J. Burden on Political Realism

Interesting discussion, a lively discussion, and my second ever discussion with someone who goes by an anonymous name.

We have Jay Burden with us. Hey, Jay. How are you doing? I'm doing quite well, John. Thank you for having me on. And if people want to find out more about your podcast and your writing, they can go to jayburden .substack

.com, jayburden .substack .com. But I reached out to you, what, two weeks ago,

I guess, and I've known about you for a few years. I think I was on your show maybe a year and a half ago. Yeah. We spoke a few months ago.

It's funny. We were talking about this before you went live. And if you have as many interviews as either of us do, everything blurs together.

It's sort of this run of incredibly intense conversations. But yeah, it was quite a good show. I enjoyed it a lot.

And I welcome the chance to speak with you again. Yeah. So I just reached out and said, I'd love to have you on. And I had my first anonymous person on the other day.

And so you're the second ever on the Conversations That Matter podcast, which, I don't know, it's exciting in a way.

Like we were talking before we started recording that I think some people are attracted to those conversations, not just because you tend to be intelligent and Kryptos was intelligent on this podcast.

But there is sort of like this element of like, almost like forbidden conversation. They have to keep their names out of the discussion because it's like truth that could get them in trouble potentially.

And so I don't know what we're going to say exactly. But I think that's sort of an attractive element.

And I guess real quick, before we get into the big discussion, since this is new for the podcast, maybe you just want to tell everyone publicly, hey, why don't you use your own name?

Why do you use this sort of anonymous account? Well, sure. And I will make a distinction

I think is important at the beginning between the difference between anonymous and pseudonymous. So when we think of anonymous accounts, if you've been on social media, there are these sort of faceless personas that basically just say whatever they want.

And it could be the same person with three different accounts, it could be three different people. But I have a pseudonym. I write under Jay Burden, I speak under Jay Burden, I use that same avatar and that same name everywhere.

Even if you don't know me personally, that is associated with the same kind of body of ideas.

And the reason I do that is the same reason that many in the Western tradition have selected pseudonyms.

The Federalist Papers were written under assumed names. And it's because it grants you a certain amount of freedom.

You can say things that would be socially or economically disadvantageous.

So you're a full -time podcaster or not a full -time podcaster, you're a full -timer, this is what you do.

I'm not, I have a day job. And because of that, if the things that I said, which

I'm not ashamed of, I'm not hiding from those things. But there are things that if I told to my

HR department, they would ask you to leave. Things that even would have been common sense 20, 30, 50 years ago are now sort of outside the

Overton window, outside of what is acceptable to talk about. And so that enables me to still have interesting ideas, to speak with people without putting my family in risk of economic trouble.

And so I think especially if we look at the world as it is now, where more and more things are becoming kind of irredeemable social sins, it's a useful tool for that.

Do people abuse it? Most certainly. I'm not issuing this sort of blanket endorsement of every pseudonymous person on the internet.

But I think that it's important, especially in a time where we see this kind of like rampant social contagion, if you want to call it wokeness or progressivism, kind of ruling society, that it becomes very difficult if you aren't at the level where it can fully support you to talk about important ideas, talk about things that ought to be discussed.

So that's my reason for adopting a fake name and a profile picture. It's also,

I think, a symptom of what we're going to be talking about today. The reason that people feel the need to be pseudonymous is because of the arrangement that we have in the way that the elites have decided to use their power and the gap that exists between us and them as far as the way they view the world and their mission and vision for the world and the one that we have.

So that's what we're going to get into today is just how do we grapple with that? I mean, one of the ways is pseudonymous accounts, but how do we look at it and then what do we do?

So, Jay, I saw this tweet and I can't pull it up again. I think it was deleted, but it was not long ago.

It was like maybe two weeks ago. And it was Aaron Renn, who I've had on the podcast and enjoys talking to.

And he was just pointing out that the new, the young right, the upcoming,

I guess, Zoomer right, if you want to call it that, dissident, Zoomer right, they kind of when they look at things, they look at it in a more

Machiavellian way. They're looking at it, meaning there's just a very pragmatic kind of approach to politics that they have that their parents did not have.

And and some people are very concerned. I think even Aaron was kind of concerned about this, that like, is this casting principles aside?

Is this something that is showing a compromise in the fabric of our moral view?

And so one of the things, you know, you're going to talk about is, you know, what since we live in a different frame, we live in this frame where the

Overton window has shifted so much and the left, if you want to call them that, but the cultural elites really on both sides now have deemed certain things unacceptable and they're willing to use their power to crush disagreements, even if you just believe what normal people in the 90s believe.

Now you're crushed. You know, do we need this Machiavellian approach? Should we throw it out?

Are there multiple? Like, how should we view this this particular culture ward that we're in?

So I'll let you take it away. To start, let's examine that term

Machiavelli, right? It is sort of entered the UN, entered the dictionary, right, as the synonym for kind of ruthless, heartless, results oriented action.

But if we look at the man Machiavelli, he was a political thinker from Italy. Interesting personal life.

Won't get into it, but it's worth your time to check him out. But he wrote this book essentially as a manual for the

Christian press. Right. This is Italy where there's no unified state. There are kind of these like micro polities. And so politics was a very dangerous game.

Right. Machiavelli himself was on the losing end of a political struggle and ended up being exiled and tortured for that.

And so what he essentially tried to do was write a manual for how to how to play this game, right, how to get what you want done.

And there's this this phrase at the kernel of that that I think is quite useful for this discussion, which is basically dealing with the world as it is, not how we wish it to be.

Right. So a lot of previous political thought was concerning these kind of broad abstractions, right, these noble principles.

And his whole point was like, OK, that's great. But when you're actually playing the game, you have to you have to work in a very kind of ruthless way.

So, for instance, right, if you look back at Roman history, there's this in this kind of anecdote where Ursula, who was a general, comes up to the gates of the city.

The guy in charge of the city says, well, it's illegal for you to conquer the city. And he says, you know, enough about laws.

We have swords, you know, basically being like, well, it doesn't matter what you say. We're going to beat you up and take your stuff.

And. I think it's important to contextualize where we are currently, right, because there's this idea and I like it,

I reference it quite a bit of first and second order disagreements. So a first order disagreement is sort of an intra group conflict.

Right. So, John, you and I get into an argument, but you and I assent to the same set of ultimate principles, right?

We believe in God. We believe in these kind of like higher principles. And so we can have a common argument, right?

We're arguing within the same framework, you know, and if it ultimately comes out that, you know, our higher authority, whether it's our pastor or our mayor or something, says, all right, you know,

Jay Burton, you were wrong. John was in the right. Well, you know, I assent to that system of values.

And so fair enough that the dispute is resolved. But when we talk about our groups of second order disagreements who do not have the same system of authority, do not have the same priors.

Well, if you're acting like, OK, we ultimately agree we're under the same arbiter here, you're sort of playing the game wrong, you know, you're looking at the problem incorrectly.

And, you know, my assertion is that society now is a series of these second order disagreements.

Our enemies, the people who wish bad things for us, and we can get into exactly what that means, they do not have the same values.

And so they may tactically pick up those values, you know, oh, you as a Christian should do X or you as a

Christian do Y. But it's very clear that they don't hold those. And so it becomes a conflict more similar to what

Machiavelli was talking about, where it is this sort of winner take all type of situation. And so when

I look at American Christians, right, when I look at evangelicals, I see a group that is a minority.

We are not in an ascendant position and our views are not shared by the system of power.

And so to go around acting as if that is still the case, like it may have been in a previous generation, is a is an error.

And so I don't look at that and say, that's great. I'm not happy that that is the case. But it goes back to that principle of looking at the world, how it is.

And quite simply, we are not in a position where we can afford to. Afford to act as if we are in the cultural ascendance.

Yeah, so to put some meat on the bones here, so people understand exactly what you're talking about, maybe some examples of first order versus second order first, like with the

Reformation, would that be an example of a second order where they could not go to the Catholic Church to arbitrate it because there was a fundamental disagreement about the authority of the church?

Well, definitely. And if we look at the consequences of that, we have something like the 30 years war, right, where millions of people are killed because it is not a not a conflict you can resolve by going to a common shared authority.

So, for instance, I used a hypothetical when you and I were speaking about first order claims, but you can imagine like a schoolyard dispute, right?

You know, OK, you know, like you stole someone's lunch money. You both go to the principal. He sorts it out. It's solved versus, like you said, the

Reformation, where there's a fundamental disagreement about the ordering of society, where authority derives from.

And so currently we're seeing this about any number of social issues, right? If you believe that marriage is defined as a man between, you know, as a one, one man, one woman, right, not only is that not shared by the vast majority of society, but when other people are talking about marriage, they're talking about a completely different institution.

It was a completely different claim being made. And so there is no common shared authority between the two.

And so I think that that's an important distinction to bring up when we talk about the culture war, because I think some people view this as if we are still operating in a relatively unified society, right?

This is a disagreement with shared ultimate premises. Is that do you think that maybe the fundamental thinking behind the whole we say in common parlance, the boomer cons who think that we're still under the

Constitution, that's their arbiter. We can go to that, read it, and then it'll force the left to stop doing what they're doing, whereas like the left really doesn't care about the

Constitution. That's not their authority. Exactly. And that's actually perhaps the perfect example.

You know, I like the Constitution. When I read that document, it resonates with me on a certain level. But it goes back to that idea of, you know, quoting law to the man with a sword.

He doesn't care. You know, it has no hold on him. And so despite the nobility of that document, it only works when everyone assents to it.

Right. It is the rules of the game. And likewise, you know, if you're playing basketball at the park and one side is tackling you and stealing the ball, you know, pulling up the official rules on your phone and saying, well, this is illegal.

I mean, that only carries you so far. You could be technically there. You can be technically completely correct, but technically correct.

It only gets you so far. And obviously you see this as well in a conflict for watching in American denominations.

Right. So so recently the United Methodist split about a year ago. And I actually got to see this firsthand in a congregation local to write.

My friend went there. That was where he attended since he was a small kid. And what he saw there is that, you know, this church ended up splitting and the very small, you know, vocal minority group basically said, you know, we want to affirm gay marriage.

We want to become, you know, one of those churches that has the in this church we believe type of signs in the front yard.

Well, they were willing to go above and beyond, you know, all kinds of underhanded tricks, you know, getting people who are still on the books as records, but as members rather, but hadn't, you know, hadn't shown up to church in 15 years, got them to come in for the vote, you know, spread false information about when the vote was being held to their opposition.

All of those things, you know, it's kind of underhanded tricks to get what they want. And so there's a certain level at which it's like, well,

OK, like if your enemy is playing dirty, if your enemy is viewing this as that second order, pure power struggle.

Essentially, in order to survive, you have to adopt those tactics, and that doesn't mean that it is a great thing for all societies to be run like that.

Like in our own tradition, you know, we see a time in which everyone did have a shared system of values, a shared morality.

But again, that is not where we currently are. And I think it's important to remember that the stakes of this are very high.

You know, if your church obviously starts preaching heresy, you have to find another church. You know, we see this in other places like Canada, where it is not merely on a kind of a doctrinal level.

But the state is very comfortable saying, you know, you cannot go to church. You know what you are preaching is hateful.

You will be thrown in jail. And so when we look at other countries that are sort of down the line, further degraded than we are, again, we have to understand that there are real consequences to this to this political game.

This isn't merely kind of a disagreement that you can have over Sunday dinner and then say, all right, well, go back to normal life.

Even if you don't care about politics, well, politics cares about you, to be kind of brutally honest.

So when you when it comes to the first order disagreements, then there is sort of there's a sharing.

There's a sense of like the society in which you operate is shared by the other party.

And so you can actually create a life together in which there's a potential for peace there because there's arbitration.

And the second order disagreements, that's not true. Like one side has to win. Their paradigm is going to be imposed on the other side.

Is that correct? That is exactly correct. And in fact, I probably should have said that more explicitly, right?

That this is, you know, because it is not an arbitrated conflict, you know, there's really no way for these two parties to coexist.

You know, it can't be simultaneously true that marriage is between a man and a woman and marriage is between any two consenting categories who have any set of hard work.

Right. One of those must be true. And, you know, it's interesting you mention Aaron Wren, because he has quite an insightful model on this, basically how the culture has changed in result or in relation to Christianity.

You know, if we look at if we look at America in particular, America was a Protestant country.

Right. That doesn't mean it was any particular denomination, really. And obviously, you know, there have always been Catholics and Jews and an extreme minority of Orthodox people there.

But it was assumed that that was sort of the baseline morality of society. And we go into this, you know, and you can kind of pick the time at which you think this happens, whether it's the 60s or the 90s, where Christianity is now a neutral thing.

He refers to this as neutral world where, you know, it doesn't do you any good to be a good standing member of a church, but it's probably not going to hurt.

And what he says is what we are currently in is a negative world where society at large views your classical

Christian, you know, small Orthodox belief as a as a negative, as a social ill. And so I think that it's also important to talk about this idea of neutrality, right, because you were fed this idea.

And it's kind of downstream of the doctrine of separation of church and state, right, which, let's be honest, is not a part of law.

It is not something in the Constitution. It's a phrase someone got from a letter, I believe, either Jefferson or Madison wrote.

I can't remember off the top of my head. And and views that as, well, that's how society was.

You know, society was just completely neutral. That's not the case. Very obviously, every society has a civic religion at its core, even if it is not explicit.

It has a baseline set of values that citizens are supposed to adhere to.

And the situation where now is we don't have in any way a Christian ethic at the core of society, but we still do have an ethic.

You know, it's a bad religion. It's a bad civic religion. But nonetheless, it exists. And we've got to understand that we are not aligned with that civic religion.

We cannot because of our commitments to Christ. And so if we look at how societies previously have dealt with people who did not adhere to the civic religion,

I mean, actually, if we go back into early, early Christian history, right, why were Christians persecuted? Well, very explicitly, because they would not make concessions to the emperor cult of Rome, to the civic religion that was seen as a traitorous act.

And so I guess the reason I want to bring this up is just to say, look at the land as it currently lies, look at the situation we're in and acting like, oh, it's just like how it was when church was a neutral or a positive part of my life,

I think is is inaccurate. And I'll throw it back to you. But one of the things you hear often in our circles is this idea that, oh, like persecution will be good for the church, you know, particularly more conservative

Christians have been saying this for a long time, you know, calling back to what happened behind the Iron Curtain like Dreher did, you're talking about Christians in Muslim countries and kind of making out those martyrs to be noble.

And that's definitely true, right? Those those men died for what they believed in. That's honorable. But when those same people say like, oh, that would be me, you know,

I'd go to the pyre for my beliefs. But they get a little bit squirrely, they get a little bit uncomfortable when it becomes, you know, socially shameful to be

Christian, you know, when it becomes racist or homophobic. I kind of don't believe, you know, I don't really believe you that you're willing to go to the pyre if you sort of clam up when someone calls you a mean name.

And so maybe that's a discussion for another time, but nonetheless, something I wanted to bring up. Yeah, no, that's a lot to think about.

And like really good point is I think that the Christian nationalism discussion fits within really this discussion in that I think

Stephen Wolfe and maybe even like, you know, Andrew Torba and Andrew Isker wrote this book as well on the subject.

And I'm trying to think who else has used it positively in a book form. But they seem to want to hold on to something that still exists in red areas in a certain respect in the

South, perhaps in the Midwest. And it's, you know, from it's like the

Hunger Games, right? Like there's this sort of central authority in D .C. that's imposing itself more and more and more even on these local areas.

But there's still areas where the church bells chime, the people are respectful to one another, and most of the people are they claim to be

Christian and perhaps even the majority goes to church. Right. Those those places do still exist. And but but they're being imposed upon and by this new paradigm.

And I think that's sort of what how the Christian nationalism thing fits in. That's why at this moment it's such a big deal and why the media wants to attack it is because in the siege we're in there, they've stormed the gates.

They're past that. They're now rushing in to kind of like the inner area.

And like this is one of the last strongholds is like, can we agree? Can we at least agree that Christianity is a good thing?

Right. Like that's like like one of the last things to go. And and, you know, even

I live in New York, so I'm not in one of those areas, but even where I live, there's a lot of kind of latent

Roman Catholics who have like this cultural memory of like grandma went to church and took me when

I was a kid. And they have a respect for religion. Like if if let's say the government came in, whether it would probably be the state, maybe even local government where I am, and they decided we're going to round up the pastors who preach against you use the example of homosexuality.

So I'll use that. But whatever. I mean, there's so many things they could do this with. There would be an outcry even among the people who don't go to church.

They'd be like, something's wrong with this because there's sort of this this memory of a time or this like,

I don't know, the sentimental authority. I don't even know what word or term to use. But they look at the Bible.

They look at the church as like they disagree with it. They don't want to live their lives by it. But like, don't touch it.

Like, don't let it be there. And I think that's even fading. But it's still kind of like there's still sort of this this sense of that.

And maybe and I think that's what like Christian nationalists are trying to capitalize on and why that whole controversy exists in a way is like, don't let the new paradigm rule.

Don't like we're in a struggle. Like it's still an ongoing battle. We haven't been completely defeated, even though cultural power is certainly in the hands of the wrong people.

Like, let's let's rally. Let's try in these red areas, especially to kind of like secure things and reinforce them.

And so that ends up being a strategy. And that's what's called at least one of the many different strategies on the dissident right today, a

Machiavellian strategy. So I guess first, you know, I'll let you respond to that. But like, do you think of that as like Machiavellian to say, you know, let's let's somewhat try to disregard what's coming from the central authority and what's being imposed on us by Hollywood and the media and the education system and all the places that that produce power and that kind of thing?

And then let's produce our own institutions. Let's try to hedge against those things. I think that you're 100 percent right.

Like when we're if we've accepted this premise that Christianity is no longer a dominant cultural force, we're kind of presented with a fork.

Right. And either we can do what a lot of progressive denominations have done. You see this very clearly in institutions like the

Church of England is basically to form a new syncretic religion, right, to kind of mix 50 percent

Christianity, 50 percent kind of current cultural attitudes. And let's be honest, it never it never ends up being 50 50.

But that's the idea. And sort of become wins adopt certain attitudes from predominant cultural forces.

And we'll use that to sort of win people over. And I feel like we've we've run this experiment enough times to know that it doesn't work right.

The Church of England is not at all a church. Right. You have you have churches where they're leading Muslim prayer from from the front of the cathedral.

You have female ministers. You have open homosexuals kind of in positions of power. And so to me,

I think it's very clear that that that option is no longer open to us. Right. That does not work.

We've seen that experiment run any number of times. You cannot make a compromise because effectively, you know, again, this is a second order kind of winner takes all situation.

They either want all of you or they want to destroy you. And what we've seen is when you give them a little bit, they get all of you can name any number of mainline

Protestant institutions that have basically just become social clubs for aging and PR supporters.

Right. And nothing else. There's really no gospel there. And so the other one is to sort of adopt a dissident track, like you said, to sort of build your own thing.

And one of the things that I think is important to mention in this is that once you've accepted that role of a dissident, someone outside the system, you've got to understand that that is a socially disadvantageous role.

You cannot expect the sort of accolades of power if you're opposing. Right.

You become an enemy. And so, you know, look at the reaction to the Christian nationalists. You know, I don't consider myself a

Christian nationalist. I'm friends with a lot of those guys. It's not my circle, but they're being hysterically attacked from every corner, you know, with the most insane things possible.

You know, there's this movie coming out, Civil War. Right. And what it effectively is, is sort of this liberal wish fulfillment fantasy of, you know, people like you and I basically joining up with these kind of like right wing militias to shoot journalists and take over the world.

Right. And that is how they view distance. That is how they view traitors, quote unquote, to their to their state religion.

You know, it's interesting. This is this is something that's actually been going on for quite a while. There's a great I believe it's a

Rothbard essay from the late 70s. I can't pull it up. So Rothbard, a father of libertarianism with an atheist

Jew, had absolutely nothing spiritually connecting him to Christianity. But he wrote this article talking about Jerry Falwell and the moral majority.

And what he basically said is like all of the things you read about these people are completely hysterical. It's stupid.

This is not a real threat to the halls of power. Right. Jerry Falwell is not going to institute a theocracy.

Right. But the people in power find it very useful for you to think that right.

To find people who are dissidents, who do not, you know, bear their priors and to cast them as ultimate villains.

So what we've got to expect is if we adopt that second path, right, that path that says I am rejecting this, you will take flack for that and you will take flack for things that you that are not true.

Right. You're racist, you're homophobic, whatever that term means. You know, you're a Christian nationalist, a domestic terrorist.

That's sort of par for the course, again, because we are in a real conflict. You know, this culture war, like there are certainly stupid things about it.

There are things that I find a little bit distasteful, but it is much more than just people getting angry on the

Internet. It is a real argument about those kind of important priors. And I think that for a lot of people who grew up in a world in which going to church was a positive thing or even a neutral thing, they don't understand.

They're saying, well, I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm doing something pro -social. That is 100 percent right. Again, you are technically 100 percent correct.

But the people who are arguing against you, they don't care. You know, they view you as an enemy.

They view you as prey, effectively. And so I think that if we're adopting this lens of looking at things how they are, we must accept the fact that we will, you know, because we have set ourselves in opposition to the system, we will get flack.

We will be called names. And again, like I said, looking at the example of Canada, looking at the example of the

UK, there will very likely be persecution that derives from that. You know, so.

You brought up Jerry Falwell and. That, you know, that was what now, 40 years ago,

I guess, like the height of his influence, if you want to call it that, and he probably didn't think he was working outside the system like the way we're framing it right now, in his mind, he probably thought he's doing something as American as apple pie.

And people are going to realize that the imposters are the ones who are taking us away from what we used to be.

And the way that the media, well, not even the media, just I've read a number of books from leftists on Christianity and now they call it

Christian nationalism. But, you know, all that whole thing, the moral majority, Christians being mobilized for political ends and.

The way that they look at it is. This was an anomaly that America was doing just fine and it would have been at peace, like people would have been living the way that they always lived until they frame it that the real imposters, the real agitators were people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who showed up and started mobilizing

Christians outside of the system. And and then to make matters worse, the

Republicans ended up seeing this as advantageous for their own power. And so they got behind supporting or at least really not supporting, but receiving support from the moral majority.

And and now we're to the point where figures like Russell Moore and David French and Phil Vischer and Karen Swallow Pryor and Kirsten Gomez or Dumas, rather, and the list goes on and on about like the cultural elites who on the

Christian side now they denounce Jerry Falwell, right, as being exactly what the leftists say he is, that he,

Tim Keller even said this before his death, that like Falwell came in. And, you know, he didn't have

Jesus's spirit because he was too concentrated on power. And this is what they all say, that that was all wrong because it was focused on power instead of the way

Jesus was. And Jesus wasn't focused on power. He was focused on the needs of people and these kinds of things. And that's how you be a good

Christian and live with. So so really what's happening, though, is they're telling you this is how we can try to keep our faith, quote unquote.

And we can also live within this paradigm. We don't have to have this battle over second tier disagreements.

Whereas the Christian nationalist types today are saying, actually, you know, that's not possible.

They're not going to let us keep our faith. We have to compromise our faith in order to do this. So we have to be dissidents. We have to be outside the system.

And there's really no option. Like that's all there is to it. So, I mean, do you see it lined up that way?

I do. And it's interesting to take this back to the split between what we now call evangelicals and mainline

Protestants. Because this is a this did not start in 1970. This did not start in 2020.

So the split is referred to, depending on who you ask, is either the great betrayal or the modernist crisis.

And basically what you see is, you know, like I said, America was an explicitly Protestant country. And many of these kind of institutions of arch leftism now, like Yale and Harvard, well, they were set up as Christian seminaries, as Christian institutions.

Right. Like, interestingly enough, I think it was it was Princeton was set up as a as a conservative reaction to how leftward

Harvard had gone. That's right. You know, in the 18th century. Right. Which is sort of comical to think of now. But when we get to the early 20th century, we see that the elites are basically taking on modernist positions.

Right. Things like, oh, you know, Christ is not literally divine. He didn't literally rise from the dead.

You know, the virgin birth could not have happened. And so there's a conservative backlash from congregations.

Right. And so what we see is, you know, your pastor may have gone to Harvard, but the congregation, you know, they don't count.

And it's the idea that, you know, Christ wasn't really divine. So a lot of these churches split and a lot of these these splits basically form the main line and then the evangelical branches of any one tradition.

And, you know, many of these, you know, evangelical congregations realize, oh, we need a place to train our pastors.

This is the the genesis of Bible colleges and things like that. That's right. And very, very quickly, you see that these people start to just get the absolute brunt of the press.

You know, these people are morons. They're idiots. They're backwards hicks. You know, the scopes monkey trial is very much connected to this.

And, you know, regardless of your opinions on the people involved in that, it is very clear that that has been used as a cudgel, right, to beat people who are not on the same page as the ruling elite.

So this has been going on for for quite a while. I think the big difference is that not only has the gap between those two groups massively extended, because, look, like, let's be honest,

I think that someone who believes in 1920 that, you know, Christianity is still a good thing. But Christ wasn't literally

God's son is that's heretical. But that is a world away from there is nothing good about Christianity.

And also, if I put on a dress, I am literally a woman. Right. That is an order of magnitude different.

But that that crack started quite a while ago. And again, we see through that, that, you know, the people who are most devout are are viewed as kind of like socially backwards.

Right. That is a negative thing from the halls of power. But as that that divide increases, so does the temperature of the rhetoric.

And so, you know, I really understand the desire to return to a depoliticized society, right, where people did share at least most of the same priors.

And so any number of these things that were considered private religious matters could genuinely be private religious matters.

But again, we don't really have that luxury anymore. And so I think that adopting the dissident stance is effectively the only way to hold on to your your faith anymore.

And I think for some of us, myself included, this wasn't an option.

And like for me, for example, one of the battles that I got involved with when

I did not have a lot of influence was the battle over monuments, specifically ones that were associated with Confederate soldiers and that kind of thing.

And at the time, you know, this was you could more or less at the beginning of that controversy be a reasonable person, right, who also was a cultural elite and say, well,

I think they ought to stay. And and you wouldn't be automatically called a racist, at least in the very beginning.

And I think this this kind of started in 2000, but it really got picked up, I would say, after the

Dylann Roof incident. And what was that, 2014 or something? And and so but now, of course, that's not the case.

So within a very short period of time, it became if you lifted a finger to try to defend any of this, then you are the worst form of racism and you want to bring slavery back and make it a race based system again and that kind of thing.

And and so the interesting thing for me was, you know, I put out, you know,

I realized later I had my some professors that I respected at university tell me

I was going to publish a book, I want to think now maybe it's 2017. And in that environment, it was it was it was like a death sentence in academia to hold the views that I held and or at least present, present the people in these.

My book was about the denominational splits before the Civil War. And so I I basically give information that would lead you to think the

Southern Baptist Convention wasn't, quote unquote, formed over slavery. But there was a deeper concern about biblical authority there.

And so I don't make them into cartoon characters. I make them into actual people who, you know, viewed this slaves as their brothers and wanted to evangelize them and wanted many of them wanted the best for them.

And even many of them wanted to progressively emancipate their story. Right. I show the nuance and show like here's who these people were.

They weren't these demons that you necessarily make them out to be. Well, I was told, use a pseudonym.

And and so I did. Well, I'm not the the best person at promoting a book that I wrote under a pseudonym.

I have to like there's going to be the connection. And so so so long story short, and I'm just using myself as the example for this one, but I think many others on many other issues have the same story.

I was people, I guess, say doxed. I mean, I guess sort of. But I already kind of like it was kind of like, you know,

I let people know enough people know that that was me that wrote wrote this book called Sacred Conviction.

And so anyways, that was used against me as like a hit job by people on the far left, in my opinion, like their their way out there.

Well, now, just last week, Lincoln Duncan made this reference.

And it seemed like it was to me. A lot of people said, John, that seems like he's talking about you. And he's from within the

PCA, right, conservative Presbyterian denomination. And he went on a podcast and started like going after what it seemed to be like me.

But it was it was like these neo -Confederates who are in their mom's bedroom and and they're nefarious and they're outside.

We shouldn't pay any attention to them kind of leading the people who believe him and follow him to just dismiss anything that the stereotype is cartoon.

He's painting anything that they have to say. And and so here's the interesting thing to me.

Like this is the lesson that I learned is that like I have no option but to be a dissident in a way like the views that I that I publicly stated that I hold even like 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

Like those views now are the kind of views that will prevent you from getting a job in academia.

They'll prevent you from rising to the highest levels of a denomination. They will prevent you from being involved in media or even in politics in many areas.

Maybe there's some some some regions that I could be involved in local politics, but it's it's going to be difficult.

Right. The higher you get. And and so that's just like I have no option to to go back and say, like,

I'm not going to say all those things again. You know, I like that's actually what I believe. And and and so so that's kind of like the situation

I'm in. And I've lived long enough now to see people from within my tradition, my evangelical tradition,

Protestant tradition, also attacking me using the same crummy arguments that the left use, that he must just like slavery or and they don't read what

I wrote. They don't care. But it's like that association, if it just exists at all, if you want to defend a

Confederate monument or if you want to, you know, accurately represent people who split in the

Southern Baptist Convention or something like that's just who you are. That's by definition. And there's there's no argument

I can bring up to like we talk about second. We were talking about second degree. This is a second degree difference.

I think like I can't go to a common arbiter with this and like resolve the disagreement. There's no way to do it because that's by like they start.

The conversation starts for them with by definition, you're an evil person. And so now this is like infiltrated even conservative

Christian circles, which is crazy. It didn't take that long to do that. And so I think people are figuring that out, though, in a number of issues.

It's not like that's just one issue, but like it's the same thing with homosexual and even other sexual deviancies.

And whether you agree or disagree with the normalization of those things, it seems like it's the same thing now on the border crisis.

And what you think about, I mean, even Trump, like if you just support Trump or voted for him, like if you get the same kind of treatment and now from within Christianity in the elite halls of Christianity.

So so maybe I'll just give you throw it back to you. But like, is this where kind of like all

Christians are going now? Like you don't really have the option. You are a dissident whether you choose to be or not.

Definitely. And it's good that you brought up the the monument controversy. You know, that was also one that was kind of instrumental in my political transformation, because very clearly that is an issue that was not controversial for the best part of 100 years.

Right. These monuments were were put up to sort of foster a spirit of reconciliation, you know, as the generation that fought in the

Civil War was dying. It was basically like, all right, you know, we're all Americans. You know, even if we believe that we had a legitimate claim, we have we have gone to the trial of arms.

We lost like we're Americans now. And so that was a good enough conclusion to reach for the best part of 100 years.

Right. We could accept that. But that sort of creeping nature of politicization, right, that more and more and more areas of your life need to be under the eye of the regime.

Right. You need to pinch more and more, you know, pinches of incense into the fire and sacrifice to the emperor.

Right. One is not enough, I think, is another reason why, when we look at that split I was talking about between forming some kind of syncretic compromise and becoming a dissident, it is not an option because we've seen that even in something that is not directly connected to Christian theology.

Right. Nowhere in the Nicene Creed does it say and Thomas Jackson was a pretty cool dude. Right. That's not part of it.

But nonetheless, this is not something you can make a compromise with. You know, it's interesting to look at the example of gay marriage.

Right. Because gay marriage was incredibly controversial from, you know, really the 90s when it started being floated to Obergefell in 2013.

But now we've blown past that. Right. Like that's not that's not on the table. It's like 2015.

I mean, it wasn't actually that long ago. Right. Yeah, actually. Yeah, it's even less than that. And so, you know, when we look at now, you know, what is considered part of the dialectic, we have sort of the trans stuff.

And that has also been walked. Right. You know, it's gone from transgender as just a general concept to trans kids.

And we've already sort of lost that much ground. And so when I look at people who are striving to make compromises in the name of kind of social respectability.

Right. So only gross people care about money. You know, you're the loser in his mom's basement.

Yeah. Well, OK, maybe that works the first time that's been tried. But I'm not an old man. And I've seen this play run a couple of times before.

And once you've realized that it doesn't matter, you know, you don't get points for being the guy who was right about the

Confederacy, who was right about BLM, but isn't right about transgender stuff.

They're still going to come after you no matter what. It doesn't matter. They don't accept compromise for them.

Right. This is that second order conflict. It's war. And so, again, I think that is an ultimately foolish endeavor.

And if we're looking at, you know, at being a dissident, it's sort of like, well, you're in for a penny in for a pound. Right. You know, to go back to, you know, that idea of John Hancock.

Right. We're like, I'm going to sign my name big. Right. Because it's like, again, like you're already a traitor, according to them.

So no sense in, you know, compromising nine out of ten positions if you're already on the bad list.

And it really, you know, you mentioned people like French. And I, in general, try not to speak ill of people on the

Internet. But I will say, you know, it's hard for me not to look at men like that and basically say, like, well, really, who's what side are you on?

Because if all of your attention is basically focused on sort of selling out your people to this regime that manifestly hate them.

It's like, well, OK, like, are you really meaningfully opposed to this? You know, this satanic, you know, public religion in any way.

Right. You're essentially doing their dirty work. And so, again, it goes back to that idea of a political realism.

You know that many times people who do that who say like, oh, you know, John Harris is a neo -confederate. I don't want to be associated with people like him, but no gay marriage.

It's like, well, OK, like if the only issue at hand is the neo -confederate issue and, you know, everyone else agrees on everything else, like,

OK, fair enough. Maybe we can have a discussion about that. But that is not really the core of the issue.

The core of the issue is not some historical disagreement. You know, it is all of these other things. And so when we're looking again at this kind of triage list of like,

OK, like we are in a life or death cultural struggle, you know, where if we lose, we will very likely face severe oppression, as has been demonstrated all over the

Anglosphere. It's not only stupid, but it's evil. You're prioritizing something that is largely irrelevant, sort of making bed with the enemies of the faith.

And again, I'm not even saying you have to have any one opinion on the Confederacy, but it is very clearly, you know, you are drawing your sense of moral legitimacy.

You're drawing your social status from a regime that hates you. And that's why you have to accept that role of the dissident who basically says,

I don't care what you say about me. Because if you still do, if you still do want to derive, you know, moral legitimacy, social status from the regime, well, they've got you by the nose and they can make you say anything.

And I think, you know, those men and others have very clearly demonstrated that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Russell Moore is now is very different than where he was even 10, 15 years ago. And yeah, you keep having to kind of compromise and compromise after compromise pretty soon.

Like you're not even the same person. What's the practical application, though, of this? Like, so if people realize,

OK, that's that's what we live in. I mean, it's maybe akin to the children of Israel, you know, living under the thumb of, you know, a pagan regime of some kind.

They're living in the Babylonian exile. And what do they do in that particular situation?

I mean, there's there's the whole. So like Tim Keller would would try to emphasize like, hey, seek the peace of the city, which means basically,

I think practically for him, that meant like, don't fight it. Like, just kind of like, you know, be this winsome witness and focus all your energy on just not political victories, because that's power.

But like just being this witness and and thinking that will somehow work, you know.

But then there's also, of course, like, you know, the more Christian nationalist approach, which is like, let's whatever we do have still in cultural capital, let's try to expand on that, secure it first.

And, you know, this is, of course, and then behind all of this is the question of whether it's right to be

Machiavellian about this, whether, you know, Christians, is it more noble to try to seek compromise?

As people traditionally have in the United States when there was a political disagreement, or is this is this so different, though, that we have to come up with a whole new strategy, what do you think?

So I think it goes back to that idea of first and second order conflicts, right, because there are any number of controversial issues, right, things people can have different opinions on.

But, you know, within that kind of ingroup, that brotherhood of dissidents, right, if you have an issue, well,

Christ has a very clear instructions for how to handle that, right? You go to the privately, you know, if necessary, you take it to church arbitration.

But if you're taking those and basically selling that person out, even if you don't agree with them out to this monster right outside the gates in this like 10 foot tall giant ready to, you know, to grab anyone that can and rip them limb from limb.

I view that as almost unexcusable, right? That is a traitorous action. So that's what we're talking about when it comes to, you know, political disagreements within the ingroup.

I think also we have to recognize that ingroup versus outgroup to begin with, right? We are no longer part of broader culture.

And so, you know, when it comes to making moves, I think that you have to realize that the consequence for losing, right, the consequence for losing the game is much more than losing a, you know, type one disagreement, right?

It's not just that you're embarrassed that you were wrong, but it's very likely that, you know, you will suffer real consequences for that.

And so, you know, that may mean that you have to, you know, again, like not sell someone out, right?

Not get the social hit, not social hit, the social boost that would come from being the person who exposed

X, Y, Z racist. So that's something to give up. But also when it comes to, you know, the policies you pursue in your own religious community, some of those will have to be perhaps a little bit exclusionary, right?

Some of those will have to be things that are not necessarily the friendliest. And again, not because, you know, that's the greatest situation to be in, but because we're effectively in a condition of scarcity, right?

We don't have unlimited resources. We don't have, you know, unlimited social goodwill like we used to.

And so when we look at people like Machiavelli or even Calvin, right? You don't have to be a Calvinist. But when he wrote instructions for magistrates, there was the understanding that, you know, when you were dealing with politics, you were dealing with a different set of morality than interpersonal in -group relations, right?

You have to make hard decisions. You have to do things that would be, you know, unexcusable if I did to you as a fellow brother in Christ.

But when we're dealing with power, when we're dealing with real consequences, you know, your charge is not to be the nicest guy, but it's to secure a future for your people, right?

To protect people who have entrusted you with power and authority. And so, you know, this is not a revolutionary idea.

Our forefathers just assumed this so much so that they almost barely talked about it. But I think that it's important to realize that the principles you share within your group are not universal, right?

And acting as if they are is a very good way to get yourself and your community harmed. And so I guess that that is sort of my argument for why, you know,

Christians need to look at the situation realistically. They need to understand that, you know, that sometimes, you know, this kind of like ruthless calculating action is the best way to go about it.

And that it is not an abandonment of principle is a realization that, you know, if you if you fail to act in that way, your principles will be effectively destroyed is sort of my conclusion to that.

So so I want to make that clear for people, because the first thing you talked about giving up this kind of,

I guess, the accolades that would come with participating in cancel culture.

That one, I have examples in my head. Like I can think of even on X, how people like from the

Davenant Institute. And I know I think Neil Shenvey was part of this. And Neil Shenvey, someone who seems to still be somewhat very concerned about this idea that there's racists among us, the white supremacist types.

And I remember there was a guy named Thomas Accord who had a,

I guess, an account where he was just posting all kinds of things that kind of like stream of consciousness, not thinking about what he posted.

But it was all anonymous. And then he was doxxed. And it was a whole confusing mess, the whole situation, because first he denied it.

Then he said it was his account. And it was it was just confusing for all of us who were trying to follow that and accurately report on it.

But the thing is, like what I've noticed after that is two groups of people kind of emerged.

And there wasn't so like there were the people who were instrumental in doxxing Thomas and they were

Christians. Right. They were people who were supposedly conservative Christians. They didn't go to him privately and say, hey, we figured out this account's yours or, you know, this is this is some bad stuff.

And honestly, the worst things on that account were things that were like about marriage and about like his personal life.

They weren't, you know, but there were some racially insensitive things. So but they didn't go to him about that.

They decided instead decided, let's just publicly blast this guy. And because he's friends with Stephen Wolfe, you know, that seemed like it was an advantage to them, like kind of getting the pat on the head, in my opinion, for fighting

Christian nationalism. Right. And so I can think of examples. And I'm sure there's other examples. That's just one that like, you know, like I wrote an article for American Reformer kind of along these lines of the conservative, quote, unquote,

Nazi hunters, but just pointed out that like the actual conservatives who fought an actual

Nazis, you know, writing for National Review or who lived through that in the 1950s and 60s, like their concerns about Nazism, like they were their concerns were very different than the left's concerns, even at that time.

And we've just adopted the whole leftist framing. And so anyone who like loves their people too much or loves their, you know, loves their people in place too much, like they're a

Nazi. And there's people like this online who pose as conservative Christians like I'm for traditional marriage, right?

I'm I'm with you guys on 90 percent of stuff. But like they put a lot of their energy into let's expose whoever is out of step on racial matters, let's say, with the regime.

And so they feed them to the giant. So I've seen this. And I think you're right, like that has to be this is where I guess no enemies or it's reframed.

Now, there's no enemies to the right. Now, I think it's no enemies on the right. But Charles Haywood's whole thesis, that's where this comes in.

It's like, hey, we got a giant out there like like, you know, we got to prioritize our resources according to the needs we have in the moment.

And that's not that's not our big need. That's not the big threat. But, you know, so maybe you have more examples along those lines.

But I'd also be curious about examples of like fighting back and like where Christians are maybe doing what you are suggesting.

They're realizing this is the problem and they're doing constructive things to meet that challenge. Well, definitely.

So there are any number of examples. Right. You know, I've mentioned we both mentioned the

Christian nationalist guys. I'm a big fan of Isker and Engel and all those guys. They do great work. But also, you know, you have other organizations, your new founding capital run by a couple of friends of mine, which is basically a collection of businesses that have got together to sort of circumvent this issue.

Right. So one of the big things they have is they have a job service, right? Where if you're someone who's been doxxed or is worried about that, you can get a pre -selected group of companies who are looking for people.

And they're basically saying, like, yeah, we don't care. We will, in this own institution, kind of circumvent that whole

HR nightmare, right? Where you don't have to worry about being a dissident, right? We will still find a way for you to be employed.

Explain it yourself. Yeah, exactly. Like, that's a pretty basic thing. But also, we have the rise of, you know, any number of these publishing houses.

So you mentioned that it's quite difficult to get a book published if you have certain ideas.

You know, but I have any number of friends, you know, at Mystery Grove, Antelope Hill, who are very interested in publishing dissident ideas, right?

Interested in publishing things that are outside of the normal scope. And all of this goes back to that idea of building your own institutions, right?

Building things that are resistant to that giant. So you don't necessarily have to, you know, worry all the time.

You don't have to take as big of a hit for your principles if you don't have to, right? Obviously, that's a noble thing to do.

But if I had the choice of having my principles and not getting fired, or having my principles and getting fired, it's like, well, you know, that's a pretty easy choice, right?

So I think that people are acting on this. You know, you've talked to any number of guys who are no doubt working on their own projects.

You know, I'm a member of the Old Glory Club, which is sort of a fraternal organization designed to solve a lot of these problems by creating local institutions, by creating local networks of people.

Another one, the Beowulf Foundation, which is sort of a tech startup. They're launching, you know, half a dozen different products, you know, a payment processor designed to circumvent this.

You know, it's basically a way to find other similarly aligned people in your town.

So there are tons of people working on projects, right? It's not just pundits. Like, look,

I'm a talking head. You know, I don't really do anything that useful in the real world. But there are people who have looked at these problems, who have looked at this dissonance, right, this case in which people like us are no longer able to count on wider society and said, well,

I have an idea. Like, let's get this worked out. And so, you know, when I say this, I'm not, you know, going on this rant to basically say like, oh, it's all over.

But I am saying we need to reframe things. And we need to understand that we can no longer count on the support of wider society.

And so, you know, if your people at home have, you know, their own ideas, it's certainly a great time for it.

But there are definitely people looking to address these problems and building solutions so that, you know, people like us can, you know, hold to true eternal values without the risk of that, you know, that giant basically making our lives a living hell.

Yeah. I'm grateful for those people and everyone you just mentioned.

I didn't know. Could you just say the name of that payment processor again? That is not released yet.

I probably should have said that. But the Beowulf Foundation is an organization I'm a member of.

And basically, that is an international organization founded by some

Canadian Christians, right, who understandably are very freaked out at the way that their country is going. Oh, yeah.

And it's sort of like a tech incubator, right? They have, you know, 15 or 20 different projects at different stages.

And they're allocating resources, you know, connecting people to build those. So, for instance, there's a documentary coming out by a young guy who writes under the handle

Nordhuger. I've spoken with him. He's a great guy. And so some of them are artistic. You know, they have a number of artists who are, you know, putting projects together.

But some of them are tech guys. And I'll be sure to, obviously, I probably should have checked with them before I said this.

But I'll be sure to, you know, have those guys on to speak about the payment processor. It is almost done. I've been kind of messing around with a, you know, trial version of it.

But there are dozens of people looking at ways to solve this problem. And, you know, again, if you want to get connected to anyone at home, the

Beowulf Foundation, they accept applications if you're interested in helping. And, yeah, I highly recommend them as well as the other organizations

I've mentioned. There are people looking at ways to solve this. Even if it's in its infancy, there are a lot of people who are serious about this, who have kind of seen the way the winds are blowing and are looking at ways to build our own institutions and to sort of weather this.

That's great. Well, final moments here. What can you say about people who want to still operate within the quote unquote system?

So, you know, I think of Donald Trump as someone who made a very lateral move. You know, he didn't actually build up his career in politics.

He moved from the business world all the way to president. And and somehow in 2016, it worked like he was able to get elected.

But, you know, the gates are being shut more and more at very early stages to people like us in the political world.

So maybe you could rise into local politics, maybe even state politics if you're in a red state. But it becomes increasingly difficult to like in my state that I live in now.

I know that there are parts of New York where I could be involved in local politics that are still red and that kind of thing.

Probably, probably. But I'm not going to really get that far.

Like, I'm not going to rise too much beyond that. I'm not going to be viewed as like a Republican leader in New York, even if I went down that route because of my views.

And in, you know, maybe in a red state like Oklahoma, that that would be possible.

But but as far as a national level, now you have, you know, you understand the challenge. So, I mean, some people

I've noticed because I know a bunch of people at education who. Well, I shouldn't say a bunch.

I know a few people at education who, you know, their views are maybe to the right of mind on some things, but they just keep their mouth shut.

Like no one knows that they believe that. So they're able to operate in those realms. You know, should should people do that?

Should they keep their mouth shut in politics until they rise to like they ascend to the highest level and then, you know, let her rip?

Like, you know, hey, I'm actually super right wing. And is that the way to like try to gain power?

Is that deceptive or, you know, like like how do you operate in that frame? So sure.

And I will just say, you know, this is an area that I have had limited expertise. And, you know, I have very clearly not gotten into, you know, the political stuff explicitly kind of, you know, joining a party or anything like that.

But I will say there I know people who are doing it. And I think that, you know, one of the problems with entryism, right, which is this idea that we can sort of mimic what the left did with the long march through the institutions is that you don't have the backing they did.

So, you know, if you think you can make positive change, you know, by all means do it. But again, understand that you, you know, you are fighting an uphill battle that will be a dangerous and difficult thing.

And so especially at the local politics level, you can accomplish a great deal of good. You know, there are guys who are running for sheriff.

There are guys who are, you know, you know, running for the fire marshal, things like that. And you'd be surprised how much good you can do in a position like that.

Right. We have a relatively federalized system in the U .S. So I would not discourage anyone in education.

You know, don't get me wrong. You know, I think you and I had very similar experiences in education. And my conclusion was

I want to get away as fast as possible. But I know there are guys who are still in that. And so, again, like if you have the capacity to make positive change, do good.

I'm not going to be one to pooh -pooh that. But, you know, again, we have to understand that if you are a dissident, there are people looking for you.

Right. There are people who would love to find your scalp. And so, again, I would say, you know, play your cards close to your chest.

You know, if you have a chance to make a stand and accomplish something, do it. But, you know, there's basically, as far as I'm concerned, no sense in, you know, getting letting them blow your life up, you know, letting them claim your scalp.

Again, you know, I will say this is very theoretical for me because I am not at all in the halls of power, but I know that there are a lot of guys in there who are thinking the things we are.

You know, I get the same emails you no doubt do, John. And, you know, my advice to those guys would be, one, keep your head down.

You know, obviously, there's a certain perspective that if you have resources, you know, if you're a very wealthy man like Charles Haywood is, you can do a lot of good.

And that's another path that's different than the, you know, the out and out, you know, spoken dissident.

But it's nonetheless an important one. And in the same way we recognize there's both a useful purpose for, you know, pseudonymous accounts like me and for people who, you know, post under their real name and face.

I think it's important to understand that there are multitudes of ways to solve this problem. And yeah, that's maybe a rambling answer, but probably the best one

I've got. Gotcha. All right. Well, Jay Burden, you can check out the Jay Burden show. Go to jayburden .substack

.com. I do appreciate it. Thanks, Jay. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. This is a great discussion.