who I am. I don't have a fixed identity, and like, that sort of came to me through natural measures.

01:05:51

And I do feel for this. I think what you have to do in that case, if you realize this, and you're starting to realize, oh, no,

01:05:59

I'm getting sucked into obsessions, getting sucked into universal explanations for things that don't explain everything.

01:06:05

I'm getting sucked into ideology. I think what you end up doing in this, what you end up having to do is, you need to probably identify the avenues in your life that contribute to the influence of that thing.

01:06:23

And if it's promoting lies, it's promoting imbalance, it could be an idol, get rid of it.

01:06:30

Get rid of those things. It may be some, it may be a podcast.

01:06:36

Stop listening to that podcast. I am totally for researching historical events, but if you are making the main bedrock of your worldview, whatever happened in World War II, and you have

01:06:49

World War II brain, and that's it, you can't like go before World War II, then broaden your horizons.

01:06:56

Start reading some other stuff. Get a fuller understanding of human experience. Read your Bible, right?

01:07:02

Like, these are just obvious things, I suppose, but if it's relationships, if it's like an online group chat, and there's more in -group preference for the group chat than there is for the actual tangible people in your life with whom you share life, and you have actual proximity and responsibility, leave the group chat.

01:07:19

There's nothing holding you there. You can be nice about it, but just say, it doesn't meet my goals or whatever. And then, so that's the negative part.

01:07:27

I mean, I don't know. Whatever's influencing you that direction, be aware of that, and then start cultivating healthy habits.

01:07:33

It's just like when you're working out, right? When you're gonna turn away from junk food and stuff, and stuff that gives you a high in the moment, and you just wanna keep getting more of it, but it's a transition to go to healthy food and working out.

01:07:48

So, you have to start cultivating your own sense of the past. Realize, okay,

01:07:53

I wasn't passed down this. I've gotta cultivate it. Start doing some family history research. Know who your parents are.

01:07:59

Start asking them questions. That would get you closer to your parents. What was grandpa like? What was great -grandpa like?

01:08:04

I never met him. What was he like? Tell me about him. Tell me about your first memory, dad. What was your favorite Christmas?

01:08:09

What did you get at that Christmas for a gift? Tell me about what you remember from your first political memory.

01:08:17

I don't know. Ask questions about what life was like, and the conditions that led to you, and why you exist.

01:08:24

That's gonna give you a sense of gratitude too, that this is the story God's woven to put you in the place that you're at.

01:08:34

And then it might require, if you don't have that, maybe you don't have your parents around, start reading some books. You have a region that you're living in.

01:08:40

I don't care where you live. Your feet are on the ground somewhere. I don't care if it's an apartment. What happened on the land that your feet are on?

01:08:47

Going back in time. Understand what the landmarks around you mean.

01:08:53

You'll have meaning pop out at you all of a sudden, and you'll have curiosity as you drive even to get to church or to work, you're gonna be passing landmarks.

01:09:02

You're gonna start wondering about that old house. You're gonna wonder where that path leads, and you maybe wanna go look at it.

01:09:11

You're gonna start asking questions that are going to start fulfilling, be fulfilling for you.

01:09:18

Know about your civic national or American history, if you will. Start reading about that.

01:09:25

Read biographies. Those are, I think, one of the best places to start. It's good to have overviews, but start reading biographies. Who's someone that you respect from America's past?

01:09:33

Start getting to know that person. And then after that, start getting to know another person. That's how you do this kind of thing, okay?

01:09:40

And of course, it goes without saying, but beyond all of this, be in the word of God. Don't ever neglect that. Be studying that.

01:09:46

Be trying to understand that. Be in relationships with people who are also on a journey to try to understand this at your church.

01:09:56

And get to know the people around you. And obviously, we operate on a certain scale.

01:10:02

We can't do everything, but it might be giving cookies to your neighbors that you haven't really met or inviting them over.

01:10:08

It might mean even at your church, inviting someone over that you haven't and getting to know them. But get to know people around you.

01:10:14

Maybe spend less time in the online fake world where these ideologies seem to make more sense because it's all abstract, and go into the real world more so.

01:10:22

Now, I'm not saying that there's no connection here. I think that actually online is great. It serves a purpose.

01:10:28

You're watching me online. Like dating websites serve a purpose. You can find someone on there, but the whole point is to get off the dating website and to go find that person.

01:10:36

And I think the online world should serve a purpose to help you in your tangible existence every day.

01:10:43

So that's my two cents. That's what you do. And you will find you will come to an understanding of who you are over time.

01:10:52

It's a process. And it will confer identity, and it will be very fulfilling and rewarding.

01:10:59

And you will start to treasure things that you want to secure and defend. And that will make you a conservative.

01:11:05

That will make you a real conservative. That's what conservatism is. It is meeting these threats. It is a posture of being skeptical of things that disrupt these threats, innovations that are foisted on your life that disrupt the things that you love.

01:11:19

It is the order of Mars. It is protecting the things that are worth loving that God has put into your life.

01:11:26

Okay, does that make sense? I hope it does. All right, let's get to some questions here or comments or cries of outrage.

01:11:34

Is liberal synonymous with the left? Not necessarily. So liberal, like you have your guys who are sort of liberal neutralists, multiculturalists, individualists.

01:11:46

They think that market participation is essential and should be the main.

01:11:53

So maybe a good way to explain it is like guys who are liberal tend to break everything down into the individuals, the building block, and participating in choice is the highest good.

01:12:05

And so the individual gets to choose things. The left today has kind of like, they still honor this, but they've also gone post -liberal in some ways.

01:12:14

And so that's the woke movement. They view groups, certain groups as the basic building block, not individuals.

01:12:24

And they look at, they still like individual market participation, but they think the deck is rigged.

01:12:31

And so we have to take from some to give to others so everyone can be fulfilled. So I would say that the left today, today's left has blossomed and kind of grown out of a liberalism.

01:12:41

Liberalism didn't deliver on the promises. It was supposed to create this equality. It didn't.

01:12:47

And so the left is coming in to try to restore balance in their minds and fulfill the promise that America hasn't delivered of equality.

01:12:54

So yes, I would say the left is, there is a liberal assumption, a liberal undercurrent there.

01:13:02

I'm still comfortable saying they're liberal, but the right is also liberal. They also have similar goals. They're operating in similar frames.

01:13:08

I'm talking about the elites on the right. But I am thankful and optimistic that there are elements now within the right that are trying to restore an older way.

01:13:17

This will be challenged obviously by ideology though, so. Okay, it's sad to see

01:13:23

Will Spencer hop on the Lindsay Express. Yeah, I really haven't been paying attention. I was on the

01:13:28

Will Spencer podcast a while ago and I talked to Will. Will Spencer, and we talked about this a little bit, like he was kind of going down this ideological path.

01:13:41

And then, I guess he, according to him, what he said, and I have no reason not to believe what he's saying.

01:13:48

He said that he had a wake -up call. He had a wake -up moment that like, oh no, this is way too far.

01:13:56

Like this is evil, this is bad. And then he, when you're starting to justify genociding people, he was like, oh my goodness.

01:14:04

And it kind of like shocked him out of it. And now he's, from what I understand,

01:14:09

I haven't really seen this much, but I guess he's really going after who he considers to be neo -Nazi types.

01:14:16

Now, I don't know how wide of a net, if he's doing it from a liberal frame, and if he's talking about guys like myself who just are traditional conservatives, then maybe he is,

01:14:26

I don't know. But the Lindsay path is the liberal frame. The Lindsay path is we need a neutralist, multicultural, individualist type of society, and Christian nationalists, in his mind, threaten this because they think there's particularity there that Christianity in particular should be established and rewarded in ways that other religions should not be platformed, and oh, this is horrible bigotry, right?

01:14:51

So that's the James Lindsay path in my mind. Does Ophal, oh man, okay, we're getting into all these things.

01:14:59

Does Ophalan of Sovereign Nations still promote James Lindsay? As far as I know, I mean, I don't keep up with that stuff, but I would be surprised if not.

01:15:07

Most libertarians are just high school and college age dudes that want we to be legal in their best arguments, we can tax it, which goes against their core principles.

01:15:16

This is kind of true, I hate to say it, that's kind of true. Bonhoeffer was of the confessing church's theology wasn't exactly reformed orthodox.

01:15:25

No, it was not. Bonhoeffer was not. That's the thing, like you go to Germany, who are your heroes, your theological heroes at that time?

01:15:33

You don't really have any, you can't find any. Like, that's what I'm saying, like Germany was so stripped, they were ripe for this, they were ripe.

01:15:42

What's your opinion on the claim that culture is genetic? So there's definitely different competing ideas and there's different, even in race realism, there's competing theories about this.

01:15:54

So you'll hear guys say things like IQ is determinative and IQ is determined by genetics and everything can be built from that, like everything's downstream from that.

01:16:06

There's other guys who, taking a more of a Darwinian evolution posture will say that things like your environment determines your genetics.

01:16:14

So environment becomes the main factor. What's the determining factor, right?

01:16:19

And I think that if you read the Bible, okay, and this is also established in the

01:16:26

Anglo -American tradition or at least this has been assumed for centuries. There's not a reductionistic one thing, that's a modern impulse to try to find that kind of like reductionistic one thing.

01:16:39

I think that culture, think of it this way, think of it like a pond or a lake, think of it a body of water and there's multiple streams running into that body of water.

01:16:48

So your ancestry is part of this, okay? You do have DNA that, let's face it, even physical activities, like I'm not gonna be in the

01:16:59

NBA, but I can swim pretty well, right? And on average,

01:17:04

I'm not saying in every case, but on average, you look at the Olympics, you see a lot of black guys who aren't swimming, but they're really great at jumping and running and like, there's probably some environmental factors that lead to some of this where you grow up, but there's genetic components too.

01:17:25

And there's been Ivy League studies that prove this kind of thing. So, I mean, that's an important thing.

01:17:31

Your pastimes, the things that you're involved with for recreation, that actually does have an effect on your culture and there's a genetic component there, right?

01:17:40

So it would be foolish to say that there's no impact, but to say it's determinative, that's where you get into ideology land, that it determines these kinds of things.

01:17:49

There's all kinds of things that determine your culture. I just pointed out Thanksgiving dinner determines your culture. Your cuisine, the things that are available determine your cuisine and your area, your geography, and how close you are to a body of water and how reliant you are on transportation and what kind of transportation, what kind of animals and the religion is hugely determinative.

01:18:08

I think one of the problems for theonomist types and not saying all of them, there's general equity theonomist types who don't fall into this, but some of the rigid theonomic types

01:18:16

I've met think that religion is the only factor. It determines everything. It's just culture.

01:18:22

What's the saying that culture is religion externalized. There's a truth to that, but religion does not determine everything.

01:18:31

That's what culture is. And I really do hope some light bulbs are going off on this. It's experience over time.

01:18:37

Why is it that in certain parts of Europe you have these ancient agreements that are still honored between shepherds where they can, their flocks, that there's common land that's like not owned by anyone.

01:18:51

It's just pasture land, but everyone takes care of it. And you try to do the failure of the commons, the tragedy of the commons.

01:18:58

You try to do that in other places and people trash it. They trash common land because they have no ownership in it.

01:19:06

And the free market people come in and say, well, we should privatize everything.

01:19:11

But then you socialists point to places in Europe and they say that their land's not privatized and they all respect it.

01:19:17

And then here's where the true conservative comes in. Not the ideological libertarian, not the ideological communist, but the true conservative walks into that situation and says, hmm, could there be another factor?

01:19:31

Could there be cultural factors here? Maybe there's a religion that tells people to keep their word.

01:19:37

Maybe there's embedded in that culture ways to punish those who break their word.

01:19:44

Maybe these people have a close cultural affinity. They are interrelated. They've married within their group so that they have common ancestors and they treat each other well because they have a shared heritage and common ancestors.

01:19:57

And they treat the land well because of that. And maybe in diverse societies, it doesn't work as well. And I mean, this was the whole argument.

01:20:03

Remember the alt -right was like, they were sort of like socialism, but not all of them, but I think the

01:20:09

Richard Spencer, was he the one that was like socialism, but for like mono -ethnic groups or whatever? And he was just jumped all over by Ben Shapiro for that.

01:20:17

And of course, Richard Spencer's like in Looney Tunesville. He supported Kamala Harris, but so did Nick Fuentes, right?

01:20:22

These guys are, oh, they're pieces of work. But Spencer, there was a point to be made with like, you do have to examine why is it that some of those cultures were able to have more socialized systems and it wasn't as detrimental.

01:20:38

Now, maybe their defense budgets aren't, they're being covered by us. There's other factors, but one of the factors

01:20:43

I think was you had cultural homogeneity. People naturally did have a affinity for each other and there were mechanisms to punish people who didn't treat each other well, which don't exist in more multicultural settings.

01:20:58

All right, so that's a long answer, but that's my answer to it. Betty says, yes,

01:21:04

I grew up in the North Irish history. We always had a big St. Patrick's Day celebration, corned beef and cabbage, Murphy's potatoes, occasional green beer.

01:21:11

I see that slowing down. You know, I was at a Mexican restaurant today that said happy St. Patrick's Day. And I said, I was with an

01:21:17

Italian guy, he's a friend of mine. I said, you know what? Only in New York would you see this.

01:21:23

You know, you go down South, you're not gonna see at a Mexican restaurant, happy St. Patrick's Day. That's because it's a cultural thing. There's a lot of Irish that settled in this area.

01:21:31

And that's part of, you know, I'm not a big St. Patrick's Day guy because it's not part of my cultural history, but because it's embedded in the community

01:21:38

I live in, I become that a little bit, right? I think about it more. I put on a little green.

01:21:44

My church goes to St. Patrick's Day celebrations and passes out tracks. Culture is learned, therefore not genetics, says

01:21:51

Anita Smith. College, yeah, this is a good point. Like it's like adoption into a family, right?

01:21:58

You see in the Bible cases of assimilation. Here's the thing I'd wanna say. I think you do need a core element of ancestry.

01:22:06

Like you need something that's being passed down to you that you've been passed down to others. You can't just come, like you have to tap into a chain that has links on it.

01:22:16

It can't just be one link separated from every other link. So when someone who is not of a totally different ancestry, someone, let's say a fresh immigrant from Ab, we'll say from Bangladesh comes to the

01:22:29

United States, they have to try to assimilate. And the thing is they're not fully going to ever, they're gonna still have their

01:22:38

Bangladeshi in ways, right? But they can definitely become part of what America is.

01:22:44

And that's really gonna be determined to some extent on how do people treat this person? Are they included? And if they are included, they do become part and they will affect even that dynamic will be affected by them to some extent, but they are much more affected by the larger group because that becomes their in -group.

01:23:02

If you have too many people coming over, they have their own in -group, they never assimilate. And that's what we were having a problem with in America.

01:23:09

But you have that let alone person who comes over, they assimilate. You're looking at a generation thing over the course of a few generations, especially when you have intermarriage, there's a full assimilation will take place.

01:23:22

And so most guys who are immigrant, they're doing it, if their families at least, they're doing it for their kids. And so I don't wanna say that there's not any kind of ancestral component to this.

01:23:35

There has to be, I think, but I would frame it in this way, like it's an ancestral core.

01:23:42

And you see this in scripture, there's constantly reminders about respecting the fathers and keeping the land within certain tribes.

01:23:51

That's all genetic. There's certain rules that apply to people who are

01:23:57

Israel that don't apply to others who are outsiders. They identify outsiders, right? You can't be a perpetual slave if you're an

01:24:03

Israeli or an Israelite, I should say. You're not gonna be in the leadership class if you're a foreigner, you can't be, it's against the law.

01:24:11

You have to be an Israelite. You can't be a priest unless you're part of a certain tribe. And there's even regulations on the temple and how far you can get.

01:24:19

And certain ethnicities couldn't even, they have to wait a few generations before they could even go to the temple.

01:24:25

So there's all these things that you see that, but at the same time, you also have these specific examples of things like Ruth and Rahab and people often try to focus on the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt.

01:24:41

So you do have, I think, examples of assimilation happening, but it has to happen on a certain scale.

01:24:47

Once you lose the core, you've lost the culture. I hope that helps. I go through this in a lot more detail in the book.

01:24:54

And my attempt is to try to be as faithful as possible to what the scripture says on these things.

01:25:00

And I give you all the references. I give you even a lot of historical background and so forth.

01:25:06

And I try not to oversimplify what is maybe more complicated. Today, Tim Pool is a right winger.

01:25:15

Yeah, tell me about it. I know the rights, everyone's on the right. You're not crazy, you're on the right.

01:25:21

Ecclesiastes 10, a wise man's heart is in his right hand, but a fool's heart is in his left. I'd love to take that out of context.

01:25:27

I really would. Let's move on here. I gotta get to some questions. Okay, what's a good book recommendation for the

01:25:35

War for Independence and for the Civil War? Love your podcast. For our first War for Independence and the second

01:25:41

War for Independence. Good book recommendations. Man, the funny thing is like I've read so many and I'll pop into my

01:25:51

Goodreads right now. What have I rated high on Goodreads on these topics? I don't know why it's hard for me to like pop off with something off the top of my head, but for some reason it is, even though I've read so many books on the topic.

01:26:05

For the Civil War, there is a good book called, I think it's called Understanding the War Between the States. That's a good kind of like starter,

01:26:12

I would say. I know Clyde Wilson contributed to it, but it gives you the complexities and it's kind of a broad overview of the political and social realities that led into it.

01:26:24

So yeah, I would recommend that. And for some reason, my Goodreads isn't being pulled up.

01:26:29

So I don't know what to do about that. Oh, well. Oh, there it is. Ah, it got pulled up.

01:26:35

Causes of the Civil War by Phil Lee is another good one. If you're looking at causes and trying to figure that out.

01:26:42

Let me see what I have for the War for Independence or Revolutionary War.

01:27:00

Yeah, there's some good books on specific battles and stuff. I don't know if I wanna recommend this totally.

01:27:07

I gave it a three star, but Gordon Woods, the American Revolution of History. It's an overview. I mean,

01:27:13

I thought it was okay. I think he, if I remember correctly, does bring a little bit of a liberal frame to it.

01:27:20

Just so people know, like on the Revolutionary War, there's multiple interpretations, but you obviously have the more propositionation guy saying it was a revolution in a very revolutionary sense.

01:27:30

Like they're literally starting the world over based upon these high and lofty principles of equality.

01:27:36

And then you have the group, and I'm part of this more that says, no, this was securing their rights as British people.

01:27:42

It was a conservative move to say we're being denied our British rights. So yeah.

01:27:52

Let's see, what other books do I have here? David Hackett Fisher does some good stuff.

01:27:57

Washington's Crossing, that's a good book. American Insurgents, the

01:28:04

American Patriots, the Revolution of the People. That will give you, I think, kind of like a from the bottom up view of the revolution.

01:28:13

That's a decent one. Yeah, I guess that's all.

01:28:21

I know I have one on my shelf. Oh, Partisans and Redcoats. Yeah, the Southern Conflict. If you're a Southerner, you should definitely be reading some of the

01:28:28

Southern stuff that happened in the Revolutionary War. So Partisans and Redcoats is one. The Devil of a Whipping, the

01:28:33

Battle of Calpins is another one. And then South Carolina and the American Revolution is another one. I did a

01:28:39

Southern Revolutionary War trip where we read these and we went to all the battlefields. It was amazing. So those are some good books to look at.

01:28:47

So yeah, let's get to some more stuff though. Those are, hopefully that's enough recommendations for now.

01:28:53

What else? Question, would you consider the liberalism of modern conservatism defended by Joel Berry and Neal O'Shenvy to be an ideology?

01:29:00

If so, what is an overriding narrative that defines it? Yeah, to some extent. I think, so I think a lot of modern conservatives, especially in the

01:29:08

Christian side, they do deny certain aspects of liberal ideology. So there's kind of like a, there's a mesh going on, right?

01:29:17

So they're not complete ideologues on everything perhaps, but they do buy into the liberal ideology.

01:29:22

And part of that, I think, is because the establishment is ideological. They're liberal ideological.

01:29:28

So in order to, that's just what you're used to hearing. So when you hear things like, you can be anything you want, you, our country is a nation of immigrants, it's a melting pot, you know,

01:29:40

I don't know. Like you can do anything you want with your body. No one should tell you what to do with your body. Diversity is our strength.

01:29:46

All of these are liberal slogans that you just kind of imbibe and you don't realize you're swimming in that water.

01:29:52

So I think those guys, those guys have bought into certain aspects. And like I say,

01:29:58

I think it's the neutralist thing. It's basically like the assumption that there is this liberal, neutral, sort of just, fair perspective by which everyone can operate in society regardless of their background.

01:30:15

And so this is like the American creed or the proposition nation. It doesn't care what your religion is or what your culture is or what language you speak.

01:30:26

It's just, you know, and so some of these guys, like Joel Berry probably thinks like English should be the official language. Some of these guys will deviate at points, but then they'll get really upset.

01:30:34

Like if you say, America's, you know, Anglo -Protestant and then just like, how dare you? You can't define it that way.

01:30:40

That's too particular, right? So ideologies are universal. They're universal explanations.

01:30:46

They take things that are particular and they make them universal. That's probably the best way

01:30:52

I can put it. They make things that should be particular universal. So let's see, what else do we have before I have a very, it's gonna be very short, the

01:31:04

SBC stuff here. So if you came for that, my apologies. All right,

01:31:09

I think I answered the questions. Bon Breithoff says that,

01:31:15

Bon Breithoff Gohard says, my ancestors settled PA when William Penn was governor. That's so cool. So did mine. Harrisburg was founded by the

01:31:22

Harris's and then they went down South. They followed the Appalachian or Appalachian, depending on how you pronounce it, mountains down.

01:31:30

All right, well, let me pivot. I actually, I'm gonna be on Apologetics Live in like 20 minutes or 25 minutes, whatever.

01:31:36

And I still gotta eat something. So we're gonna do this quick, but I wanted to go over something and it's stuck in my crawl a little bit.

01:31:44

I wanna just say, I love that there's a pivot going on in some ways in the

01:31:51

SBC and that guys who weren't on the conservative side of things as much are now coming to that position, but how much of it is opportunism?

01:31:59

I don't know. How much of is it is authentic? I don't know. We are in a leadership crisis though in that denomination,

01:32:07

I think, because it was almost universal. The guys, it was like everyone was saying, we have an abuse crisis.

01:32:15

And the guys who were saying, I don't think so, were tarred and feathered and they're not being rewarded at all.

01:32:21

They're not being recognized for the right that they, trying to get the convention to avoid this pitfall.

01:32:27

They're not being rewarded for it. They're not being credited. And guys who steered us into this iceberg are positioning themselves like they were the ones that didn't have anything to do with it.

01:32:37

And it does annoy me a little bit. I'm gonna be honest. Like if you wanna be a leader, you've already shown very bad judgment.

01:32:44

And now you're trying to gaslight us. You're trying to convince us that you weren't part of this. And I don't know.

01:32:52

That's worse. That's worse. Like I'm totally, like we should be forgiving of people who genuinely realize they did the wrong thing and they repent of it and they turn and they genuinely tell you

01:33:05

I was wrong. And I think what would even make it better is like, I need to sit this out for a little bit. I need to, I mean,

01:33:10

I just did. I'm doing that with something right now in my own life where I'm like, you know, I haven't made good decisions on managing this. I'm gonna have to sit this one out.

01:33:17

It takes humility to do that, a certain level of humility though. And I don't know that we have a lot of that.

01:33:23

So let's play some, man, cosmic treasons.

01:33:31

I don't know if you're here for the whole podcast cosmic. I defined ideology at the beginning of the article, but yeah,

01:33:38

I don't know if I have time. If I have time, which I probably won't, I'll try to get to a more full definition of ideology.

01:33:43

But I will say this, I do talk about ideology in this book and in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, I have a whole chapter on ideology.

01:33:52

So I'm drawing from guys like Roger Scruton and Okunshot and just paleo conservative, traditional conservative writers who have critiqued ideology.

01:34:04

So that's the vantage point I'm coming from. Whereas it's against tradition, it's an abstraction, it's top down when you apply it, it's an immediate thing.

01:34:14

It's a universal one size fits all regardless of particulars kind of solution.

01:34:21

All right, I can't say any more on it though. I gotta get to this other stuff. So let me pull up this video for you.

01:34:27

This is in a Twitter thread or an X thread by the way, as well. So, okay, here it is.

01:34:39

Sphere of coming forward is very, very well founded because most of...

01:34:45

Okay, sorry, you can't see that now. Hopefully you can see it. You speak up, they are trampled on.

01:34:51

And this has happened in the SBC over and over and over again.

01:34:57

In fact, there is a very prominent survivor, a precious friend of mine that this happened to just a year ago.

01:35:04

Most of you know Jen Lyle. She works for Lifeway. She is one of our most treasured people in the

01:35:11

SBC and the work she does is incredible. Over a year ago, in order to protect the people around her and in order to keep her abuser from being able to prey on others, she came out publicly because she trusted the

01:35:26

SBC to protect her and to handle her story well. And instead of doing that, the

01:35:32

Baptist Press changed the article after she saw it. They used the same language to describe her abuse that is used for consensual affairs.

01:35:43

And a survivor of horrific predatory abuse, instead of being surrounded with love and care and support, was cast away as someone involved in a consensual affair.

01:35:56

I didn't have any idea that Jennifer would ever come to me and to Southern Seminary with what was brought to us on that day.

01:36:08

And so that day began pretty much like any other day, but it didn't stay that way.

01:36:17

First of all, I knew Jennifer knew who she was. Secondly, there was specificity that meant that this was a true or false question.

01:36:33

There was this specificity. And third, there was the sense of urgency because he was on our faculty.

01:36:41

And so I understood what was at stake, at least at that point.

01:36:48

And so we had that conversation, prayed with Jennifer, and then we had to get to work.

01:36:57

And it was a complicated situation. The professor was out of the country at the moment. We had to do a lot of pretty instant investigation, had to get help.

01:37:08

And that help meant that as the leader of the institution,

01:37:14

I had to pull together the kinds of legal and other responses we needed to be ready.

01:37:21

And we were ready. But I wanna make one thing clear, and this is just absolutely necessary.

01:37:27

And this is a part of what we're dealing with in the SBC right now. It was sexual abuse.

01:37:34

It was a direct accusation in specific terms of sexual abuse, of abusive behavior.

01:37:43

When you... All right, well, that's the first clip and I'll show you what...

01:37:54

No, it's not letting me because I had the video. All right, I'll just read it. I posted on X, the

01:38:00

Southern Baptist sexual abuse nothing burger narrative was pushed by many who claim they were against it. Here are a few examples.

01:38:07

Number one, Al Mohler pushed the idea that David Sills abused Jennifer Lyle and it was not a consensual.

01:38:13

Sills took his complaint against the SBC's framing to federal court. And I understand that case is still gonna be decided, but there you have

01:38:21

Al Mohler saying this, emphasizing that this was abuse, wasn't consensual.

01:38:29

When... I've talked about the specifics of this case before, at least what we know, and driving long distances to rendezvous over the period of years, or at least the relationship was over a period,

01:38:40

I guess, of years, but they were... But that was one component of it. And they're both adults.

01:38:47

What's the thing that makes this... Why is Jennifer Lyle completely off the hook and not in sin and David Sills is on the hook and in sin for it?

01:38:56

Why aren't they both in sin? You could admit that David Sills has more responsibility in this, but that was 2019 when this all kind of started.

01:39:05

And this was what Al Mohler was doing at that time. This is how the whole abuse narrative got into the

01:39:12

Southern Baptist Convention. The whole idea, the whole concept of the Me Too thing is that you just have to believe what victims say.

01:39:21

And if they say it's abuse, then that testimony runs roughshod over any kind of examination.

01:39:30

And even the examination then becomes the propensity of...

01:39:35

It's not beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's the propensity of evidence or whatever they say.

01:39:41

So Mohler was deeply involved in this kind of thing. Now, the next example I give is

01:39:46

Denny Burke. Let me see if I can... All right, I'm gonna... Here we go. You can see this now, sort of.

01:39:52

Denny Burke. So Denny Burke supported the Me Too narrative by pushing the Houston Chronicle story, which if you remember that, if you're

01:40:00

Southern Baptist, how could you not? That was kind of the beginning of all this. 2018, Houston Chronicle says basically there's a crisis in the

01:40:06

Southern Baptist Convention and Al Mohler and all these guys got, oh no, and that's when Al Mohler like dumped C .J.

01:40:11

Mahaney overboard after defending him with no new evidence. And Denny Burke, he supported that.

01:40:20

Like he thought... He also supported Greer's Sexual Abuse Presidential Study Group.

01:40:25

He thought Greer did a great job in his appearance on CNN where Greer called for enhanced language under which churches who didn't go along with a protective measure beyond what ethics and the law require would be removed.

01:40:36

Of course, Den Hollander was in the study group to help make these recommendations. Greer even compared the abuse crisis in the

01:40:43

SBC to what was happening in Hollywood and the Catholic Church. And I'll show you the video of Greer, but this is the article.

01:40:49

This is just one of the articles Denny Burke put out there where he's saying how he agrees with the report.

01:40:54

And there are likely many other instances. So the problem's worse than the Houston Chronicle's even making it. And we need to act. And J .D.

01:41:00

Greer appointed last summer to investigate the practical steps the SBC can take to prevent sexual abuse. These guys who are saying now, like, oh, this was all a mistake.

01:41:09

And Denny Burke's out there posting stuff like this. The bottom line on the SBC crisis, there wasn't one.

01:41:16

And like, there wouldn't have been one if people like you would have stood up. There wouldn't have been one if people like you would have stood up.

01:41:23

And I just wish there would be some humility about this. But all right, so J .D. Greer, I went into a little more detail here.

01:41:30

Basically just said, look, he's behind the Caring Well stuff. The Caring Well stuff blatantly says that you shouldn't look for even like the two or three witness standard, you don't need that.

01:41:43

You can, because love believes all things. So apparently you should just believe victims when taking that verse out of context.

01:41:49

And I have two videos here, one from Greer on the Caring Well panel, but there's another one that, this is from CNN.

01:41:56

This is the one that Denny Burke shared that Denny Burke thought was great from J .D. Greer. First read these stories in the

01:42:02

Houston Chronicle. What was your immediate visceral reaction? Oh, it was one of absolute horror to think that this was happening in churches around the country.

01:42:13

I mean, we've known that this has been an issue for decades, churches that show a wanton disregard that allows abuse, that allows it to happen, that protects the abuser.

01:42:25

They have no place in our convention. Our goal here is not simply to meet the minimum requirements of what ethics and the law require.

01:42:31

Our goal here is to put on display what we believe about God. What I'm going to do this evening is going to call for some enhanced language that show that this is something that is out of step with what we call the

01:42:45

Baptist faith and message. Already, it is clear in our governing documents that this kind of thing is reason for disfellowship, but I'm just gonna say that, listen, this is not an excuse.

01:42:58

It's not something we can hide behind and we've just got to be very clear that this has absolutely no place in our convention.

01:43:04

Churches that will not go along with what we believe on this have to be removed as a part of who we are and that's what

01:43:11

I'll be calling for. Yeah, so I do have confidence because of the conversations I'm having, the conversations

01:43:16

I've had with the study group that's comprised of people like Rachel Denhollander and Andrea Munford that I believe you would be aware of.

01:43:25

She was the lead detective on the Larry Nassar case. As they have just been dialoguing with Southern Baptists, pastors and churches, the readiness of Southern Baptists to deal with this issue because we know that it is so out of faith, so out of character with the message that we have and with the

01:43:41

God that we worship. That's what Southern Baptists, I think, how they got a little bit into this problem is we said, oh, this is a

01:43:46

Roman Catholic problem or this is a Harvey Weinstein problem. It's not something that can happen to us. Well, we're certainly realizing that this is not an isolated problem and Pastor Greer, I want to thank you for coming on New Day to address this.

01:43:57

Thank you so much. May this world know that this - Okay, all right, we'll stop there for a moment and just say this about it.

01:44:06

That's, I mean, that's abuse incorporated right there, right? That's abuse incorporated right there. And that Danny Burke thought

01:44:12

Greer did a good job on that. So how do you, how do you square it? How do you square it? Now, the next one actually was

01:44:19

Dean and Sarah in my thread, but I guess in my video montage

01:44:24

I made here, I have Ronnie Floyd and all the videos are on X, by the way, if you want to look at them. So Ronnie Floyd, and the only point of bringing this up is that Ronnie Floyd, he actually kind of got me to, but even

01:44:34

Ronnie Floyd, who, you know, he's not known for being woke or any of that stuff.

01:44:40

Even he was saying this kind of stuff. And that, this is kind of my point is like, this was a knee -jerk reaction.

01:44:46

Everyone was going along with, from like 2019, 2018, to 2022, 2023.

01:44:54

Like this was like, everyone had to get in on it. So here's Ronnie Floyd at the Southern Baptist Convention.

01:44:59

There's Mike Stone behind him. This was at what? 20, I want to say, I don't even remember what year this was, 20, 21 maybe.

01:45:08

It was either 20, I think it was either 2019 or 2021. Cause there was no convention in 2020, but here he is.

01:45:15

Southern Baptist Convention stands against all forms of sexual abuse.

01:45:22

And may this world know that this convention of churches, 47 ,000 churches, plus a few thousand congregations, just under 52 ,000 churches and congregations, have given a clear signal, not only about what we believe about sexual abuse, but we also stand against all ethnic discrimination in the

01:45:47

United States and around the world. It's been extremely heavy for all of us. Okay, so there's

01:45:52

Ronnie Floyd. And it's like, you know, even these guys, you should know better. We're all just buying into like, we've got this big problem and we're going to do something about it.

01:46:02

Now here's a Dean and Sarah. And what he said, this was in 2022, I think, at the

01:46:08

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. I don't know what they call it, webinar, it's a video, obviously, but here's what he had to say.

01:46:15

But not only in our churches, but also as a denomination, as there's been continuous revelations coming out from the

01:46:22

Sexual Abuse Task Force, as well as this kind of monumental report, documenting countless instances of sexual abuse and cover -ups throughout the

01:46:30

Southern Baptist Convention, as well as our executive committee. I mean, my emotions after the report were anything from sad to outraged, angry, how can this happen?

01:46:37

Most importantly, if we actually do believe that all people are made in the image of God and have worth and dignity because of that, then any harm towards people should cause us to do whatever we can do, whatever it takes, to ensure this doesn't happen anymore.

01:46:51

We took the Caring Well challenge seriously. The ERLC was involved in a couple of years ago.

01:46:57

We want to make sure that we are a church that is a safe place for all people, and that we take any form of abuse very seriously and are quick to act, quick to have measures in place, and are quick to also call our own network of churches, our own denomination, to care the same.

01:47:14

So for us, it's not any kind of scientific formula. It's just making sure that everything we possibly can do that has been recommended by experts to ensure that our church is as safe as possible for all people who attend, that those measures are taken, and that if anyone ever comes forward with any kind of allegation, any kind of experience in the realm of abuse, that we are extremely quick to act and extremely quick to do whatever is needed to make sure that justice is served and that the people, whoever makes the claims, feels that they have been rightly heard and represented and taken care of, and that the church can continue to be a safe place for them.

01:47:52

Basically, the whole Caring Well thing was, oh no, we have this crisis, it's an emergency, we gotta do something right now, we gotta do whatever the experts tell us to do, we have to be willing to waive attorney -client privilege, pay whatever we need to pay, we need to produce curriculum, we need to come up with mechanisms for outside the law for reporting potential abusers and intaking accusations against them and treating those seriously, and oh no, now we're getting sued, now we're going to court, now there's false accusations, now we've spent all the money that these people gave us for things like missions and education, and oh no, and you can tell all these guys are going along with it on a certain level, they're going along with the narrative, and now the chickens have come home to roost, the federal government just did an investigation and not one arrest related to anything that's sexual abuse, like there was one arrest of a guy who lied under oath or something, but big nothing burger, and I'm just telling you,

01:48:58

I think these things have to be remembered to some extent, if people were honest about it,

01:49:04

I wouldn't care, I just think like, I hate to see guys who steered the

01:49:12

SBC into icebergs, and not just on this, on other stuff too, but maybe for Ronnie Floyd, it was just this, but, and I don't know if that he was steering, he was in the boat, but guys who were like happily in the boat and then retaining their positions of power, they should honestly be probably being quiet right now, giving steadily back to the

01:49:35

SBC, backing into the shadows, and if they're gonna say anything, praise the people who got it right, that would be humility, that would be true conviction to lead, but you're not gonna see that,

01:49:46

I don't think, and I hate to say that, but that's the truth. All right, well, that's the podcast for you, is it any wonder people buy into ideology with leaders like that?

01:49:56

Not really, not really, I think that people are gonna look for alternatives to whatever that is, wherever they can find it.

01:50:06

Well, we are almost done, this was almost a two hour mega podcast, hope that was helpful for everyone,

01:50:12

God bless, if you want to see the article that I talked about for most of the podcasts, you can go to americanreformer .org,