Dave Rubin vs Edmund Burke

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are going to watch a short clip from David Rubin, the quote -unquote conservative commentator.

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I know. He is conservative by modern standards, I suppose, and you're going to find him.

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Just look at where he is a guest. Look at the kinds of people that he spends time with. The clip that I'm going to play for you is very revealing in my opinion of where conservatism and I don't mean as a philosophy, because I think we've left that long behind.

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Conservative philosophy. I think whatever we're in now, the new right is untethered.

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It's in opposition to progressivism by trying to conserve an earlier form of progressivism.

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That's what I'm seeing. And this just highlights it so much. I'm not saying there aren't genuine conservatives that are rooted in something deeper than that, but it's not the ones that seem to have much of the influence.

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And so this clip from David Rubin is quite revealing. And then we're going to read a section.

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They didn't have clips back then, but a section from a speech. I'm sure if they had cameras, it would have been recorded.

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But it is from Edmund Burke, the great conservative.

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Many consider him the father of modern conservatism or at least the one of the first identifiable figures as a in Parliament, as a conservative.

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And in fact, you'll even hear today some people refer to themselves. I've even used the phrase sometimes a

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Burkean conservative. I'm a Burkean conservative. And so for those who are the nerds that really like tracing things and read

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Russell Kirk and those guys, they'll know exactly who Edmund Burke is and they'll know exactly why he's such an important figure to the philosophy of conservatism,

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Anglo -American conservatism. Burke gives us a glimpse into what has been the foundation of conservatism, a foundational belief of conservatism, and then the foundation in that foundational belief for hundreds of years, for centuries.

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You couldn't disagree with this really and be a conservative. But yet most of the blue checkmark conservatives today,

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I would say, are wishy -washy on this at best, if not in disagreement.

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So what is that thing I am talking about? What is that that fundamental element that you must believe in or advocate for or hold in order to be a conservative?

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Well, we shall get into it. Before we do, though, before we do, I need to remind everyone of something that I haven't talked about in a while, and that is a website, discerningchristians .com.

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We have some new people on the podcast, and I really want you to be able to see this. So if you go to discerningchristians .com,

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this is the page you're going to see. In fact, I'll log out so I can just log back in. So you go to the bottom.

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There's a statement of faith here, terms and conditions. And you can create an account, log in.

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So I'm logging into my account. And you can personalize your profile.

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From what I understand, we're doing this on a volunteer basis. So it's taking time, and it's really in beta mode.

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But it's getting better and better as time goes by. And there is, it's not up yet, but there is apparently a feature for messaging people that is being designed within this particular website.

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But what you can do right now, if you want, is find a church. You can also add a church.

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You can also check out candidates who are looking to find a church.

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So if your church is looking for, and this is a question I get all the time. John, my church is looking for candidates.

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We're looking for people who aren't woke. We want a good pastor. Well, here you go.

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We have 42 candidates listed right here. You can message them all.

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You can click, get the email, message them. You can see what part of the country they're in. And just ask.

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You can actually get all these emails if you wanted to send a mass email out. Say, hey, send your resume. This is the job. So I would definitely suggest doing that if you're looking for a pastor.

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Because guess what? These are people who have made profiles and they've agreed to the statement of faith. And that statement of faith is pretty specific on social justice.

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So check that out. People have also asked me, how do I add a church? Well, that's easy.

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You go to your profile and you go to create an organization. Create an organization, click on it.

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And you can search to see if your organization comes up. If it doesn't, then you can click manual entry.

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Now, you're going to have to find the latitude and longitude. That's actually pretty easy to do. There's a lot of websites. If you put in the address, they'll give you a latitude and longitude.

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But you just put in the address, put in the latitude, longitude. You can put in the websites, descriptions.

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You can put your relationship, whether you're a layman or a pastor or who you are, why you're adding this particular church.

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And these are going to be churches that are in line, generally, with the statement of faith. And so this has been a great tool.

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So if you go to the map, you can see where other churches and organizations would be in your area.

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So hypothetically speaking, let's try to find a church in, oh,

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I don't know. I haven't done this yet in this particular area.

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So let me just put in St. Louis, Missouri. I don't think

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I've done that before. St. Louis, Missouri. So it comes right up. Click on it. Take you to St. Louis.

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And look, there's a few people in St. Louis that have profiles. They may be able to recommend a church. You can get their contact information if you click.

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There's also, there was a church that was close by to that location. So you're going to have to make sure that your ad blockers off, location services are turned on.

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And there's churches all around this country. And so if you know of a church that should be on here, go ahead and add it.

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This is just a great tool. And I've already found out about people. I was actually just in Idaho.

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And I found out about a person who literally moved because of this tool. They found a church and they moved to be near that particular church.

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And so praise God that this is being used for his kingdom. So discerningchristians .com.

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And I need to mention this as well. This is all on a volunteer basis. I have spent a little bit on this, but the person who's really putting in the long hours,

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Craig, you can, if you are so inclined, you can go and support this particular website by going to the support us tab.

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And if you scroll down, stripe and square are the two, if you don't have

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Bitcoin or crypto, stripe and square are the two conventional ways you can enter your credit card information and give a donation just to keep the website up.

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And we appreciate it. And this will be something that whether donations or not,

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I will continue to make sure that it stays up. And it's a useful tool for everyone out there.

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Okay, let's get into the topic now. The topic everyone's here for. I want to play for you a video first of Dave Rubin.

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Dave Rubin is a conservative commentator according to modern standards. And this is what Dave Rubin had to say.

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Look, when we made the announcement, first, I would say, which is exactly what I said to you on the phone. I need to mention this.

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The announcement he's talking about is him and his homosexual, I guess, husband. And the fact that they're having two surrogate babies.

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So there's women are going to carry children that have been pollinated by their sperm.

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And those are going to be their kids. And they're acting as if they're a family. Dave Rubin and his husband in his mind, and then the children.

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And of course, it goes without saying that they can't have children on their own. Obviously, they have to because God designed the world this way.

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Women have to actually be part of this process to carry that and to supply the genetic information, half of it for these children.

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That's who their actual mothers are going to be. But this is 2022.

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And now, apparently, people who are conservative, you would think would be more traditional family values and all that are in support.

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And this is what David Rubin is talking about. He made a post about it. And he's talking about the reaction to the post of him having a surrogate carry a baby that he is the father to.

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Well, 99 percent of what we got, at least that I saw, was absolute love and support from all of the people that I thought

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I was going to get love and support from. I don't know any one person that has any meaning to me in my life, either publicly or privately, that turned on me because of this.

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Now, yes, there were two or three from what I saw, blue check people, one woman, this

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Jenna Ellis person who I've done. I've done her podcast, I think, twice. But, you know, she keeps calling me a friend.

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I've never met her. I've never had drinks with her or dinner with her. I'm not even saying she's a bad person. She's entitled to her religious beliefs.

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But I know she was not happy about it. Then there was some other troll, blue check guy. And then I saw just like the usual frogs on Twitter just saying mean things and the

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Catholic groper or whatever. Look, the Internet is evil and murky. You know more about this than anybody, right?

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Like what goes on on the underbelly of the Internet. So in terms of the people that matter to me and the people that I'm associated with publicly, who now are almost all conservatives, you know,

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Glenn Beck and Dennis Prager and all of these other scary people and all of the folks at PragerU and the entire

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Blaze family and all of the hosts at the Daily Wire who either emailed me or Candace was at my house a few weeks before and she knew and we were looking at strollers.

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I mean, it was a lot of love. But that's not to say that there isn't a little something on the right.

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I want to stop right there for a moment. Did you hear what he said? Candace Owens, all the, everyone at, well, he said the

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Blaze, he said PragerU and then he said everyone at the Daily Wire, all the hosts at the Daily Wire. That's incredible.

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They're all in support. In his mind, the Blaze, PragerU, the Daily Wire, all in support of what he's doing.

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It means Ben Shapiro, Andrew Clavin. I guess

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Michael Knowles would be part of that, right? I think he's with them. I don't, I wouldn't even know all the hosts that are at these various places.

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He mentioned Glenn Beck. All the hosts at the

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Daily Wire and then the Blaze family and PragerU, all in support. In David Rubin's mind, no pushback except this

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Jenna Ellis person that he doesn't even know. He just is very dismissive of her. And I think that's also what's interesting.

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I caught that when he said Jenna Ellen, this Jenna Ellen person, this Jenna Ellen lady. Jenna Ellis is kind of a big deal in some ways on the

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Christian conservative right. But honestly, outside of that, how,

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I mean, she was Trump's lawyer, but how influential is she actually? That was one of the things that I caught when he said that.

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I was like, I wonder, you know, he almost acts like he barely knows her and barely, that she's insignificant in some way.

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And I think this is what's happening. If you are a strong Christian conservative, just watch out.

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Your significance is going to be diminishing, I believe. And in order to remain relevant and, well, not even relevant, just in order to survive in this drastic shift, you have to kind of go along with it to some extent.

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And now being conservative means we can serve the Obergefell decision. I mean, it's just, it's amazing to me.

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So I'll let him continue and then we'll read from Edmund Burke.

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Related to the religious portion of conservatism that still has some weird stuff here.

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We have to slog through that. So, you know, there was sort of a meme out there, like my audience turned on me.

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You're saying Forbes wrote a piece. Dave Rubin's audience turns on him. It's like, I didn't see one person who knows me, who likes me, that was angry at me.

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My audience, I think, tends to be, I would say, it's sort of the disaffected liberals and the more secular conservatives.

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That's a huge swath of people, by the way. I would argue that might be the biggest political group of people there are.

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But of course, are there gonna be some more traditional religious people, by the way, who, although I was getting it more,

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I would say, from like the Catholic crew, I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of religious Muslims and religious Jews, by the way, who would not be so thrilled with this situation.

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And it's okay, actually. So it's okay, actually. But he also said in that, that they have some weird ideas and we're just gonna have to kind of slog through it.

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They have weird ideas. They have weird ideas. It's the Christians who would object to a situation in which a homosexual relationship is referred to as a marriage and a family in which two babies with,

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I'm assuming, different surrogate moms are then included in this family.

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And they're going to be told that these are their parents. That's weird, apparently, in the minds of conservatives, which makes them weird.

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So they're the actual weird ones. That situation isn't the weird thing. It's those who would think that's a weird thing.

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They're the weird ones. Welcome to 2022. Welcome to neoconservatism on steroids.

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Now, I thought about, so there's tons of Bible verses, right? We could bring up and talk about this.

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I wanted to take a different road here. Most of the audience, most of you would be familiar. You know

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Romans 1. You understand how this is just completely outside of biblical ethics.

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But I wanted to read for you something because many of you probably don't know that this is completely outside of the conservative political tradition.

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Burkean conservatism is, that's the basis for modern conservatism. I mean, many would say that.

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Many experts on conservatism would say Anglo -American Burkean conservatism. That's what conservatism today is primarily based off of.

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It's the ancestor of that. And there's probably many conservative thinkers

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I could quote. But I wanted to just go back to Edmund Burke and see what Edmund Burke said.

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This is a speech reflecting on the French Revolution. I think it's from like 1791 or so.

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Let me see if I can pull it up here. And I'll read for you a significant portion on this.

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And you'll notice it's very similar to things that I say on this podcast. Timeless, timeless values, unchanging.

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They might look different in different cultures, but there's something timeless about this.

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So here we go. This is from Edmund Burke. Selected writings and speeches.

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I'm going to start, let's see, here. Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of the

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Parijan philosophy, I may assume that the awful author of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence.

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And that having disposed and marshaled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according to his, he has in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belong to the place assigned to us.

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Listen to those words, order of existence, the place that belongs to us. Not us, not our work, his work, his will.

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He says we have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact.

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They arise from the relation of man to man and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice.

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So what he's saying is there's a divine law there. You could have contractual obligations written down on paper.

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You could have a constitution that governs things. There are certain things though that are just binding, regardless of whether it's recognized by other human beings, because actually

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God is the one that requires us to behave in responsible ways toward one another.

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He says on the contrary, the force of all the pacts, which we enter into with any particular person or number of persons amongst mankind depends upon those prior obligations.

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In some cases, the subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary, but the duties are all compulsive.

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When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice.

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They are dictated by the nature of the situation. Let me read that line again. When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice.

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They are dictated by the nature of the situation. Think about that.

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What's he saying? Okay, when you enter into a relationship with someone else, as a husband or wife, there are certain obligations you have just entered into.

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It's your voluntary choice to get married, but once you do, you have duties that are not optional.

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What kinds of things are those? Well, for one thing, raising children. It's in the nature of the situation, the nature.

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It's embedded within that relationship are the duties. They're obvious.

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Having children, raising children, providing. The different ways men and women are designed.

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That's what's encapsulated in this. Divine order, obligation, nature.

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Dark and inscrutable are the ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of nature are not of our making, but out of physical causes unknown to us, perhaps unknowable arise moral duties, which as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform.

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Now listen to this. Parents may not be consenting to their moral relation, but consenting or not, they are bound to a long train of burdensome duties towards those with whom they have never made a convention of any sort.

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Children are not consenting to their relation, but their relation without their actual consent binds them to its duties, or rather it implies their consent because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the predisposed order of things.

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In other words, you don't get to choose your parents, your parents don't get to choose you, and you have a duty to them. Not based on your choice, not based on your whim, not based on something you just artificially manufacture, but embedded within the very fabric of creation.

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Men come in that manner into a community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the benefits, loaded with all the duties of their situation.

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If the social ties and ligaments spun out of those physical relations, which are the elements of the commonwealth in most cases, begin and always continue independently of our will, so without any stipulation on our part, are we bound by that relation called our country, which comprehends, as it has been well said, all the charities of all.

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So he's saying it all starts, the building block, the fundamental, I mentioned this at the beginning, the fundamental thing here that he starts with is a marriage.

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And from the marriage come children. And this is what creates and what is on a micro level, a community.

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And from that grows communities to the point where you have countries. That have obligations to one another.

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This is the basis of conservatism. And the basis of this basis is the marriage union.

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Our country is not a thing of mere physical locality. It consists in great measure in the ancient order into which we are born.

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We may have the same geographical situation, but another country, as we may have the same country in another soil.

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The place that determines our duty to our country is a social civil relation.

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Now, this is the kind of thing you would hear conservatives talk about up until fairly recently.

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Even arguing against same -sex marriage, what was the main argument that you heard all the time?

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You heard marriage is the building block of society. That was one of the talking points.

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Marriage is the building block. Now, you're not even allowed to say that.

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When was the last time you heard a conservative say that marriage is the building block of society? If you don't have marriage, and the marriage that he's talking about could not be substituted with some kind of artificial relationship constructed outside of the natural order.

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He's talking about a husband and a wife with obligations attached to their station. Not of a work of their own, but because God designed it that way.

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That sounds like a crazy, kooky, fundamentalist Christian in today's mind. Certainly the media mindset, right?

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This is Edmund Burke, one of the greatest British statesmen that there's ever been.

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A father of conservatism, Anglo -American conservatism, right here. He could not have hardly even conceived of a world, probably, in which we're living right now.

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What we've done in conservatism is we have lost natural order, created order, natural obligations that arise from this.

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And behind that is a God who's designed things. You must have that.

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If you don't have that, there is no design. Or if the design doesn't really matter, or if whatever you feel ends up being the design, you're the creator of your own universe, you don't have conservatism anymore.

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There's no way. There's no transcendent anything. It's totally a free -for -all at that point.

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And that's where we're heading in many ways. And in order to restore order and make sure the state runs things, there will be a stronger and ever more stronger, powerful federal government.

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Because if man does not take seriously his obligations to his fellow man, which are imposed upon him by a creator, then there will be obligations imposed upon him by a government.

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Because you can't have chaos. And people will demand it. I was listening to the radio the other day, and I heard that Andrew Cuomo, not

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Andrew Cuomo, sorry. I'm still an Andrew Cuomo. I heard a radio today, Andrew Cuomo was thinking of running, sorry.

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Not Andrew Cuomo. It was Joe Biden. It was the president. And I heard on the radio that Joe Biden, it was just a summation of his budget plan.

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He wants more funding for the police. And I thought, well, that's curious. Because we just heard that we're not supposed to be funding the police.

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That was the whole BLM narrative. Defund the police. The police are racist. I think if we were shrewd about it, and I may have mentioned it on the show at the time, because I knew that that's not the case.

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Obama even wanted a civilian police force as well funded as the military. I mean, come on. They want a federal police force.

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The attack is not against the police. It's against local police. Because they want federal police.

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They want to be able to... The local police are just a barrier for them. All the sheriffs that won't enforce their innovations.

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If we were smart at that time, if conservatives were smart at that time, they would have seen that. They would have thought this argument is not an actual serious argument from the left.

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There might be some crazy people who believe that, but they're the ones, they're the disposable ones. The people behind this, they don't want to get rid of the police.

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They want to be in control of the police. They want their agenda to be forced down everyone's throats.

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That's their problem. They love force. They just don't like it when they're not the ones that are controlling it.

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They want a more powerful government. They want a government that substitutes for God and defines the obligations that we have to one another.

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It's not going to be in the created order. And so, morality, public morality, social issues, these are tied.

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Tied and directly, really, to economics. You can't, if you want a free market, if you want the ability of people to engage in the marketplace, there must be trust on some level.

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That's, we're already in moral territory right now. There has to be trust as a basis for engaging in the marketplace.

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If there's no trust, you don't have an economy. And in order to have trust, you have to have something in common with one another.

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You have to have some shared virtues of some kind. You have to have, a shared culture goes a long way in this too.

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A way to communicate with one another, a common language. People tend to trust those who are like them.

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Those who are close in proximity to them. Those who have proven themselves. Those who come from families that are, have proven themselves.

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Those who are engaged in the same kind of interests and have the same kind of goals that they have and share similar experiences.

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And all these things help. If you don't have a family, you can't even get off the ground with this.

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If you don't have moms and dads, if you're already engaging in a lie from step one, because you're denying the natural order, you're denying the way

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God created things. If you're calling something a family, saying that these are our children when they're not, at least they're not, that's not all there is to that particular situation.

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There's mothers involved. They've given of their genetics as well for this. This is the problem.

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This is the problem. If you give that up, you give it all up. And that's where we're at. And I'm very disappointed that the

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Blaze, Prager U, Megan Kelly, Megan McCain, I even saw there was an anchor from OAN.

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The entire, apparently, all the hosts at the Daily Wire are all on board somehow with this on some level.

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Take note, take note of that. I'm not saying not to listen to any of those guys. I'm not saying go cancel your Daily Wire or cancel your

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Blaze subscription. If you want, you can. I canceled my Blaze subscription years ago.

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I used to have a Blaze subscription. And I think it's fine if you do have a Blaze subscription.

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I canceled it more just because I was finding better sources for things. And I didn't think it was, I wasn't using it.

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And I've kind of, I don't really listen to Glenn Beck much anymore. There was a time

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I did. And I've realized in some ways, his libertarianism and his Mormonism affect a lot more than they used to.

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And I think a lot more than perhaps I realized back when I used to listen. And I've just found other alternatives. Not saying it's wrong though to listen to them.

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You're still gonna get some good information here and there. But just take note of that. How you realize when you listen to these folks, their opinions are gonna come through.

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Their assumptions are gonna come through. You're gonna be influenced by that. So just be aware and perhaps try to find some alternatives.

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There are alternatives out there. In fact, I was thinking about this. There is a

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Steve Dace, I believe is with the Blaze. And I'm pretty sure he's not. He wouldn't be for this.

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I'm pretty sure Steve Dace would not be on board with this. I know there are

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Christians in talk radio and in commentary that wouldn't agree with this.

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I wouldn't think Matt Walsh would agree with this. Although he's Catholic. But I know there's some who would probably disagree.

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But where's the pushback? Maybe there's some pushback I'm not aware of. But according to Dave Rubin, who

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I'm sure is keeping closer tabs on this than me, he feels pretty validated in the conservative community.

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Think about that. He's not talking about the progressives. He's talking about those who are supposedly conservative. All right, now that you're all depressed, you don't need to be.

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Remember, God's in control. There are those who have not bowed the knee. There's many of them.

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In fact, the audiences for most of the people that he talked about, I don't think would be in favor of something like this.

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And stand for truth no matter what. But I think the more that we...

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I mean, if you do hold some of these folks' feet to the fire, if you do cancel, let's say, your Blaze subscription, let them know why.

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If you are supporting the PragerU, let them know why you canceled. Say, I saw that you endorsed this, and I can't.

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As a Christian, I can't. And as a conservative, I can't. This is an attack upon the social order itself.

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All right, well, I might get some flack for this one, and that's okay. If I did a lot of it,

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I'll just make another video. That's the luxury of being able to podcast.

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Of course, I could be canceled, you know, and then I'll be on Rumble, I guess, or something, and you can find me there.

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But this is serious enough in my mind to say something about it. It's a milestone.

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This is a moment that I'll remember probably for years to come, when I saw that many conservative organizations endorse something like this.

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God bless. Hope that was helpful for some of you out there. Maybe it'll inspire you to read some more Edmund Burke.

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Brilliant man. Honestly, very brilliant. And you can't go wrong reading some Edmund Burke, especially on the

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French Revolution. Very similar to what we're going through with the social justice stuff. So you might find that inspiring and enlightening.