Right Wing Woke? & the New Antisemitism Laws

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Can I retweet this or something? Oh yeah, yeah. Well, we're live now. People are listening in.

00:06

We have CJ Engel. Yeah, go ahead and retweet it if you want so people know. CJ is a host of the

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Chronicles podcast and the Contramundum podcast. He is going to join us today to discuss this anti -Semitism bill as well as the woke right.

00:23

Before he gets to that though, I just want to let everyone know that I am going to be in your area this coming, what is it?

00:31

I guess Friday, I think, or maybe Saturday is when the conference actually starts. I'm flying in though to Minneapolis on Friday.

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Here's the conference. It is called the Be Not Conformed 2024 Conference at Eureka Baptist Church, also co -sponsored by TruthScript.

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You can find out more about that at truthscript .com. You can register. You need to register if you're going to come. It's in St.

00:52

Croix Falls. It's a beautiful area. CJ, I don't know if you've traveled much in the Midwest. I was surprised though in Wisconsin.

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It's actually very pretty in many areas. You think it's all going to be wheat and cornfields and it's not. Yeah, I haven't been up there.

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Yeah, the Northwoods they call it. It's an interesting area. We're going to talk though today about two things.

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I'm grateful that you're on the podcast to talk about this because I think you can clearly explain some of the working issues in both of these subjects, which perhaps are really the subject from different angles.

01:24

We have this bill that is, as I understand it, passed by the House, is going to the

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Senate. Our hope in the Senate is that Chuck Schumer somehow says no to it, but it's this anti -Semitism law.

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People were freaking out last night because it actually makes parts of the

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Bible, it frames them as anti -Semitic and would make them qualify as speech. Is that your understanding as well?

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Yeah, it's so vague that you can, I mean, and they refer to this third party nonprofit organization for their definitions without actually defining things in the bill itself, which is always dangerous because these 30 third party definitions can change as political dynamics change.

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But yeah, but they really clearly say in one of the definitions in the third party definition area that one of the examples they give is claims that the

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Jews killed Christ. And the Bible, you know, in its own way, and they're subject to interpretation, you have to contextualize these things, but it does indicate, at least in certain ways, that the

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Jews rejected the Messiah. And they did this by cheering for Barabbas and against Christ.

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And all these things are structured into Second Thessalonians, Gospel of John, and Acts. And so it's like, what are they going to do with this?

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Do you trust the regime to hold out in defense of Christians? I don't. And so it's very clear that these things can be very easily go against us.

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Yeah, they've handed a tool to the enemy in a sense by which they could justify limitations and persecutions and those kinds of things.

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This is a larger issue than it was even just a month ago when I did a podcast on the state laws that mirror this, or I should say this mirrors the state laws.

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DeSantis, Christy Noem, I think, in Texas, they had a law just like this.

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And they seem to be working off of a commonly shared definition of anti -Semitism that was codified,

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I think, in the early 2000s by a, I don't remember the name of the organization, but it's a organization concerned with the

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Holocaust. And it has a very broad understanding, I would say, of what anti -Semitism is.

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And so other people were upset that criticizing Israel essentially, or in certain ways is now anti -Semitism.

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And so things that perhaps our parents who are concerned about anti -Semitism and their only category for that is

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Nazis, and I'm not saying my parents specifically, but I mean, our parents' generation, that's kind of what they're thinking is the war that their parents fought.

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This is beyond that kind of image that you might have in your head when you hear the term anti -Semitic.

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And so I want to talk about that a little, this broad definition given to it. And in helping us talk about it,

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I want to show you all, those who are listening, just a little sample of what evangelical leaders have been doing with this term.

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So Russell Moore says that, and there's a number of things from Russell Moore, I just picked one.

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He posts an article, this is fairly recent, My Thoughts on Campus Anti -Semitism and the Lessons We Should Learn from a

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Nazi -Occupied Church. He wrote an article for Christianity Today, where he, again, he uses that very,

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I say simplistic, but that archaic in a way, this category from the

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World War II era that I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about, but he's applying it to what's happening now.

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These protests against Israel are in league with that. It's the same kind of thing. And there's not a whole lot of thought given to widely or specifically really defining anti -Semitism.

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You have Danny Akin from Southeastern, the president there. He's retweeted by Brent Leatherwood at the ERLC and the

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Southern Baptist Convention. He says, anti -Semitism has always been ugly and evil throughout the history, and it is evil and ugly in our own day.

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It must not be tolerated, but vigorously opposed. The government must speak against it. Good people must speak against it as well.

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Shame on those who remain silent. Again, not defining it, but just we ought to do something about this.

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Brent Leatherwood from the ERLC, and then the ERLC as an organization, also promoted the legislation that CJ just described.

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You have the CREC. This is the end of last year. In December, the Knox Presbytery adopted a statement on anti -Semitism.

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And I'll just read it really briefly. It says, we believe the conversion of the Jews is key to the success of the Great Commission, and it is incumbent upon us to pray and labor towards that end.

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Well, apart from Christ, the Jews are, as all others, alienated from God. They have remained an object of God's care. It goes on to say,

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God's plan for converting them is for them to see Gentile nations under the blessings of Christ's Lordship, thus leading them to long for the same.

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Hence, the cancerous sin of anti -Semitism has no place in God's plan. Again, fairly, what does that mean, right?

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Dan Darling, Owen Strand, the same thing. Anti -Semitism is not fake. It is all too real. Going on and on about it, but what is it?

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And we found out last night what it is. I think we had a rude awakening. Oh, that's what it is.

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So what do you make of all this, CJ? Do you think that evangelical leaders who pushed all this stuff, were they just dupes?

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Were they playing into something they didn't realize they were playing into? Is this ideological liberalism taking its course?

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How do you understand it? Yeah, I don't think, like even the top dogs like Russell Moore, I don't see him as like this, you know, cigar in a back room kind of person.

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I think he's very easily duped into certain metanarratives that the regime wants to play up.

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And that's kind of the function that he plays within the evangelical world is he is a catalyst for regime narratives to enter into the subconscious of the evangelical world.

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I think that's the function that he plays. And so he's doing his role, you know, very well. So when they want to, you know, build up for the, you know, mass acceptance of a law like this, they need representatives to kind of speak to the base to make these things happen.

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And I think that's why these phrases are coming out. I also don't think people like Owen Strand, I don't think

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I wouldn't consider him like a top dog, but I do consider him as very easily absorbing regime narratives.

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And so I think that's more the function that they're playing. But I think it's, you know, a lot of, you know, you can look at the anti -Christian nature of what's going on in politics.

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But I also think a lot of it has to do with the well with the well -being of the state of Israel from the state of Israel's perspective, too.

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I mean, it's becoming very much obvious to those of us on the right, to those of us who have a, you know, are aware of our constitutional past and the wisdom of George Washington to not have these entanglements with foreign powers, that these things are not good for us.

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That's sending billions of dollars overseas so that other countries can prop up their, you know, their interests and their objectives and their priorities that actually sucks wealth and culture and opportunity away from America.

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And so this return of this American first mentality is actually bad for those who live off of the government welfare in foreign governments, including

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Ukraine, including the state of Israel, all these things. And so the best way to get people on board with, you know, continuing the relationship with Israel is to speak in terms of the

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Third Reich and Nazism and all these things. And so it's very easy to drum up the emotions, especially in the evangelical world, with its, you know, deep history and dispensationalism and, you know, this eschatological reference to the state of Israel, all these things.

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That's a very easy narrative to play up and get what you want for the state of Israel is to tinker with the, you know, the puppet strings of the evangelical conscience.

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And so I think that's more what's going on. And I don't think people like Russell Moore, maybe Russell Moore, but definitely not

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Owen Stray and really understand the implications of what's happening and why they're being used for these ends. You know, it seems to me just watching this, that it goes so far beyond the dispensational circle, though, because you saw, was it 260 or something

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Republican senators or congressmen vote for this? You see, even

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I had an example in there from the CREC, which they would certainly oppose dispensationalism, but also wanting to take this very strong stand against a vague kind of antisemitism.

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And I've wondered to what extent this is a post -war liberal instinct and dispensationalism in certain forms is perhaps a resulting from that or a byproduct of that, at least some of the enthusiasm we see for the modern nation state.

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I mean, I don't know what your thoughts on that, but I see some people in the comments sometimes they'll say, like, dispense, if you just get rid of dispensationalism, this problem goes away to which

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I say, I don't think so. I don't think that's actually what's driving this. There's something, it seems like, that's deeper. And I don't know exactly what that is.

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I suspect it's some kind of a liberal consciousness. Yeah, I think that the, we'll call it the

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American empire. You know, after World War II, Europe basically was torn apart by the Soviet Union on one side and the

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American priorities in Europe on the other side. And so, you know, say what you want about the very difficult topic of World War II, it's much more nuanced than we grew up with, just the struggle for power and what was going on there.

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But I think in so many ways, the late 20th century and the 21st century really had its founding origins in the mythos of World War II.

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And so recreating those dynamics is important for the maintenance of power for the

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American empire. I don't think any of them, it's funny, you see these

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Palestinian proponents versus the pro -Israel side, these are basically two post -war movements battling each other out.

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None of them represent heritage America or constitutional America or anything like that. So I think you're right that a lot of this is the reinforcement, the struggle for post -war liberalism versus the woke left.

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And we should, I mean, we can talk about those dynamics a lot, but one of the important things to realize is the woke left, the pro -Palestinians, the ones that are seeking to couch

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Israel as this massive villain, that left is not the liberals.

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They are very illiberal. They very much want to suppress what they can see as oppressive forces,

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Christianity and patriarchy and white supremacy and all these things that they talk about. They are very much anti -liberal.

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And then there's the liberal establishment that's trying to hold onto its power. And one of the ways it's do that, one of the ways that it seeks to do that is it has to reinforce the myths of World War II, that there's these

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Hitlers out there that they have to rise up and address. And I think that's where a lot of the antisemitism comes into.

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It's just that they need that reinforcement mechanism that bolsters their ability to continue the post -war liberal order.

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Now, very quickly, before we move on, I wanted to find this a little deeper if we can, because we do have people listening who perhaps are questioning what the difference between the woke left and liberals are.

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We've done a whole series on liberalism on this podcast, but I know that we always have new listeners who probably see those as the same thing because they grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh and he just talked about liberals.

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And then towards the end of his life, what emerged as the woke movement is kind of the same thing. But you're saying there's a difference between them.

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I think there's a difference between them. I think the difference is very important. On one hand, there's lots of liberalisms. If you look at the genesis of English liberalism in the 1700s or something, it's very different character than the 20th century liberal establishment.

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The liberal establishment adopted this word liberal, but in its own way, it was very much not continuous with John Locke or something like that.

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And John Locke today would be considered a Christian nationalist. John Locke himself, the founder of liberalism said that Christianity has to be the metaphysical basis of English society and that Hinduism or Islam, these things needed to be rejected from political society because they had nothing to do with the

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English way of life. Here was Mr. Liberal himself in the 1600s, John Locke, speaking in this way, he would be considered dangerous like Stephen Wolfe or something today for speaking in those terms.

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So that classical liberalism is kind of done. It doesn't exist anymore.

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People like to use the classical liberalism so they can return to it, the good old days. But that liberalism,

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I don't think adequately describes 20th century liberalism. 20th century liberalism was really built on the interests of the

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New Deal establishment, the managerial revolution in the 1930s. And then it kind of was infused with this new radicalism in the 1960s.

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The liberals at that time had things like thinking in terms of only of individuals.

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They emphasized multiculturalism. They emphasized feminism, the emancipation of females from the patriarchy and all these things.

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These are liberalism. And if you look at the woke left, they do not speak in terms of everybody gets a fair and equal chance.

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They very obviously have a political agenda that seeks to suppress its enemies. I mean, if you think of the woke left today, they are very much against our way of life.

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They're tearing down our statues. They're erasing our documents. They're firing people who stand for those things.

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The woke left is not liberal. The woke left is very illiberal and they seek to dominate every aspect of our lives.

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So I think liberalism itself is crumbling, but I do think it's important to keep the left separate from the liberals.

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I think these two need to be kept separate. And I know this is going to pour into our conversation about the right, because the right is actually this forgotten option away from liberalism in the 20th century and also away from the woke left.

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One question I have, this is on a personal level, because I'm actually speaking on this topic this weekend on Christianity and liberalism, i .e.

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post -war liberalism. But I know that they gained some inspiration from Locke and Hobbes and maybe even

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Montesquieu. And they try to go back to these objectivities, what they sometimes call it, this objective way of looking at the world and at the government.

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And they see individual rights, which I think you and I probably would agree that this was maybe a freeze frame.

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They were trying to conserve what English common law up to that point had given to us, and then it got universalized.

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And so they believe in this universalized version. But the left today, they also sometimes use these same rhetorical devices.

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They'll say that, for instance, this year with the issue of abortion, they'll say that we're restricting a woman's right to choose, which is very much the language of liberalism,

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I would say. And the woke left doesn't have a problem using that. So there is some overlap, wouldn't you say? I think the overlap is very

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Machiavellian. I don't think the left is doing rhetoric. I think that they, I think the left is the master at appropriating rhetoric for their own political agenda.

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I think the left is much more devious about the way it uses rhetoric and strategy.

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I mean, if you look at like Antonio Gramsci, right, he was a Frankfurt School cultural

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Marxist, you know, far leftist who wanted to basically liquidate Western culture.

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But he recognized the fact that if you radicalize the rhetorical framework of the culture itself, then everybody drops their swords, they drop their guard, because, you know, the your opponents are speaking in terms that you yourself appreciate.

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And I think that's a very key aspect to the left is appropriating liberal rhetoric and using it for its own purposes.

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Because, I mean, you can see this during COVID. I mean, where was the, you know, personal right to choose then, you know, they use it selectively, not absolutely, whereas like a classical liberal, like James Lindsay might use it much more universally.

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Absolutely. Yeah. And it seems what maybe 15 years ago, when I was in college, that the term tolerance was used all over the place.

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That was the main thing that you could probably headline over the left that they're the liberals that they were, they were about tolerance, tolerance.

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And now you've seen the same people in that group, essentially move on from that they don't talk about tolerance anymore.

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It's really just conformity. And it's, it's a contradiction, you would think if you're a liberal, so well, let's move on, then to the woke right stuff, because I want to talk about this.

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And I want to reach an understanding, which I think we have, and then talk about this new term that it seems to be developing.

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Um, I think you and I mentioned, you mentioned before that maybe Kevin D young was the first, at least in Christian circles to talk about the woke, right?

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When he reviewed Stephen Wolf's book, he accused it of wokeness in some way. Um, here's just a little, uh, two, two little videos that I wanted to play.

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One's from a, uh, commentator who's commenting on Tucker Carlson, calling him woke, right?

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And the next one is from Doug Wilson in a recent interview on the room for nuance podcast with Sean DeMars.

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And he's asked about the rope. Story of Tucker Carlson and the woke right. Tucker and his producers are perfectly entitled to invite the guests they want to discuss the subjects they want.

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But the incident made it obvious to me that Tucker was not a truth seeking journalist and that when it came to Russia and the war in Ukraine, at least he had no intention of being objective.

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Not much is obvious, especially after the events of the last week. But the real question is why, why is the dissident right going woke?

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I should say that that's about the Vladimir Putin interview. He's calling Tucker woke because of he's taking what he considers to be a pro -Russian side.

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Uh, and then this is Sean DeMars asking Doug Wilson about the woke, right? You believe in the woke, right? The woke, right.

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The woke, right. Like basically the equivalent of the woke left, but the, the dissident right guys. Yeah. Think about GK Beals, sort of you become what you behold, you know, you spend so much time interacting with the woke that you begin to mimic their tactics.

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Well, I, um, I would say there's, I wouldn't say mimicking their tactics, although there is some of that.

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Um, I would say that, and this is something I'm actually quite concerned about on the right is identity politics is very much a danger on the right.

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Yes. Okay. We don't want to just do it better than them, which is what a lot of people on the adult lives for being white.

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Okay. And, and finally they say, okay, I can't do anything about it. I might as well be proud of it. So I might as well embrace it.

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And I'll take a page from your book and not your book, a page from the woke left.

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So I'll take a page from, um, Saul Alinsky. I'll take,

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I'll take a page from those guys and I'm going to be white and proud. I'm going to start hating

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Jews. I'm going to start, you know, I'm going to start doing the thing. And that is a big concern of mine.

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And I regard it as almost entirely the creation of the left. Oh yeah.

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Right. They, they invented it. But can you fill out the almost? Almost entirely?

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Yeah. Oh, I think a bunch of it comes from Adam. In other words, everybody's a sinner.

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And, uh, so basically vein philosophies oftentimes grease the skids, but we don't really need help coming up with sin.

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A lot of this, a lot of the agitation on the right is envy driven and envy is something we get from Adam, the material and the lies and the stories that are told we can get from the propagandist.

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Yeah. Okay. So I'll just give you the floor, CJ, with those clips we just heard.

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What's your analysis? Yeah. The woke white, I think it's, um, first of all,

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I don't, I don't know. I don't think Doug Wilson, like, you know, he, he, he himself, I don't think he was just responding to the question and they, you know, they set up the question for him.

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So he was responding in that context. Um, I think the woke right is a really silly content, uh, concept.

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Um, I think what it is is the inability to differentiate between the revolution and the counter revolution.

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I think that's the best way to put it. You know, whenever, whenever people start, um, recognizing that liberalism is failing and that there's gotta be some sort of, um, quest for, for power.

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And then if you don't feel power, then your enemy's going to feel power and use that power against you. Whenever you start thinking like that, because that's, that's legitimately what's happening here.

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Um, you, whenever that happens, people don't know how to handle it because we've been so, um, we we've come from a liberal, you know, background, like the classical liberal background.

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That's, that's part of the way that we frame our political rhetoric. It's part of the way that we treat the constitution. It's part of the way that we treat the rule of law, you know, um, equal, um, protection under the law.

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These are all, these all are downstream from liberalism, you know, as a, as a concept. And so when, when that starts to become liquidated and as the left, you know, reigns in power, there's this revolution going on and they're trying to attain power so that they can wield it against their enemies, which, you know, a lot of times are heritage

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Americans. And when the heritage Americans, you know, initiate some sort of counter -revolution against that revolution to call both of them woke,

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I think it's just the inability to grasp the failings of liberalism. And, um, you know, they're unwilling to cope with it.

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But I think, you know, a good example of this, I think there was a speech in 2014 by Victor Orban over in Hungary, and he gave the speech in Romania and he called for Hungarians to embrace an illiberal democracy.

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And what he was doing was he was, he was denying the right of individuals around the world to place themselves into Hungarian society and transform it, um, in the interests of their own interest groups.

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He was saying that Hungary exists for the Hungarians and that we are not going to embrace this

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Western liberalism because we want to do what is good for us. We, he differentiates between Hungarians, those who inherited the

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Hungarian way of life and the Hungarian political structures. And that he thought that it was important for the government of Hungary to fight specifically for those who were part of it, part of the soul of the

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Hungarian history. And he called for this illiberal democracy, um, not because he was a woke rightist, but because he recognized that there were enemies in the world that were seeking to liquidate

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Hungarian particularity. And he wanted them to, um, not fall for the rhetoric of liberalism as the

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West has done, but rather to assert and uphold the Hungarian way of life. And I think that, that needs to be recognized in what the new right, you could call it the new right.

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Um, it's actually just a return to the old, right? But you, I think you should see this in what the new right is doing.

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It's not woke because it's actually, actually a counter woke. It's, it is recognizing that what the woke wants, what its objectives and priorities are, and we are addressing it in a way that is feasible politically with where we are with our political empowered dynamics.

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So I don't know if you've seen the clip. I was looking for it just to see if I could display it, but I think

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I have part of the transcript where Doug Wilson talks about the Jewish blood in his family. Have you seen that?

25:22

I didn't, I think I saw, I read clips of it. Clips of it. Yeah. So, I mean, it was, um, some people were bringing this up and I'm not trying to do like a gotcha on Doug Wilson or anything like that.

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I think this is more representative beyond Doug Wilson. But, um, he talks about, uh, in the clip

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I just played from Sean DeMars that, you know, you're going to be proud of being white. Right. And this is like a negative thing.

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I know he's written, um, articles like white boys summer or how republics rot. And I know this frustrates some guys, younger guys, uh, some of them who, um, who have been vilified for so many years for being white.

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But, um, he had said, and this is back in, I guess, 2021, but he talks about that. Uh, many of his members of his family, his immediate family, uh, have some significant amounts of Jewish blood in their veins.

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The ancestry of his grandchildren includes rabbi Cohn. Um, and so anyway, and then he gets into, uh, kind of like God's promises to Israel and so forth, but there seems to be like a broadly speaking, an aversion to seeing a

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European lineage as a positive and, and when it's any other lineage, it's seen as positive for some reason.

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Like that's something that you can declare or be proud of. And it means something, it confers identity, but you're not really supposed to have any identity conferred if you're

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European and heritage. And a lot of young guys have noticed this and it's upset them to some extent.

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And maybe there has been some overreaction. I'm open to that where, uh, I don't know if I've seen a lot of that, but I'm trying to think of examples where, where they become really just obsessed with this and it kind of takes over everything else.

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But I, what I've seen more is just younger men who have been deprived of this feel like they've been, they've been given a raw deal.

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Like they've been cut off from their own heritage in a sense, traditions, uh, ways of living.

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And they're told that they must live in these neutral ways that don't prefer their own.

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And then, uh, when they, uh, finally kind of break free from that in their minds and they're like, okay, like I, I love my family.

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I love my people. I'm proud of my heritage, that kind of thing. They're, they're told that they're woke right. And I, I don't know if I'm reading that exactly right, but I think

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I am. Do you agree? I agree. Um, one of the ironies of all this, so Stephen Wolf in his

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Christian nationalism book, and people still can't wrap their heads around this and it's bizarre to me, but he's very much a two kingdoms guy.

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So we have our Christian identity. We have, we belong spiritually or invisibly or however you want to put it to the kingdom of Christ.

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But we also belong to these, uh, networks of net of what he calls natural familial relations.

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And these things are not founded in grace, but they're founded in nature. And so one of the, one of the, one of the hilarious aspects to all this is that Stephen constantly, all of us, you know, myself and you, we talk about the fact that these natural relations are, are good to claim that we belong.

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You know, I have, you know, German and Swiss or not Swiss, Swedish heritage. And these are, these are not founded in Christ, but they're founded in, um, the natural kingdom and that the, we can belong to those and we can fight for those and we can represent those familial dynamics.

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We can see ourselves as belonging to them. And that's allowed for all of these other ethnicities and cultures in the world that they belong to this very specific natural relations, um, heritage.

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And they're allowed to speak of this, but somehow when, when people of European descent speak about this to say, no, your identity is in Christ.

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You don't belong to, you're not first a Jew or a Greek, you belong to Christ. And we always get scolded about this.

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Um, so I do see what you're saying and I do agree with it, but we need to recognize the fact that, you know, a lot of our political work and our political interests has to do with the fact that we have a, um, a

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God given duty to, and an obligation to represent and stand for our natural relations, not merely our spiritual relations.

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We live in two kingdoms and it's okay to fight for those, uh, within the natural kingdom, you know, within the pre grace arrangement of familial dynamics.

29:40

You know, CJ, I think that the liberal order and everything that's come with it and not just the liberal order, but that coupled with industrialization has left many of us very fractured.

29:51

So we've moved around the country a few times, uh, there's divorces. I mean, I probably know more friends of mine in my age group who come from broken families than do not, uh, they come from stable families.

30:03

Um, we have, you know, different groups that you can be part of when you're in high school that are have interest in different things.

30:10

And so there's all these, in my opinion, confusing groups to belong to. And, um, it, it renders kind of a, an interesting situation where people grow up and they start attaching themselves to groups that probably that natural relationship mold that you just described do not fit that they, uh, we, we see young men sometimes becoming furries, right?

30:31

And they're identifying with a, my little pony TV show. I mean, that's a weird kind of extreme example, but, uh, gamer groups and that, and I'm not saying all of that's wrong, you know,

30:40

I've made the freezes, but, you know, being involved in hobbies and various things. But, um, but you, you talk about natural relations,

30:47

I think of region, I think of your local church context.

30:52

I think of the people that you're obviously at the root of many, much of this is the people you're related to the lineage that you have.

31:00

Um, but there's all kinds of factors that I think go into this. And I've told people before that in the area

31:05

I live in now, and I've grown up most of my life, I've been here. I realize I'm an alien in some ways coming from California, but in this area of New York, you know,

31:14

I go to a very diverse church ethnically. There's people from, um, all over the world.

31:20

And, um, I spend time there shared experience there. Right. And so when

31:25

I talk about my people, I'm thinking of them as well. It's not, this isn't just boiled down to genetics, which is what

31:31

I think the, the right, not the right, but like liberals here. And they freak out that this is going to be a, just a genetic thing.

31:36

I think it's certainly, um, kinship plays a role in this, but it's so much, there's so many other things and shared experience is certainly one of those things.

31:45

And the region that you live in render shared experience so forth. So I just want to bring that up. I suppose to, um, offset some of the critics that I'm anticipating when you talk in these ways, just to say that we're talking about the real world.

31:58

I think that's what I'm hearing. You say is like real world relationships that you have, and that starts in your home, right?

32:05

And the people that are very similar to you, that's how you learn to live with other humans. That's how you order your loves as Augustine talked about.

32:13

And the liberal order seems to just kind of wipe that clean. That doesn't, those things, those connections don't really matter as much as being individuals in a certain, uh, political structure that was made in someone's mind, some kind of forced, uh, forced principles, forced propositions that everyone must live by.

32:37

That becomes the thing that binds us. And that's just not true in the real world. That's not what binds us. It's not propositions or abstractions.

32:44

It's real shared experience in life that God ordained. So I use the phrase heritage

32:50

Americans a lot. And I know there's a question in the chat about, there's a number of them. Yes. Yeah. So yeah.

32:55

Well, heritage Americans is one of my favorites. So people say, you know, like people on the hard right, let's say, why don't you just say like, you know, white

33:02

Americans or European Americans or something like that. It's like, because the dynamic of American history played into the native

33:11

Americans were here. There was a fusion of culture, a struggle in some ways, uh, a cooperation in other ways.

33:18

If you look at things like the old South, there was a certain dynamic between white and black.

33:24

And, um, it's a lot more nuanced than people understand, but there are these, when you speak about heritage America, I'm really speaking about like, you know, pre pre

33:32

Ellis Island America. And so it's not racially essentialist, you know, back then we have this shared experience.

33:38

We have these dynamics. Like if you look at the, you know, relation race relations between native Americans and Americans, we had conflict, but we, we had this shared history of something unique.

33:49

Like have you ever seen like the Davy Crockett, um, you know, movie that the Disney Davy Crockett, we were sure. Yeah. Many times.

33:55

Yeah. Yeah. So there's this like dynamic and there's, there's tensions involved of course, but there's also cooperation and it's this like mosaic of, of how do peoples in Iraq and the

34:06

American experience does integrate these different types of people. I mean, that is what heritage

34:11

Americans mean. And so there's this fusion and it's, it's not a melting pot idea in the 20th century where you can just take anybody from around the world and plop them down in America and he'd be fine.

34:20

You can import, you know, millions of Somalis or millions of Haitians or millions of Palestinians into America and they'd be fine.

34:27

That's not what melting pot originally was meant, but this organic shared experience that kind of grows together over time.

34:34

So I think, I think you're right that region and particularity, um, is, is exactly what's, what's going on here now.

34:42

Our institutions were very much Anglo -Saxon for sure. The political institutions in America are very, um,

34:47

European derived. I mean, the, the native Americans and the Southern blacks, they all grew into.

34:54

No, no, no. The Iroquois Confederacy, CJ, that's where we got all our ideas, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, but, but these are, these do stem from, um,

35:03

Western European institutions and ways of political thinking for sure. And we, I mean, the, the, the

35:08

Europeans did dominate the continent, the continent, um, for hundreds of years, but I'm not a racial essentialist.

35:14

Um, so like, you know, I think anybody could recognize that those in charge are like people of European descent that are completely liquidating the institutions and the this country for sure.

35:25

I'm not a racial essentialist, but I do think that there is a dynamic there where you cannot just import the third world into America and expect it to say the same.

35:34

Yeah. I want to get into methodology a little bit. So, uh, I just, uh, screenshot, uh, uh, well, this tweet is the one

35:41

I want to talk about a little bit. This is from Neil Shenvey on X. He says, um, and, and I could have probably picked anyone.

35:47

I just didn't have a lot of time. And this is the first one I found, but, uh, he says, I want them. And he's talking about, uh, the

35:54

Christian nationalists, uh, de -radicalized from actual racism, antisemitism, misogyny, conspiracy theorizing, and critical theorizing that our fellow travel fellow travelers with the

36:04

Christian nationalist movement and aversion to seed oils is not the problem. I hear this a lot that, uh, the problem is we have critical theorists running around claiming to be conservatives.

36:17

Uh, James Lindsay, I think likes to use this line, I think, vocal distance. And I realized many of you don't know who

36:24

I'm talking about. You may not even understand, you know, who knew, you know, Shenvey is. So these are from Twitter, but, but there are guys on, on Twitter or X that, um, are kind of nerd out on, uh, the critical race theory discussion.

36:36

And, and what, the way that I've seen it, I suppose, is that they can trace this. Some of them can trace it to Mark.

36:42

Some of the can only trace it to Derek Bell. You know, their, their understanding is about an inch deep, in my opinion, um, of the cultural factors going into this, but they can really nerd out on those particular documents and the differences between, you know,

36:55

Crenshaw and Bell and other critical theorists and what did they think? And, um, and so they, they look at the right today and they look at what you just described from Victor Orban.

37:07

They look at national conservatism and they think this is right wing woke. And the reason is because they're using the same methodology, right?

37:14

The critical theorists were critical about the hegemony, meaning the, uh, intricate web of control that the cultural control that, um, kind of sets the default social mores.

37:25

They're, they're critical of that. And so the new right is also critical of that. So they must also be woke in that sense.

37:32

What can you tell me about methodology? Is it wrong? Is criticizing, does that make you a critical theorist? Okay. Yeah, this is, this is important.

37:40

So all woke people are critical theorists, but not all critical theorists are woke.

37:46

And I think that's important. Um, critical theory was very much a post -Marxist left -wing phenomena.

37:53

Um, they describe us on the right as critical, as critical theorists or as woke because they don't understand that there's an entire tradition of right -wing counter -revolutionary thought that was also not liberal.

38:06

And what the critical theorists did is they called bluff on liberalism, all of its claims about objectivity and science -based politics and individual rights without any, um, presuppositions within, you know, any, any preexisting frameworks, uh, within, um, you know, political power, they called bluff on all those things.

38:27

Liberalism basically in the 20th century sought to bring the claims of science and objectivity, um, and you know, the reign of the experts and all these things that they thought that they could bring these into, um, the managerial state and basically organize and structure society in a way that would benefit the world.

38:48

I mean, that was the, that was the liberal mentality in the 20th century. That's what the managerial revolution in the 1930s was about, was about credentialists, experts, basically organizing society, centrally planning society.

39:01

They had the know -how to adjust the interest rates in the best way for the economy, all these things they thought that they were doing objective science -based policy.

39:11

And the critical theorists called bluff on this entire enterprise. And I don't think you need to be on the left.

39:18

You don't need to be on the, on the, on the, uh, woke in the woke circles. You don't need to be part of the Frankfurt school to also call bluff on liberalism's claims.

39:27

And so that's how I would respond to that. I mean, there's this, uh, idea in the 20th century, um, you know, rhetorical, you know, uh, your circles, the, you know, the intelligentsia, they often, they, they so often talk about things as objective and we're a law -based society and that we can basically banish politics.

39:45

You know, the tension of friends and enemies, we can banish it from our society because we have objective science -based thinking.

39:52

And I think the left is calling, um, balderdash on that. And I think the right is learning too as well.

39:59

And those that are still stuck in the middle don't recognize the fact that just because we're calling bluff on liberalism doesn't mean that we're woke.

40:07

And one of the things that I know some people are going to raise as an objection to this is some of the critical theorists, uh, like Theodore Adorno in his

40:15

F scale seem to find Nazism or fascism behind every Bush. If you love your parents too much, if you have a, an allegiance to your people, you're a

40:25

Nazi, right? And we've seen this now in the discourse for years. Well, that's what fascism means in the academic spheres, right?

40:32

No, seriously. Like that's where, where's the source of the fascistic way of thinking. It's in the fact that your father rules the household.

40:38

Literally. That's what he has. The F scale is. So that is probably one of the lasting, uh, reminders or, or vestiges of critical theory from, from the

40:49

Frankfurt school that people remember and think, Oh no, uh, that's what theory is.

40:55

And, um, so I, you know, I want to just, I guess, admit that, that there is a separation maybe to may be made between some of the observations.

41:03

Like for example, um, Korkheimer, I think was the one who he was looking at like advertisements, if I'm not mistaken,

41:10

I don't remember it was him or someone else, but they were looking at like how capitalism influences people to go buy the impulse, buy things that they don't really need.

41:18

And that's really bad for society. And they kind of view that as enslavement. I don't know if I'd call it that, but you can see a parallel today,

41:25

I guess, suppose with the right, that the right is very concerned, the young right with, uh, drug overdoses, right.

41:30

Uh, coming across the Mexican border. And I've heard other, uh, older conservatives say, well, that's just a personal choice.

41:36

And it's like, well, it is, but you're the two work together, but you're still allowing all these things, these fentanyl products to come across the border.

41:44

And so there's a critique of border policy based upon my friend died or of a fentanyl overdose.

41:50

That's a critical that's being critical, but that's, that's different than, or Dorno saying that you're a

41:56

Nazi. If you love your parents, can you parse out the difference here perhaps? Yeah, I, um, well, the difference there, it doesn't need to be parsed out, but I do think that there is, um, like for instance, take someone like, like Roger Scruton, you know, he would talk about the fact that, um, you know, that, that individuals in society, they absorb the priorities and narratives of the elites.

42:21

That's how all of society functions. And it's functioned that way for a thousand years. And the idea that we can get rid of that is basically denying anthropological truths that God created the world such that, um, that individuals at mass would be represented by and framed and informed by those who exist in a more powerful situation.

42:43

Children are, um, not raised as individuals, but they're raised with the priorities and values of their fathers and their mothers.

42:52

Um, there was an article, uh, in ABC. I mean, every, I'm sure like most people listening to all this, but it was titled as having a loving family and unfair advantage.

43:00

Um, and I pulled this up this morning cause I knew this type of thing would come up, but you know,

43:06

I mean, they're, they're basically describing the fact that a mother and father who invest in their children by reading to them every night, by homeschooling them, they're basically disadvantaging those that don't have family, uh, structures at all.

43:18

And so that's that, that critical fact coming out. And we say on the right, we say, yes, I mean, they are giving their children advantage.

43:25

And that's one of the benefits of the West was that it was based on nuclear family dynamics.

43:31

And so we do have this element of rejecting the idea that we're all a bunch of deracinated individuals that don't come from preexisting structures.

43:40

We do reject that view. We do believe that a father who rules his family well will produce a family that is more productive and more, you know, um, wholesome and they're better, um, you know, they're better civilians.

43:53

They're better, you know, um, they, they represent their heritage in a much better, more holistic way in a society can improve by having these structures in place.

44:02

You know, those are, those are elements of, of our denial of the absolutist implications of liberalism.

44:09

Um, so, so I hope that kind of answers your question, but I, but I am emphasizing the fact that at individuals at scale do absorb the priorities and the messages of those above them and the family that's obvious, but it's also true within the market economy too.

44:24

We aren't, I don't, we don't glorify the individual who is this rationalistic calculating person.

44:31

He actually absorbs those, the things that are handed to him. This is one of the observations of this. There's this great book

44:36

I had out here, um, called the cultural cold war by Saunders. And he, he reflects on the fact that all of this, you know, deep money was given to these institutions, these nonprofits, which were to invest in media and art and culture and movies and religion and philosophy and law.

44:52

And all of these things were downstream from, you know, the structures that were basically put into place by those, um, who held, you know, the, the strings of power.

45:02

And that's how individuals absorb things. I mean, Paul Gottfried talks about this all the time. There was a speech that Hillary Clinton gave in the nineties where she was advocating for, um, you know, homosexuals to basically have the right to free expression.

45:16

And one of the, one of the observations that Paul made was, was that she was not reflecting the culture, but she was helping to craft it.

45:23

I mean, people are downstream from what they hear by their leaders. And when you have immoral, degraded, grotesque leadership, you're going to get a culture that reflects that.

45:33

I think this is one of the biggest problems that people like Neil Shenvey have with, with Stephen Wolfe, because he emphasizes the fact that culture is downstream from politics.

45:42

In other words, power sets the tone and the pace and the vision for culture and culture begins to mimic it and reflect the priorities of those in power.

45:51

Yeah. I think I saw, uh, an abolitionist guy yesterday. Um, I think it was Russell Hunter, if I'm not mistaken, make the claim that your leaders just reflect you.

46:00

And that's basically you're as wicked as your leaders because these are your leaders. Right. And you've elected them.

46:05

And, and I suppose there's a truth to that to some extent, but that's liberalism, right? But there's like, there's like a hint of like, okay, like you,

46:13

I guess you do, right. You elect, you do tend to gravitate towards people that are like you, but I see much more what you're talking about, where like we are shaped by how did we get from 2014 when gay marriage was not even legal to 2024, when we're arguing about whether kids should have transgender surgeries, was that a reflection of the culture or was that leadership using power to push us very hard, very fast?

46:41

Yeah, this is, this is one of the things about critical theory that actually there's some truth to it.

46:47

I'm going to get in trouble for this, but I'm speaking for myself and not John Harris here. But the, the truth to it is in critical theory, there's this dynamic between what

46:57

Marx called base and superstructure. So Marx had an economic materialistic view of the world.

47:03

So he believed that those in power were the, the bourgeois, the capitalists, the private property owners, those who own the means of production and that they would fill the heads of the churches and the artists and, you know, the cultural makers, and they would fill them with ideology that reflected their own priorities, their own capitalistic priorities.

47:23

What the, what the, the post Marxist left or the, the critical theorist, the Frankfurt School, what they did was they culturalized those dynamics.

47:31

They left the materialistic economic factors and they emphasized the fact that fathers and kings and, you know, those, you know, those with a patriarchal or biblical mindset, like all those things, they were the ones in power and that they would build up ideologies to justify their power.

47:51

Well, the fact of the matter is that yes, there is, you know, the, the ideologies, the things that we actually believe about the world are downstream from those who hold these key positions because that's how

48:01

God designed it. He designed men to follow their kings. This is another reason why

48:07

Stephen Wolf's Christian Prince chapter in his book is so controversial, because he talks about the fact that the king is a mediator.

48:14

He's the one that reflects or mirrors the image of God and shines brightly for his people and leads them in the way that they should go.

48:22

The king basically sets the pace and the vision and the tone. And when there was a Christian conversion, like in the middle ages, you know, when, when some local

48:31

Lord was converted, his people would adopt Christianity. That's, that's how society functions.

48:37

And so there's an element of truth to the fact that mass men are not, we're not all out there, you know, thinking deeply about biblical concepts.

48:45

That's not how you convert people. People follow their leaders. And that's an element of, of critical insight that calls the bluff on liberalism, that calls the bluff on enlightened individuals who are rationalistically going through the data and coming to truth on their own.

49:01

So there is this base and superstructure idea that culture and religion and philosophy, that the quality of law, that the themes in our media, the themes in our scientific explorations, like gender study, all these things, they're actually downstream from the priorities of those in power.

49:18

And so I completely agree with that. And I think that that's not a left wing thing. That's the, that was the teaching of like the counter revolutionaries in France, Joseph de

49:27

Maistre and Louis Bonnet. They all talked about this. Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Roger Scruton, they all talk about the fact that those who lead society will begin to, you know, create residues that the people below them pick up and absorb.

49:42

Even John Calvin, I think you can pick up pieces of that from the institutes. So one of the things

49:49

I've noticed is the old guard conservatives, the old right, I don't know what to say because the old right's the new right, the liberal right, what do you say?

49:58

The more liberal right. They, and the evangelicals who I suppose are involved in that industry, and they are, they are,

50:07

I think the moral majority did become essentially one of the facets of the neoconservatives.

50:17

They became, they were kind of like, I think originally somewhat, you could call them rebels or what's the term used today?

50:26

Dissidents. But they eventually, in the early 90s I would say especially, became just kind of like the polite people who went along with the

50:35

Republicans for the most part. And that is a critique you hear from the left quite a bit. But one of the things I think the advantage this gives them in denying a critique of the order in which they live, is they can hold out hope that if we just have a revival, that everything will be smooth, that everything will be fine.

50:54

I saw this in Georginia a few years ago. There was a rededication of the

50:59

United States to Christianity, and Glenn Beck was there, a Mormon, go figure, David Barton was there, Michelle Bachman was there.

51:05

It was supposed to be a Christian event, but they thought, hey, if the people just come back to God, then the leaders will essentially follow.

51:15

And you can also rage at your people. You can also go to them and say, you know why this happened? It's because of you that this happened.

51:22

And maybe that does happen sometimes. There's judgment because people are wicked and we get the leaders we deserve and that kind of thing. But I'm just saying,

51:29

I think I agree with you that there's this advantage that you don't actually have to criticize those in power as much in that kind of a setting.

51:37

You can blame yourselves for why Biden is in office. He just is a reflection of us.

51:43

And if we get our act together, then everything will be well. And I'm not so sure I buy that anymore. And I used to,

51:48

I think, somewhat buy that. And I don't think that's most of it.

51:54

We have to get good leaders. We have to actually go about the work of trying to secure and wield power before we can actually see the structures of society, the legal structures change.

52:07

Yeah. I mean, one of the great contributions, I mean, first of all, this came about in the 19th century with John Calhoun, it came out in the 20th century with James Burnham.

52:16

But they emphasize the fact that no well -wishing, no ideological fortitude, no logic, none of these, the conversion of the masses, none of these things can really confront power.

52:28

The only thing that can actually confront power is other holders of power. And the only thing that can stop power is not like this, believe in the constitution or rediscover the propositions that made

52:42

America great. None of these things actually can confront, they're not capable just based on the dynamics and reality of politics itself or power itself.

52:52

They can't actually do anything to confront the left in power.

52:57

The only thing that can confront bad power is other pockets of power. This is what you're seeing with the

53:03

Israel and Palestinian crisis. It's two groups in power that are confronting each other.

53:09

No one in power, very few in power, I should say, are representing the heritage American ethos.

53:15

You could point to someone like Thomas Massey or Paul Gosar, people like that for sure, but they don't really have any power.

53:23

And so only power can confront power. And that's one of the facts of, that's political realism, that's

53:29

Machiavellianism, is it doesn't matter how firmly you believe in liberal democracy or how committed you are to the constitution, none of those things can actually confront the left.

53:41

And I think that when we talk about what it's actually going to take to confront our political enemies,

53:47

I think that's when those in the center or those in the cozy conservatism get very uncomfortable.

53:54

So let me ask you a question, CJ. I agree with that. Although the Machiavellianism thing, that's the thing that also scares people, right?

54:01

When you bring that up and it, I might just give you the floor before I get to the point I want to make. But when you hear people push back at you for that, what do you say to them?

54:13

I have my own way of thinking about this, but what do you say to people when they're, hey, you're unprincipled, you're Machiavellian, you don't care about the truth?

54:20

Yeah, I'm not saying that you have to do that. Maybe we should be principled unto our death, but I'm describing political reality.

54:29

So if you want to be so principled that we lose everything, then that's a choice we can make.

54:36

But the fact of the matter is, is I'm describing the way politics works, whether you like it or not. Right. And I think that's probably what

54:42

I would say too. Yeah. The Machiavellian understanding of politics is you can glean how politics works from that.

54:51

It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to get into a position where might just makes right or anything like that, which is what people freak out about.

54:57

The solution I think that you and I are both advocating is the good people, righteous people, the

55:02

Christian prince type of person needs to rise in the ranks and take power and use power for good ends.

55:09

But it also helps us slow off or get rid of these false notions that the left depends on us putting down our swords and pursuing these non -confrontational strategies.

55:22

The left loves that because you're basically, your enemy is putting down their weaponry. So it also helps in just, you know, being realistic.

55:30

If you want to be the super principled and not play politics, just recognize the fact that you're not articulating a means to confront power.

55:39

So let me ask you this question. I've been wanting to get to this just to see what you think of my little tweet here. So this is one of the distinctions

55:46

I made between critical theory and the people on the right today who are critical of trash world.

55:52

So Max Horkheimer thought that progress toward utopia was blocked by the technocracy. He said, critical theory was designed to emancipate man from this.

56:00

Ripping on the liberal order because it's led to moral degeneracy doesn't make you a critical theorist. And I guess I'm just looking at the telos of critical theory there and trying to say that the purpose for which the critical theorists used critical theory was because they wanted to reach some kind of a utopia through another means other than economic, through a cultural means.

56:21

I don't think that today's right sees it that way. They're not looking for utopia.

56:28

They're not looking for the unrealized Marxist dream that couldn't be realized in an economic factor. So they're going to do it in capitalist factors.

56:34

And I think that makes a difference. We're just wanting really to secure ourselves for ourselves, secure a place for ourselves and our posterity.

56:44

And that's not utopia. That's not we're going to try to rip apart every element of society that we think hierarchies, to be honest, which what critical theory did.

56:57

We're going to rip apart every hierarchy so that we can somehow have this egalitarian society. That's quite the opposite of that.

57:03

We want to reinstitute hierarchy. So we're kind of going in the opposite direction. Yes, I think that's one of the most fundamental differences between the left and the right is the left is seeking utopia and the things standing in their way are the current power structures.

57:18

This is one of the benefits of reading the left, though, because they understand the fact that there is something in their way and that's structural.

57:25

It's institutional. And I think the right can not benefit from the left, but they can benefit from those who called out and really parsed the actual meaning of liberalism.

57:37

But one of the fundamental aspects of being on the right is being anti -utopian.

57:44

I mean, you and I have talked about this before. The right, almost by its definition, is realist.

57:50

They look at real people. They look at what is worth preserving in the world and they don't see them as tools to be undermined for the sake of creating and blueprinting the perfect society.

58:03

This is another aspect of the, I don't want to call them liberals, but conservatism, or regime evangelicalism, or however you want to put it.

58:13

This is the problem that they have also with Stephen's books. They think he's blueprinting out an ideal society, but he's not.

58:20

The fundamental aspect of the right wing is basically to look at what tools we have at our disposal to confront realistic enemies, to preserve realistic goods.

58:32

And I think that's one of the fundamental aspects of the right is we're not building something utopian. We're not blueprinting out the perfect society.

58:39

We're rather looking at what we have, what the character and nature of our enemy is, and we're seeing what can we do realistically to confront those who threaten our way of life.

58:48

It is very hard in my experience for people that are used to ideological thinking to break free from that.

58:54

They've divided the world up into two. Everything has a tag on it that tells you what the value is according to some proposition.

59:04

And it's very hard to break out of that. You think everyone else is also being ideological and some of us aren't. So there's some questions and comments coming in.

59:13

And since we're almost an hour in, we should probably wrap it up soon. But let's see. The first one is, when

59:19

I interviewed Jeremy Karl about his book, Unprotected Class, he advocated that mutually assured destruction is the only way to beat this.

59:26

And I'm not sure exactly what he's talking about there. Do you know what he's talking about? No, because I talked to Jeremy.

59:31

It doesn't sound like something Jeremy would say. So maybe he could clarify that and I could respond to it. Squidward says, envy is simply a ridiculous accusation.

59:40

We didn't really talk about this. I don't envy foreign nations for co -opting politics in my country. I repudiate them and want Americans in charge of America.

59:46

So I think this is in response to Doug Wilson's kind of explanation that envy is driving what he thinks the new right is, what he perceives them to be in being,

59:58

I guess, proud to be white. And I think, I don't know if the word he used, I think he did say anti -Semitic.

01:00:05

So do you want to just address that? Is envy driving this? And maybe tagged onto that, is the new right anti -Semitic?

01:00:12

What does that even mean? Well, who's in that framework? Who's being envious of whom?

01:00:17

Is he saying the white people are envious of, or who's envious of whom?

01:00:23

That's what it seemed to me in the clip we played that he was saying that he's very concerned about the woke right. Envy is driving this.

01:00:32

Envy is behind much of this. Yeah. I don't quite understand.

01:00:37

When I just think about myself, I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be envious of. I just want my way of life back.

01:00:44

Jewish people, I'm assuming. Yeah. I don't think it's envy. I think it's realistic.

01:00:50

I want my heritage to be upheld and asserted. Yeah. I don't get that either, but that's what's being thrown out by some out there.

01:01:01

Envy. Real quick, maybe the second part of my question, because people are going to ask, is there a term you can use, if it's not anti -Semitism, is there a term we can use or a concept to say, all right, well, it's wrong to hate people, including

01:01:19

Jewish people. You shouldn't hate them. That shouldn't be a feature of your politics is hating people.

01:01:27

I don't think, I think only in very rare circumstances is an entire political movement animated by hate.

01:01:34

I think that's a construct that benefits those in power of the post -war liberal order.

01:01:45

You could say that the Nazi party was animated by hate. I don't think the Germans were at large, just the

01:01:51

German people at large. I think that's a construct. Just think about the way that any,

01:02:00

I don't know, pick some old right guy, Garrett Gerrard or just any of these old right guys that,

01:02:05

Charles Lindbergh, none of them operated on the idea that there's people out there in the world and we hate them.

01:02:13

We're going to build up this political movement just so we can show them off. It just never, it doesn't make any sense to me.

01:02:20

I don't think any of us are sitting peacefully in our chair and then someday we're like, we hate these people.

01:02:25

Let's go get them. I think that's a made up thing. Honestly, I don't think, when you think about all of these immigrants coming in from the

01:02:35

Haitian island or whatever, all these Africans, we don't oppose them because we hate them, obviously.

01:02:44

We don't think about them until they're at our borders, changing the way of our life and getting bad people into power and being used for cultural upheaval, instituting crime.

01:02:56

That's what frustrates us, but we don't think of these random people around the world in hateful ways. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about them in a political context, to be honest.

01:03:06

When it comes to Jewish people, if I could put a little meat on the bones for people who might not be initiated into this kind of a conversation,

01:03:13

I do know of some young guys on the right who have the opinion that secular

01:03:19

Judaism, it's not Judaism, secular Jews, people who are Jewish in their ethnicity, but secular in their religious views, that they have been overwhelmingly disproportionate in advocating for pornography.

01:03:35

Pornography has essentially, in my generation and especially those in Gen Z, it's crazy what they're going through.

01:03:43

They're looking at their friends, they're even looking at themselves at times and they're thinking, this is destroying my life. This is ruining my life.

01:03:50

And the same thing with drugs, but pornography is probably even worse.

01:03:56

It's huge. People aren't having children, they don't know how to interact with the opposite sex, they're not getting married.

01:04:05

There's so many social consequences to this. People who start studying this issue tend to find out that a lot of the major figures who are behind the distribution, behind the production of pornography, behind the court cases that made it legal in our country, because it didn't used to be, that many of these people happen to be

01:04:26

Jewish, overwhelmingly, and the secular Jewish people. I don't know exactly what you're supposed to do with that, but this bothers them.

01:04:37

This wasn't maybe part of their, if they happen to be Black or if they happen to be

01:04:44

European in their heritage, Americans, they don't look at that and say, well, this was something foreign that came in.

01:04:51

This isn't part of my heritage going back. And I don't like that. I've never heard anyone who's told me that, say, hateful or resentful things against Jewish people or envious things.

01:05:01

It's more just like, this is a kind of a foreign understanding that is taking a toll on my people.

01:05:09

And so that's the best concrete example I can think of to try to understand maybe what

01:05:15

Doug Wilson might be getting at there. But I don't see that as anti -Semitic. And so I'm trying to think of like, is there such thing as the bad kind of anti -Semitism or hate?

01:05:26

I'm sure, yeah, hating someone is wrong, just because of their ethnicity. But I don't see that as anti -Semitic necessarily.

01:05:35

That's a worldview issue. In some ways, I suppose that's a religious issue, but there's also deeper cultural issues and factors that have led to this.

01:05:45

So I don't know if you have anything to say about that, but I'm trying to make it understandable for people listening. That's a really tough one, because it's proven and it's obvious that those in charge of very grotesque media in the

01:06:02

West have been Jewish people. And there's the clip of one of the owners of Pornhub or one of these groups that was bragging about the fact that Jews were in charge of the pornography industry.

01:06:17

So what do you do with it? But I don't think that hate animates our opposition to their participation in it.

01:06:25

I think that the participation in it comes first, like the fact that it's being perpetrated on us.

01:06:34

There are people who point out the fact that when Israel took over the media control in Palestine and stuff, the

01:06:42

Israeli government was live streaming hardcore pornography to the TVs of all of the millions of Palestinians.

01:06:50

I mean, a couple of decades ago. I didn't believe that at first. I looked into it. It's true. It is true. And so what do you do with that?

01:06:56

And so I don't think opposition to it is anti -Semitic like in this ultimate essentialist sense.

01:07:03

But there is an aspect to Jewish political strategy that comes from a long, frustrating experience that they had in Europe that has made them recognize the importance of moral degradation in the takeover of a society.

01:07:22

I mean, we don't live in a society where it's like pure ethnicity wars anymore. But back when there were pure ethnicity wars,

01:07:31

Jewish people on the margins of society got into loaning and banking because they weren't allowed to have power anywhere else.

01:07:39

And they began to learn these tricks. And one of the tricks that they learned in order to get into power and to undermine the moral fabric of a society was to perpetrate sexually degenerate imagery.

01:07:52

And this is something that goes back a long way. So I don't know if that makes us anti -Semitic, but it does recognize the fact that sometimes there are group interests at play that will use these mechanisms and that we need to oppose them, not because of their genetic makeup, but because the fact that they have become especially good at it as a group in perpetrating these things.

01:08:14

And yeah, it's a tough issue. And I don't think that I'm animated by hate in recognizing these types of patterns.

01:08:20

It doesn't make sense. I know myself very well, but there are people who will abuse.

01:08:25

They will look at these patterns and they will begin to hate. And so we can talk about the fact that that hate is on the rise and that it's dangerous or whatever, but we also need to talk about the fact that they're responding to something that might be real and also dangerous.

01:08:39

And perhaps much more dangerous to be quite honest with you in some ways. I think that that's a really good take on it.

01:08:46

And I guess when I think about that issue, I'm thinking there's border policy, maybe not border, but immigration policy to be considered when you start suffering the consequences of importing large groups of people who shared a different value system than you do.

01:09:02

You also have, I suppose, the main working issue here is recognizing the strategy that was employed, and it doesn't matter who the strategy came from, and then trying to reverse that so that we can then, and this is,

01:09:15

I think, Stephen's point is to make, to reintroduce a kind of pan -Protestantism of some kind.

01:09:23

And how do we do that? How do we make that, beautify that, make that look good, implement that in law, inspire

01:09:29

Christians, no matter their ethnicity, to get involved in politics and to really promote a moral vision that is good for everyone, but is a uniquely

01:09:38

Christian moral vision. And so that's how I would channel that frustration.

01:09:45

And I think of the constitution too, it says for ourselves and our posterity, right? And for all the

01:09:51

Glenn Becks of the world who really value the constitution, it wasn't this universal document, it was a communion with the past and with those who are yet to be born.

01:09:59

And I think that holding that, the sacredness of that, that's a sacred kind of compact in a way, not the constitution itself, but that relationship between the past and those who are yet to be born requires us to stand up for our children and our grandchildren and try to preserve the things that have been passed down.

01:10:15

And one of those is, for a long time, pornography was illegal and now it is.

01:10:21

And we need to take that seriously and limit it in our own homes and in our societies. Yeah. But you can't do that unless you have power.

01:10:28

Exactly. The power is like a very key aspect of strategy.

01:10:34

And it's the very thing that the people in charge of evangelicalism deny to us is they call it sinful to want power.

01:10:42

And they scold us for recognizing the fact that only power can confront power.

01:10:48

So I would completely disabuse ourselves of that sort of guilt laden narrative about our participation in power and just recognize the fact that we live in two kingdoms and we have a right to stand up for those that came before us and also those that are going to come after us.

01:11:05

So I don't know, CJ, you've been very gracious with your time. Do you have five more minutes? I do. Okay.

01:11:10

So Tim Miller for 199 says woke basically has no meaning at this point, in my opinion. Justin Stroke says us poor folk are all ethnically mixed now, can't be raised heritage

01:11:19

Americas because he likes your heritage America term there. Abolitionist says the

01:11:25

Whig party became Republicans because they stood firmly on the issue of abolition and slavery. And he actually had a few comments.

01:11:32

I think the point that he was trying to make was that if you are unmovable and you have conviction, then you can actually move the halls of power to promote your interests.

01:11:46

I guess the thing I would say about that is William Wilberforce was actually wielding power though. He wasn't. So it is important to win elections and to, to have those options available to you that are not available to you if you do not win elections.

01:12:00

And if you have anything to add to that. Not really. Yeah. Convictions convictions can work in tandem with, you know, because we're not like Machiavelli was advising the

01:12:09

Prince to pursue power kind of for its own sake. So there are lessons in Machiavelli about understanding politics, but that doesn't mean we have to drop all of our objectives.

01:12:18

In fact, one of our objectives is standing up for our heritage. That's a, that's a good objective. We're not pursuing power for its own sake, but power is this tool given to us by God that can be wielded responsibly on behalf of people that we love.

01:12:31

We have John Carter who says for 499, you can't say it's sinful to hate

01:12:37

Jews. If you give Jews a blank slate to define what counts as hatred of them.

01:12:43

And I think he's talking about last night, the bill that we saw that's now going to the

01:12:48

Senate for it's for ratification. If this bill passes, then there's a whole lot of things that are now considered antisemitic.

01:12:56

It's not just hating a certain ethnicity. It is that, that hates now.

01:13:02

And I, I'm even having struggling trying to come up with the terms for this because I want to root down into what the sinful, sinful hatred, right?

01:13:10

It's, it's much more than that now it's criticizing policy. It's you know,

01:13:16

Christian doctrine could even be considered hate. We have Adam Noble who says this is an outstanding convo carving out the lines between good division and bad division.

01:13:24

That part of Americans was remarkable. Also parsing out race essentialism. So he's very enthusiastic about what you said there.

01:13:32

CJ CB says, I took a film pornography class in college. Yes. You read that right?

01:13:37

LOL. You don't know the half of it. Yeah, I don't. I guess

01:13:42

I don't. I that's not a class that I would want to take. If your kids are going to college, probably advise them not do not take that class.

01:13:50

I think he was referring to Jewish influence and pornography. Yeah. He's probably agreeing.

01:13:57

Um, so yeah, those are some of the comments that I, uh, highlighted along the way. I'll give you the final word,

01:14:02

CJ, and then let you plug your Twitter handle and anything else you want to plug. Yeah. My final word is, um,

01:14:08

I think we should be, we should recognize the role that institutions play and that institutions in the

01:14:14

West are not neutral. They're not objective. They're not science -based, but they actually serve a certain political agenda.

01:14:22

And so when we're criticizing the institutions for the function that they play in the making of a new

01:14:27

American culture, we are engaging in a type of criticism, you know, a type of critical analysis of the fact that these institutions are not neutral.

01:14:37

They are serving an, um, a specific way of politics. They're serving a specific metaphysical vision or view of the world.

01:14:45

They're serving a certain, um, moral priority scale and that we need to not pretend like these things are neutral, but we need to participate in their control because from the institutions come the health or degradation of the society.

01:15:01

Excellent. What's your Twitter handle? At ContraMordor. And you can, uh, subscribe on iTunes to the

01:15:09

Chronicles podcast and Chronicles magazine podcast. CJ hosts that as well as, uh,

01:15:14

Contra Moondom. I believe they're both on YouTube as well. Yes. And, uh, thank you, CJ. I appreciate your time and, uh, your wisdom in navigating this.