Stephen Wolfe on the Case for Christian Nationalism- Part 3: Revolution and Liberty of Conscience

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00:10

I've heard you talk about how you kind of think that another thing to preserve, not just having a

00:18

Christian government, but also making sure that immigration is either stopped or at least it's severely reduced.

00:28

Well, I mean, given what I presented earlier, which is this idea that we are connected to people based upon a relation of kind of our ancestral connection to a place and other people's ancestral connection to a place, not race or blood, like I said, but that would mean that if you flood, it doesn't matter who the immigrants are.

00:50

It doesn't matter if they're Russians or they're Mexicans or they're, I don't know, I guess even Canadians, but it doesn't matter who they are.

01:00

I mean, in a way, if you do that, what you're doing is you're introducing people from a very different place to a new place, and that's okay on the individual level.

01:19

Even people like Enoch Powell, the British guy, very controversial, even he was like, yeah,

01:26

I mean, I'm okay with immigration. I just, mass immigration is a problem. Individual immigration is fine because then people would become integrated into society and they become ancestrally one of us, and there's no problem with that.

01:39

And you see this, I mean, the US has seen this in its history significantly now, people come here and they, we've kind of become one, but like with mass immigration, especially if it's like a constant flow, that means in your communities, you have a constant stream of people who have no actual ancestral connection to this place.

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And so you're constantly dealing with that issue because one of the things is like this reciprocal nature of, like if your people have been here for a long time, you have this like reciprocity with the place itself.

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Like this, I love this place, I'm not going to just kind of take, I'm just not going to take, take, take. But if you're new here, you don't actually have that.

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People are going to say this sounds like racist or something, but it doesn't matter what race of someone is, this is true for everyone.

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There can be this like sense in which you don't have a reciprocal relationship to that place, but more of a sort of exploitive, like you come here for economic benefits, you work, you get the economic benefits of it, but it's not like this reciprocity between your love of this place rooted in generations, but it's more of taking advantage of the material conditions that make it kind of give you a sort of better life in that sense.

02:57

And but what being here for several generations means is that this is your home, you have no place to go, if things go bad, you're not fleeing.

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I mean, think of like, remember Ukraine, like when Russians attacked Ukraine, people were trying to flee

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Ukraine, plenty of Ukrainians were too. But if you look at some of the videos

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I saw of people getting on trains, they're mainly foreigners, they were non -Ukrainian workers.

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They're like, this is my country, I'm out of here. And so they got out. And it's understandable, if I was in Ukraine, I'd be like,

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I'm out of here, I'm not fighting for this place, it's not my country. But if these same people had been there for years, for generations, regardless of their historical national origin or their ancestry, they'd say, this is my home and I'm going to stand next to my

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Ukrainian, whatever, racial, Ukrainian, whatever you want to say, and I'm going to fight for it.

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And so this is my point. Now, everyone's going to think I'm like racist or whatever, but what

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I'm saying is that we cut off, like, I don't want immigration from anywhere because I think we need to, as a country, build up generations.

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The people here need to have, we need to start building up generations of people here so that this becomes their home based upon that love that I talked about before.

04:19

That make sense? And that's my motivation. It's not because there's too many Mexicans, it's not because there's too many this or that.

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It's because there's a, it's very disruptive of that process of becoming a people when you have constant flow of people who have now jumpstart their, in a way, their new connection to a place.

04:42

Well, you even talk about English people escaping persecution, going to other places in the world and not fitting in, being barred.

04:48

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is one of the things like people, people are like, well, all my, you know, all my examples in the book of actually cultural conflict are between white people, to my knowledge.

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And the examples I used is during the like 1540s, 50s, 60s and 70s.

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So during kind of the reformation era and during the persecution in England, a lot of Protestants from Scotland and England fled to the continent and they stayed in usually these key cities like Strasbourg, Geneva.

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What other cities did I say? I'm on top and I can't think of some reason. But they go to these places and they would cause a lot of conflict.

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And it was cultural conflict differences in part and religion had a big part of it, but also cultural conflict.

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The towns themselves would say that, okay, you artisans from England, you can't practice your craft here because you're competing and have different ways and you're undercutting and doing this and that.

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We don't conduct business like you guys do. And you're taking advantage of that. And so they would cut them off from being able to practice their craft.

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And they did this because there was like a sense in which all these English newcomers were disrupting their way of life.

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And so it's just a clear example of how cultural differences can be very disruptive.

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But anyway, yeah. No, our differences make us strong, Steven. You don't understand. No, and there's so much more.

06:23

I know we're running out of time here, but there's so much more in the book. I just wish we could talk about. You talk about some really helpful, honestly, probably one of the most helpful areas in the book, which we could have spent a whole podcast on is you're talking about the revolution and a

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Christian's duty in some cases, even to disobey, to even replace governments with.

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I mean, it's stuff you're not hearing from your top 10 CBD books. And I think gives you a kind of a path for some of the tyranny that we might have coming upon us in some areas.

06:58

Yeah. And I think that was super helpful just to even know the history, to know that there's

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Christians who have had these thoughts and written on them because we're totally kept from thinking those thoughts or understanding what those before us have written on this.

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And you just bring it right back up. So I appreciate that. So I mean, so in the book, I have several chapters that deal with the definition and I kind of, in a way

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I close it, close, I don't know, seventh chapter. I forget which one I say. I'm kind of done with the definition of Christian nationalism, but I have to deal with some of the things

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I want to deal with religious liberty. I want to deal with revolution. I want to deal with some American history.

07:40

And yeah, so I have the chapter on revolution. It follows from some of the conclusions from the chapter on the

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Christian prince for the magistrate. And so I don't want to give the full argument here. But yeah, I thought that was necessary.

07:53

It's kind of weird how Americans, American Christians are so kind of scared of the idea of revolution because like we are, you know, how do you think we came about people?

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There's a revolution obviously. And so this was kind of a way to justify, to provide,

08:12

I think, a justification for revolution.

08:19

Yeah. I mean, I don't know what else to say. I don't get in the argument, which is it's kind of an involved argument because it's a very complex.

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It's not as obvious as, oh, we have a tyrant, so let's just go pick up our guns and fight.

08:33

It's pretty complex. Yeah. I mean, there's got to be theoretical justification because civil rulers are, they have their power of God.

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And in a way, conducting a revolution is resisting that person who is magistrate or sort of deputy of God.

08:55

So how do you work issues of kind of the questions that arise from reading like Romans 13?

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How do you deal with this question of, well, are you resisting God because he's the deputy of God and you're doing a revolution against him?

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Then there's the Nero question and all that. So someone would have to just read the chapter to understand the argument.

09:15

You're very careful and I appreciate that. You're not throwing flames or anything like that.

09:22

Yeah. And I mean, and one point is we also have to think through this carefully. Most revolutions in history just didn't end up well.

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The American Revolution is a very unique instance where it actually ended well.

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I mean, there's some revolutions that were in a way successful, like the French Revolution, but then ended poorly for several reasons in several ways and times.

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Even though I don't, you know, but that's another subject, but a lot of other revolutions either were unsuccessful as in actually deposing and when they were successful in deposing actually ended up being a nightmare.

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So, well, so you have to be very careful in how you go back to about doing it.

10:05

Whether it's feasible and all that. You have also a section I thought actually it was the most potentially controversial section on the enforcement of the magistrates enforcement of both tables of the law and justifying even things like the magistrate punishing blasphemy and these kinds of things.

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And I thought you made such a strong case from Christian tradition, at least that it has to be those who are going to object to it have got to do actual homework.

10:36

They can't just be sloppy and say, you know, Steven's a Christo fascist or he's doesn't believe in freedom of speech because you even say you believe in freedom of speech there.

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But it was man opened my eyes even that section. History I knew because if you study political history, you obviously know that some of these things were punished, but the rationale behind why was is not really taught much.

11:02

So another very helpful section, in my opinion. Yeah. So that was that's a chapter on what's the title?

11:09

Like Liberty of Conscience. I don't remember the title of the chapter now. That was an editor's choice probably anyway. But yeah, like Liberty of Conscience chapter nine, perhaps.

11:19

And yeah, chapter nine. Yeah. And yeah. And I spent probably like a few pages saying now what

11:26

I'm not. Well, I don't say what I'm not saying. I'm saying the question. So I spend like a time saying, what is the actual question here?

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And that's an old method of trying to boil down exactly what the dispute is. And I think right off the bat from just saying

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I'm not like the question is not this, not that, not that, that, that. It precludes like almost all the objections you hear from from this.

11:50

And then I get to the actual question. The question is, I mean, do you have in front of you can read it, but there's an actual.

11:56

Yeah, I can pull it up. Sure. But there but yeah, there's you know, the funny thing is I actually don't have a copy of the book yet.

12:02

Are you serious? I do not have. It's not the editor's fault. They actually when I was in Moscow, when

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I was in Moscow, they handed me a book. And so I'm here and I was like, OK, thanks. I put it down. I did one of those video interviews and then

12:14

I walked away and left it. Oh, no, get it back. But I really don't care. I got a copy online. I mean, bought your own.

12:21

You had to buy your own book. No, no, no. I have a PDF. So the question to be the longer one, the longer one,

12:31

I'm trying to find what page is it doesn't doesn't matter. But the idea here is that so wait,

12:38

I think I found it. The question is whether a Christian magistrate having civil rule over a civil society, Christians may punish false teachers, heretics, blasphemers and idolaters for their external expression of such things in order to prevent any injury to the souls of the people of God.

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The subversion of Christian government, Christian culture or spiritual discipline or civil disruption or unrest.

12:57

Is that the one? Yeah. So the key thing is external. So once to my mind, so you can't punish people for their beliefs in themselves.

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You can't punish people for having false beliefs. As an internal thing, you can't pry open people's souls and say, do you really believe this?

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And then if they say no, you hit them or whatever. So you don't actually persecute the conscience itself as an internal matter.

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But what I say is external religion or an expression of it. And this would be and you can punish that.

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And it wouldn't be the punishment is not simply because they said it.

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It's not to try to correct them from not believing it. It's a sort of protection of the people who might end up hearing it such that it might harm their souls or might disrupt the society.

13:51

Let's say you live in a Christian society that's generally Orthodox and you have some guy spouting off anti -Trinitarianism or some kind of anti or some sort of atheism.

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Let's just go atheism. Atheism is a better example. Well, I could ask that. I literally have a patron who asked, would you shut down mosques,

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Hindu worship centers? So use that as an example. So in the

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United States, we have a thorough tradition of religious liberty along those lines.

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And I don't see why you can't have a thoroughly

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Christian society, Christian government, even like a sort of established church and still permit people to have their own independent place of worship.

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I mean, Jews were clearly persecuted and disliked for much of even among the reformers and post -reformation guys, but most of them said that Jews could have their own synagogues.

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So even in a time where people were extremely assertive about what's true religion here now and no one's going to, they still said

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Jews can have their own synagogues. Now in our day with the American tradition, yes,

15:03

I mean, that would all be permitted. But that doesn't mean that you're committed to neutrality. So it means that they would be exceptions to the norm.

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So like in a school, like a public school, public schools should be Christian schools. And a public school that's a

15:20

Christian school doesn't mean that you would deny people who are non -Christians from being in the school, from participating in school, but they would be exceptions to the norm.

15:29

And so if let's say there's like a Christmas play or whatever, and they don't want to participate in the

15:34

Christmas play because they're not Christians. I mean, that's understandable. So you say, well, you don't have to participate in the play, but it would be expected of everyone else to do that.

15:43

Yeah. So I guess the answer to the question is no, you would not shut down these things. Like when

15:50

I was growing up, this is a good example. Maybe I had a, there was a park, right. That would display a

15:55

Christmas tree and a nativity set every year. And when I was like maybe eight or nine, 10, they put in a

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Hanukkah display. And menorah. And then when

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I was like 18 or so, 17, 18, all of a sudden all these like Hindu and Muslim and other religious things were at the park.

16:16

In your thinking as a Christian society, you wouldn't be required to, or you would not have to put these other displays up.

16:25

I would think, right. It would, it would be. No, no, no, you shouldn't do that. No. Right. So the, the, the public, the, the, the public institutions are, would be

16:34

Christian institutions. And so they would, if you want to do a nativity scene, you know, Presbyterians might not like it, but some of the congregationalists, but didn't even think of that.

16:44

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could have like a manger, but just don't have the baby. And I don't know, I don't know how they do that. But there you go.

16:52

Okay. So that's my train of thought. Oh yeah. So, so they, yeah. So you would just have the Christian because it's a, it's a Christian place.

16:58

I mean, would you, and people like get up in arms, like, oh, I can't believe, yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, if you lived in a

17:05

Muslim country, would you expect them to put, do something for Christmas in the Muslim country?

17:10

I mean, of course we wouldn't because Muslims are, have like, like the strength of will to say no, unlike us.

17:15

Oh, we'd be afraid to ask the question from the. Yeah. But I mean, we would like, imagine

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Christians being like this, this demanding. Yeah. Yeah. You have to put our thing.

17:26

Somehow it is one of these weird, I don't think it's a Christian thing. I think it's a Western thing.

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It's a, it's a Western mental habit where we respect the demands of people, but would never make the same demands for ourselves.

17:43

So like Christians in the West, they, or just Westerners in general, like you said, there was the

17:53

Christmas scene or the Christian scene. And then there's other people who said, well, you know, religious liberty,

17:59

I demand all these other religious displays as well. And we say, okay, yeah, well, they demand it. We should respect it.

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But we would never do, Christians would never do that themselves. It's in a way like we respect and acknowledge other people's demands, but then would say it's sin for us to do that.

18:14

In fact, what we, our impulse would be to like, yeah, we shouldn't have anything Christian, but we should put every Muslim thing out. We should have every

18:20

Hindu. You know, that's like the, it's a weird, like self -degrading, like mental habit.

18:25

We have where like we're passive with regard to our own beliefs and our own positions, but everyone else who makes these firm demands, we just kind of like, oh yeah, okay, we obey.

18:35

And yeah, you can just do whatever you want. So yeah, it's, it's a weird thing.

18:41

It's a pathological. Yeah. But like in a Christian nation that's self -affirming and explicitly

18:47

Christian, yeah, it'll just be Christian things with exceptions. Now I have one question from someone on Patreon that asks, are you worried about this movement,

18:57

Christian nationalism being hijacked by individuals who desire power? And are you willing to use the name of Christ?

19:03

I mean, this is so early to ask this question, but further on down the line, this takes off, your book is selling well, people are responding.

19:13

Are you worried about people jumping in line, Republicans for instance, who don't really share your values saying, well, yeah,

19:18

I'm a Christian nationalist. I mean, they've done it before. So has that crossed your mind at all or no?

19:31

Well, I guess, I mean, it has, it has crossed my mind. I mean, it's so early. I didn't know this was going to reach top 100 on Amazon yesterday.

19:37

So I, I didn't know. Yeah. Yesterday it was 84. Wow. Total number.

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Why is that? What do you contribute that to? So I, the first thing is,

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I think that people desperately needed, they, a lot of guys in particular needed something, they wanted something like this, that is just an unashamed, direct, rational, dare

20:07

I say masculine approach to a question and just state it bluntly. And I think that's, they want that.

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And I, in other words, they wanted to, I think they wanted to read something that treats them like men instead of one children and one female adjacent.

20:23

So they, they, they, they, they, they wanted that. I think the other thing too, is Canon's very good at marketing and, and, and advertising and they have a pretty big following.

20:33

And then also like other people, like the NatCon people have helped me out a bit, another thing.

20:39

So it's just been, I mean, just incredibly grateful because I'm just like this, this guy living out in the woods who wrote a book, you know, and it's just, so it's been really great to see just random people.

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I don't even know, like, I'm so excited about Wolf's book. It's like, wow. So it's very kind of a grassroots thing.

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Like I haven't had, there's also been free advertisement from neurotic enemies as well.

21:04

So I appreciate that as well. Yeah. Mentally ill, like the mentally ill people have been very generous with their, their negativity towards me and their advertising.

21:15

So I appreciate that as well. But anyway, what was the original question again? Well, you're worried about it being taken over by Republicans.

21:23

I mean, yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, I guess it could be worried about it, but that's true for anything. Everything can be hijacked.

21:31

I mean, again, I think it's a legitimate concern, but I, it's also like,

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I just want to critique the habit. There is this thing in the West where it's, I mean, you kind of see like Rusty Reno's, what's the title again?

21:47

The Return of the Strong Gods, I have it right next to me, Return of the Strong Gods, where people since World War II have been so like this idea that this is kind of scary.

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Like Nazism was scary. What we learned in some history books was scary.

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And well, what if this sounds strong? Like these are strong claims.

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What if someone hijacks it? Well, I mean, yeah, that could happen, but that's true for everything. But I think it's a habit that we have to then say, okay, let's dial it back and just be good old kind of like secularist again, and just be neutral.

22:22

Let's dial it back because this could be bad. Well, no, I mean, let's, let's do our best to not have this happen, but let's, let's not be pacified because we're afraid of, of, of this sort of thing.

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I mean, there are, I mean, there are like some politicians out there that make me kind of nervous, but I'm, yeah, and they're goofy and I don't think they know what they're talking about.

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But there's, there, there is a place for people like that. I mean, like every movement, every movement's going to have,

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I say this like in the conclusion, very briefly, I say like every movements have like their intellectuals, they have, you know, their book writers, then they have their foot soldiers, they have their warriors, they have the popularizers, the advertised, they have these people.

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And sometimes like the people who are a little kind of off are, can actually bring the movement up, take it a long ways.

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So, yeah, they're willing to take risks sometimes that more careful people aren't and that you need that for sure.

23:30

So, yeah. What, what are your plans for the future? I'm just curious. I mean, you weren't expecting the success of this.

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Are you, I mean, are you running for public office? Absolutely. Absolutely not. I, I just,

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I just want to, yeah, I'm like, I just mentioned the list of people.

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I'm the book writer and I have friends who are great networkers. I have friends who are good foot soldiers and warriors.

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And I think we should all work together and not, not look to, you know, don't, don't look to, to Wolf to be like this, the guy who's going to bring about the

24:04

Christian national estate. It has to be something we do together with the diversity of our gifts. And so for me,

24:10

I'm thinking about what, what's my next book, to be honest with you. Well, I hope everyone else is thinking, what am

24:17

I good at? And how, how, how can I play a part in this, this movement and do what they would, you know, and do what they can do for it.

24:27

Well, congratulations on your success. I'm very happy for you. And I know there's so many other things

24:33

I wanted to talk to you about, but we've, I've really taken a lot of your time already, but I just want to steer people towards where they should go to get this book.

24:44

So obviously it's on Amazon, but is there a special place you want people to go where it benefits you more?

24:50

No, I mean, the, the push was on Amazon early on. So you can buy it on Amazon. I think it'll be a, yeah.

24:56

So just, just look on Amazon for it. So go to amazon .com, check out the case for Christian nationalism by Steven Wolf.

25:04

And is it going to be on Audible as well or Kindle? Yeah, they're working on Audible now.

25:10

Yeah, they are. And soon there should be shirts. Can you see my shirt here? Oh, nice. Should have, they should have shirts.

25:17

I know they have mugs now and I, I think it'd be awesome if guys literally uh, wore this as their gym shirt because it's enough.

25:26

People are going to get around. It's a really cool candidate. A great job on the cover art. And, and I think it'd be great if they had these, they wore these around and then they can meet people.

25:36

They don't even know. It was like, Hey, wait a second. I have that book. I heard about that book and not for my, and this is not for like, you know, this is not so I can sell more books.

25:44

Um, but just because then you can start getting to know people who have similar ideas. Uh, in your, in your, in your own community or your gym, you can start a

25:52

Christian nationalists. Um, yeah, like a group club or something like that.

25:59

Raw milk, heavy lifting Christian. Yeah. Yeah. Raw egg. Yeah. Uh, like a raw raw egg, raw milk,

26:06

Christian nationals. Yeah. Awesome brother. Well, uh, thank you so much for giving me your time and, um, and to the audience as well.

26:12

And, uh, if people last question, if people want to reach you, follow you, where can they go?

26:19

Yeah. I mean, you can just search my name, Stephen Wolf on Twitter and look for this. I don't think anyone's trying to imitate me yet as far as I know, but you can find me, find me through that.

26:28

And I should be there. Twitter. Okay. All right. Well, God bless Stephen and I hope for continued success.