Ideas Have Consequences Ch 1-3 Discussion

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We're going to discuss this book and I have my dad and my brother. So my dad is Scott Harris, and he's a pastor graduated from Master's Seminary and My brother is a school teacher in Tennessee.

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One of the things that I wanted to bring you into is the discussions growing up my family would have

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Around the kitchen table usually but we would talk about things that we were reading some sometimes things

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I would read in school Books like this I like ideas of consequences are really

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I think good for that Because there's just a lot of material in it. That's Really thought -provoking.

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In fact, we could probably spend days and days talking about some of the things Richard Weaver brings up and the reason

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I want to do this is because it's a lot different than what I've been doing on the podcast, which is talking about evangelical elites and where they're messing up sometimes and social justice in particular that issue and It can be really discouraging

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I think for a lot of people who everywhere they turn it's bad There's problems there and we're going to talk about some bad things again today

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But I wanted to at least put positive resources in your hands Instead of doing a lot of book reviews on here's another bad book and let's talk about how bad this book is

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I wanted to start giving you authors and books that are helpful in Certain ways and this is a book that I found helpful and people have often asked me how

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I started the podcast where I got my understanding of the issues that I'm critiquing and It's hard for me to answer that because there's a whole bunch of authors and influences

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But Richard Weaver is definitely one of them. Weaver is considered a conservative and I want to read for you a

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Quote from him from a Work that he did called life without prejudice. He says this it is my contention that a conservative is a realist

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He believes that there is a structure of reality independent of his own desire He believes that there is a creation which was before him which exists now

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Not just by his sufferance and which will be here after he's gone This structure consists not merely of the great physical world, but also of many laws principles and regulations which control human behavior

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Though this reality is independent of the individual. It is not hostile to him It is in fact and men amenable by him in many ways

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But it cannot be changed radically or arbitrarily This is the cardinal point the conservative holds that man in this world cannot make his will his law

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Without any regard to limits and to fix the fixed nature of things So you see in Weaver's conception of what conservatism is something that I think a lot of modern conservatives

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Conservative industry conservative thinkers. They've lost this that it's the permanent things it's

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It's this idea that there is a created order and that we ought to conform ourselves to that We it's not just that we have practical ideas that are better than the left

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Better than those who hate God even it's that we actually are trying to live within the natural world the pattern that God has laid down and so Richard Weaver just a little biography about him

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He was the oldest of four siblings his father died when he was six His father owned a library stable near Asheville, North Carolina and after the death of his father's family moved to Lexington, Kentucky, so he was a southerner and that's where his mother managed a

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Millenary business which is hats they made hats Weaver became a socialist in college at the

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University of Kentucky But but rejected socialism while attending Vanderbilt University Where he fell in love with the

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Old South under the tutelage of John Crow ransom And there's a book actually John Crow ransom Contributes to call

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I'll take my stand and we may do one of those That book or one of those essays in the future for this format, but anyway, that's who he studied under and his dissertation was published in a book called the southern tradition at bay and In that book he praised the besieged virtues of hierarchy chivalry and religiousness that he's found in the

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Old South Weaver received his PhD from Louisiana State University, and he taught rhetoric for most of his career at the

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University of Chicago He intended to retire and live in his in sister ancestral land in Weaverville, North Carolina But a heart attack in 1963 prevented his plans from becoming reality

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Weaver is recognized today as one of the main founders of the traditionalist element of modern conservatism

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Which focused on preserving Western traditions against modern societies technology industrialism and urbanization?

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His prophetic insights ensure his continued relevance through his 20 -year career

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Weaver published 115 book reviews essays and pamphlets eight books are published under his name ideas have consequences in 1948 is his most famous David want you talk about when you first encountered the book and what you thought of it.

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I think I'd recommended it, right? Yeah, yeah, so I think it was probably about five or six years ago, and it was

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I think it was Before we had gone to that Abbeville conference, but Or right before or right after maybe it was right after so it's probably like five years ago

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But I read it and then a mutual friend of ours who passed away a few years ago

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He read it as well, and we both were really concerned about Weaver's Opinion on jazz because we both enjoyed jazz a lot

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But there was there was a few There was a few lines in particular that kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.

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So I mean Weaver is good at weaving Different sorry different strains of like sort of big picture and smaller picture

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You know aspects of reality and like just the world that we live in and the society that we inhabit

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But the what he really hit me with was And when I was reading through this again

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It again hit me like a ton of bricks was my own My own position sort of in society in in the economy how

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I function as an individual and That really comes across. I know we'll get into specifics, but one

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One particular area that I to me it's probably my Favorite quote in a whole book, but in the third chapter when he talks about The like the development of the modern

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The modern kind of ideal man, and he juxtaposes that to Historic and he talks about kind of what was

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I what was the ideal? like man and What has changed is specialization and so it was ironic because when

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I first read the book I had been listening to a conservative talk show host and I was also teaching

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Economics at a high school. And so I was being really really heavily influenced by like libertarian philosophy and thought because most of the resources the best resources

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I could find on economics came from libertarians and When I read ideas have consequences,

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I realized like this is kind of like empty and It's my

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What would I think of as an ideal man? Because of specialization like in my own typically like my own specific career field

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I think the word he uses is I I had it right here in front of me who uses the word anxiety a lot, but It's it's it's kind of our emasculation that's the word that he uses he says it's emasculating basically to be a specialized to be in you know in Your career or your place in society to be hyper specialized and I realized like oh

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This is kind of where I am career -wise. So I've been kind of pigeonholed into this extremely specific role that I'm supposed to be the expert on but then when

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I look around I'm like This isn't fulfilling, you know, right as a teacher

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I really enjoyed when I was When I was able to you know teach and interact with a lot of different subjects.

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I taught government history economics geography and then after I went through grad school,

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I kind of focus on this one particular area and So we were kind of helped me see that There's more to it than just Your little place that you fit into the puzzle in society and it made me kind of start to strive

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To want to be a more complete man Yeah, I I finally figured out how to show the presentation to everyone out there wall.

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You can see us So sorry about that. There's gonna be some kinks. I'm gonna have to work out but Yeah, thanks for sharing that David and since I asked you

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I might as well ask you dad So I know that I was the one who introduced you to this I think a few months ago, but you've read it a few times.

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So what were your initial impressions? Why did you think you had to read it again? Because it was thicker just no

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Actually, I'm gonna read the very first quote that starts in the book The past shows unvaryingly that when a people's freedom disappeared

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It goes not with a bang but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for That is the dire peril the present trend towards Statism if freedom is not found accompanied by willingness to resist and to reject favors rather than to give up What is intangible but precarious will not long be found at all.

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That was written in 1962 So right from the beginning I read this. I like As I'm reading through the first reading

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I had to go back at when did he write this 1948? How is that? How is that possible? I was amazed at the insights this man had of where society was going and it explains a lot about where we are that was the first reading is just more of a

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Maybe kind of just a shock of a guy that long ago You know foreseeing where it's going

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The second reading has been more Thoughtful trying to understand him and as I did it became very clear his tie into the southern agrarians and You know,

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I it would be good to take a look at I'll take my stand and where those thoughts came out

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Interesting change from him from being an avid socialist into the man he became

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He taught rhetoric, but he seems to be more of a philosopher and he ties a whole lot of things

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Philosophically and trends going and where we were going because as he looked at the past he could see the trends

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So it's been a very good book to read It also came out in my second reading as I'm looking at more closely where some of the weaknesses are is because he

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Tied into southern traditions, which I think he put it as a religiousness or something like that older religiousness.

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Yeah But he himself has a little familiarity with the scriptures, but really not much

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So he keeps trying to tie things back to something that's more foundational then kind of where we are now is the society and everything's completely transitioning all the time and So there is nothing stable

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But he doesn't tie it that well into what really a foundation though he gives

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Some reference to it and actually it's God right and the world that he's created but from a philosophical point

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That is his foundation and why traditions became so important to him. And I think even

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Among the the southern traditionalist now why it's so important that stability So it's been a very good reading.

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I really appreciate you Introducing to me to him. Here's a summary of the book for everyone

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Man's metaphysical dream of the world is fractured because Pragmatic concerns in the immediate replace faith and timeless ideals as a result a subjective

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Sentimentality characterizes culture. The only remedy for this is found within the restraints of a harmonized vision

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Chapter one he talks about this vision. He says it's unreachable as long as social hierarchy is rejected in favor of egalitarianism

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Chapter two the specialist is revered above the philosopher. That's that's another barrier to reaching this vision

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Chapter three egotism if it motivates the craftsman, then that's another barrier

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He says in chapter four in the absence of a harmonized vision something he calls the great stereoptagon, which will define later induces societal function

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Chapter five. He says salvation becomes the effortless harnessing of nature for temporary physical gratification and Then in the last chapters, which we probably won't get to today

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He says the restoration of a harmonized vision can come through a respect for private property and an exposure to the forms through an education in linguistics and piety and justice so that's

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Richard Weaver's book in a nutshell and His purpose he said was to account for the loss of standards and values and and we see that in our own society

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He saw in his it's more so now and the challenge Forces that threatened the found anyone to challenge that and the forces that he believed threatened the foundations of civilization

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So the picture he paints is kind of bleak His thesis is that the defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture

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From this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. And so he talks about nominalism

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William of Ockham in the medieval era proposing this

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What they call it nominalism now, but this this idea that Things aren't really that the categories that unite things

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Don't really exist that our sensory perception is really all there is I'm oversimplifying, of course but he thinks that that led to a rejection of ideals of absolutes of what he calls the transcendentals and When rejecting these we've lost so much now if we were live to see what we see today with the loss of even gender

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He would just be he would say yeah That's exactly you would trace it right back there and say we lost it when we rejected really it's

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Platonism It's it's a kind of Platonism the slackening hand of Plato has led to The the gender issue and all the things that we're seeing where we don't have definitions and language doesn't mean anything anymore

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Because we don't believe in a world in which there's order in which there's reality So Weaver supports a recovery of intellectual integrity which enables men to perceive the order of goods

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So he wants to find a solution to this So with that we'll start the discussion and I'll just give you a quick run -through chapter one

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And then we'll start talking about chapter one in the first chapter Weaver And the title is the unsentimental sentiment

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Weaver argues that people necessarily experience feelings of oughtness from a source of clarification before engaging their rational faculties

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So in other words people People know that there's something there's something that's something they're supposed to do something that's good or bad if you think in moral terms, but there's there's a purpose there's a telos and This is how they start out.

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This is how we all start out apart from any sensory perception We know that there's purpose there's design in front of us

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Rejecting the existence of these transcendentals means there is no definition of man which erodes notions of sentiment and hierarchy

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The result is the creation of a world where inhibiting expression is wrong and the heroic ideals disappear

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This can only bring about the destruction of society as people fail to recognize obscenity and pursue immediate gratification

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Weaver argues that before imposing ideas that can limit this destruction. They must be harmonized by some vision and so that's his first chapter and Really what he's saying if I could just sum it up for myself in my own words is that if you lose standards if you lose the design and the

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Willingness the desire to conform yourself to that that ought that we all know is out there Then what ends up happening is you crumble into societal chaos you get what we had in 2020 you get riots

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Because there is no transcendental anymore. There is there is nothing to bind you to any course of action

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There there's no definition for what man is man's just an animal at that point So, you know, this means that we can level all the hierarchies

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We can we can really we can do what we want because the world is putty in our hands so the question the first question that I thought was

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He says something interesting in chapter one. He says the this failure He's talking about obscenity the failure of having increased obscenity is not connected with the decay of puritanism

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I'm page 26. He says this and I was thinking about how a lot of Christians try to combat obscenity and crassness and just the sexual stuff that's out there now and some do this kind of neo -puritan thing,

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I guess where You could use a different word you don't have to use I mean I'm using the word he uses but they want to imply they want to put more rules in effect

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Essentially and you know keep my kids from being bad, right? And he says that's not the root of this.

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That's not the problem. It's not like we had a failure in rules It's not rules went away and no, there's something else bigger that's going on here and that's what the chapter is about and if we don't recognize

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I think the Underlying cause of why there's so much obscenity why on television or on the internet or otherwise?

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Then we won't know how to even do things like raise kids properly because just putting in more barriers and rules is not getting to the heart of it

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So I'm gonna just open it up for you guys since I've been talking a while David Or dad.

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I mean, what do you think of that? I mean, do you what would you I mean, obviously dad you raised us so Do you think what we were talking about in chapter one is

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Something that you realized in raising children and Teaching people how to raise children that there's they have to have a larger vision than just rules

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Absolutely, you definitely have to have rules children need boundaries Because they're not equipped to go outside those boundaries and deal with the rest of the world

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But your goal as a parent is to raise those children So there's something in the heart that understands what the world's about where it's going

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He's using the term I guess transcendental, but it's that God has a purpose for you being here and your ultimate purpose is to please him

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So that you can hear well done now a good and faithful servant When you pass from this life or Christ comes first So yeah, that's what your mother and I, you know worked real hard at is giving you the moral reasons

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Why we would do something or not do something so that your Own convictions as you got older would in lead you into whatever situation you got into to make a proper decision

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Based on something more than what was expedient at the moment Boundaries are not going to work

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When you're away from other people What you're you're doing by yourself what boundary you're going to put there there's always a way around it

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Boundaries help they you know keep you on The path, you know where the edges are if You're driving a car when we're

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Teaching you to do that We try to teach you how to steer and be safe and the boundaries were the edge of the road

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And when you went off the edge you got in trouble because we're all rumbling around and I would holler at you

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To get back on it But we want to train you with the skills to stay on the road and why it's important that way no matter where you were

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Whether there was a fence up or not, you knew how to you know, go on the right path

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Map reading the same thing all those things that all end up with a moral Aspect to it. Did you know what you're doing?

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Why are you doing it? Where you were going? So it was training the heart more than anything else Yeah, and that's all

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Christians should have that it's it's a curious thing to me that so many I don't think do though so many do think that there's a

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Rule is this sort of imposed external thing that you limit someone's choices by which it is but that's like that's all it is and it's because God says so and I Think what we were tapping into here is that there's an order though.

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There's a there's a goodness to the order that exists in creation so it's it's

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Even though we have the curse of sin There's a way that God Initially in Eden did intend for us to live and we're all kind of pre -wired

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To know that that exists that there is this thing out there

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And it's not in we can't find it inside of us and in his what he keeps critiquing in this nominalism

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For those who maybe this will make sense is this notion that you can find the deep truths in yourself

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That it's not out there. It's actually in here and that's what he blames for all the problems that we're having

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Pretty much is it's it's through experience that we go ahead and This is before chapter one but in the introduction that this is one of the

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I think one of the best quotes in the entire book, but when he says Man is constantly being assured today that he has more power than ever before in history

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But his daily experience is one of powerlessness Yeah, you know so you you kind of have this that one really is

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You kind of I mean we've got Millennials as Millennials, I guess we've been raised with this

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I did this cultural idea that You know the answers are within yourself and then you you know, you get into your 20s and 30s you start to have kids you realize you actually know nothing and And that's that's when the powerlessness really sets in and so what do you see you see like a mass collapse?

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he kind of gets into that when he talks about like That's a little later but when he talks about kind of mass anxiety

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Of think of a feeling like you have the answers are found Within you but in chapter one when he's talking about obscenity.

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He says That if you take the the idea that History is moving in the same like in the direction of progress like it's just in this endless march towards progress and then if you combine that with the

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The failure of obscenity that there really isn't anything obscene then you get I think it's yeah,

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I have it here then you get a virtue of desecration and it's just strange that he wrote that in the 40s because the late 40s because when you think of His time period you you tend to think of the idyllic

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That being the idyllic time in history. That's the most wholesome time That's the time that you know

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We wish we could go back to and I would still in many ways. I would still hold to the head because Compared to the present but Seeing this kind of start to play out and now we live in that reality and You know that that's the nature.

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I mean, I'm a teacher. I work in school So I'm kind of I'm very familiar with the mass social implications of You know desecration.

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So the question I have a little one now the question I have is like Okay. So how am I how exactly am

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I supposed to raise this child in the midst of a culture that? holds desiccant desecration

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You know Yeah, I think what you're saying is he that it's a worse moral evil to limit someone to put up a barrier and say

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You can't express yourself your authentic self inside of you then

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That's what people or I don't know how to how to really phrase it but that that That the experience they have that makes them think that they need to do something sexual or to do something whatever violent

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It's it's a worse moral evil to put the barrier up and say you can't do that then to do it like Whereas I think at Weaver's time

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It's funny because we what you just said that society would have wanted that was the

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Hays Code I mean, they were trying to limit what Holly was was putting out It reads like I know they're trying to live they're trying to direct it toward it would not be something obscene

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Destroying the values of the culture so it was trying to put some guidelines in there because they had

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Lost their way. He actually has a really good quote. I think on what you're talking about here page 24 Top the page today over the entire world there are dangerous signs that culture as such as mark for attack because of its formal requirements down the way of expression of the natural man

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So what he's really getting at there though, he's not saying that way because he's not theological.

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He's philosophical it's this is the the sin nature of man and The Hays Code and things like that we're trying to well defining obscenity

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You can't put out pornography all those things. We're trying to keep this expression of Natural man simple bent to whatever he wants and thinks it's better For him with some adult guidance is that no, it's not this stuff is dangerous to you this is this is destroy you and Frankly the under the

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Hays Codes the movies were a lot better if you look at the the way they could create

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Ideas without having to be obscene and showing what doesn't need to be seen right me

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John Doe It's a wonderful life the oxbow incident the searchers Mr.

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Smith goes to Washington Yeah, thank Frank Capra stuff. He he says this on page 26 right after the quote you mentioned

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Making a virtue of desecration He says in the 19th century This change came visibly over the world bringing expressions of concern from people who had been brought up in the tradition of proper sentiment

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Propriety like other old -fashioned anchorages was abandoned because it inhibited something

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So and he says proud of its shamelessness the new journalism served up in swaggering style matter which

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Hero for had been veiled indecent and I can't even say that word Taciturnary turnatee

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I think taciturnatory So it almost reads like Romans 1 he's saying that people were proud of their what they should have been shameful of and and he he roots it though in something

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I think we're not used to rooting it in as people who just grew up in the church And if that's and I'm talking about the evangelical

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Church in America if all they're ever exposed to is is That teaching and they haven't been exposed to let's say a wider range of philosophy

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And I think there's a simple explanation That's right that we all have which is that men love evil right and that that could easily explain all this

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But the very mechanism or the justification man's using to promote this evil even without knowing that he's doing this perhaps is

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Is fascinating to watch play out over centuries, and that's what weaver gives us is this time frame does so Chapter 2 he gets into hierarchy distinction and hierarchy and to me this chapter 2 is this is in every chapter really this point because he's always coming back to hierarchy and How we've abandoned that to our own peril he argues that Let me pull this up for everyone to see everyone can see this he argues that the elimination of Distinctions in the name of justice produces a society of consumers reduced to their economic interest

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This in turn reduces the role of the state to promoting economic activity pragmatism serving comfort just becomes the highest moral

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Justification and the result is the elimination of public trust and loyalty weaver writes people do not know what to expect of one another

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Leaders will not lead and servants will not serve this creates opportunities for resentment

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Weaver teaches that fraternity and aristocracy are necessary for social harmony if you don't have those you don't have harmony equality is not enough in other words he said

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Today he says this aristocracy is sought through education so ed. They don't they say they're for equality, but education is the

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Instrument that Gives us a new elite so if you can pay all this money and go into debt and then get

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You know go to the Ivy Leagues and get into the group of people who are also educated you can that's how you transcend and It's no longer though education focused on perfecting man as a spiritual being but preparing him to live successfully

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And this produces an elite class who failed to develop the aristocratic virtues that used to exist

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Weaver again argues that people must regain a metaphysic that expresses purpose beyond the consumption of economic man

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This will ensure the possibility of Liberty in the hope of personal Improvement so a lot to unpack in this chapter.

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I was gonna ask you David first though because there's so much about education What did you think because I think it's on page?

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45 he's got this whole description of what modern schools are like and do you know where I'm talking about?

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I'm looking now. He says let's see if I can find the exact. He says they've built new

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I'll start early Americans certainly cannot be reproached for failing to invest adequately in the hope that education would prove a redemption

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They have built numberless high schools lavish and equipment only to see them under the prevailing schemes of values

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Turned into social centers and institutions for improving the personality where teachers living in fear of constituents

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Dare not enforce scholarship They have built colleges on an equal scale only to see them turned into playgrounds for grown -up children or centers of vocationalism and professionalism

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Finally they have seen pragmatists as if in peculiar spite against the very idea of hierarchy

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Endeavoring to turn classes into democratic forums where the teacher is only a moderator and no one offends by presuming to speak with superior knowledge

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That's 1948 You know how could he possibly have seen this at that point when you're juxtaposing it with with today, but I think he hits the nail on the head when he you know a little bit earlier in the chapter kind of talks about the the replacement of Metaphysical reality of a you know sort of a grander vision of the purpose of life

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And we're gonna replace that with education You know education is a and it's not just replacing it with education

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It's replacing it with mass education because you know, I mean, I were I live in Tennessee now I work in Tennessee There's a lot of differences.

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There's a lot of cultural differences but yet when you go into the school, there are a lot of Similarities and most things, you know, even in like in my particular field

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All you do is is you just replace some acronyms, you know So like in New York, my field is called

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ENL, but in Tennessee, it's called ELL That's pretty much it other than that. It pretty much follows the same uniform Plan and It's it's it's failed it's it's it's it's a complete failure not not on an individual level

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I don't I wouldn't say that at all There's lots of great teachers and I'd like to think that I'm a decent teacher and I can make somewhat of a difference but if you look at the whole thing in mass that and the failure is two -part one is it's been a failure of actually imparting useful knowledge to Two generations that are coming up.

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It's and that's that's really the disease of Of making everything about identity personal identity

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I think the word he uses later is egotism like being egotist but sort of training that into Generations that come up and then the other the other failure would just be because of the lack of any reality beyond You know, we all come in here and we're gonna sort of check our

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You know our metaphysical realities at the door. So it doesn't matter words. We're all this is democratic We're all just gonna be you know, we're gonna agree that we don't agree on those things, but we're gonna

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Where we have this one goal that we're all gonna move toward. It's it's education. What does that mean? What what? Does that mean anything education towards what and it goes back to what he calls in the introduction the wig theory of history that you are all moving in a direction of progress but nobody knows what progress is nobody can define where the

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Final destination is and when you don't have that you have nothing you have basically just a crumbling

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You know a train that the wheels are slowly rusting and falling apart It's gonna eventually it's gonna just run off the rails.

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You might argue it already has But he says progress basically justifies everything in the 40s and nothing's really changed in that regard

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We still we don't maybe use the word progress as much but that notion is still there that every innovation that the left wants to foist upon society is justified because This is how we get ahead.

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This is the Sometimes progress is used or they'll just say this is because we are moving towards greater equity diversity inclusion so Democracy is another one.

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Right? No, no one can really tell you exactly These words are just kind of weaponized and used but they're not

34:54

They're not defined not precisely at least so I'd be curious dad what you think because you you've been in ministry for over 30 years you've watched people get married and You know go through counseling situations and just you've seen the changes that have happened and Weaver when he talks about how people do not know what to expect of one another.

35:19

I'm thinking it's not just bosses and employees it's

35:25

Women and men, you know, how do you go from I like you to I'm going to marry you like that there's so much confusion about that because all the standards that once existed that Organized and facilitated that kind of relationship are gone and So people there's a lot of insecurity

35:43

I think because of this there's a lot of people are afraid to go on dates They're afraid to go in in social situations.

35:50

They don't know how to because there's no Propriety there's no courtliness. I guess there's you know, they don't even know to open doors for women and that kind of thing

35:59

So, what do you think of that? Well, uh Yeah, don't ask a preacher those kind of questions you want to keep this short

36:12

Thing is several things in there One of the things that I'm gonna step one step back here He runs through this

36:18

I think that fits in this is the materialistic idea What progress is as long as you're gaining more and there's more technology and all that that's part of what progress is

36:28

And therefore that's superior and therefore education is to train you to be able to be the cog in the corporate wheels

36:34

So you can make a lot of money rather than training you to understand what life is about so that you can make wise decisions

36:40

So as a broad education or at least that used to be so you can understand the world

36:45

God has made and be able to function and think properly towards things and that then Definitely figures into what you're just talking about is how to males and females even

36:55

Relate to each other when it comes to dating and then thinking about marriage They don't have any idea anymore because they don't know what marriage is about We've become a sexualized society thinking that it's just about having some fun or something than realizing there's actually a purpose that God has for it and your marriage is about children and a stability of a family to raise children in the nurse or an admonition

37:19

Lord of what their purpose of existence is in glorifying him That there are

37:25

Guides lines that he's given to us as well as command specific ones on how to treat one another so when you're looking at I Think the confusion you're talking about it exists today.

37:37

Weaver seems to have had a be prius and Prius Crescent. Yeah, I can't say the word either very prescient toward What is in the commenting and it includes all those things this?

37:53

Distinction about who you are and a hierarchy within it We destroyed it and so the men have no idea how to treat a woman

38:03

Because there's one side of society that's saying it's all about you know get her to go to bed with you and the other side is don't you dare treat her as a sex object and Don't you dare say anything that might?

38:14

Say that she's a weaker vessel is first Peter does Don't say anything like that because you're going to destroy you so the guy is left.

38:23

He doesn't know what to do. So he does nothing Yeah, so I'm not going to get married and marriage rates you know average age of first marriage keeps going up because the guy doesn't know what to do and the woman's complaining because when she

38:35

Gets the guy Finally, he's just a big boy and he doesn't know what it means to be a man because we no longer define those things

38:41

Right, we have a society that is degenerated the point that we're so against a

38:48

Established hierarchy that actually originates from God and it would be expressed in societies in history and in other nations in different ways but there is a hierarchy that God has created and man is rejecting that and so everybody's supposed to be equal, but yet They're not equal and you see this everywhere because in evangelicalism

39:07

This is so prevalent when the role of the pastor even gets reduced to like I'm just call me

39:13

Bob or something and I'm your buddy and There's no respect that comes with that office and not that you don't want to respect where you're just bullying people obviously some people can use that and some people associate that with hierarchy and we were actually talks about that later how

39:28

This is going to the modernity and the rejection of these absolutes will end up with a bunch of bullies

39:34

Basically, and then people think that's what hierarchy is and no there's there's a proper hierarchy.

39:40

It used to exist I think of a book I like to read about Washington Irving old Christmas or even people who you know watched out and Abbey same thing

39:47

It's like there there were stations in life that people held and they knew how to treat others based upon their role

39:54

And so they were all working towards this common end Where whereas now it's people want to the everything else to work for them and their benefit

40:03

And it's not fair that there's any you know people that are over others or we should all be kind of flatlined and And so I don't know.

40:12

I just I see this everywhere and I see the church Evangelical Church in particular attacking this concept of hierarchy

40:19

Themselves and they like to dance around the edge and say well, you know, Paul says women can't be preacher But uh didn't say that she can't be the head of our deacon board or something like it's it's crazy

40:29

They failed to see what we were saying is that there's there's a design behind all this and if you fail to recognize the principles that tie everything together and categorize everything and create these boundaries then

40:43

You will just be lost at sea and that's what I think young men are that's where they are but and they're the worst in a way in the worst position because They're told basically that they're terrible for being men and at the same time you know, they they're they're told by others that they need to step it up and be a man and be self -sufficient and somehow navigate this world where they're supposed to find a wife supposed to find a job supposed to live and No one's reaching out to well in some circumstances tell them how to do it

41:18

So anyway, I I just think So many examples came to my mind that I couldn't figure out how would we were in 1940s see the social breakdown, but he did

41:27

He did and I think there was a reason for it because after 19 Well after World War you saw somebody can start telling world one after World War two

41:35

You have women go to work. The men are out fighting the war. The women are at work They're no longer at home the war ends and after World War one

41:44

The women went back home after World War two the women stayed in the workforce because we're in progress toward hey

41:50

I can make more money. This is good I've had my independence now for you know Four years five years and I don't necessarily need the man to provide everything and so there was more direction so there were some clues going this direction, but he still

42:08

You know, I see things from a theological standpoint He sees from the philosophical and it really is interesting reading him to see how his philosophical basis

42:16

Which actually still has ground on our theology Could see what was coming as he's just watching in society and this was definitely one of them this

42:27

Absolute hierarchy. He ends up talking about a lot about aristocracy and Those people who are in those positions were trained to be able to handle the responsibilities

42:38

That were going to be under them. They had to think differently. It wasn't a it's all about me

42:44

I mean certainly their exceptions are just selfish people But overall they were trained to understand that they had people they had to be responsible for And had to watch out for them.

42:54

And so it was other centered not self -centered yet those under them understood that the success of the whole was going to be because they were part of something greater than themselves and that's being lost other than You know, you start to talk about education the specialist he's going to get into that later, too

43:15

You know, we all kowtow to whoever the specialist supposed to be but the specialist doesn't know what he's talking about because he can't relate it

43:21

Yeah to the other areas of life and that's part of this hierarchy thing The hierarchy that used to exist was because the person who was in that position actually had a greater broader understanding

43:35

Of everything I think he calls it's a centrotism or something like that He understood what was there?

43:41

Whereas we become so specialized. We don't know where we fit So there is no hierarchy except in your one little specialized thing and you think that's everything about life and it's not so It just cascades into everything and so you're right what you said about young men now is they're completely lost

44:01

They have no idea where they're supposed to fit what they're supposed to do Yeah, um, what does it mean to be a man if they strive toward manliness?

44:08

They're attacked if they Don't do You know other things and they're attacked for that.

44:14

And so they stand there with their hands in their pockets knowing what to do It's ironic because they can they can go into the video game world and a lot of these video games um will implement some kind of a structure in this fanciful world, so they're it like My wife and I were watching lord of the rings last night and I had the same thought

44:31

I was like It's so funny that this is popular because this is a world of um of lines of There's there's nobility there there's all kinds of different kinds of people that have different places and strengths and weaknesses and They have to form this fellowship to destroy a ring and the only way they can do it is working together because they're all different and there's no leveling egalitarian and I think the end of it is, you know, a guy becomes a king the man the

44:58

Aragon becomes a king. This is all fantasy But if we were to take some of those principles to apply to our own world, we would be bigots immediately um

45:09

And but yet in fantasy, we're still allowed to enjoy those things And so isn't it ironic that so many men play video games fantasy games games about if you think about it, there's really

45:18

There's really three acceptable ways of being a man in our day and age You can drink beer.

45:25

You can watch sports or play sports if you're a little bit more aggressive And you can play video games.

45:31

Those are those are the acceptable forms of being a man And I don't know this is probably a good segue in the chapter three because that's exactly what he's talking about here but when he traces the

45:41

I feel like I got the most out of chapter three when he traces um He says in the middle ages um the ideal man, he calls the philosophic doctor, so um, there's a lot of I don't know there's a lot of There's a lot of different people you could think about but I actually kind of thought about martin luther even though he's he's sort of towards the end of the middle ages

46:00

Um martin luther has something to say about everything, but he's also a man of action. So he's You know, he obviously is kind of influential and starting a movement, but he's also he's widely read

46:11

He's widely what he writes widely. He's a debater. He debates people in person um

46:16

And he's he's he's a varied man. He's he's more he's you can't boil him down to just one thing as opposed to a specialization

46:25

Um applied to to the man, right? You have your one job and then when you come home the way to express your manliness is man

46:33

You can have a you can have a six -pack and you can watch the game and that's That's what it means to be a man, you know

46:39

And you're also kind of dumb, but it's funny and that's basically what it means to be man And that's such a juxtaposition of really what an ideal man was

46:46

He says um milton's ideal of the educated man who is ready to perform all duties both public and private of peace and of war so In the past the the ideal man is basically the gentleman warrior, right?

47:01

So you are um, you know, you're talking about lord of the rings which you're kind of going back to the days of knights

47:07

That's I guess the the aesthetic Um, but you are you are you're skilled in combat, you know, um, you know how to organize men uh to achieve a goal, but then you're also

47:19

Um, you're also kind of meek, you know, you are you're uh, you're kind and gentle to your wife and with your children

47:25

So you have these simultaneous these simultaneous natures that god gave you to be like the nurturer and provider

47:31

But you're also a warrior you're ready to go um, you know, you're ready to go to battle as soon as the threat arises and to me this is basically the this is how

47:42

Applying it personally. This is the alienation that men feel in the evangelical world and in the conservative world because and and I think that's why this book is worth reading in a way because it kind of it kind of uh, underpins those um those the lack of You know the presentation of what it really means to be a man in the evangelical world.

48:06

You kind of get that You know drink beer and watch sports and that's it

48:11

That's that's what it means to be a man and then the conservative world like the academic conservative world of today it's really like well, you know, we're

48:18

Capitalists and you have your special job and you fit into the economy and it's free market That's kind of it and it doesn't really go beyond that but I think weaver's kind of showing that there there there was and there is a

48:31

There is a better way of being a man. That is actually more fulfilling. Yeah some of that I think you could easily tie in to the southern agrarian idea of What life really is about and agrarians understood it's more about Living life in god's world and understanding it and enjoying it and uh being grateful for it and having a broad knowledge in many things rather than what we've ended up with uh, in in cities and Where you're a cog in a corporate wheel and it's just I go to work

49:05

I do this one little thing there and I go home and then What am I experiencing? You know, I can experience by watching the idiot box on you know television or something like that rather than actually going out and I mean god's creations join something there.

49:20

There's there is definitely a tie that he has into these uh southern agrarians And it starts showing up in all these kinds of things.

49:28

He understood what life was about he understood We're talking about being a man or something. He understood it because it was part of You name his own upbringing in the south.

49:39

Um, Louisville, Kentucky, wasn't it? Yeah, well North Carolina and then Louisville, North Carolina, Kentucky and um,

49:47

I guess being brought up by a Mississippian myself and and the things he instilled in me, which

49:52

I tried to instill into you were against that kind of um, I guess fragmentation that goes into it's this

50:05

There is a hierarchy and it ultimately goes back to god and I'm going to be under him. I I don't think there's a strong that that that it has to be there it can't be defined by a society that doesn't even know what it exists for anymore other than we're just gonna make more wealth and Those who have more wealth will make more wealth and those who don't have it.

50:25

They'll yeah want it and Well, you know, there's a uh stuff. There's a small town.

50:31

Um, I mean I think you do see this expressed in some of the movies david mentioned earlier from frank capra. There's a uh,

50:40

You know who your family is and they've gone back generations. They have an investment in the land. So you have a tie to the lands.

50:46

People know who you are, not just because of your life, but also the lives of others who sacrifice to give you your life and and vice versa as you know them in relation to their what their contributions to the community and over the span of generations.

51:04

And so when it comes time to choose a leader, even if it's not a formal choosing in a political setting, but actually a simply just who do we respect?

51:16

You're not looking for the person that has the biggest bank account necessarily. That could mean that they're a wise steward of their money, but it may not be.

51:24

They could be the city person who moved in. It was no tie to the land and doesn't want to talk to anyone that they're not getting respect because they have money.

51:31

It's not because you have the highest level of education, even though there's some respect that can come with that. If you worked hard to get there and gain some good knowledge, it's more the investment that you've put in over the long haul.

51:43

And that's the kind of world Weaver I think fell in love with. And that's what got him out of socialism was he, he realized there was this decadence to the the world that he lived in that was just reduced everyone to an economic consumer.

51:56

At least that's what he, when we get to the stereoptagon, we'll talk about it. He felt like that there needed to be an alternative to this.

52:04

And so when he was young, he turned to socialism as that was going to be the thing. But then he realized that that, that created, that that was actually a by -product of the same thing.

52:12

Like the bourgeois capitalism and socialism both reduce man to an economic. And these are his terms, a consumer.

52:20

And, and he wanted, he, it's, it's ideology. It's narrow. And he, he saw man is so much wider.

52:26

So in the chapter three, which is what we've been talking about, he argues that rejecting transcendentals destroys the possibility of wisdom and traps people in the present.

52:34

Man narrows his focus from pursuing truth to pursuing facts. This destroys the outmoded hierarchy that once honored the philosopher.

52:40

And then the gentleman by replacing it with one that comprises itself of specialists on the, and he called, he says this on the borderline of psychosis.

52:50

And I have a picture of Anthony Fauci. Everyone can, uh, in fact, I'll put it up here.

52:55

Cause I'm like, that's the epitome of it. It's that, that's what we all did in 2020. We, well, he's a specialist.

53:00

You can't question him. Um, but, uh, this metric prohibits value judgments.

53:06

This in turn emasculates men through multiculturalism. It's funny. How he predicted the political correctness we're dealing with.

53:12

He said, you can't criticize anyone from another culture. Uh, that encourages emotional instability in urban living, where workers are confined to small tasks, creates a small group of elites who manage a massive workers and leads to moral horrors.

53:25

And he talks about this in relation to what we did, uh, with the Manhattan project and what the

53:30

Nazis did in just being, well, I'm, I'm part of like the moral accountability doesn't apply to me.

53:36

If I'm a low level worker, it only applies to the person at the top because they're the specialist. They're like the prophets from on high who tell us what to do.

53:44

Um, and so he says his conclusion is wisdom does not lie on the periphery. Uh, instead we need to get back to revering the philosophers over the specialists.

53:52

And I should just say real quick, he doesn't mean philosophers like go to your local college and find the philosophy department. He means something different.

53:59

He means, uh, we would think of it today more as the Renaissance man kind of idea. So someone who, um, is wise.

54:06

Wisdom is what he's talking about. The person who would, you know, be described as a Solomon.

54:12

Solomon would be the epitome of this, the philosopher King. So, um, anyway, that's, that's what he argues.

54:18

And, um, let's see, I have questions written down for all of these. I've been ignoring it, but how would this impact, um, hiring, uh, who we,

54:27

I don't even know what I wrote here, scribbles, how would this impact hiring and who we trust?

54:33

So, um, I think what I'm trying to say there is, uh, when you're hiring for a company today, they look for certain things.

54:42

They make a lot of short -term decisions I've noticed just in my experience. And they, they're not hiring.

54:48

They don't have a metric based upon someone's in character responsibility. It's like, what level of education did you get to?

54:55

Right. And, and, um, maybe what experience did you have at a previous job? But that's it. And character means so much more nurturing the, those eternal qualities is going to make you a better worker.

55:09

And so, um, would you hire the specialist, right? Or would you rather hire the person who can think for themselves?

55:18

And so maybe we can get the discussion started with that. Who would you, are we talking about my job or?

55:24

Yeah, I know. We're talking about every job, right? That's what he's. Cause if I had somebody to hire, I'd probably hire the specialist cause I don't want somebody, you know,

55:30

I just want them to follow the bureaucratic rules. Well, you're ruining my, uh, you're that's what he lives in.

55:39

You know, you have to have a specialist. The idiot who can't think out of the narrow box that. I would never hire the specialist.

55:46

No, absolutely not. I would, you'd want to know that somebody I, so can, if I can just really quick,

55:52

I mean, and this is not a knock. I have a lot of friends who do this for a living and they're, you know, smarter than me and, you know, are going to make way more money, but, um, coding, right.

56:03

So coding is, um, kind of the, what's the saying?

56:08

Learn to code. Yeah. Yeah. So coding is, you know, you sit at your computer and you're kind of figuring puzzles out and writing, um, software language and stuff.

56:17

Right. And you can get paid a lot to do this. Um, and you can just be at home doing it. And that's, you know, really cool for a lot of people.

56:24

Um, I think it's in chapter four, he kind of gets into this, but, um, he talks about how there's been a shift from, uh, in work, right.

56:34

So if you're just working for the, um, for the consumption of whatever it is that you're making,

56:41

I think the example uses as a chair, like if you're just, if you're making the chair for somebody to consume the chair, to use it, then, um, you, there is, there's no, um, there's no hierarchical, hierarchical,

56:54

I teach you, I teach English. We're having a lot of hard times. You're pronouncing stuff. I can say in Spanish better.

57:01

Um, there's no, uh, that, that there's no hierarchical aspect in your, your work.

57:08

Right. So that's, that would be juxtaposed to, um, you're putting excellence into the particular thing that you're doing.

57:16

You're, you're doing it because you actually have a higher, um, you know, you have a higher goal, right.

57:23

And, um, you know, it relates to the scripture, do everything hardly as the Lord, not for men. Uh, but we kind of, you know,

57:30

I always think of the, um, like all those, uh, the pictures you'll see on social media of, uh, you know, churches today versus, um, you know,

57:41

Renaissance churches and stuff and the way that this is kind of outflowed in architecture and, and, um, different mediums to where like the work is, is just for whoever's going to come and consume it.

57:52

Right. But then work has sort of gotten boiled down to, you know, it's not even, it's not even physical, tangible anymore.

57:57

Now it's, you're just doing a task on a computer for somebody to, and even that now is going to be probably taken over by AI.

58:05

Um, a lot of that work. And so then we were left with just the question, what is work? What is it for?

58:10

What's the point? What's the purpose? And you get back to these fundamental questions about why we're doing what we're doing to begin with.

58:18

Um, Do you remember what Joshua did to AI? I'm sorry.

58:24

Is that the illogical joke? I don't know. Yeah, I'm sorry.

58:31

Uh, there are places for a specialist, but the specialist doesn't understand the general things behind it.

58:40

They become foolish. And he does point that out. They become so specialized in something, they don't understand how it fits together.

58:47

And so you end up with real problems. And we certainly see that in our day and age to a huge degree.

58:55

Um, we've paid, he taught, you know, the philosophy doctor, that's not an equivalent to the

59:01

PhD of today. There was someone who was trained in a lot of different areas and could help you transition to see how it fit into what, you know, he was referring to as the metaphysical, um, it would be the theologians, theologians as well.

59:18

We now have specialists that don't understand what got them to that specialty.

59:24

Certainly you want a specialist. If you have a particular disease, you want to talk to someone who knows something about that disease and how to treat it properly and what's known about it and all that that's helpful, but the specialist is never going to be the one that actually got you to finally, you know, to move you toward that diagnosis.

59:41

That's going to be the general practitioner who has a wide array of knowledge and can point you the direction you need to go.

59:49

And that might be a good analogy of some of the stuff he's talking about here is that we, if as society, and he's looking for, seeing where this is going to go, we're now living what he was foreseeing.

01:00:00

You have all these specialists who get a high degree of attention or, um, weight in their argument because they have whatever degree or they're specialists in this.

01:00:12

But as you point out, Dr. Fauci is supposed to be the specialist, but the man was a fool. He had no understanding of what he was doing, how it affected economics.

01:00:21

Then you find out he's a liar. He admits it. You find out it really comes back down to him and his ego.

01:00:28

And yet he's accorded all this, uh, weight in his, uh, opinions because of his position.

01:00:36

And no, it was the common doctor who was fighting COVID and helping people to live and not losing patients.

01:00:45

And I think that's a probably good analogy for where he was. Weaver's actually looking to, this is where we're going to go.

01:00:50

And we're in it. I think that's why you mentioned Fauci earlier, Jonathan, is that this is a epitome of a guy that demonstrates the foolishness of our society.

01:01:00

Who would I hire? It depends on what it's doing for a church. I'd always want the generalist.

01:01:06

Yeah. I don't want a guy who's so good at preaching. He doesn't know how to pastor. He doesn't know how to deal with people. He doesn't know how to counsel them or comfort them.

01:01:14

You know, okay. He's a pulpiteer. He's an oratician. Wonderful. But that's not what God calls to do.

01:01:20

He's called pastors to be pastor's teachers to equip the church for the minute, you know, the saints for the work of the ministry, not just be an oratician.

01:01:29

So he can gain a lot of followers in the media or something. But that starts becoming what we end up doing even in something like ministry.

01:01:40

If you have someone who's building a house, yeah, you appreciate that there's somebody who's really good at plumbing and you have a plumber, but the plumber better know something about the rest of the structure of the house where he's going to start cutting through supporting studs in order to put his pipe in to collapse the house.

01:01:58

So they have to have a general knowledge too. Weaver makes a good case for that of the importance of that and what the danger is, is that the direction we're going in that we are now in.

01:02:10

Yeah, no, he, he is very prophetic in that respect. I thought we were going to get through probably six chapters, but we've only gone through three so far.

01:02:22

And I think, I think we're going to stop it there. And and then we can, we can talk about what we've already talked about some more, but since there's nine chapters, maybe

01:02:33

I'll have to do three episodes or something. We have 88 people streaming right now.

01:02:39

I want to open it up for, and by the way, you, if you need to go down or David is totally fine.

01:02:46

I'm going to open it up though, for people who are patrons right now, if they have a question or if they have a comment about this and we'll just give each one of them a few minutes.

01:02:56

I'll just add this really quick. What we have talked about so far, we've only scratched the surface of what this guy has said.

01:03:02

I know I would, I do highly recommend the book. There are weaknesses in it. You know, we could point those out, but if you want to kind of understand where we are in society, this is a very good book to read.

01:03:16

And his last chapters though, I have to admit are a little confusing and I had to reread them again to understand kind of what he was really talking about.

01:03:26

He gives some very good things about what, how do we get back to where we need to be? So again,

01:03:32

I thank you for recommending the book to me and I've enjoyed reading it. Well, we'll do more of this.

01:03:37

You're welcome. Lord willing, when, when I find some other books, in fact, there's a number of them already thinking of, but I want to introduce some good books to people because we get so much junk out there.

01:03:50

And I've noticed too, a lot of Christians tend to be insular in their, whatever, not even denomination.

01:03:56

It's like the evangelical guild, I guess. And we have the books that Lifeway and, you know, sees other big publishers produce.

01:04:03

And I want to just give you some, some really good books that will, that aren't, you know, cheap.

01:04:09

They're not fluffy. They're not shallow. They're deep and they're rich and they'll change the way that you even think about things for the better.

01:04:20

And I think Richard Weaver's books are like that. Ideas of Consequences being one of them.

01:04:26

All right, well, let's, let's transition really, really, really quick. So just before, before we go to the, to questions, just as like a personal plug for this book, this book like revolutionized my own understanding of kind of where I stood within like conservatism and where, where I was going like politically, because I realized that something was missing.

01:04:49

Something was wrong with kind of, I guess not what I had been taught at home, dad, but what

01:04:57

I had kind of, where I'd graduated where a lot of the sources that I'd kind of ended up getting, like how, how they were affecting me and impacting me and that there was more.

01:05:08

So one of the, one of the biggest reasons for reading it is if you feel like there's, something's off, something's wrong.

01:05:15

Like I, this is very empty, you know, whatever, listening to talk radio or like reading the fluffy evangelical books.

01:05:22

It's a good place. It's a good book to start, to start identifying like where, where, where, where is this wrong?

01:05:28

Where do we go wrong? What's missing from this picture? And I think it's helpful in that way. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt.

01:05:33

All right. Well, let's transition since it's already nine 24 here. Barbara, Barbara Assebry.

01:05:39

I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that name, right. I'm just giving you a little bit of a heads up before I press admit here.

01:05:46

There's a number of people in the queue here, so hopefully we can, I'll stay here as long as I need to, but this is for patrons.

01:05:53

And again, we're going to still live stream, but for the patrons who want to come on, all right, I'm admitting Barbara now and seeing what she has to say.

01:06:02

You know, Barbara, Barbara. Oh, Barbara, turn off your live stream while we're talking here.

01:06:09

We'll see if she comes back and give her a minute here. But yeah, one of the things you were just talking about, uh, that you feel like disconnected or isolated.

01:06:19

Um, the way I phrase that is I felt like there was no one representing me.

01:06:25

Like I couldn't find a voice hardly anywhere, even in political conservatism that represented my interests.

01:06:30

And I want to defend, um, the things that matter to me. That's I think what we all want.

01:06:36

We all, there's things that matter to us and they're not at all abstractions. There's ways of life that we live in and we think they're worthy of defending.

01:06:44

And it even comes down to cuisines, right? It comes the lobster fishermen in Maine, right? Is he upset that the windmills are going to come in and ruin his lobster fishing?

01:06:52

Yeah. But it's not just because it's an economic thing of like, well, I'm not going to be able to make money or something.

01:06:59

It's cultural. I'm a lobster fisherman. I've been that for, uh, my, my parents were lobster fishermen.

01:07:05

This is our way of life. You're not destroying my means of income. You're destroying my entire identity, not entire, but you know, a big part of it.

01:07:15

And we see in the old Testament, I think safeguards for this kind of thing. That's why the land goes back to the tribes right after 70 years of Jubilee.

01:07:24

Um, it's, it's, um, I don't know. It's just, there's an assumption that people take pride in their work.

01:07:34

The craftsmen who went to the temple, right. Um, they weren't just doing it cause they're getting a paycheck.

01:07:40

They're doing it cause this is my purpose in life. Don't take away my purpose. Uh, and, and that's what

01:07:45

Weaver gives us. And that's what a lot of modern conservative, uh, pundits, unfortunately don't. And especially the more libertarian minded ones.

01:07:53

Um, all right, we'll see Barbara. You there. See if I can, I'm asking to unmute here,

01:08:02

Barbara. All right. We're gonna, um, um, I'm going to see if maybe we can have someone else come in.

01:08:10

I'm sorry, Barbara. I'm not, uh, hearing you. All right.

01:08:18

We're going to go to, um, Mike, I think, uh, Mike. So get ready.

01:08:24

Mike at the microphone. Mike, can you hear me? All right. We'll wait a second, uh, with him and, uh, see if he comes on.

01:08:35

Um, but anyway, uh, other thoughts that you've had as we've gone through this, uh, these first three chapters, hierarchy, um, education, we've talked about the roles of men and women to some extent.

01:08:50

Um, uh, well, maybe one caution. He, he, he speaks quite a bit against science.

01:08:57

And I would just say, the caution is this, he's actually speaking against scientism, the philosophical aspect of science, uh, proper understanding of science does increase your overall knowledge, but you still have the same problem.

01:09:09

You become just specialized in one position and don't understand how all the different sciences work together.

01:09:15

You're probably going to have a trouble. That was just one thing I kept seeing throughout it. He, he's using the one term, but what he's really talking about is the, the sign scientism, the philosophy behind, uh, a materialism rather than science as the

01:09:31

Christians were pursuing at the time. What he's saying, he's saying is that we are not the founders of many fields of science of understanding God and his creation that we may, uh, fit in with this creation better because we are stewards of it.

01:09:44

Mike, can you hear me? Are you there? I don't hear Mike. Maybe I'm going to have to come up with a better software.

01:09:52

I'm using zoom for this, which is what I'm used to. But, um, some people recommend stream yard and other services, and maybe that's what

01:09:59

I'm going to have to do. All right. Well, Evan.

01:10:05

Evan, get ready because I'm coming to you next. Well, other things that Weaver mentions in other works have been profound to me.

01:10:18

Evan, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Oh, we have. It does work. All right. Let me try and silence you guys.

01:10:26

Don't silence us. Well, he means on the YouTube stream. I should probably silence myself.

01:10:31

And, you know, Barbara just mentioned in the chat that she goes, I am here. So, I don't, Barbara, I'm sorry. If you want to come back in the waiting room, we can try again.

01:10:38

So, Evan, what's on your mind? So, well, first of all, thank you guys so much for doing this.

01:10:45

I really enjoy it. This is a book that I very much appreciate. I guess one of the big takeaways that I had when

01:10:53

I read this book was Weaver talks a lot about what he calls universals.

01:10:59

And what he means by that is these transcendentals that exist outside of human experience, right?

01:11:08

That are, like, universally true. That, like, are aspects of God's character, for example, that are supposed to be controlling our worldview.

01:11:25

But what's interesting about that is a lot of the people who want to deny these universals tend to sort of universalize humanity.

01:11:34

And there almost seems to be a connection there between this universalizing of humanity and refusing to acknowledge these universals that exist outside of humanity.

01:11:49

And I haven't quite been able to put my finger on it yet. But, and clearly, Weaver does not do that. He recognizes, like you guys were saying, these hierarchies, these distinctions between human beings.

01:11:59

So I don't know, John, if you have any thoughts about that, why that might be the case. Are you saying that he, that people who reject these universal absolutes, intangible things that he, what does he call them, transcendentals, that they instead impose that on humanity itself, you mean?

01:12:18

That's a globalist instinct? Okay. Yeah. So they tend to, when you reject these things that are exterior to human beings, you tend to sort of want to flatten humanity itself, to make all human beings the same.

01:12:34

Okay. Yeah. No, you're saying that humanity becomes an abstraction at that point. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No, I totally agree with that.

01:12:41

Humanity is, for the modern left, and unfortunately now for even elements of the right, when they talk about people, you can hear it even in their language.

01:12:49

They can talk about, you know, world peace or something like that, like wanting to bring about some, you know, what's the song that they do?

01:13:03

Imagine. Well, Imagine's one of them. There's the one that Michael Jackson did years ago, too, that keeps coming up.

01:13:09

We are the world. We are the world, yeah. And it's just like, I mean, no, you're not. You're not the world, actually.

01:13:16

You're a person in a particular place. There is a particularness to this, but the way that particulars can relate to one another, which we're all particulars, is that there's certain things that we have in common.

01:13:28

The number one thing being the image of God or the fact that we're sinners or in need of salvation. But when it comes to, like, things like language and culture and lineage and, you know, all these very tangible things that are part of God's created order, we don't have those in common with each other.

01:13:42

And they create barriers. And guess what? They're supposed to, to some extent. It doesn't mean barriers in a bad sense.

01:13:48

It just means like, like we have borders around our country and the globalists do seem to want to reduce man down to something so abstract and basic that none of those barriers ought to exist.

01:14:02

And there should be. They won't tell you this because it's in the name of equality, but they want to have a global hierarchy where their specialists are in charge of the whole world.

01:14:11

And that will prevent the bigotries of nationalism and, you know, other local bigotries from, you know, what do you guys think?

01:14:19

I mean, that's my take on it. He mentions this. Weaver mentions this directly in chapter three. So since liberalism became a kind of official party line, we have been enjoined against saying things about races, religions, or national groups.

01:14:31

For after all, there's no categorical statement without its implication of value. And values begin divisions among men.

01:14:38

We must not define, subsume, or judge. We must rather rest on the periphery and display sensibility towards the cultural expression of all lands and people.

01:14:47

And then he says, this is a process of emasculation. So when you remove those distinctions, you've now, you've now emasculated, you've taken away all the oomph from, you know, from yourself as an individual within, you know, a context.

01:15:03

Yeah. If you can't honor your fathers and your lineage, those who will come after you, who will share your type, your way of life, then you don't have a society.

01:15:13

Because society is a communion of the living and the dead and those yet to be born. Right? So that's a good point.

01:15:22

Dad, do you have anything on that or no? No. David. Read the quote. Passage I was looking at.

01:15:29

Yeah. Well, thanks, Evan. I appreciate you. That's a good point. And I'll have to chew some more on that.

01:15:34

Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm going to come to Earl next, I think.

01:15:41

If Earl is there. Earl, just get ready. He's about to join us.

01:15:51

Yeah, that's the globalists are probably like the specialists and globalists run together. Like every specialist wants to be a global elite of some kind.

01:16:02

They don't just have loyalties or responsibilities, duties to their particular context, local area people, marriage duties, maybe even.

01:16:11

They want to sweep the fortunes of other people. And I've seen this in education context where professors tend to be, in my experience, the most insecure people

01:16:24

I've ever met. And it's like, why? You have all these degrees. But that's the only thing they have is this specialization.

01:16:30

And they've sacrificed all these other things sometimes to get there that would normally confer identity in natural ways.

01:16:38

Earl, can you hear me? Yes. Good evening, John. Hey, it's good to hear from you. Good to see you.

01:16:43

I was going to say see you. You can turn on your mic if you want, but you don't have to. Oh, well, I'm on my couch wrapped in a blanket.

01:16:51

So not quite fit for. I don't need any other details. So, yeah, just share the question or the comment.

01:16:58

Well, thank you for putting this together. This has been an edifying evening. My question has to do with discerning between the legitimate hierarchies within life, the natural

01:17:13

God -ordained hierarchies like parents over children, let's say, and what

01:17:19

Thomas Jefferson called the aristocracy of merit versus purely arbitrary hierarchies such as, say, a hereditary monarchy, right?

01:17:30

Because any time in a modern context, if I say that hierarchy isn't bad, that's immediately what the radical egalitarians run to.

01:17:40

And I guess as I've been listening to this dialogue with the three of you gentlemen, something that stuck out to me is that character is as important as competence.

01:17:55

So you have to have the Renaissance man, you have to have the well -rounded generalist.

01:18:03

But if he doesn't have the integrity or the courage to use his knowledge, he's not really fitted for a leadership position.

01:18:18

And that seems to me to be one of the reasons why the radical egalitarians hate people like, say,

01:18:26

George Washington or Robert E. Lee, because they weren't just competent, they were men of great character too.

01:18:37

And there's this – it seems like there's this envy of – Tennyson called it pairing the mountain to the plain to leave an equal baseness.

01:18:48

So I guess my question is how to respond to the radical egalitarian types on what qualifies someone to be at the top of a legitimate hierarchy?

01:19:03

I'll keep my answer short. I mean, number one, I would point out hierarchy is inescapable. Even the radical egalitarians have a hierarchy, whether they admit it is a hierarchy or not, that's up to them,

01:19:13

I guess. But if they're being honest, they have to realize, especially if they're communist types, that at the top of their hierarchy are people or a government structure that includes people, because there's no structure that doesn't have people, that is going to have a godlike status.

01:19:27

And so that's a hierarchy that's beyond anything that we've seen even in, I would say, natural aristocracies.

01:19:35

And so what they're proposing is worse in its capacity for abuse than anything that has come previous to this, an all -knowing state with the capacity to implement a social credit, right?

01:19:48

So you know where I'm going. So I would say that first. That's my critique of them.

01:19:54

But second, I would just say that, you know, I think what we're arguing for is the fact that hierarchies do exist.

01:20:02

Some of them, I think, like you can't come and impose sometimes like an exact, this is what it should look like, because it's going to be tailored to a situation.

01:20:11

Like I've been in social experiments where they did this when I was doing NAM training. You go into a room and they give you a task and there's like 10 people.

01:20:17

Someone naturally arises to become the organizer of that task. Because the task has to get done and not every person can be a chief.

01:20:26

You have to have a chief and Indians. And if there's two chiefs, they duke it out, right? Or they figure out how to work together.

01:20:31

So a hierarchy emerges even in that situation. And so some hierarchies, I think, are natural.

01:20:37

The divine right of kings, that whole idea, that created the problems that led to things like,

01:20:42

I think, World War I. I mean, I'm not in favor of that.

01:20:48

I understand there are people returning to that because they're seeing the failures of democracy. But, I mean, it's going to be, there may,

01:20:57

I mean, obviously, crisis is going to come back. So we want something that's going to be suited for the population. If it's a population that's responsible, they don't need a king.

01:21:04

If they're irresponsible, right? Man, they may need something to come and limit their evil decisions.

01:21:10

And, I mean, I think of the warnings that Samuel made of having a king.

01:21:16

But sometimes it's necessary to limit decisions. So we want, in general, the principle is local control that's suited for the people and their needs and the level of responsibility they have in particular areas.

01:21:29

And it's going to look different in different fields, too, whether it's government or ecclesiastical or whatever.

01:21:35

So David or Dab, what do you think? Let me tell you about the glory of the British Empire. You are live.

01:21:43

Oh, sorry. Yeah, I thought you'd go there. What do you think,

01:21:50

Dad? Well, I'm a pastor, so I immediately thought of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 and saying, as God has already set forth certain qualities, and he's spelled them out pretty clearly there.

01:22:04

Even the Old Testament, you have the same kind of thing, is there's character qualities. Even for elders, the character qualities are first and the abilities come second.

01:22:13

And it's the character of the man that you need for any kind of hierarchy. And that's what you always should be looking for.

01:22:19

Part of the problem of our current republic is our degeneration of our political system is that we're looking at specialists, the guy who's been in politics for a long time rather than the guy who's demonstrated his character in business or whatever he was then, military guy or something.

01:22:38

You should be looking for character in any field, first and foremost, for the person that's going to be in the upper echelons of whatever organization it is, whether that's national government, state governments, local governments, in a business.

01:22:57

If you were responsible for hiring, who's going to be the guy who's going to be our girl, who's running up to lead within that organization, look for the character.

01:23:09

Character qualities are listed out as what we should have. Just one thing

01:23:15

I would say. This isn't necessarily going to the promotion of a specific organizational structure of society, but for the radical egalitarian, our society is radically egalitarian, and pretty much every institution promotes that idea.

01:23:35

The only thing they haven't really successfully promoted is why that's good. Why is it good for people to rule?

01:23:40

Why is it good, voter franchise? Why is it good for everybody to... Weaver, in his other book,

01:23:46

The Ethics of Rhetoric, one of his big points is arguing from first principles.

01:23:52

The argument from first principles would just be, all right, well, the people need to decide why. Why is that good?

01:23:59

I'm a teacher, so try that with your students in class and see how that works out. Why is that the best thing?

01:24:06

Why is that a moral good? Work up from there, I guess. Universal suffrage has not been a good idea.

01:24:14

It's been bad because you get an equal weight of influence by those who are least capable or least knowledgeable or have the most despondent character to decide how things are supposed to be compared to those who have the greatest character and abilities.

01:24:32

It's been bad. It was a bad idea. We had it right early on in the

01:24:38

Constitution and continue to expand voting rights to anybody and everybody under the sun.

01:24:44

That's been kind of based on the idea that the more people vote, the closer you should be to what reality should be.

01:24:50

The reality is it enables for a greater aspect of manipulation for popularity.

01:24:59

The most popular is the one who gets in position rather than the one who's actually competent.

01:25:06

In the military and history, when the troops would vote to have their leader, that didn't always work out so well.

01:25:16

Sometimes not any better or worse than a politician putting them in, but you need competence.

01:25:22

Character is part of that. Thank you, by the way,

01:25:28

Earl. We're going to switch to Hannah Smith now. Hannah, if you hear me,

01:25:33

I'm going to ask you to unmute. Oh, you're going to show us your video. Thank you for doing that. Hi, Hannah.

01:25:40

People don't have to do that. Can you hear me? I can. Yeah. Good to see you.

01:25:46

What are your thoughts? Oh, my gosh. So many. First was my education is way lower quality than I ever expected because I'm reading this.

01:25:58

I'm like, who's that? What's that? What's that word? I have the same thing. I'm going to read it with a dictionary.

01:26:03

It was excellent, though, and I actually enjoyed how he could condense such big thoughts in just a few words.

01:26:12

So I did want to, I had two questions. The first one is I was just going to preface with kind of a short commentary.

01:26:21

I'll try to keep it short. But at the very end where he was talking about the positive aspects of what we can do, the second thing he talks about is language and words.

01:26:32

And this paragraph stood out to me. He said, in recognizing that words have power to define and to compel, the semanticists are actually testifying to the philosophic quality of language, which is the source of their vexation.

01:26:48

And in an attempt to rid of that quality, they are looking for some neutral means, which will be a non -conductor of the current called emotion.

01:26:59

And it's concomitant of evaluation. They are introducing into language in the course of their prescriptions exactly the same atomization which we have deplored in other fields.

01:27:11

They are trying to strip words of all meaning that show tendency, or they are trying to isolate language from the nominal world by writing speech of tropes.

01:27:23

And all I could think of was when I first started engaging in the social justice conversation.

01:27:30

And I was working in law enforcement. So when I saw a lot of this stuff coming up, I would, well, what do you mean by that?

01:27:37

And what are your thoughts? And trying to engage in good faith with friends. And at first it kind of started as, oh, listen to our stories.

01:27:46

Like, no, we just want to express our stories. So I was like, OK, great. Tell me your story. And then you'd engage with the story.

01:27:53

They say, no, no, no, no. I just want you to listen. And then that very quickly turned into, your silence is violence.

01:28:01

You need to speak up. And then you'd speak up and participate in the conversation again, which would turn into, those are the wrong things to say.

01:28:08

Here's what you need to say. And then also what would happen, you know, so the language was always coerced.

01:28:16

The definitions were always on their terms. But then also what would happen is there would be, and I know you've talked about this with like TGC and some of the other evangelical, there's always this emphasis on, we must define our terms, which can be very good and meaningful.

01:28:31

But often it's like, kind of plays into, we can't understand one another unless I give you my very own specific definition to this conversation.

01:28:42

So one of the things I remember kind of decisively trying to do when

01:28:49

I was like, how do I even respond to this conversation, was I don't, I'm tired of equivocating.

01:28:55

I'm tired of trying to speak to their emotion and trying to like lower down the emotion so we can have a conversation that's clearly just being manipulated.

01:29:03

But I actually found like over time, I just lost the ability to even know how to speak directly.

01:29:14

You know, it was almost like you lose that skill. So my first question was just what advice do you have for people, you know, who are, want to both speak without equivocating and then just confident that what they're saying is true.

01:29:33

I mean, obviously like that has a spiritual dimension too. But, you know,

01:29:38

I think a lot of times people tend, I saw this too. I was joining like a lot of mom groups. I was a new mom at the time.

01:29:44

And, you know, there's this idea of, well, no one can tell someone else what's true or what you can do.

01:29:52

Right. It's whatever is best for yourself. So there's no common understanding. So how do we speak?

01:29:59

How do we get better skilled at speaking truth and confidence and that it is true?

01:30:07

Well, you're the English major, David. Oh, okay. I was going to say, well, I mean, I could, I can,

01:30:12

I would just set that up for it because I feel like that's, I mean, as Christians, that's really where, that's where we shine the most because we are rooted in specific language.

01:30:24

So, you know, I mean, think about the, if you think about the implications of AI, right?

01:30:29

So now we're in a position where, you know, if I want to, I can open a website and I can say, hey, write me an essay about Richard Weaver.

01:30:36

And it will produce a, you know, believable essay that I could submit to my college professor.

01:30:42

And, you know, I probably could get away with it at this point unless he has some software that can determine or detect that that's fake.

01:30:51

And so what, what we're probably on their precipice is at least what I would assume we would be is just chaos of, of learning and education because nobody will be able to verify not only whether something is original, but what something means.

01:31:03

And, you know, so definition, I, your point about like, your point about always beginning a conversation or an article with definition.

01:31:14

And actually Doug Wilson does this a lot. And I don't mean that to pick on him because I actually think he's very good at doing that.

01:31:20

But, you know, the fact that, you know, the last time someone picked on Doug Wilson on this show,

01:31:25

I'm not picking on him. I'm not picking on him. I've, I've, I've gotten a lot from his stuff partially because of, you know, providing a lot of answer, providing this modeling this because in November, he doesn't do it.

01:31:39

He just says, all right, we're not doing any more definitions. We're just going to go no quarter November. So, and that's the only time

01:31:45

I generally read that stuff. But we, you know, we're rooted in, we're rooted in, you know, in the

01:31:53

Bible. So that's, that gives us a foundation that gives weavers sort of, I mean, that is the metaphysic.

01:31:59

Because it's, it's, it is specific language. It's, it's the only solid rock in a stormy sea.

01:32:07

So, Pastor, what do you have to say about that? It seems like I spend most of the time in my sermon defining words so that we can understand what is in there.

01:32:20

The idea of it, actually, I think it is a good idea to find your terms before you, you speak and even more important when you're dealing with, you know, these people are talking about make them define their terms.

01:32:32

Make them define what they're talking about and then don't give them any quarter on it. Because you can saying as then you're being very foolish and redefining a term.

01:32:40

You don't change reality by redefining the word. This is what the word means. This is what it's always meant. So, you know, you go on.

01:32:48

Truth is not compromised. You go back to the truth. You tell them the truth and then let

01:32:54

God take over from there. We can't. Part of the reason that we end up in trouble is, let's see if I can say this a nice way.

01:33:08

The last couple of weeks I've talked about what Peter says about the role of women and role of men and I've been pretty straightforward with it.

01:33:15

One of the things I generally find that women want to make sure the relationship's okay.

01:33:21

So, you'll accept a whole lot more than a man will.

01:33:27

But most of our men have been emasculated and so they've been taught the same thing of kind of how you're describing it is, you know, listen to my story, etc, etc.

01:33:35

And then they want to keep changing the parameters of the discussion. It's like, you can't let them do that. And you're going to have to deal with reality, whether you like it or not.

01:33:44

And here's what God has said about it. And when God has said it, that's it. This is reality. He determines it, not us.

01:33:50

We bend to Him. And I think that's true in every area of life. We have to make sure that we're speaking the truth.

01:33:57

We're trying to understand the truth. Our humility comes in trying to make sure we understand the truth correctly.

01:34:04

But then making sure we're also, you know, holding others to account to the same thing. Don't let people redefine words.

01:34:14

I'll leave it at that point there. The other thing I'm going to add from a theological standpoint,

01:34:20

Satan's, one of Satan's strategies has always been to destroy the language by redefining terms.

01:34:27

That's why when you look through the etymology of a term, you just see so many different changes to this over time.

01:34:36

It's because it just leaves language confusing. We end up, we're not talking about the same thing.

01:34:42

We need to be talking about it. But we end up, we're not talking about the same thing because the language means something completely different.

01:34:48

That happens so often in theology. And that's why if you're reading theological statements for like a church statement of faith, they get longer and longer and longer because we have to add more terms to define what we mean because other people have redefined it into something that doesn't make any sense anymore.

01:35:04

Yeah. What is concupiscent? No, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to define it. Yeah, I mean, it's true though.

01:35:12

I see this all over the place that you spend more time sometimes trying to figure out how someone's defining a word.

01:35:18

And it's partially because I think of this destruction of language. C .S. Lewis talked about it too, that language is weaponized to carry an emotion that's negative.

01:35:31

And it's like touching an oven. Every time that word comes, it's like, that's hot. I don't want to touch that.

01:35:37

And so today, if you're called a racist, let's say, to pick one example, it doesn't really mean anything.

01:35:43

There's no actual definition. It's just a nasty thing you can say that conveys a nasty emotion that no one wants to stick to them.

01:35:52

And so I think one of my main thing is this is super short because this is something

01:35:57

I've had to learn over time, and I still am struggling to learn it. But I've developed somewhat of a thicker skin.

01:36:03

And you know what? Someone calls me a racist or whatever other pejorative, you know, it's kind of like the meme,

01:36:09

Lord of the Rings meme. You know, you have no power here. Sorry. You can call me that all day, but that doesn't actually mean anything.

01:36:17

And for you to just be bandying about nonsensical terms makes you the one that should be embarrassed.

01:36:27

And we have to return to that somehow. And the only way is people are going to have to do it one at a time.

01:36:33

So if everyone listening here just said, you know what, next time I'm called a racist, I'm not going to get all offended right away and try to prove that I'm not.

01:36:44

I'm not saying don't do that and don't prove that you're not, but you have to figure out what they're saying first.

01:36:50

It makes no sense to go into like, well, here's all my friends who are Hispanic.

01:36:56

They have no right to just call you a name without any justification or definition, if that makes sense.

01:37:05

So this is what I have a problem with a lot of political conservatives for, because they do this kind of thing.

01:37:11

They're called homophobic and they're like, oh no, I have gay friends. And it's like, you should ask them, what do you mean by homophobic?

01:37:20

If you can't define it, I'm not even having a conversation with you. It's pointless. So anyway, yeah, but I hope that helped.

01:37:29

Did you have another question? My last question. Go for it. I did.

01:37:35

It's super short. And it's just, what historical hierarchies do you think did it well in terms of what

01:37:41

Weaver's talking about? Man, all right. I have many thoughts on this. You know, this is like a very dangerous question here.

01:37:51

I'm afraid to answer because of what you just said. I'll tell you what Weaver said. We can talk about it another time too.

01:37:58

The short answer is Weaver thought the Old South. I'm not afraid. I don't do this for a living. Yeah, Weaver thought the

01:38:04

Old South was idyllic. And because it carried, it preserved this kind of medieval relationship that existed between the landed gentry and those who worked the land.

01:38:23

There was a relationship of mutual affection. And so Weaver's not, he doesn't justify slavery or anything like that, which is why you have to be careful in how you present.

01:38:35

You actually have to read his whole book really to figure this out, The Southern Tradition at Bay. But what he's talking about is very similar to what like Roman Catholic teaching was concerned about in like the 1850s.

01:38:47

And there were some encyclicals the Pope made that were, he was trying, and he even used the word social justice.

01:38:53

It's one of its earliest uses. And it's not what we think of today as social justice. And he was just describing, well, there's a relationship that exists between people who own the land and the people who work the land.

01:39:03

And it's a mutual affection. And so their lots are tied together. One fails. The other one fails.

01:39:09

They need each other. It's a symbiotic relationship. And it's a good thing. And if the

01:39:15

Industrial Revolution shatters that, what do we do? And so the Catholic Church was trying to tell the captains of industry, well, you still have a responsibility to provide for these people and provide for their well -being.

01:39:28

You haven't, just because it's a, you know, there's a paycheck and it's a different kind of arrangement doesn't mean there shouldn't be mutual affection still.

01:39:36

And a lot of that's been destroyed, though. We don't even have hardly, you have to go back to these old literature, you know, older literature to find out what it used to be like.

01:39:45

And there was a mutual affection. The poor didn't hate the rich. I mean, that's a novel idea. So, yeah, it's hard to give you a specific answer.

01:39:55

I don't think there's any perfection, obviously. In any example I give, someone's going to try to poke a hole in it. But Weaver thought that early

01:40:02

America had something unique that's been lost. And I think he's probably right about that.

01:40:10

So, anyway. All right. Well, I'm going to move to. Yeah, they do describe it.

01:40:19

And, again, they don't defend slavery. And that's the thing that everyone thinks. They're like, oh, you're going to. No, it's that. You got to think.

01:40:24

You got to take two intellectual steps back. And you got to think through how this class of people who had been molded by these virtues in the sense of responsibility, how they thought and how they took their responsibility.

01:40:36

If you just assume presentism, it's like everyone was just like your boss today, man.

01:40:41

Then you would think that anyone in a hierarchy over you is evil or something.

01:40:48

And they didn't have that view. But you could go to England. You could go to Europe. You could.

01:40:54

I mean, I'm thinking in the Western tradition. I'm sure there's other places. But in the Old Testament you had that. Abraham.

01:41:00

Oh, my goodness. I mean. But, hey, thank you, Hannah. Appreciate it very much. Thank you, gentlemen. All right.

01:41:06

We're going to go to Andrew. Sorry. You've been waiting patiently, Andrew.

01:41:12

Thanks for dropping in. What's on your mind? That's OK.

01:41:18

You can hear me. All right. Yes. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. I'm going to be here anyway, whether you bring me on to ask a question or not.

01:41:25

So, yeah. Thanks. I didn't read the book, but I joined tonight to hear you all give an introduction of the author in the book.

01:41:33

And it sounds fascinating. I'm going to have to pick it up and read it. You definitely whet my appetite for it.

01:41:39

But the question I ask, I think, is a pretty, pretty short one or a simple one. I actually want to know if this is an oversimplification.

01:41:47

You know, you've been talking about these problems with hierarchy and meaning and eschatology from a philosophical angle that Weaver took in this book and his other writings.

01:42:01

But like a lot of Christians, it seems to me, or maybe it's just the ones that I know, they wouldn't really take part in this kind of a conversation.

01:42:07

They would be lost five minutes in or they would feel overwhelmed. And they would just maybe, they would maybe even ask the pastor in this call, hey, can you just simplify this and show me what's the theological error?

01:42:19

What's the part of the Bible I need to shore up and know? What practice do

01:42:24

I need to make sure I'm not overlooking that people in Weaver's time were overlooking? And what

01:42:30

I keep thinking of is like, there's this ministry you all probably heard of, Answers in Genesis or Ken Ham's ministry.

01:42:37

And they constantly go over different cultural issues that we have been facing or continue to face in Western culture.

01:42:46

And they just keep simplifying it down to that these problems are rooted in a rejection of Genesis 1 to 11.

01:42:53

And that the reason that's been rejected is largely because of the acceptance of Darwinism.

01:43:00

And it can be tied back to that. Do you all think that's an oversimplification or the theological angle is pretty much just right?

01:43:10

It might just be that simple that the rejection of Genesis 1 to 11 or compromises like organizations like Biologos have engaged in and other pseudo evangelical organizations and how that's affected the church.

01:43:22

I know I was a part of a conservative church that they would tell you in private, the elders would, that they believed

01:43:28

Genesis 1 to 11. They just didn't care to bring it up very much in ministry because it's hard to teach.

01:43:35

It brings up challenging questions. So I just wanted to know what your thoughts on that were, if that theological problem corresponds to the philosophical problems that Weaver brings up in this book.

01:43:45

Okay, I'll take this one. Go for it. It's my hobby horse too. As I was reading through Weaver's book,

01:43:56

I found he basically is simply presenting a philosophical approach to that exact same problem.

01:44:03

He doesn't define it well. I can see his own loss because he doesn't have a strong theological foundation.

01:44:10

His is a cultural theological foundation. That's why, you know, religiousness among the

01:44:18

Southerners that held sway for their culture. But still, what is still underlying it is this loss that he sees and he can call it transcendental.

01:44:29

Transcendentals, yeah. What is transcendent? Yeah, thank you.

01:44:34

The transcendentals. He can call it that. But what's really been lost is the foundation that there is a

01:44:40

God who's created everything. There's an order to this creation. There's a hierarchy in this creation because there's a purpose for this creation.

01:44:47

And I just find that he's actually just making philosophical arguments for that very same thing. I find

01:44:53

AIG is very good at taking you back to the foundations. When the foundations are lost, everything else is going to start crumbling.

01:45:01

And that is true. And it's true in theology. When pastors, elders, the churches will not take a stand on what the

01:45:07

Bible actually says, their ministry is already crumbling. They just don't even realize it. If you can't stand on what

01:45:14

God said in Genesis, you've lost all basis for the rest of your interpretation. You've already made

01:45:19

Jesus then claiming to believe things that aren't true. And you're compromising everything.

01:45:26

So AIG actually does a very good job in taking you back why these foundational issues are so important to cultural issues, practical issues, to the gospel of Christ as well.

01:45:42

I don't find it's not an oversimplification. It is the foundation.

01:45:48

If the foundations are lost, you're done. Weaver does go after Darwin, by the way, in the book in two places.

01:45:57

But I'll just read the first one, I think, where he says, The social philosophers of the 19th century found in Darwin powerful support for their thesis that human beings act always out of economic incentives.

01:46:11

And it was they who completed the abolishment of freedom of the will.

01:46:17

So he's saying that what's going on in science when also took place in philosophy.

01:46:26

And so I think he'd be critical of Darwin. The thing I know what you're saying in that, you know, a lot of Christians would just they just would want to simplify it down to give me the

01:46:38

Bible verse and what I need to do. And I think what I'm trying to say, the reason I'm doing this book and while we'll do other books, some might be similar, some might be different.

01:46:47

But I'm OK with this level of academic approach is because I want to call

01:46:53

Christians to a little bit of a higher standard as far as understanding the times in which we live.

01:46:58

Like, there's no way I would have been able to critique or notice some of the things that I've seen, I think, if I didn't not just know scripture, but also know the world

01:47:06

I was living in. So I'm not saying know the world as an authority, right? That's not like a final authority.

01:47:13

The scripture is my final authority. But I need to know how to apply it. And if I don't know the world I live in, it's hard to know how to apply it.

01:47:19

I have seen and I'm very careful here because I love answers in Genesis. I've been to the Ark. I've been to the Creation Museum a few times.

01:47:25

Very positive. I have noticed, though, there are times when I think they will try to pigeonhole issues into it's a

01:47:35

Genesis issue because it's so fundamental. Most issues are. But like, for instance, the issue of critical race theory, to pick one example, you know, that's an issue that does

01:47:46

Genesis address this? But it's not maybe in the simplistic way that I've heard at least people influenced by some of the creation science have framed it because and the reason is because they don't understand it most of the time.

01:48:01

They don't understand what critical race theory actually is. They misunderstand it. And they think what critical race theory is, is thinking some races are better than others.

01:48:09

And you can have racial prejudice on the basis of that. And they will go back to biological evolution being wrong and then they'll knock it down with an argument that we're all made in the image of God.

01:48:19

The problem is critical race theory, though, is postulating the idea that there are that race itself is a social construct doesn't really actually exist in the in the real world.

01:48:30

So what AIG ends up critiquing something? I've seen this, at least I'm not saying all their articles are like this, but I think they want to take an issue that if they had a little bit, sometimes more of a philosophical understanding of what that issue is, they could maybe do a better critique.

01:48:47

And I'm already regretting the way I'm phrasing this because I really I'm not trying to get down to it because I love AIG. I think everyone should support them.

01:48:54

I hope what I'm saying is making sense. Maybe one of you can save me so that I'll save you. Yeah, I think all you're really saying is that.

01:49:01

I think it goes with Andrew's question. Is it an oversimplification?

01:49:07

And sometimes you just wish they would add a little bit more so that they're hitting the foundation. But that needs to be expressed a bit more in this case, critical race theory and the philosophical aspects of what the issue really is.

01:49:20

How's that? Yeah, I mean, that's basically what I'm saying. They need to look at the idea that God actually did separate people at Babel and did want people in certain places to have unique characteristics.

01:49:34

That was part of his ordained will, at least. That would answer critical race theory, that particular section of scripture more than, well, he created us all in his image, if that makes sense, because you're actually applying.

01:49:45

So the Bible is sufficient, but not everything's in Genesis 1 through 11 because God gave us an entire

01:49:51

Bible. And it's all profitable. So, yeah.

01:49:56

David, do you have anything on that? I mean, you just mentioned Babel. That's what I was thinking of.

01:50:02

I think that's kind of the beauty of Christianity is that you can talk at an intellectual level that's a lot higher.

01:50:09

You can dig really, really deep. You can get into all sorts of nuances and argumentations.

01:50:14

But somebody with, I don't know, somebody with Down syndrome, somebody who is mentally challenged could understand the concept of a bunch of people came together and said, we're going to make a tower that's going to reach towards heaven and nothing will be impossible to us.

01:50:31

And God said, no, you're not. I'm going to confuse your languages. And they were dispersed across the earth.

01:50:37

And yet there seems to be a, I don't know, what I would probably call a satanic plot to bring

01:50:42

Babel back. And, you know, you could fit most of the central planning and the globalism and all this stuff into that box.

01:50:49

And it's as simple as that. So we can get into all these nuanced discussions and everything. But at the same time, yeah, it's that simple.

01:50:54

It's Babel. Yeah. Yeah. We were fighting that. So, yeah. Does that help,

01:51:00

Andrew? You got a lot more than you bargained for. Yeah, that's awesome. Cool. Thanks, guys.

01:51:05

I appreciate it. Hey, I appreciate you coming on. Thank you. And the book is unaudible, by the way, if you like that kind of thing.

01:51:12

I should mention that to everyone. That's how I listened to it first because I didn't have time to sit there and read it. Anyway.

01:51:18

All right. Well, we're going to bring Mary Beth back in. Can you hear us, Mary Beth? Yeah. Can you hear me?

01:51:23

I can. Yeah. Oh, OK. I'm glad it worked out. Yeah, me too. I was not very technological.

01:51:32

I'm not good at it. As you can see, neither am I. So, I was just...

01:51:41

I don't have a question or anything. This has been great. And I was just listening last night to...

01:51:49

I don't know if you know of George Grant. I heard that name. At Parish Presbyterian Church.

01:51:55

He's in Tennessee. And he's doing this three -week, once -a -week

01:52:03

Christ in Culture. And last night, he went into just the history of how we got to where we are.

01:52:13

I mean, even a little before Darwin and that. But it was really great.

01:52:19

And then next week, he's going into how we make a difference.

01:52:27

Where we are today as the body of Christ. George Grant, he's got to be, what, 60s, 70s?

01:52:35

Yeah, he is 67. I thought he was about my age. Yeah.

01:52:42

Prolific writer, especially in the 80s, 90s. Yes. Well, even now,

01:52:47

I mean, he does continue to write some. But, yeah, he does a lot of teaching.

01:52:55

His history is great. He has a series on four aspects of the history.

01:53:07

I mean, four... I'm sorry, I'm nervous. Oh, you're fine. I did not expect to talk. So, yeah.

01:53:14

So, you just want to plug his... Four cycles. It'd be great to find out what George Grant thinks of Richard Weaver.

01:53:21

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, if I had a better memory, I wouldn't tell you.

01:53:28

He's probably somebody that he would recommend reading. Yeah.

01:53:33

And last night, he was recommending, like, Amusing Ourselves to Death, that book.

01:53:43

Contemporary writers. And, you know, really good reading. But, anyways, if you go to his website, the

01:53:53

Parish Press Church website, people can view that.

01:54:00

Watch what he did last night. So, that's all. Cool. Well, thank you. I appreciate that,

01:54:06

Mary Beth. Thanks for stopping by and letting us know. Yeah, if that's something that interests anyone listening, go check it out.

01:54:13

Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else? Or is that... No, it's just been great.

01:54:20

And I hope you do more books. Yeah, I'll figure out the technology better, too. So, it's a work in progress.

01:54:27

But, yeah, I wanted to do just some more positive things. So, I appreciate you coming in the chat.

01:54:34

And maybe we'll talk some more next time. Sounds good. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Bye now.

01:54:39

God bless. God bless you. Did Barbara get back in the queue? Yeah.

01:54:47

Barb, I don't think so. Yeah, the first one. Did she get back in the queue? Yeah, I don't see her.

01:54:55

James Starbuck writes in the live chat, I'm here to pick on Doug Wilson, ask you to define concupiscence, and slam answers in Genesis.

01:55:02

That's slamming. This is the problem with breaking up answers. I know. The warning signs were going off in my head, and I probably blew it.

01:55:12

I'm just being honest. This is another issue, is the issue of front -loading all of your disclaimers.

01:55:21

I have to, like, disclaim, disclaim, but then there's only one thing that is heard, like, that was negative. I know.

01:55:28

Yep, that's what's going to happen. So, answers in Genesis, I love you, and would love to have you.

01:55:33

Actually, I probably should have asked Ken Ham if he wants to come. He's probably too much of a star to come on this podcast. Maybe not.

01:55:39

Well, you never know. I should ask him. I think what you're doing matches much what fits in well with what he's trying to do.

01:55:48

Well, yeah, same objective. We want to go back to a biblical standard, and, yeah,

01:55:53

I mean, he's just in a different arena, which is fine. He's fighting a different battle, and it's a battle that needs to be fought, there's no doubt.

01:56:03

But, you know, one thing I forget. Go ahead, sorry. I just said we're glad we're on the same team. Yeah, we're on the same team.

01:56:10

One of the things I forgot to say at the beginning, and I wanted to start the whole thing with this, is that Richard Weaver is the anti -Tim

01:56:16

Keller. Because. Remember naming names? Well, Tim Keller.

01:56:22

Well, Tim Keller, I've renamed that name I don't know how many times. I'm not going to get in trouble for that. Tim Keller.

01:56:27

You'll get in trouble if you don't. Yeah, probably. Tim Keller, though, his whole scheme, I've talked about it many times before, is that the cities are the place where God's, he almost acts like he's most at work there, and we should be most invested there.

01:56:41

And, like, cities are important to be invested in, but he acts like it's God's purpose, though. It's kind of a weird view he's got.

01:56:48

And he says because, look, God ends the whole, the New Jerusalem's a city. He ends everything with a city.

01:56:54

And that's part of, factors into why we should value cities so much. And Richard Weaver, basically, is sort of the anti -urban guy.

01:57:04

Like, a lot of what he says, ideas have consequences, is basically a critique of urban living. And it wasn't cities, per se.

01:57:11

It was these crazy megalopolis things that we have now. Like, you go back to the 1700s, they didn't have cities on the scale we have now.

01:57:21

You include the suburbs and everything else. So, he thought it was an artificial environment.

01:57:26

We're actually not to that chapter yet, but he talks about it in the one about spoiled brats.

01:57:32

That artificial living gives you the impression that science and man can provide everything for you.

01:57:41

And you forget God. And, anyway, we need to be in the cities, for sure. But that's one of the things that I think struck me about Weaver, especially reading so much

01:57:50

Keller. Which cities? Which cities do we need to be in? Jeddah?

01:57:56

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? No, just New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles.

01:58:01

Just Americans. I don't know. But it's okay to be at a small church somewhere in the country.

01:58:11

That's also a mission field. His whole outreach is city to city. We need the cities, but we need everywhere.

01:58:19

People. It's people. It's not cities. Anyway, I thought I'd just mention that about Weaver. If you really don't like Tim Keller, read

01:58:25

Richard Weaver and you'll not like him more. So, any final thoughts before we end the live stream?

01:58:35

Well, I appreciate being invited in there, into this. My first reading through Weaver was like, what is he talking about?

01:58:44

And then I am amazed that he wrote this in 1948. It seems like he must have been writing it last week or something.

01:58:52

I do recommend reading it. I think it would be a good read for people to be challenged.

01:58:59

Just take in mind that he is writing from a philosophical standpoint that parallels a theological one.

01:59:08

But he is not writing as a Christian. Or at least not a born -again

01:59:14

Christian, yeah. He's writing as a... The sense

01:59:19

I get is... He uses a lot of biblical illustrations. Southern cultural

01:59:24

Christian. Yeah, he's a cultural Christian. Yeah, a couple of little things.

01:59:32

One would be just in thinking about specialization. So, that's a topic that is really just not touched a lot in the conservative sphere.

01:59:43

I guess blogosphere. But I remember the first time I ever kind of realized that that might be an issue that was kind of wrong was

01:59:53

I was in college and I took a Shakespeare class. And my professor, he was a professor of Shakespeare.

02:00:00

But he had a very specific expertise. He was the authority on the history of the putting on of the play.

02:00:10

The historical putting on of the play Twelfth Night. So, he would be called to different universities. He would do different fellowships.

02:00:17

And that was his thing. That's what he was known for internationally was if you wanted to know not about the play, but about how the play had been performed historically, that particular play, then he was the guy.

02:00:30

And I remember just having this huge impression of, oh, my goodness, that is sad. Like, this guy is in his 70s and his life has amounted to this.

02:00:39

And he enjoys Shakespeare great. I mean, I love Shakespeare. I did it before I took the class. He helped me a little bit kind of discover a love for Shakespeare.

02:00:46

But, I mean, how sad is that, you know, to get to the end of your life and that's all you got is just, hey,

02:00:51

I can tell you how this play got performed. You know? So, that's just one thing that I guess to think about maybe critically.

02:00:59

And then just the challenge of the book is it's good to, you know, it's a beneficial thing to challenge yourself intellectually.

02:01:05

You know, it's like phones are extraordinarily addictive. And, you know, it's very, very easy to get in the habit of just kind of being a scroller because everybody's doing it.

02:01:16

And, you know, one way to try to fight that is to put your phone away, sit down with a book like this and, you know, challenge yourself a little bit intellectually to, you know, to, you know, try to be more of a whole person.

02:01:29

You know, like the thing he puts is if you're hyper -specialized or if you're just kind of going with the tide of culture, then you're not a whole person.

02:01:38

You're kind of a divided person. So, you know, it's just something to take into consideration and, you know, challenge yourself.

02:01:47

Well, maybe to piggyback on that one is read histories as well. Obviously, Weaver's understanding is because he must have some good understanding of history or he wouldn't be able to see those trends.

02:01:58

Yeah. No, very true. Well, we're going to end it. Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for participating.

02:02:03

You've kind of been welcomed into my living room and discussions that might have happened around my table growing up.

02:02:10

And we're going to take suggestions on how this could be made better in the future.

02:02:16

So some of you might want it longer. Believe it or not, some of you are like that. Some of you, probably more of you, might want it shorter or you might have suggestions on a different format.

02:02:26

And I'm aware of the technological things. I'll correct those for next time. But let me know if you have any other critiques or suggestions, because I'll take them into account.