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

The Limits of Universalist Political Theory

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, CJ Angle. CJ, welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast.

Thanks John. Appreciate you coming on. 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 paleoconservatism I should say, theonomy, and then libertarianism got a lot of views and there were a lot of people who had questions.

You saw them in the comments, I got some personal messages from people who were part of each of these three camps. And we want to address some of those questions today and maybe get into some other areas.

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.

We'll talk about the accusation or the question about whether or not your philosophy or paleoconservatism more broadly is somehow a relativistic thing. 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 I go to really understand this more fully? So that's where we're going, just so everyone understands. 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 paleoconservatism is accusations of relativism. I think in the modern age, people have had this sense that they have to construct a universalistic solution of civil law.

And this comes about in a variety of different ways. Marxism is a certain rendition of that instinct. 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, I think is the impulse that defines modernity.

You have political philosophers and historical philosophers like Eric Voegelin and Michael Oakenshott who would emphasize something that we could call political rationalism, the ability that we have to sit back and construct.

Or perhaps we could use the Bible, specifically the Old Testament and the civil laws given to the Mosaic people in the Old Testament economy. 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.

I think that approach really defines the modern age. And so in that sense, you know, it's actually interesting. I think the theonomic position is very modern. I think it came about, you know, after, you know, the Civil War in England and it kind of was the birth, you know, it was well, this is one of those conversations, too, that is interesting because the actual theonomist in the 20th century, like Bonson and Rushduni and stuff, I think they were creating something that's distinct from what the Puritans were doing.

But even still, there's this this bifurcated approach here that one of them emphasizes this universalistic law that has to be applied to all people. 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, it responds to things as they come down the pipeline and recognizes the realistic as opposed to the idealistic nature of political theory.

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 the decision maker, the political actors in a society, they do have the authority to decide when the exception happens in terms of of laws.

You know, you can create laws and it's good to have a stable legal system, but there are exceptions to those things. And a lot of those exceptions exist within the realm of the strictly and purely political.

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

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

Augustine, Ordered Loves, and the Variety of Nations

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. 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.

I think it might have even been my Facebook profile. I was reading a lot of theonomy. I still am. I'm not quite done with Joe Booth's book. I'm slowly making through my way through the mission of God.

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

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

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. 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.

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. 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 seems 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.

Also, whatever weights and measures, stamping and weighing of coins are proper to each state and nation and other practices of this kind. If these had not been the arrangements of men, they would not have also differed from nation from different nations.

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

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. 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, and that something with which was permissible up to now becomes illicit and our hence that something permitted or prescribed in one spot is prohibited and punished in a nearby place.

But is justice variable and mutable rather the times over which it rules do not follow the same courses for they are temporal. 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?

That's classic classicalism. I mean, the idea that every nation has its own customs and its own modes of morality. So this doesn't mean that there isn't an overarching or transcendent ethical standard by which all humans are held accountable.

That overarching ethical standard is the thing that humans have all fallen short. And it's the it's the very thing that Jesus fulfilled when he died for everyone's sins. But at the same time, there are variations in customs and we see this all over the place.

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.

This doesn't deny transcendence, but it does add a layer of plurality to ethical things. So a lot of 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.

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. It's unique to its own development.

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

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 politics being having variety as well and needing to confront very specific situations.

And this is sort of the the story of Western society and Eastern society. But most of my mindset, of course, is on Western Europe and its children like America. But each nation has its own confrontation.

It has its own interests, its own the role of the and the obligations of the magistrate vary when France and England are at war. It is the role of each of their magistrates to defend the particular interests of their specific people.

A lot of a lot of our war make they is very ideologically laden. It was hard for us to think in terms of actual conflicts having to do with people and specific people. 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 focused in uniting them like France and England in their own wars. They've had a layer of the of the ideal and the universal that they've that they've needed to justify their own decision making.

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

And so there is variation in politics and political ideology or political orders. And it is important to recognize the fact that that nations do have conflicting interests between each other. 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. Let's take this in two directions.

What you're saying is very similar. 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. Right.

Which is, of course, argued against by, I guess, modern conservatives that have power, that identity politics is bad. 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 will 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, 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. How do they appeal to these various disparate groups? We're going to do something for your group. It's not a universal call.

Was that fair? I mean, have you noticed this? I agree. I it's. 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. 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. And it and it does they do have friend and enemy groups that they are trying to integrate into society.

They do think in that way. And so identity politics is a key characteristic of the enemy of Western civilization right now. They operate on an identity based and it's hard. There's a book by Samuel Huntington.

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. I think it's called Who Are We?

I could I could link it. We could look at the show notes page. But he basically asked this question of who are we? Now, what does it mean to be an American? Is it this is it this boundary list definition?

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? 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 asked it very honestly and transparently. 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.

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

But identity politics can be abused. But the rejection of identity politics can be abused just as well. And in fact, my own interpretation of things insists that identity politics is a key characteristics of the of the left.

And the abuse of anti identity politics is something that the left uses against conservatives and against, you know, what I would call like legacy Americans or traditional Americans. They really they really push this like abuse or distortion of anti identity politics in there in a way that benefits them.

And so I think Americans like conservatives, heritage Americans do need to start thinking about these questions. Who am I? What do I identify as? Like, what do I have something beyond myself and my family that I belong to?

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

We didn't have to talk about like stuff like this in the 1930s or 1940s. We have to address different questions today. And of course, these questions are more uncomfortable, but they're just as important because that's the character of the political conflict.

Identity, Heritage, and the American Tradition

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

And but the left is, of course, permitted to do these things with various groups. And when you say heritage Americans, we should probably I don't know if you define it the last time, but we're we're talking about in the 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. 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.

They're in their thinking as they're doing this. And they've it's been passed down through tradition over time. And we've learned to live with and accept and make alterations along the way. Hopefully good ones.

Unfortunately, sometimes not so good. But but there is this group. And of course, immigrants can come. They can be adopted into this group and so forth. 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 that the left uses identity politics to attack that core 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. 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. 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 because what is that document even govern the Constitution in this case?

But what is it even behind the Constitution? Because 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?

Right. So I want to read for you a quote. I'll get your reaction here. And you can anything 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 thirty three. He talks about politics. He says opposition, disagreement, the free expression of dissent and the rule of compromise shall presuppose a shared identity. 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.

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. This seems to be one of the things that stood out in the last episode when you were talking about this issue of your universality is you were saying, I want to conserve American identity, though.

I want people who are here. It's not just about Christianity. It's Christianity that speaks English, that has certain Anglo-Protestant customs. I want to conserve that. I'm not interested in conserving some universal notion of even Christianity.

Maybe talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I'd like to talk about this. I love the dynamic between nature and grace. This goes back a long way and it's been answered in different ways over his historical, over Christendom's challenges.

Nature and Grace, and the Two Kingdoms

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, as a result of Christ's work, there are these new categories that have to do with a heavenly kingdom.

How does that relate to our nature? The fact that he created us as communities, as nations and as people groups that we have obligations to, like our families and our communities. And historically, a community was an extension of the family.

It was the extension of of the tribe or the kin group. These were very, they're ethnically related topics. So how does the aspect of grace relate to the aspect of nature? 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?

Or does grace perfect nature and does it renew our obligations to our families as part of the the second kingdom? 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 along different lines as our natural obligations and our natural ties.

These are two different kingdoms. And what happens when you begin to blur them is you can't properly answer this question. But how do you handle the dynamic between nature and grace? And so that's how I would approach your question there is with that dynamic.

I would refer to people like Bavink and even the entire scholastic tradition, like Thomas Aquinas, they really grappled with this dynamic between nature and grace. And the conclusion that they came out with was as Christians, we still have these obligations to our natural duties.

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

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. One is the identity that is maintained by tradition, which we're talking about now.

But there's also this element of practicality. And you mentioned it at the beginning of in particularity, how do we apply laws? How do we respond to threats? More importantly, perhaps that that threaten the identity of a people and and and that includes things like the morality of the people, the all the other things, just like a family, if you think of it in terms of a family.

Man, I lost my thought. I had something from what you just said. I didn't want to answer the question of heritage Americans, too, because 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.

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

The founders didn't think like that. They really thought in terms of the continuity of their own people. They they saw themselves at that time. And this is before the the Irish and the German immigration.

This was before the Eastern European immigration in the early 20th century. They really saw themselves as an outpost and a continuation of a 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 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 America without its British culture, its British backdrop is kind of silly.

He basically makes that point. And so this at the founding, they really did have a British world in mind. They saw themselves as saving or continuing on their own rights as British free men. 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.

And they saw themselves as conduits, as catalysts to bring forward those British rights and those British liberties and the British way of life into the future. So that would be the old heritage American.

That would be the original. And as you expand out from like the British identity, you can get into like Germany and the Germans and up into the Scandinavia and you can find cultures that are not strictly British, but they are Western European and you can incorporate those people into a British culture 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 British rights and liberties, because those people have completely different incentives.

They have completely different priorities. They have completely different convictions and their ties are differently constructed. Their own spiritual backdrop and their own instincts and sentiments and demeanors are so different that you could change an entire culture by bringing in these groups of people.

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 your group with all these other people in the same way that you couldn't import half of Germany into Thailand and expect Thailand to continue on in its tradition and customs.

It's just not the way that human beings work. And so there's been this recreation of the American way in the 1960s that reconstructed what it meant to be an American. And it took away the more realistic, empirical, ethnic or cultural aspects of what it meant to be in America.

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 American as anyone else.

And what happens when you when you have that is you actually are denying the there's the stable foundations of an ordered society. But let me I don't know if it's pushback, but let's challenge that a little bit if you would.

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. I don't think it does.

But I have a good friend, let's say. I mean, I actually do. 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 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 British, because I think Kenya was influenced by Britain so much. And, you know, 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.

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 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.

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, or at least they think they're pushing back and they're saying, well, you're excluding him.

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

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. 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 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.

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

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. 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 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.

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

And I think the subtitle is The World of Slaves Built. So he's saying that they actually they're not passive people. They actually they went and built things. They built cultural things. And they're still with us today.

They're part of the broader American experience. And so that actually shapes our identity. Right. Even though and here's maybe where the point in your favor is that perhaps this has caused instability in a certain way, having large groups of very different people next to each other.

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

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 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.

Yes, they did. They lost that particular aspect of cavalier culture by doing that. And then what happens over time is you begin to have this organic creation of something that's slightly different. So if your objective is to maintain a specific culture, then, yes, you can't do that.

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

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 because I think I forget who it was. It may have been like Flannery 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 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.

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

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

And so you are destroying it in a way because it's not organic and you are losing this distinctly Southerness of Southern political life. Yeah, and I've watched that firsthand. I mean, the South is they call it a second reconstruction.

Like they're losing their identity. It's not just Confederate monuments. We knew with those things leaving heroes like Robert E. Lee, you don't have I mean, he's the great man, right? So you don't have that that social cohesion anymore.

And even some of the heroes like Booker T. Washington now are being sidelined for more radical figures that are more activists in nature. 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, 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. They murdered someone in Lynchburg. And this was a big deal. And there were a few. I mean, this describes a lot of American towns.

There were a few people, illegals who had come from South America or Mexico who are coming into the community. 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 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. The only racism she felt was towards her at times, 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 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 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.

But but they learn to live together over time and bonds of love start to form and that kind of thing. And then if you impose this new group, that's just like human nature, you know, and I think Christians would love to live in a world where that's just not the case or everyone just gets along.

But that's the story of history. You can't really get away from it. 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, I think is you'd be lying to yourself.

At the same time, I live in California, like the, you know, the 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.

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 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, Mexican influences that are just here.

Like this was California was settled not by the English, but by the by the 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.