The Importance of Conserving Identity and Particularity with C. Jay Engel

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Hey everyone, welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host John Harris. We have a reoccurring guest now, twice on the podcast,

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CJ Angle. CJ, welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. Thanks, John. Appreciate you coming on.

00:26

You actually reached out to me and I was glad you did though, because I know the podcast that we did a few weeks ago on conservatism or paleo -conservatism,

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I should say, theonomy, and then libertarianism got a lot of views and there were a lot of people who had questions.

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You saw them in the comments, I got some personal messages from people who were part of each of these three camps.

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And we want to address some of those questions today and maybe get into some other areas.

00:57

So we might be talking, I know we just chatted about this, but for everyone listening, we're probably going to be talking a little bit about some of the things that you said in the last podcast of the legalism versus practical nature of politics.

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We'll talk about the accusation or the question about whether or not your philosophy or paleo -conservatism more broadly is somehow a relativistic thing.

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We'll talk maybe a little bit more about conservatism, theonomy maybe, maybe we'll get back into that a little bit, and some just resources for people, because I think a lot of people who resonated with what you said want to know, where do

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I go to really understand this more fully? So that's where we're going, just so everyone understands.

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CJ, I'll just give you the floor. What kind of things did you want to respond to and clarify? I think the thing that people have the biggest trouble with in conceptualizing paleo -conservatism is accusations of relativism.

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I think in the modern age, people have had this sense that they have to construct a universalistic solution of civil law.

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And this comes about in a variety of different ways. Marxism is a certain rendition of that instinct.

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Libertarianism is a certain rendition of that instinct. Even things like theonomy. I mean, the idea that we have to have this overarching universal law that needs to apply to all civil societies,

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I think is the impulse that defines modernity. You have political philosophers and historical philosophers like Eric Vogelin and Michael Oakenshott who would emphasize something that we could call political rationalism.

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The ability that we have to sit back and construct, or perhaps we could use the Bible, specifically the

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Old Testament and the civil laws given to the Mosaic people in the Old Testament economy.

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And we can take these things, and these are perfectly applicable laws, standards of law that need to be applied to all people in order for that society to be just.

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I think that approach really defines the modern age. And so in that sense, it's actually interesting.

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I think the theonomic position is very modern. I think it came about after the

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Civil War in England, and it kind of was the birth. This is one of those conversations, too, that is interesting because the actual theonomists in the 20th century, like Bonson and Rushdie, I think they were creating something that's distinct from what the

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Puritans were doing. But even still, there's this bifurcated approach here that one of them emphasizes this universalistic law that has to be applied to all people.

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We have to figure out what is ultimately just and the more what I would call the old fashioned or the classical tradition of politics, which is much more situational.

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It responds to things as they come down the pipeline and recognizes the realistic as opposed to the idealistic nature of political theory.

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So I think that's I think that's a good start, because I think it really emphasizes the fact that there is accusations of relativism that come about when you have more of a classical view of things where the the decision maker, the political actors in a society, they do have the authority to decide when the exception happens in terms of laws.

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You know, you can create laws and it's good to have a stable legal system, but there are exceptions to those things.

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And a lot of those exceptions exist within the realm of the strictly and purely political.

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And so distinguishing between the political and the legal, I think, is something that people don't pay a lot of attention to.

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And when we talk about political theory, what happens and I noticed this as a libertarian over the last 10 years, it really quickly goes back into legal theory and exits the realm of political theory, strictly speaking.

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And so I think distinguishing between the political and the legal is something that we should perhaps focus on a little bit, too.

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OK, well, taking a I don't know if I want to say shot, that's a little too aggressive, but talking about the theonomist right out of the gate.

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So let's just start there, because I think a lot of the critiques and questions are coming from people who are who have been under this teaching.

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And and I empathize with this a lot because I think I said on the last podcast we did together, I called myself a theonomist at one time.

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I think it might have even been my Facebook profile. I was reading a lot of theonomy. I still am.

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I'm not quite done with Joe Booth's book. I'm slowly making through my way through the mission of God.

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And and I'm realizing all these things that I used to think that now I'm like, wow, that's not where I am now.

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And and it's not because I'm a relativist at all. If anything, I'm far from that.

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But I think living through some of the circumstances that have challenged this universalist impulse, at least for me, has caused me to think this way.

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And I think as you get older, too, this is one of the reasons maybe people shed libertarianism as they age.

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I mean, that's at least a pattern is they start realizing that their families and the particular things that they care about, their neighbors, their regions, all of that matters far more to them than these ideas, these these universal ideas that should be applied to everything.

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And and so I do think we need to take our time as much as possible. And I know this is going to be, as you said, hard for some people, but like walk through this a little bit.

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If you wouldn't mind, there's there's a few quotes I want to bring up and maybe we can just talk about them.

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The first one's from Augustine, because I was just reading this this morning because I'm writing a book now and I want to write a chapter on ordered loves.

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And anyways, I came across these quotes from Augustine where he says this, but the useful and indispensable institutions of men with men include all the differences that seemed proper in dress and endowment of the body in order to differentiate sex and dignity, the numerable kinds of signs without which human society either is not managed at all or is not managed skillfully.

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Also, whatever weights and measures, stamping and weighing of coins are proper to each state and nation and other practices of this kind.

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If these had not been the arrangements of men, they would not have also differed from nation from different nations.

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They also would not be altered in separate nations themselves, according to the judgment of their own rulers.

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And then one more quote, short quote here, these are the and he's describing a certain kinds of people he's arguing against the kinds of people that I'm about to describe here.

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He says these are the kind of people who become indignant when they hear that something was permitted to just men in times past, which is not permitted to just men now.

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And at the fact that God commanded certain people to do one thing and other people for a temporal reason to do something else, both observing the same justice or in one man and on one day and in one house, they may see that one thing is suitable to one member, another to another.

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And that something with which was permissible up to now becomes illicit.

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And our hence that something permitted or prescribed in one spot is prohibited and punished in a nearby place, but is just as variable and mutable.

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Rather, the times over which it rules do not follow the same courses for they are temporal.

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And then he goes on and I don't want to bore everyone with more, Augustine, but I think that's kind of what you're talking about, right?

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That's classic classicalism. I mean, the idea that every nation has its own customs and its own modes of morality.

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So this doesn't mean that there isn't an overarching or transcendent ethical standard by which all humans are held accountable.

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That overarching ethical standard is the thing that humans have all fallen short. And it's the very thing that Jesus fulfilled when he died for everyone's sins.

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But at the same time, there are variations in customs and we see this all over the place.

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We see this when we go on missions, we see this in the completely different culture that people behave and dress in ways that are appropriate to their own backdrop that would be completely inappropriate if imposed and adopted arbitrarily in Western societies, just because there is a cultural element to some of these aspects.

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This doesn't deny transcendence, but it does add a layer of plurality. Two ethical things, you know, so a lot of, you know, a lot of people just focus on the overarching things and this and this gets even more relevant, of course, when you get into politics, because one of the aspects of politics that's important to keep in mind is that the state does have the magistrate does have the authority to confront very specific political threats, very specific threats that come to face and confront the realm at a given time.

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There is no there is no blueprint or book that teaches the magistrate how exactly to course to confront a specific political threat, because every political threat is unique to its own situation.

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It's unique to its own development. It's unique to the people and the behaviors and the standards that come about.

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All these things are all situational. And the role of the magistrate is to make decisions about these unique events and to use the tools that he has at his disposal to make the right decision, to make the just decision in light of particular situations.

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And so when you quote someone like Augustine, who talks about the fact that there is variety, there is variation among the nations in terms of their laws and ethics of behavior, you also bring in the element of, you know, politics being having variety as well and needing to confront very specific situations.

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And this is sort of the the story of Western society and Eastern society.

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But, you know, most of my mindset, of course, is on Western Europe and its children like America. But, you know, each nation has its own confrontation.

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It has its own interests, its own the role of the and the obligations of the magistrate vary when

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France and England are at war. It is the role of each of their magistrates to defend the particular interests of their specific people.

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You know, a lot of a lot of our war make they is very ideologically laden.

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You know, it's hard for us to think in terms of actual conflicts having to do with people and specific people.

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And so those conflicts were much more realistic and not so much idealistic. Of course, you can have myths that you have like veils of myths that are important in keeping the people, you know, focused in uniting them like France and England in their own wars.

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They've had a layer of the of the ideal and the universal that they've they've needed to justify their own decision making.

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But they they weren't fighting on behalf of like liberal democracy and spreading all of those ideal ideologies.

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They were fighting on behalf of their own particular interests in their own way of life that they saw as threatened by the activity and interests of the other group.

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And so there is variation in politics and political ideology or political orders.

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And it is important to recognize the fact that that nations do have conflicting interests between each other.

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And that's what leads to some of these conflicts. And it is the role of the political, it is the role of the magistrate to address these very specific situations with the tools and interests that are specific to that people.

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Let's take this in two directions, because what you're saying is very similar.

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Well, not very similar, I suppose, but I do see kernels of similarity here between what even some people on the left or how they wield and use identity politics.

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Right. Which is, of course, argued against by, I guess, modern conservatives that have power, that identity politics is bad.

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And I think there's some reasons to think that and especially the way that it's used. I've been a critic of it, but but there is something to it where the people who want to get you to think in terms of what's good for your group and wield power on behalf of your group to help your group, that seems to be something the left is willing to do, where the right is not as much.

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Even though the left is about these universal principles, when it comes down to the practical on the ground, let's get voters to register.

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How do they appeal to these various disparate groups? We're going to do something for your group. It's not a universal call.

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Was that fair? I mean, have you noticed this? I agree. I it's.

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They use both, they use universalism, but they do also cater to and this is the point that Paul Gottfried has made over and over again.

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These people, they're not actually relativists, you know, they speak in terms, you know, they have their own positive ideology of how they want to remake the world.

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And it and it does they do have friend and enemy groups that they are trying to integrate into society.

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They do think in that way. And so identity politics is a key characteristic of the enemy of Western civilization.

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Right now, they operate on an identity based and it's hard. There's a book by Samuel Huntington.

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So this wouldn't be a controversial author. This wouldn't be a controversial book. This is not a right wing. It's kind of he's kind of a centrist, but he just has this book.

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I think it's called Who Are We? I could I could link it. We could link it to the show notes page. But he basically asked this question of who are we?

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Now, what does it mean to be an American? Is it this is it this boundary list definition?

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And if it's not a boundary definition, what are the boundaries? What does it mean to say that I belong to this specific national community?

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You know, what does that mean? What is that? What is the history of that? Where does it come from? And he asks it very poignantly and he asks it very honestly and transparently.

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And he asks he tries to draw the boundaries and make people recognize that you do have to have an element of identity in your interpretation of world affairs.

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You do have to belong to someone. And in belonging to some group, you also are saying that you don't belong to some other group with its own interests.

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And so there is an element of identity. Of course, that can be abused, like a lot of different things can be abused.

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But identity politics can be abused. But the rejection of identity politics can be abused just as well.

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And in fact, my own interpretation of things insists that identity politics is a key characteristics of the of the left.

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And the abuse of anti identity politics is something that the left uses against conservatives and against, you know, what

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I would call like legacy Americans or traditional Americans. The they really they really push this like abuse or distortion of anti identity politics in their in a way that benefits them.

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And so I think Americans, you know, like conservatives, heritage Americans do need to start thinking about these questions.

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Who am I? What do I identify as? Like, what do I have? Something beyond myself and my family that I belong to.

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And what are the boundaries of that? And I think that is an aspect of identity politics in a way that's probably unique to our time.

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We have to address questions that are relevant, specific to our own enemies and to our own political dynamics in a way that wasn't relevant.

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We didn't have to talk about like stuff like this in the 1930s or 1940s. We have to address different questions today.

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And of course, these questions are more uncomfortable, but they're just as, you know, important because that's the character of the political conflict.

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Yeah. And as soon as you say something like we want to operate with an American identity and I mean, that's really what

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MAGA was about. You're not allowed to do that. That's a violation of these universal norms that you're supposed to instead be for that benefit all humans across the globe.

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And but the left is, of course, permitted to do these things with various groups. And when you say heritage

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Americans, we should probably I don't know if you define it the last time, but we're we're talking about in the

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Constitution, the line ourselves and our posterity. Right. We're talking about the people who are here, who because as Scruton says, and I think he's right, that society is this communion of the living and the dead and those yet to be born.

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There's there's a we there's an identity. There's this is the group that is going to bind their descendants and their descendants are part of this.

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They're in their thinking as they're doing this. And they've it's been passed down through tradition over time.

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And we've learned to live with and accept and make alterations along the way. Hopefully good ones. Unfortunately, sometimes not so good.

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But but there is this group. And of course, immigrants can come. They can be adopted into this group and so forth.

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But but when you say heritage American, I just want people to know what you're talking about, because because I think it's important the left uses identity politics to attack that core

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Anglo Protestant kind of identity. That's not this isn't white nationalism. This isn't all the perversions of the ideological perversions of it that people like to accuse it of.

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It's just it's literally what the founders said at the beginning, ourselves and our posterity. And they assumed there were going to be immigrant groups who would come in and they can be grafted into this.

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That isn't a violation of it at all. But but if you don't have that core identity group, then you have a problem.

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Because what is that document even govern the Constitution in this case? But what is it even behind the

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Constitution? It's not about the Constitution. The trust, the public trust. Where does it come from if there's not a core group of people that have conserved it over a period of time?

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Right. So I want to read for you a quote. I'll get your reaction here. And you can anything

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I said that you want to correct or you think should be clarified, go for it. Here's Roger Scruton from How to Be Conservative, page 33.

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He talks about politics. He says opposition, disagreement, the free expression of dissent and the rule of compromise shall presuppose a shared identity.

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There has to be a first person, plural, a we, if the many individuals are to stay together, accepting each other's opinions and desires regardless of disagreements.

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And of course, he talks about the family in this way, that you may have disagreements, but they're still your family. And he says it's the same thing that's true of the body politic.

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This seems to be one of the things that stood out in the last episode when you were talking about this issue of universality is you were saying,

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I want to conserve American identity, though. I want people who are here. It's not just about Christianity.

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It's Christianity that speaks English, that has certain Anglo Protestant customs. It's I want to conserve that.

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I'm not interested in conserving some universal notion of even Christianity. Maybe talk about that a little bit.

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Yeah, I'd like to talk about this. I love the dynamic between nature and grace.

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This this goes back a long way and it's been answered in different ways over over, you know, historical, over Christendom's challenges.

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But the dynamic between nature and grace basically just asks the question, what is the nature of how has the gospel impacted the fact that Jesus came, the fact that he does have a universal church, the fact that there are these gospel laden, you know, as a result of Christ's work, there are these new categories that have to do with a heavenly kingdom.

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How does that relate to our nature? The fact that he created us as communities, as as nations and as people groups that we have obligations to, like our families and our communities.

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And, you know, historically, a community was an extension of the family. It was, you know, the extension of of the tribe or the kin group.

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These were very they're ethnically related topics. You know, so how does the the aspect of grace relate to the aspect of nature?

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Do we have to should we reject our natural obligations completely and just completely disassociate with that whole world and just be an individual with this new community completely?

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Or does grace perfect nature and does it renew our obligations to our families as part of the the second kingdom?

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You know, we belong to an earthly or temporal kingdom that we have obligations to. We also belong to a heavenly kingdom that we can look forward to perfection in along different lines as our natural obligations, our natural ties.

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These are two different kingdoms. And what happens when you begin to blur them is you can't properly answer this question.

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But, you know, how do you handle the dynamic between between nature and grace? And so that's that's how

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I would approach, you know, your question there is is is with that dynamic. I would refer to people like, you know,

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Bavinck and even even the entire scholastic tradition like Thomas Aquinas, they really grappled with this dynamic between nature and grace.

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And the conclusion that they came out with was as Christians, we are still we still have these obligations to our natural duties.

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You know, we still do participate in the facilitation of our culture and our tradition and our customs and our heritage.

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And we are conduits from the past to the future because of our involvement in that second kingdom, because we have these natural ties that aren't eradicated by the gospel, but renewed and give us hope to continue on as a fully human creation.

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And I think that's an important aspect to all of this. Yeah, I want to get to the practicality also, because I think there's two elements to the opening discussion we're having here.

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One is the identity that is maintained by tradition, which we're talking about now. But there's also this element of practicality.

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And you mentioned it at the beginning of in particularity. How do we apply laws?

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How do we respond to threats? More and more importantly, perhaps that that threaten the identity of a people and and and that includes things like the morality of the people, all the other things, just like a family, if you think of it in terms of a family.

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Man, I lost my thought. I had something from what you just said. Well, go ahead. Go ahead. I didn't want to answer the question of heritage

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Americans, too, because, you know, that plays into this. But go for it. I do think that ourselves and our posterity helps give us an idea of how the founders approach these issues.

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You know, we take things we take these phrases from the founders and we kind of reinterpret them based on the priorities and framework of the post -civil rights world.

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You know, after World War Two, America was kind of reconstructed along, you know, what's called a propositional nation that anybody who agrees or a sense to the propositions is a full

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American. The founders didn't think like that. They really thought in terms of the continuity of their own people.

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They they saw themselves at that time. And this is before the like the the Irish and the German immigration.

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You know, this was before the Eastern European immigration in the early 20th century. They really saw themselves as an outpost in a continuation of a

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British culture that had disintegrated back in the old in the old world. There's a great book that I highly encourage people to read by Russell Kirk called

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America's British Culture. I think it's a series of lectures or essays. But he just makes the point that, you know, the the idea that America can stay

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America without its British culture, its British backdrop is kind of silly. He basically makes that point.

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And so this at the founding, they really did have a British world in mind.

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They saw themselves as saving or continuing on their own rights as British free men.

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I mean, these weren't universal rights that belonged to everybody, but they were really the rights that derived from their own culture and from their own historical experience.

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And they saw themselves as conduits, as catalysts to bring forward those British rights and those

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British liberties and the British way of life into the future. So that would be the old like heritage

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American. That would be like the original. And as you expand out from like the British identity, you can get into like Germany and the

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Germans and up into the Scandinavia. And you can find cultures that are not strictly

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British, but they are Western European. And you can incorporate those people into a

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British culture, you know, in a way you can you can assimilate those people. But as you expand out further and further, it becomes less and less likely that you're able to maintain that Western European or that British institutions and the

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British rights and liberties, because those people have completely different incentives. They have completely different priorities.

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They have completely different convictions and their ties are differently constructed.

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Their own like spiritual, you know, backdrop and their own instincts and sentiments and demeanors are so different that you could change an entire culture by bringing in these these groups of people.

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And what happens is not that the groups as individuals, the groups of people are bad, but that you cannot maintain your way of life by mixing, you know, your your group with all these other other people in the same way that you couldn't import, you know, half of Germany into Thailand and expect

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Thailand to continue on in this tradition and customs. It's just not the way that human beings work.

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And so there's been this recreation of the American way in the 1960s that reconstructed what it meant to be an

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American. And it took away the more realistic, empirical, you know, ethnic or cultural aspects of what it meant to be in America.

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It stripped all that away and made it into a proposition that anybody in around the world as individuals who assent to these various ideals, these various standards or statements, they are just as fully

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American as anyone else. And what happens when you when you have that is you actually are denying, you know, the there's the stable foundations of of an ordered society.

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Well, let me I don't know if it's pushback, but let's challenge that a little bit if you would.

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And I don't think I'm actually challenging it. I think, though, this is what people who hear this from a certain perspective are going to say and they're going to think this contradicts,

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I don't think it does. But I have a good friend, let's say. I mean, I actually do.

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Who's from Kenya? All right. Really good friend of mine. He's one of the most British guys I know. And I tell him that he wears the vest.

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He likes to drink a sweater vest. He likes to drink tea. He's just his mannerisms are a lot of them are just very

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British, because I think Kenya was influenced by Britain so much. And, you know,

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I'm sure you've noticed that in many of these places that Britain colonized, they've even retained some of the aspects of Britishness that was there at the time better than Great Britain has.

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And so someone like him, he lives now, obviously. I know him. So he's in the United States. And, you know, he he went through.

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I don't he was actually born here. So he's a citizen. I think his parents may have gone through the citizenship process and so forth.

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But, you know, they're great people, patriotic, in my estimation. And there's going to be people who push back on what you're saying, and at least they think they're pushing back and they're saying, well, wait, you're excluding him.

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You're saying that someone from India or someone from Ethiopia or somewhere else in the world who's not

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Western European is on the out group. And what would you have to say to that? That's the difference between a group and an individual.

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I think when you bring an individual and he's birthed here and he's and he's part of that that culture, it's absolutely reasonable for him to take on.

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That's that's the definition of assimilation. The problem is, is when you bring in these groups of people and you have entire communities of people.

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And then what happens to the individuals? The individuals recognize the fact that they actually have more familiarity and connection to the group, that group, that specific group.

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So the problem is not whether this is this is why like, like subjects like white nationalism don't really make sense to me, but because it's so individualistic, like the idea that you can't have a very specific

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African person who adopts the culture of, you know, you know, Britain or Germany or wherever he happens to be is not is not in question.

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You know, what's in question is whether you can bring in whole groups of people and maintain, you know, custom and tradition within the political order.

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That's that's the question right there. Now, maybe this is an argument in your favor to some extent, but I know just having a lot of family in Mississippi that the the mixing of cultures that took place over a period of over a century, well over a century in these regions where there were large numbers of Africans imported in during the slave trade, especially they've contributed some to the culture, to the cuisine, to the music, even instruments like the banjo have their origin in Africa.

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Right. And of course, during Black History Month, we are there's examples of this all over the place of people trying to find these contributions.

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But there are legitimate contributions. And I think of Eugene Genovese, who wrote Old Jordan Roll.

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And I think the subtitle is The World of Slaves Built. So he's saying that they actually they're not passive people.

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They actually they went and built things. They built cultural things. And they're still with us today. They're part of the broader

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American experience. And so that actually shapes our identity.

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Right. Even though and here's maybe where the point in your favor is perhaps this has caused instability in a certain way, having large groups of very different people next to each other.

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But maybe it's to the I don't know if it's to the credit of Americans that I don't know if this would happen in other places.

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But we were able to through a process of that took a while, kind of find commonalities and merge together in certain ways.

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I mean, what do you have to say to that? Because there are contributions that are not European, it would seem to me. Yeah. Yeah. If if the objective in the

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South was to maintain their cavalier culture, inviting all these slaves into the culture, not inviting, sorry, if it brought in all these slaves into the culture, they lost their way of life.

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Yes, they did. They lost that particular aspect of cavalier culture by doing that.

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And then what happens over time is you begin to have this organic creation of of something that's slightly different.

32:11

So if your objective is to maintain a specific culture, then, yes, you can't do that. Um, so that's that's

32:19

I mean, that's the answer, right? That right, that right, right there. I mean, but now we live in the 20th or 21st century.

32:25

And in the mid in the mid 20th century, you did have these these blacks that were heavily in the

32:30

South, and they did recreate the South in a way. And, you know, some of those I mean, the idea that we have to, you know, think about the blacks is not being part of like authentic Southern culture is ridiculous because they are part of that organic development and organic community.

32:46

But what what happens if you want to maintain that? You can't you can't. You have to be really careful about playing with it and toying with it and bringing in.

32:54

Because I think I forget who it was. It may have been like Flannery. Wasn't it

32:59

Flannery O 'Connor, the the author in the like the early 20th century? She recognized the fact that even like the the relationship between the

33:07

Southern blacks and the Southern whites were actually fairly good. And then as you brought in even more diverse groups, you were upsetting that dynamic, you know, so you were you were continually upsetting these things.

33:18

And this is how you lose the cultures that are already there. So, yes, I agree with you that bringing in groups of people does undermine culture.

33:26

But at the same time, if you have these, you can change the culture and it can be done in an organic way.

33:32

The problem is, is that in the post 1960s area, it's completely done with a mindset of social engineering.

33:38

I mean, these these people are trying to create an inorganic and artificial and an arbitrary multiculturalism that has no basis in experience, like the black white dynamic in the 19th century.

33:51

And so you are destroying it in a way because it's not organic and you are losing this distinctly

33:57

Southerness of Southern political life. Yeah, I've watched that firsthand.

34:03

I mean, the South is they call it a second reconstruction. They're losing their identity. It's not just Confederate monuments.

34:09

We knew with those things, leaving heroes like Robert E. Lee, you don't have

34:14

I mean, he's the great man, right? So you don't have that that social cohesion anymore.

34:20

And even some of the heroes like Booker T. Washington now are being sidelined for more radical figures that are more activist in nature.

34:29

So, you know, it's funny, too. One of example I was thinking of was when I lived in Lynchburg, MS -13, which is a gang from Mexico or actually,

34:38

I don't know if they're from Mexico. I think they're but anyway, they're they speak Spanish. So they they came up and they killed someone.

34:45

They murdered someone in Lynchburg. And this was a big deal. And there were a few

34:51

I mean, this describes a lot of American towns. There were a few people, illegals who had come from South America or Mexico who were coming into the community.

35:00

And I remember my wife was kind of surprised because she was working at this clinic down there. And and she being raised in New York, thought that she was going to encounter all this racism in the

35:10

South or something, because that's what, of course, they tell you. And then she got there and she's like, oh, there really wasn't. And the only racism she felt was towards her at times.

35:18

But it wasn't she didn't see like the black white relationship, at least where we were as being there wasn't anything contentious.

35:26

People that didn't really say anything negative. But they were everyone was or at least a lot of people she talked to were very concerned about these

35:36

Latinos moving in. And it illustrates exactly what you're saying. It's like, of course, you had at one time new groups of people settling in a certain area and there was tension and there was all kinds of issues.

35:50

But but they learned to live together over time and bonds of love start to form and that kind of thing.

35:56

And then if you impose this new group, that's just like human nature. You know, and I think

36:02

Christians would love to live in a world where that's just not the case, where everyone just gets along. But that's the story of history. You can't really get away from it.

36:09

It's funny because that's kind of how the South is. I mean, the idea of like thinking of a South in the 20th and 19th century without the black influence,

36:18

I think, is you'd be lying to yourself. At the same time, I live in California, like the you know, the

36:26

Hispanic influence. I mean, like the bear flag revolt and all the like the dynamics in the 19th century, which is fascinating, like Gold Rush era.

36:34

Like I live in I live in Gold Rush area, like I live in old mining towns and stuff. And the idea that you can like leave behind like the the

36:41

Mexican influence because California used to be part of Mexico, I think is ludicrous in the same way that this like so you can't like, you know, you have these original, you know,

36:50

Mexican influences that are just here. Like this was California was settled not by the English, but by the by the

36:57

Spanish. You know, these were all Spanish explorers. And so you have much more of that influence on it as well. And so the point is not to have this white nationalistic approach to things, although, you know, it is it is worth talking about, you know, in a world of identity politics where lines are being drawn, you know, having to have these realistic discussions about, you know, who your friends are.

37:19

It's really I think I think that's having like that's a worthy discussion. But California does have an element of, you know,

37:25

Mexican influence that cannot be denied. And to, you know, roll over it would be an arbitrary

37:32

Jacobin mentality because it does have a built in influence from from Spain and in the people that Spain influence like you like in South America.

37:43

So there is that influence as well. And I think that America is much more regionally diverse than people often talk about.

37:50

They often forget that, too. So, yeah, California is the same same thing. Well, this is the organic versus inorganic thing that you're talking about.

37:58

And I think this is the main distinction that people when they start accusing people like you of. Have you ever gotten the accusation of white nationalism?

38:06

I'm assuming everyone has if they're conservative. But if you get that, they're not understanding this distinction,

38:13

I think. And and then conversely, I mean, we've been critiquing white nationalism, saying it's ridiculous. That's that's not the way at all.

38:20

But the people who are the white nationalists, they tend to be very ideological and want to force things as well.

38:25

And and so explain a little more of this dynamic, this this organic versus inorganic ways of building trust in a society and coming together and forming a nation or a society.

38:37

And and why it's wrong, why you oppose this forced kind of diversity, but you would be supportive of people governing their own affairs and interacting with one another and building trust.

38:52

I don't have a very optimistic view of human nature in the sense that I believe that if we just look past our own culture and customs, we can all just get along.

39:01

I don't have that mentality at all. And I do think that part of what's happening with immigration is you're importing people that have no awareness.

39:10

They have no respect for or they don't prioritize things like their own customs. So if you take like traditional

39:16

Mexican society or traditional, whatever society, their own priorities are much more about continuity than when we see the immigration crisis today, which are much more about integrating into consumer society.

39:31

And it actually has a spirit not of keeping their own traditions and heritage, but of actually absolving them and bringing them into a new

39:40

America that is based purely on individualism and consumption. It's sort of like the social order characterized by the college campus or the shopping mall.

39:49

The shopping mall is probably a better example, but it's literally just individuals consuming and satisfying their own titillations.

39:57

That's kind of the idea of like the new American culture. When you bring immigrants into a situation like that, where there is no, even among the immigrants, there is no awareness of their own continuity and respect for their own customs.

40:09

Like a lot of these immigrants, they have no, they don't prioritize their own customs or their own culture at all.

40:18

They don't really care. They're just here to either destroy or to seek material benefits.

40:25

They aren't thinking in terms of like, what can I do to continue? It wouldn't make sense to travel to another country and think about continuing your customs and your way of life based on your own heritage and your own geographical commitments.

40:39

That's not how they think. So what's happening is it's not this, it is government, the government is involved, but there's also this corporate incentive at play here too.

40:49

This artificial society is being created by consumerism and just the need for material abundance on an individual basis.

40:57

And you can't maintain an organic, continuous, stable society by operating on that model.

41:03

Well, it used to be when immigrants came over the classic Ellis Island thing, they'd go to settle in different boroughs in New York.

41:12

That's still the case to some extent. It really is. Certain boroughs, areas of New York City are where the

41:20

Jewish people live or where the Chinatown or whatever. They seem to self -segregate apart from even government doing anything.

41:29

That's just the way people associate with each other. But now you're seeing, it seems like, I think we saw this in 2020 especially, where there is these mobs going around and rioting and stealing things from stores.

41:42

And I know many conservative critics were even pointing out in some areas, they're saying, hey, so many of these protesters aren't even, they're not black.

41:51

And of course, in inner city areas, there was a lot of this. And so there were people who happened to live there who were black, who were doing some of this, but they were being bused in from all these other places.

42:01

You had Antifa, white pasty Antifa people participating. And it just seemed like new lines were being drawn almost.

42:10

Like the, I don't know how to describe it. I mean, you saw some of this in the sixties too, where it's like the ideologues all kind of get together around their shared ideology, right?

42:20

And it's not, and maybe that's the result of living in a society where this modernity has basically destroyed the family bonds and disconnection from the parent country or whatever has destroyed that.

42:35

And so now that it's weaker and now maybe they're ripe for finding identity in an ideology instead, or finding gangs that just want to go around and pursue their own vices or things like that.

42:48

So what do you think about that? I think that's true. I think that's well said, especially the point of just having the, what else is there?

42:57

If they don't have a social tie, they don't have social binds. Ideology is a natural place for people to run to when they don't have those empirical connections.

43:08

The other thing too, though, I don't emphasize the crime as much perhaps as other people because you can have the loss of the older American way of life together with a prosperous society.

43:23

You can have so much prosperity and so much distraction and consumerism that you forget your own culture.

43:30

And so, yes, the crime is serious. And I think it is a product of immigration. And like you said, there's a lot of white

43:39

Antifa people that have been radicalized online or in college and stuff like that. But I don't emphasize the crime as much because it seems to be besides the point.

43:47

Because if they can come up with a way to satisfy them so that they're not destructive and they're not breaking up communities with their crime and their vandalism and all those things, you can still lose a culture.

43:58

You can still lose a way of life and you can still sever the connection between present man and his past, even without the crime.

44:06

And so the crime is relevant, but I don't think it's the only thing worth talking about. I think you could have like a little community like Silicon Valley.

44:14

They're actively destroying the culture of California, even though there's so much wealth and it's actually a very safe place right now to live.

44:21

And so crime is only one aspect of this conversation. And I think the destruction of culture besides the vandalism,

44:28

I think is worth talking about. I think the commonly shared attribute, though, between the prosperity you're talking about or the welfare or the crime is you had these bands of thugs going around and just ransacking

44:43

Walmart. Right. So they had a shared, I guess, materialistic mission that destroyed social bonds and social trust to go and immediately gratify their own lust.

44:57

And so if you can gratify those without crime, I think what you're saying is true. Like they'll be fine united in that.

45:03

But like look at what like the existence of Walmart has done to the old like way of merchandising.

45:11

Yeah. But like those things are relevant to me. What about the community store? What about the old mom and pop shops?

45:17

What about the, you know, you look at these like idyllic pictures. My father was a little or great grandfather was a little barbershop owner.

45:25

Right. These these community ways of life are destroyed by like international, you know, free trade, you know, government trade organized things.

45:35

So I look at more of the cultural loss that comes even despite the crime. Like why is Walmart they're sucking up, you know, all of the resources and, you know, destroying the community, creating these massive communities solely, you know, created for consumption, like the stucco suburban, like that bothers me just as much as the crime, you know?

45:54

So that's what that's what I think about. Yeah. Roger Struton has a whole chapter on that and, you know, talks about these big box stores and how they're able to kind of run roughshod over the mom and pop stores that used to have such a social function by giving an anchor to the town.

46:15

And yeah, I mean, like even in those old movies, you have like situations where little kids would go and talk to like an elderly man, let's say, who's like the shopkeeper or something and get some kernels of wisdom.

46:26

Like you can't see them going to the Walmart greeter. That's the destruction of community bonds right there.

46:33

Right. And it exists beyond the crime. Yeah, yeah. And so there's some lefties that really don't like Walmart, but their issues are different than your issues.

46:42

Right. Maybe some of them have the same issues, but they they think that because it's big, it's bad.

46:47

And that's that's the problem is just that it's successful, successful and money. Those things are bad to have one person with all of that because then other people are being, quote unquote, stolen from.

46:58

But what you're saying. Mine isn't mine isn't economically based. It's cultural based. Right. I like continuity.

47:04

Bigness isn't isn't part of the equation, although bigness is probably a product of the loss of culture.

47:11

Well, let's let's shift gears a little bit. I want to get to the practicality. I have one question, though, and I wrote it down because I didn't want to forget.

47:20

I could see some Francis Schaeffer fans, which I think there are many in the audience. I'm a Francis Schaeffer fan. I mean,

47:25

I have I think I've read most of his, if not all of his books. He he makes he he goes after this distinction of nature grace that you made right before.

47:35

And I agree with you. But but Schaeffer tries to say that this was a bad thing to to make this distinction.

47:43

It's an artificial line that shouldn't exist. And it's prevented Christians from carrying their faith out in the public square.

47:51

And so we've compartmentalized ourselves. We've get away as ourselves. So we got to get rid of this line.

47:57

And he traces the line through history and basically says it's a split, this upper story, lower story way that man conceives of himself and his responsibilities in the world.

48:07

It sounds to me and I think it sounds to a lot of Schaeffer friends like, no, you're actually saying that, no, there is something to two kingdoms.

48:15

And yeah, let's talk about. So, yeah, go into that. OK, right now, the dynamic is between the like the one kingdom.

48:25

I would call it the transformationalists and the R2K, the reform to kingdoms people.

48:32

OK, so the transformationalists have this idea that because of the gospel, we can speak in terms of gospel kingdom of God categories to reshape the world around it.

48:42

That's kind of our obligation as Christians advocating and representing the kingdom of God.

48:49

That's the transformationalist position. That would be what you were talking about with Francis Schaeffer. The R2K people, they've they're the ones that have separated the two such that we are.

49:01

This is this is where it gets interesting because, you know, you could call them like pious, you know, the pietists or something where they're only focused on heavenly things.

49:09

They don't need to worry about politics and culture and society at large because they are only part of this new kingdom that is being promised to us and will be fulfilled at the end of time.

49:20

Right. That's that's sort of like the dynamic that Francis Schaeffer is critiquing. My point is to and this is part like there's a there's a great book on this.

49:29

We were talking about it before the show. It's Brad Littlejohn's Guide for the Perplexed book on two kingdoms theology.

49:36

The classical view of two kingdoms is that we are part of this heavenly kingdom and we do have a heaven.

49:43

We do have a guaranteed, you know, destination that's already been, you know, one for us.

49:50

But at the same time, we still have obligations related strictly to the temporal kingdom. So just because there is two kingdoms doesn't mean we lose our natural ties and our natural obligations and our natural function as created human beings.

50:03

The original purpose for Adam. So all of all of humanity has this purpose to be conduits between the past and the future to carry on the customs and traditions and interests and priorities of their own people groups, even though not all people are part of the heavenly kingdom.

50:21

So the two kingdoms is a is a great distinction there. Everybody belongs to one and not everybody belongs to the other.

50:29

But just because we belong to the heavenly kingdom doesn't mean we don't have interests in culture and politics and all of those things.

50:38

And these are and these are obligations and ties that come about not because of the gospel. We're not

50:43

I'm not a transformationalist. I don't use gospel categories to justify my participation in the old.

50:49

But they come about because we're created human beings. And we do have a metaphysic that has God at the center.

50:55

He is the you know, he is the divine sovereign that looks over everything. And we're created human beings and we have obligations because of our created status, not because of our our saved status.

51:06

Respond to those, if you would, who like Joe Booth, let's say in the mission of God, who is trying to,

51:12

I think, do exactly what you just said. Use those those gospel categories, gospel categories.

51:20

Yeah, sure. Yeah. I sound like TGC when I say that. But yeah, it is true. The gospel categories to justify political action and to really try to work in Christians to convict them that they ought to be very politically involved because that's building the kingdom of God.

51:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, his I think what he's responding to is and this is this is a true criticism.

51:46

American Christianity, American evangelicalism in the 20th century has gone the route of not caring about these temporal issues.

51:54

For sure. That's a that's a very Francis Schaeffer made a very accurate critique of the

51:59

Christian of the Christian community and the American church in arguing those things. But it's a mistake to think that we are only obligated because of what

52:08

Christ has done. I think the obligations go back pre Noah. I think the obligations go back to the beginning of time and that our family, not everyone will be saved.

52:17

Not everyone's part of the kingdom of heaven. But we do have this this duty to represent the metaphysical world, the world of God in earthly institutions.

52:32

I think that it is the point of earthly institutions to represent, reflect and mirror our view of the cosmos.

52:37

So these are created categories, not gospel categories. Yeah, I think that is a short, good answer to it.

52:46

I want to read for you. This is on the issue of practicality from Matthew chapter 19, verse eight.

52:53

And of course, this is when Jesus is talking about divorce and and he says and he talks about Moses ordering a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce.

53:04

Jesus says, because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, it has not been this way.

53:12

And I wonder whether or not this admission on Jesus's part speaks to this issue of practicality of the fact that when even when the

53:25

Mosaic law was being inscribed and put down and this of course is what

53:32

Theonomist really uses their their template for their universal template for all societies.

53:39

Right. Even in that, Jesus is saying, hey, there was a particular situation that you had that particular situation was you had hardness of heart on this issue.

53:49

So Moses permitted divorce, but it wasn't supposed to be this way. There's a creation order and the law doesn't conflict with the creation order, but the law is managing the fact that you and your hardness of heart are going to conflict with it.

54:04

Today, we in our society, we still restrict marriage between two people.

54:09

Right now, we've opened it up now as a civil. Of course, we don't accept these as marriages, but civilly, we're recognizing same sex marriages.

54:17

But we've for centuries said it's only two people. Right. There has to be fidelity there.

54:22

I mean, this is an example, I think, of where the Mosaic law doesn't even say that. But this is good.

54:28

This is a good thing. This is good for our society. And there was a time, at least, when hardness of heart did not prevent that from making its way into law and becoming part of our tradition.

54:38

And that's something that we want to defend. And Christians, I think, rightly want to defend that today. But there's particularity in that.

54:45

And so I thought that that like to me, that that was an awakening and a moment for me where I just thought, oh,

54:53

OK, that's why you can't just take all of these laws. Or at least one reason you can't take all these laws and just impose them.

55:02

It's not going to work that way. And the Christians who argue like, well, laws don't change hearts.

55:07

There is this kernel of truth to it. If you just impose all these laws that haven't been introduced in a way that people recognize, it's not going to work.

55:20

They're just going to disregard it. So, I mean, have you thought of that? Do you think that that's a good example of particularity?

55:28

I do. I really emphasize the fact that in order to have a stable society, you need cultural hegemony.

55:35

The law functions. There's different layers of keeping the civil order. There's the legal aspects.

55:41

What is the actual law say? There's the political aspects. What is the ability to enforce the law, the law enforcer, the decision maker?

55:49

You can have laws on the books. In the 1950s, I think the highest tax rate was 80 or 90 percent, maybe even higher, maybe 100 percent.

55:59

But there were so many loopholes that nobody had actually enforced those laws. You have the legal layer.

56:05

You have the political layer. But you also have the hegemonic layer. And this is the layer that I think people have only recently recognized in the 20th century was the importance of hegemony.

56:16

And now they're trying to create a new hegemony along left -wing lines. But you do have to have a culture of consent.

56:23

You have to have a culture that the law actually is consistent with their own demeanor, their own instincts.

56:29

When you have that, when the cultural hegemony is consistent with the law, it creates what

56:34

Edmund Burke referred to as the liberal society. The liberality of society comes about when there's a certain cultural aspect that reinforces it even beyond the need of the political sovereign to enforce the law.

56:48

You have to have the cultural hegemony. So I think that lends to the argument for particularity because cultural sentiment has variation between social societies.

57:02

So I'm trying to think where to go from here. I'll give you the floor because I said we wanted to go an hour and we're 56 or 57 minutes into this.

57:11

You mentioned also conservatism and maybe wanting to dive into that a little deeper and give some resources and so forth for people who are curious, who haven't read things that back up what you're saying in this podcast.

57:26

Conservatism is a really tough issue because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

57:32

I think in our time, I would describe the conservative movement as a values conservatism where they have these eternal universal values that America is purported to stand for.

57:45

I think that really characterizes modern contemporary conservatism is this values conservatism.

57:53

Some of the values include things like private property, the role of the family,

57:59

Christian morality. The problem with values conservatism is they can change over time. The most recent values, like if you listen to Fox News or something, includes gay marriage, which is now a family value.

58:12

The fidelity of these two people together is a family value. This values conservatism is kind of a construct of the post -war world and that's what a lot of people think of when they look at conservatism.

58:25

All the leading lights of the conservative movement today are very much values conservatism or conservatives.

58:32

I look back at a much older understanding of conservatism, which I like to call sociological conservatism, which is the maintenance and preservation of sociological institutions.

58:45

It emphasizes communities as they have been empirically developed, keeping the interests and standing for the interests of things that have been there for a long time and not disrupting communities, disrupting way of life and disrupting the organically grown -up nexus of human institutions and human hierarchies and things like that.

59:09

That's more of the sociological conservatism that I look to. The values conservatism that doesn't see much promise in sociological conservatism, they're fine with things like the international corporate interests basically running roughshod over local communities because it's part of our values to have the priority lie with the interests of capital, for instance.

59:38

But I lay more of my emphasis on continuity of localities, continuity of individual communities and the ability for them to rally together politically to confront things that seek to revolutionize their way of life.

59:54

I think the sociological conservatism, the problem with sociological conservatism, of course, is it's basically no longer possible in a world of high tech, in a world of constant revolutionizing and constant change.

01:00:08

It's really hard to have this traditionalist conservatism mindset in that type of world. I think the two conservatisms are really butting heads in a way that they haven't for a long time.

01:00:20

That's interesting. I think Kerry Roberts, my thesis director, called that the virtue tradition, which you're talking about values conservatism.

01:00:27

Yeah, that's very true. He made a speech once where he said, how is family values enough to bind a nation together?

01:00:37

It's so general. This is something also that every society should believe in family values,

01:00:43

I suppose. What does that even mean? And it's so broad that you could drive a truck through it. Well, what it is, is it's abstract.

01:00:50

You can define it. It's propositional. If everyone agrees to it, then that's the value.

01:00:58

But there's no look at the actual community that exists because most people aren't rationalists. Most people don't sit and think.

01:01:04

They respond to their instincts and their sentiments. Those are the areas, I think, that are more important to focus on.

01:01:11

If I could sum up what we've been saying in this podcast, I would make, I guess, two broad points.

01:01:16

I would say, first, it's important to defend and conserve identity because without it, you don't have public trust and society disintegrates.

01:01:26

And the second thing, I think, the point you've made is that there are universal principles, which you talk about, but that there are practical and in particular applications for different times and to meet different challenges.

01:01:43

Is that a fair way to say? Yeah, and also different enemies. I think there are political threats that seek to undermine a way of life and they're unique to world history.

01:01:58

I think our own enemies are very, you could say that they have similarities to certain heresies of the past or whatever, but they are unique and they need to be responded to in light of their uniqueness.

01:02:10

Yeah, no, I agree. You wouldn't see laws in seventh century

01:02:15

England about drag queen story hour, right? I think you said something like that the last time, so these are particular things, laws that need to be put into place to protect society from these kinds of degradations.

01:02:32

All right, well, you mentioned a few books for people along the way. You said, who are we?

01:02:38

I forget who the author was. Sam Huntington. I don't even know if that's the book. It might've been the subtitle, but Sam Huntington.

01:02:44

Sam Huntington, who are we? Maybe the title. America's British Culture was the other one and that was by?

01:02:53

Russell Kirk. Russell Kirk. Okay, and then A Guide for the Perplexed on Two Kingdoms.

01:02:58

It's called Two Kingdoms, A Guide for the Perplexed by Brad Littlejohn. Okay, so those are any more books or resources you want to recommend for people?

01:03:06

You know, it's kind of funny. We were talking about this before, but I've really been influenced by people like Paul Gottfried.

01:03:16

Of course, he's more academic. I would recommend all of his books, but he's much more, if you're ready for a high level analysis of the conservative movement, read

01:03:25

The Conservative Movement in America by Paul Gottfried. He is a difficult writer sometimes, and it's a little bit more expensive to get, but I highly recommend that book.

01:03:35

That's one of my favorites of his. He basically, I mean, a lot of the book is distinguishing between sociological and values conservatism.

01:03:42

That's kind of, I think those are my phrases, but he basically argues the same point. So I would highly recommend that book if you want to interpret the modern age, the modern character of our state, which he calls the therapeutic state.

01:03:55

I would refer to his Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt book. If you want to understand historic conservatism,

01:04:03

I would look at some of the Roger Scruton books that you mentioned. What is conservatism or how to be a conservative?

01:04:09

Those are two of his books. Those are great books for understanding classical conservatism. Of course, the question becomes whether we can have that Burkean demeanor in a post -British world, whether there's anything that we can preserve anymore or whether it has to be fought for much more militantly.

01:04:28

I think that's a good question that people on the right have to ask. I sort of lean on the side of perhaps conservatism is expired, so that's an important conversation, too.

01:04:41

But if you want to just have an introduction to a different way of thinking than you can hear on Fox News, then

01:04:47

I would read Roger Scruton and Russell Quirk, and they're great. You can't say conservatism has expired in the last minute of the podcast.

01:04:56

We've been talking about conservatism this entire podcast. Yeah. So you're not giving up on conservatism,

01:05:03

I take it. You're just saying that there's a flavor of it that's not practical and maybe like the

01:05:08

Protestant Franco talk and that kind of thing. It depends on what you mean. If you take a

01:05:13

Russell Quirk understanding of conservatism where it's more like a timeless and permanent, he refers to T .S.

01:05:20

Eliot's phrase, the permanent things. If you have that as your approach, then you can still have a type of conservatism.

01:05:26

In terms of maintaining the institutions, in terms of preserving our hierarchies that we currently have forward into the future,

01:05:36

I'm leaning much more revolutionary at this point.

01:05:42

I don't even know what can be done to save things, so I'm much more pessimistic about our ability to have a –

01:05:51

I have an essay coming out for Chronicles asking the question, is a Burkean demeanor still possible?

01:05:58

And I take the negative side and one of the other participants is going to take the affirmative side on this.

01:06:05

But that's a question that I've been grappling with as well, is whether we can still have this

01:06:11

Scruton -Quirk -Burkean mentality in an age of revolutionary conflict.

01:06:19

Well, plug the podcast then. You host the Chronicles podcast? Do people find it on iTunes? I host the

01:06:25

Chronicles Magazine podcast and it's on YouTube and all the podcasters, you can search for it.

01:06:31

That's my main one. I also do the Contramundum with a friend of mine.

01:06:37

That's sort of the fun media version of my Twitter feed. It's much more fun and relaxed with my friend

01:06:44

Andrew Isker. So that's the other one. You can look up both of those. Of course, my

01:06:49

Substack is cjengel .substack .com and my Twitter is at ContraMordor.