News Roundup: Pope Francis, Walter Strickland's Gospel, Neotr, & More
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Jon starts by reflecting on the recent death of Pope Francis and the future of the Catholic Church, he then talks about Christianity Today's recent article claiming Jesus could have died on the cross, but not with nails. After that, Jon reviews clips from Walter Strickland at SEBTS and Jordan Peterson on The Black Church and "Narcissism" on the Right.
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- 01:07
- All right, no sound. Thank you for letting me know. I guess I had that muted for the first part of the podcast here.
- 01:15
- Sorry about that. Let's get started now then about a minute into it.
- 01:20
- We're gonna start with Jordan Peterson stuff and actually we'll end with that stuff.
- 01:25
- We'll start with Pope Francis stuff and then we'll end with Jordan Peterson stuff.
- 01:31
- So thanks. SMHB bag notified me that the sound wasn't working there.
- 01:38
- So credit where credit's due. But I wanted to do a news roundup. I wanted to do something a little comprehensive and I'm gonna be leaving soon to go to the
- 01:45
- Christianity and the founding conference. But before I left, I wanted to leave you with something. I try to do one of these maybe once a week if I can.
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- 02:22
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- 02:29
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- 03:33
- Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. We're gonna start there and we're gonna work ourselves through the
- 03:40
- Anglo -American kind of starting there, conservative canon of literature, conservative
- 03:47
- Christian canon of literature. And I want people to understand how rich of a past we actually have.
- 03:53
- You don't have to reinvent the wheel on all these things. And there's so much confusion about what's on the right, what's on the left.
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- 04:33
- And this is one of my ways of saying thank you to all those who support my work. So with that, all right, we're gonna start doing the news roundup here.
- 04:40
- I wanna start with Pope Francis. Just a little commentary. Pope Francis obviously was a very progressive
- 04:46
- Pope. And there's so many examples of this. His statements, and a lot of Catholics will say, this isn't really, this doesn't matter because there was an ex -cathedra, but his statements were influential.
- 05:02
- And he said a number of things that were just, frankly, kind of bonkers. He was the one that said that priests could give same -sex couples a blessing.
- 05:13
- So they can't marry them, but they could just give them a blessing for their partnership, I guess. He was the one who, he said that a divorced and remarried
- 05:24
- Catholics could receive communion on a case -by -case basis. Now for Catholics, this is kind of a big deal, provided they engage in discernment with a priest.
- 05:32
- He was the one that, he said, I think it was an atheist.
- 05:38
- It was an, like some, I think it was a kid who had an atheist to hat. And he said, he kind of assured the kid that, well, your dad's in heaven or could be in heaven because he's a good person, essentially.
- 05:49
- I mean, crazy, right? For Catholic, for any Catholic to say that, let alone the Pope to say that.
- 05:56
- He pushed the envelope on woman's roles in the church. He said so many things, even in his recent weeks of life that were against the immigration policies that were more conservative, immigration policies of Donald Trump, but also in Europe, immigration policies that were meant to try to put up barriers to say let's remain
- 06:18
- European. Pope Francis has a long history of pushing the needle in progressive directions.
- 06:25
- And so it's kind of ironic. J .D. Vance met with him. It's just, it's weird timing.
- 06:30
- And then if not even 12 hours later, he's dead. And people are drawing all kinds of conclusions from that.
- 06:37
- I don't think J .D. Vance killed the Pope, no. But he wasn't doing well. He was in poor health.
- 06:43
- And the question now is what's gonna happen next? And there's a lot of more traditional Catholics who are excited about this prospect because they think that the conclave is going to choose someone who is more conservative in the
- 06:54
- Catholic tradition. And there is no one who has probably done more for converting people to Protestantism in recent times than Pope Francis or to Eastern Orthodoxy, frankly, because he was just so, is the
- 07:07
- Pope Catholic? You couldn't even say that anymore. And so I'll give you my assessment of this.
- 07:13
- And I don't know, obviously, the future, but just judging on past experience, if the conclave before picked
- 07:19
- Pope Francis, what's to prevent them from picking an equally progressive, if not more progressive Pope again?
- 07:25
- Now, maybe the pendulum is shifting. Maybe they'll go back, but I don't know if you can go back from Pope Francis because in a hierarchy like the
- 07:33
- Catholic Church, where you have a central location like the Vatican, where you have a central figurehead who makes a lot of these internal decisions, or at least appoints people, has people around him who make these decisions,
- 07:49
- Pope Francis has left his mark. And once progressives do leave their mark on a place, that place tends to carry that mark.
- 07:56
- It's very hard to revive, I know, revive an organization after they've gone down these paths.
- 08:04
- They might try to appease their audience and that kind of thing, but they're not usually interested in real change.
- 08:10
- There's revolutionaries in the Vatican. So I'm not as optimistic as some on this.
- 08:17
- And obviously I'm not a Catholic, and I think that the Catholic Church is primarily out of step with a biblical robust Christianity anyway, because of traditions that have been added that are not in keeping with the biblical teaching.
- 08:31
- But yes, I mean, from a political standpoint, co -belligerency with pro -life groups and this kind of thing, obviously
- 08:37
- I'm interested in, if people are going to be Catholics, then I would prefer they're
- 08:42
- Catholics that actually believe some of the things that scripture teaches, which Pope Francis was taking stands against essentially.
- 08:51
- He was undermining things in the creation order. So that's my two cents on the
- 08:57
- Catholic Church. I know people probably want me to say more on that, but there's not much more for me to say other than that. I wanted to give you some evangelical news before we move on.
- 09:05
- So Mark Dever is stepping down from leadership and Jonathan Lehman is taking his place.
- 09:11
- Now, this is interesting. I had someone recently tell me this might be a good thing. Jonathan Lehman might be to the right of Mark Dever.
- 09:18
- And Mark Dever is a registered Democrat, or at least he was a few years ago. I remember Judd Saul found that doing the enemies within the church research.
- 09:25
- I don't know where Jonathan Lehman stands exactly, but I know Jonathan Lehman, he blocked me on X years ago.
- 09:31
- I know that he is or was,
- 09:37
- I'll put it that way, because I haven't paid attention to him lately, but he was pushing the needle in somewhat of a progressive direction.
- 09:44
- He was, as you remember, one of the first ones from the evangelical world to countersignal John MacArthur pretty strongly about opening his church up during the
- 09:52
- COVID stuff. And he was also, I think, one of the main figures, more so than Mark Dever in my mind, at Nine Marks to try to reconcile critical race theory with Christianity.
- 10:05
- Even though he said that's not what he was doing, but he did this very long article on identity politics. I did a very long review of it.
- 10:11
- And that's essentially what he does. And I think that guys like that have to, here's my thing.
- 10:19
- There's ways to come back. There's ways to have leadership and there's ways to be followed. But step number one is you always have to admit those mistakes.
- 10:29
- This is for the Christian world. And I understand in the political world, people think this is different, the rules are different.
- 10:34
- Okay, whatever. But in the Christian world, at the very least, I think this applies to the political world too, but you need to at least say, you know what?
- 10:41
- Those are some pretty major things for me to goof on. And I repented that. That's not who
- 10:47
- I am. I disagree. And whatever damage I did, I want to undo that. And then to take the steps necessary to go against your previously held positions that you find to be damaging.
- 11:02
- If Jonathan Lehman's not willing to do that, it's a character thing in my mind. He has to be willing to do that.
- 11:07
- And then I'd be the first one to want to welcome him in. Now, whether he should have influence or power, that's another story.
- 11:13
- But the road back to those kinds of things though, whether he should have those things immediately, but the road back to those things is through that gate.
- 11:20
- It has to start there. And so that's my feeling on nine marks and kind of where they're going.
- 11:27
- And maybe this will be good. Maybe Mark Devereux was keeping the shackles on Jonathan Lehman or something, and he's gonna be now all conservative and stuff.
- 11:35
- And I mean, he did support the law amendment in the SBC. So it's not all bad, but I've just cautiously,
- 11:43
- I don't even know if I'm optimistic. Some people are, but I'm cautious about this. We'll see though. We'll see. One of the big headlines from the political world, and I'm gonna focus on this a little more next week.
- 11:57
- So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it, but Trump moves to repeal disparate impact liability, a key civil rights tenant.
- 12:03
- I think this is great. President Trump has taken steps to nullify a key component of civil rights act as he works to remove diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
- 12:11
- So he's going farther than just the stuff from the last few years. And that's a good thing. One of the executive orders issues
- 12:16
- Wednesday dubbed restoring equality of opportunity and meritocracy would dismantle disparate impact liability, a legal theory codified in title nine, sorry, title seven of the civil rights act that holds agencies accountable for practices that have an outsized discriminatory effect on protected groups, even when there is no intent to discriminate.
- 12:35
- So in other words, if there's a disparity that exists and it can be traced back to some policy you have, even if it wasn't intentional, then you're on the hook for it.
- 12:45
- And Trump is saying no more. This is huge guys. I don't know if you realize how huge this is. This is big.
- 12:51
- This is like we are so back material here. So I'm really good on the
- 12:56
- Trump administration. I'm so grateful that this is happening and I'll talk about that more next week.
- 13:02
- Now, moving on to some stuff from the evangelical church, specifically Southern Baptists.
- 13:07
- This podcast from the gospel coalition, the triumph and tragedies of the black church three days ago was uploaded is now private.
- 13:17
- I was gonna review parts of it. It is now private. Now the audio is not though. So I don't know why they made the video private.
- 13:23
- Maybe it was to keep people from like me from looking at it. But if you wanna listen to the audio, you can go to gospel bound podcasts of the gospel coalition.
- 13:30
- And it's still there. The triumph and tragedies of the black church and professor Walter Strickland is the one who is being interviewed by Colin Hanson here.
- 13:38
- And they both have a number of things to say that I think are terrible, not great, consistent with all the woke stuff.
- 13:45
- But there was one I wanted to hone in on. And so we're gonna hone in on that. The audio is a bit low on this.
- 13:52
- So bear with me and we're just going to, I'm gonna summarize what you're hearing.
- 13:58
- The of evangelicalism. So what do you mean about this overly spiritualized faith? Yeah, you know, if we're looking at the great awakening, the broader context for the
- 14:09
- African -American tradition is that that's the moment when Africans in America begin to come to faith in Christ in large numbers.
- 14:17
- So many of those were slave, some were free or manumitted at that time.
- 14:22
- But the question remained, okay, so what do we do with these African, people of African descent who have become
- 14:29
- Christian? And how do we not lose the economic system that has sort of undergirded the country?
- 14:37
- And that is to offer a faith that is good for saving the soul, yet does not wet the whistle, so to speak, for freedom for the body.
- 14:47
- Okay, so Walter Strickland saying what he's said for many years, he's consistent at least, right? With this, it's a liberation theology reading of the situation.
- 14:57
- That the Christianity that was given to slaves was a Christianity that was in, the mechanism was entirely for, and intended for the subjugation of black people.
- 15:08
- So it was a warped Christianity that was the reason they were given this.
- 15:15
- So it was a tool of subjugation. That goes right along lines with even guys like Louis Farrakhan, right?
- 15:23
- That the Christianity is a tool to enslave you. Walter Strickland basically agrees with that, but he's gonna try to say, well, it was a warped
- 15:30
- Christianity. It was not the true Christianity. And so what happened was, is that -
- 15:35
- Even though, and I'm gonna stop there. Even though he admits, oh, no, the true gospel was there. He sort of just admitted that, like, oh, it'll save the soul.
- 15:43
- There is a, Christ died for sinners of which you and I are one. And then that is the real, that's the good, that is good news.
- 15:54
- I would argue that the good news goes farther in the sense of that.
- 15:59
- And also because of this already not yet tension, we ought to, because of the kingdom that is sort of creeping in on the present, we ought to then live those kingdom realities out as best as possible in the here and now.
- 16:15
- So the gospel is freeing us, yes, in our souls, which is what was given, but it also does a work with us as we exist in society, as we interact with each other.
- 16:27
- And that's where that break was made. And so I'm not critiquing the fact that there is a gospel that was given that was one that was trying to ameliorate sin from people with the message of Jesus Christ.
- 16:41
- That's good and well, but I'm saying that there is a cauterization off of the implications of the gospel.
- 16:48
- And so that was sort of intentionally cut off so that slaves wouldn't say, you know what?
- 16:54
- This kingdom reality is one that we should pursue now. Yeah, I mean, the story of George Whitefield is one of the most difficult and painful to look at.
- 17:04
- And it forces everybody to make a basic decision. You can conclude, well,
- 17:10
- George Whitefield was preaching a false gospel. That's hard to say as an evangelical because it cuts you off from your history.
- 17:17
- You could say that he wasn't a Christian at all because obviously he couldn't have held those beliefs about slavery and advocated for slavery and be a
- 17:26
- Christian. Maybe that's true, but that would also eliminate a lot of other people in American history and far beyond for a lot of history, different types of slavery, of course.
- 17:38
- Or you can say that at least if nothing else, he preached a truncated gospel that did not reflect the fullness of Jesus's kingdom teaching in there.
- 17:48
- I incline in that direction. I wanna put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you incline in that direction as well.
- 17:54
- Yeah, and so I wrote my, you know what? All right, we're gonna stop there. So what you just heard is
- 18:01
- Walter Strickland talking to Colin Hanson. And then Walter Strickland says, look, the gospel was given to enslave these people, a truncated gospel, an incomplete gospel of some kind because it cut off the elements of the gospel that are meant to save people from slavery, oppression.
- 18:16
- So this work arrangement. And of course this would have been news to Paul, right?
- 18:22
- And Colin Hanson then clarifies and goes, so you're saying, are you saying that this is a truncated gospel?
- 18:28
- I don't wanna put words in your mouth. And Walter Strickland goes, yeah. And then he starts speculating on, you know,
- 18:35
- Edwards and whether, or Whitfield, I think it was Edwards, whether Edwards is in heaven and this kind of thing.
- 18:40
- And they go on and there's other stuff in the podcast. But that's the part, the theological part that I wanted to zone in on here.
- 18:47
- This is, I think, a way to reconcile Christianity with the prevailing narrative that's out there in the educational and influential sectors of society, which basically says, yeah,
- 18:58
- Christianity is a net negative and it enslaves people. And then it's to say, well, that's true, but it wasn't the true
- 19:03
- Christianity. The true Christianity really does set people free from these labor arrangements and we just didn't have it.
- 19:12
- And it was, so you're right, you get to be right. And we also get to keep our Orthodox theology somehow, but it's not
- 19:18
- Orthodox theology. Because when you start saying that the gospel is truncated, you're saying there's an incomplete gospel. You don't actually have the true gospel then.
- 19:25
- You don't have all of it because you gotta add something to it. What's the thing you gotta add? Well, some kind of arrangement in society, some kind of work to free slaves.
- 19:35
- If that work is not present, you don't have the gospel. And again, the gospel is the power of God of salvation.
- 19:40
- The gospel is what Christ has done, strictly speaking. I mean, you could say the gospels as in the stories in the scripture, but, or the teachings of,
- 19:49
- I mean, you could, I guess, say broadly, the gospels are the teachings that are in the gospels. But Walter Strickland's making a theological point here, and he's been consistent doing this for years.
- 19:57
- And it's the same point liberation theologians make, that to have the true gospel, you gotta insert these works that are human works and not
- 20:04
- Christ's work. And so I see big danger here. It's a fusion. I mean, we're just talking about Pope Francis in the
- 20:11
- Catholic church, and we got the same problem here in evangelicalism that the Catholic church has with their soteriology.
- 20:17
- It's just cloaked in different terms, unfortunately. And I hate to see it, but it's still happening, even though Walter Strickland's been corrected,
- 20:24
- I don't know how many times on this. All right, moving on. Let's talk about Christianity today.
- 20:30
- Christianity today. They put out an article. The Bible doesn't say Jesus was nailed to a cross. One evangelical
- 20:35
- Bible scholar thinks the crucifixion may have been done with ropes. And of course, this got community noted even, and ratioed so badly.
- 20:43
- The Bible explicitly refers to the nails in John's gospel. John 20, 25, Thomas said to them, unless I see the nail marks in your hands,
- 20:51
- I put my finger where the nails were, I put my hand into a side I will not believe. Now, interestingly, the author of this walked it back later.
- 20:58
- I'm not a Christianity Today subscriber, so I didn't read the whole article, but apparently said he messed up.
- 21:03
- That barely ever happens, but Russell Moore really should be the one taking credit and saying that as the editor, that he messed up.
- 21:10
- That's what I think should happen. This is egregious, but that's Christianity today. And I'm not such a no -brainer, but they unforced error.
- 21:20
- Right, right before Easter Sunday too, is when they put this out there. So if you wanted to know if Christianity Today is compromised in more than just political ways, yes, very much so, theological ways as well.
- 21:34
- Let's see, what do I wanna go to first? Oh, this is kind of a minor point, but the Presbyterian Church USA fires missionaries and ends their missions agency.
- 21:44
- And among other things, cites colonialism as one of the problems with missions work.
- 21:49
- So there you go. The PCUSA for you, that's so sad. I mean, maybe not because the
- 21:55
- PCUSA would have been preaching the same gospel that Walter Strickland is preaching, but not the true one.
- 22:02
- And even worse, the way they would frame it. But man, I mean, this is where this stuff gets you.
- 22:07
- You start reconciling yourself to this leftist stuff and this is where it gets you. Missions ends up being colonization.
- 22:15
- All right, let's talk about, I think I wanna go, okay, I wanna go here next. Let's talk about this real quick.
- 22:20
- I'm not gonna play the clip, but Rhett McLaughlin from Good Mythical Morning, which is a comedy show,
- 22:28
- I used to, years ago, they had like some kind of a Southern Baptist background, I think, years ago, I used to watch them.
- 22:34
- So they were pretty funny, but Rhett and Link is the duo. They went total deconstructionist.
- 22:41
- And one of the things that Rhett says is that Francis Collins helped him to down this path of deconstructing his
- 22:48
- Christian faith because Francis Collins convinced him evolution was true. And then evolution became like this, supposed truth of that became the thing that undermined his conviction.
- 23:00
- And I think that just needs to be emphasized that look, the Darwinist stuff didn't go away when the woke threat came.
- 23:07
- We have multiple threats. Darwinism is one of them and it does undermine the creation story.
- 23:14
- I wanna talk about this last here. This is an article that I wrote for American Reformer.
- 23:21
- And I talk about this in the older principle. It's very misunderstood. I would encourage people to read the full article, but I talk about an interview
- 23:28
- I did with Charles Haywood, who kind of popularized the term, no enemies on the right or no enemies to the right.
- 23:34
- And I point out three errors with this. And one of the errors is saying that there should be no gatekeeping whatsoever on the right.
- 23:42
- I hear this all the time. Like he's gatekeeping. Well, we have to have standards. If we don't have positive standards, then we don't have a movement and any person can come in.
- 23:50
- Any barbarian can come into the gates and claim that the city's his. And so I talk about this, that the whole point of neoter is you don't use the left's hammer.
- 24:00
- You don't reinforce the left's framing. You don't rat out guys who are co -belligerents to the left.
- 24:07
- That's the whole point. It's not that you don't have any internal criticisms or even disciplinary measures, perhaps.
- 24:16
- So like I think of a prison camp analogy, like you might have guys who are liabilities in the prison camp. Do you reinforce the guard's power though to deal with them?
- 24:23
- No, you deal with them yourselves. And so anyway, Charles Haywood said, neoter doesn't mean we necessarily need to spend our time embracing literal
- 24:30
- Nazis or something like that. We can have disagreements on the right, but those disagreements should not be aired in public, which is done merely to benefit the individuals who want to kowtow to the left.
- 24:39
- Now, this is under a specific set of circumstances, I think, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute, but that's the first error though, is that like, oh, we just don't have any standards.
- 24:49
- The second problem is making neoter this universal principle for all times and places. And this is something that Haywood says, right now the left has all the power.
- 24:59
- So let's say in the future, the power of the left will be totally broken. And at that point, there will be enemies on the right. I'm willing to cooperate with all sorts of people now, but in terms of forming and running the new post -left society, new divisions and existing divisions will arise and become important again, because there are plenty of people on the right who
- 25:14
- I would not necessarily want to be running society. In other words, there's gonna be fracturing, which I've been saying there is fracturing under the
- 25:20
- Trump administration even. With the co -belligerencies that even existed in some of the alliances, they're not holding as firm.
- 25:26
- And I think Charles Haywood predicted that, that's to be expected because you have this big gorilla that's trying to eat all of you.
- 25:33
- And when that gorilla is put at bay, then those disagreements start to become more felt.
- 25:39
- So anyway, it's not for all times and places. It's for a specific situation where the left holds the sole hammer.
- 25:45
- Now, the Trump administration does have somewhat of a hammer, right? So there is a change in, I think the left still has ascendancy and the hegemony, but there is a change going on.
- 25:55
- And then error three is if you deviate slightly, you lose the neoter shield. So if you are just slightly to the left of someone in the minds of people who think they're authentically right, most of the time, they're not.
- 26:08
- In my opinion, most of the time, the people who think they're authentically right tend to have not done the reading and they're usually like modernist type ideologues who are criticizing people who are actually more traditional and right -leaning in a conservative frame of an
- 26:21
- Anglo -Protestant context. But either way, let's just grant, okay, someone who's slightly to the left of you or whatever, that neoter doesn't apply to them.
- 26:33
- And the whole idea here from Charles Haywood, it was those who oppose the left. There are no enemies on the right. Those who oppose the left, they get neoter protections.
- 26:40
- It doesn't mean that just the people who are as far right as possible are the only ones to get these protections.
- 26:47
- And I've seen this play out many times, even with guys who think that it's fine to leak private screenshots and subject people to the left's gaze and that kind of thing, because they're authentically more right -wing or something than someone who's slightly to their left.
- 27:03
- And so they're not violating neoter, but if you respond to them, you are violating neoter. It's absolutely ridiculous.
- 27:09
- And it's a big problem for, I think, not that specific chain of actions, but the problem of thinking that's what neoter is is a big problem.
- 27:23
- So I analyze why I think these misunderstandings are happening, and I'm not gonna go into all of that, but you can read the article if you want to see that.
- 27:31
- The main point, I think, the main takeaway is like, look, gates are inevitable. I've said this before, but gates are inevitable.
- 27:37
- Every movement has to have them. The only question is who's controlling those gates. That's it. Is it someone who has the best interests of the movement in mind?
- 27:44
- Is it someone who's rooted? Is it someone who has virtue, most importantly? Are those the people that are the elites?
- 27:51
- You're gonna have elites, right? Elitism's not a bad thing. You just want good ones. So we don't let the left control our gates.
- 27:58
- That's the whole point of neoter, and there's a lot of misunderstanding on this. This doesn't apply. This isn't about pastoral counseling.
- 28:06
- This isn't like, oh my goodness, I have right -wingers in the church that are doing sinful things. I can't say anything because they're on the right, and I'm a pastor.
- 28:13
- That's ridiculous. No, no, you have a spiritual responsibility there. It doesn't mean that you can't, as a business owner, make decisions to try to make sure that you're not liable for egregious behavior of employees or something like that because they're on the right.
- 28:28
- I can't do anything. It's literally just a political strategy for a particular set of circumstances. That's it, and don't try to make more of it than that, and don't try to make this a cardinal, universal rule, which is what
- 28:41
- I see some people doing. Now, in that vein, I wanna point this out, and this is a clip from Jordan Peterson.
- 28:47
- I'm gonna play the clip, and then we'll talk about it. Without a doubt. Yeah, well, that's a terrible thing because the psychopathic types, they're always the death of everything.
- 28:59
- I'm seeing this come up on the right now, so imagine this. I've been working on a new theory of political psychopathology, and I like it quite a lot.
- 29:09
- Is this where the term the woke right comes in? Yeah, well, Lindsay is pointing at that, but he hasn't got the diagnosis exactly right, so it isn't woke.
- 29:19
- That's not the issue. It's not exactly. He's one level. I think what they're talking about is similar types of behavior.
- 29:24
- He is talking about that. Yeah, I know, but he's pointing. Woke just lets you clarify in your head.
- 29:29
- Oh, it's like that. Yeah, but the problem is. It's like Antifa. Absolutely, but the problem is is that that argument is predicated on the claim that the ideas are the problem, like the woke ideas, for example, on the right or the left, but that's not the problem.
- 29:47
- The problem is that 4 % to 5 % of the population, something like that, is cluster
- 29:55
- B. That's the DSM -5 terms, histrionic, narcissistic, antisocial, psychopathic, or they have, and they have dark tetrad traits.
- 30:04
- They're Machiavellian. They're sadistic. That's about 4%. Okay, so the question is how do these people maneuver, and the answer is they go to where the power is, and they adopt those ideas, and they put themselves even on the forefront of that, but the ideas are completely irrelevant.
- 30:20
- All they're doing is they're the Pharisees. They're the modern version of the Pharisees. They're the people who use
- 30:25
- God's name in vain, as they proclaim moral virtue. Doesn't matter whether it's right or left or Christian or Jewish or Islam.
- 30:33
- They invade the idea space, and then they use that, those ideas, as false weapons to advance their narcissistic advantage, and so then you have the problem, and the right's gonna face this more and more particularly, because the left had to face it when they were in powers.
- 30:51
- How do you identify the psychopathic parasites, 4 % of the population, who are clothed in your clothing and waving your flags, but who are only in it for narcissistic benefit?
- 31:07
- Okay, let's talk about this. This blew up the internet on the right, and you had a lot of guys, most of the guys
- 31:14
- I saw counter signaling this pretty hard, but then you had some guys who were actually taking this pretty seriously, and I wanna talk about this, because I think
- 31:22
- Jordan Peterson is using language that I would not use, psychological language, and so he's gonna analyze it that way.
- 31:29
- He's bringing it into a frame that he understands, because he's a psychologist. Obviously, the tendencies he's talking about, people who are attracted to power are gonna say and do what they need to do to get power, and they might not have the virtue that should accompany power.
- 31:43
- I mean, this is true, right? This is just true, but I think, oh, sorry,
- 31:48
- I'm distracted. I see my ride for the conference is here. Let me just text that person real quick and let them know that I am in the middle of a podcast and cannot come and talk to them.
- 32:02
- Give me a minute. Important things, important things happening.
- 32:12
- All right, important commentary. All right, so here's, man, how am I gonna do this in like five minutes or less?
- 32:19
- I'm gonna try. So he's bringing it into these psychological terms.
- 32:25
- That's obviously, there's a truth, a kernel of truth in what he's saying. I think the sensitivity comes in in people thinking, he's talking about me, he's talking about us, he's talking about you, he's talking about, and I'm sure
- 32:36
- Jordan Peterson, because of past experience, does have a very broad net. Of course, he's citing James Lindsay here, and I think the woke right idea is utterly ridiculous, mostly because the woke quote -unquote right, as they're called, are for hierarchy.
- 32:51
- They're not egalitarians, and the ideology of the left is egalitarian. It's revolutionary, but I think there is something revolutionary possibly going on on the right in some quarters, and I've referred to it as ideology.
- 33:06
- Different people are coming up with different terms and different ways of looking at it. I do think mine's the correct one, obviously, because I'm the one using it, but I do think it's ideological.
- 33:14
- I do think that it's rigid. It is universal. It's abstract. It's looking at ideas and being loyal to those and forming the brotherhood around those instead of tangible relationships.
- 33:29
- It's not very conservative, and I think it's attractive to deracinated people, and I've said so much more about this in the past, so if you follow the podcast closely, you know
- 33:37
- I've already talked about this a lot. Even this last week, I think I had a podcast where I talked about this dynamic, but here's the thing that's interesting to me.
- 33:46
- It's who shared this, and I think there's a point to be made. I think Peterson's tapping into something, but I don't think he's...
- 33:53
- It's like the elephant. I think, oh, it's a trunk. It's this. It's that, and a lot of guys who are ideological themselves because they're liberal ideologues, they tend to see it from their own ideological perspective, and it's like, it's not us, so therefore, it's this.
- 34:09
- Well, I wanted to show you someone. The reason I even saw this at first was a guy named
- 34:16
- Patrick Casey who I've had on the podcast before, and I thought this was really interesting. Patrick Casey, who has been accused of antisemitism, and he does work for Chronicles Magazine.
- 34:27
- He says, people are dunking on this because Jordan Peterson, which I get, but he's absolutely correct that most of the main figures posting the
- 34:35
- Jew obsession stuff 24 -7 and attacking people who don't are cluster B grifters motivated primarily by self -interest.
- 34:41
- Lucas Gage was apologizing to rabbis in 2023, but then October 7th gave him an opportunity to become a relevant person again, so he's now calling you a
- 34:48
- Mossad agent for posting in support of Trump. He's one example of many. That scene is a crab bucket where doxing, blackmail, homosexual grooming, and bad faith smears are the norm.
- 34:59
- Notice how these people can't even get along with each other. Every time a new person comes out of the JQ closet or gets a big media appearance, the others will come and attack him.
- 35:08
- I don't know what Jordan Peterson believes, and whatever it is, it probably isn't satisfactory right wing as far as I'm concerned, but on this, he's correct.
- 35:15
- That caught my attention. Patrick Casey is someone who would be roped in as way too nefarious, right wing, scary, and he's saying, we've got a problem.
- 35:27
- I notice Martyr Maid, Darrell Cooper, wrote a blog April 13th called
- 35:32
- The Road to Hell, and Darrell Cooper says the same thing Patrick Casey's saying. He's saying, we got a big problem on the political right, and it's this obsession.
- 35:40
- He says, they're tapping into what I've been talking about for a while with ideology. They're saying, there's an ideology at work here that is subverting what we're trying to do, and if you don't understand what's actually happening, you will misdiagnose it.
- 35:53
- You'll get it wrong, but you gotta understand it is happening, and Darrell Cooper, who's the guy who said
- 35:59
- Winston Churchill, chief villain, World War II, right? He got all sorts of flack for it. He's saying that there's a problem with this
- 36:05
- Jew obsession. You have, recently I saw Pedro Gonzalez, I think, said something very similar.
- 36:12
- Another guy who's been doxed and called anti -Semitic and all these things. He's saying, we got a problem on the right.
- 36:19
- Now, what do I make of all of this? I think that my own experiences in the last few days have totally proven this to be correct, and for especially the guys who are interested in new
- 36:31
- Christian right ascendancy, this will be one of the stumbling blocks. I'm not saying it's the only one, but it will be one of the stumbling blocks if there aren't gates put up to make distinctions, and so I'm, for my part, for my platform,
- 36:45
- I have put up some gates. I have made some distinctions, and I've said, no, it's not allowed here. That's not what we're doing.
- 36:51
- We're about restoring American heritage specifically and restoring biblical
- 36:57
- Christianity and shoring up those things, defending those things. That's what motivates what I'm doing on my online platform.
- 37:04
- That's what I'm gonna continue to do. So no, I'm not going to war with all the Anons. I mean, at this point,
- 37:09
- I post things that are honestly not even about them, and they take it so personally, and it's, but the dust will all settle on those kinds of things, and this is hyper
- 37:18
- X stuff. Most of you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but that stuff, people will go into their various categories, and they'll kind of snipe at each other, but it's not going to be constant drama.
- 37:34
- I think we do have some rocky things ahead, but I think that things will kind of settle down, and part of this is from my own experience.
- 37:41
- I mean, in 2020, I was canceled in a very vicious way, and I really had hardly anyone. 80 was one of the only few people with a public platform.
- 37:49
- 80 Robla is to defend me. People were not defending me when the woke mob came after me, and I remember how that was, and I'm still standing.
- 37:55
- I'm still fine. It's time, especially on the internet. News cycles are very short, and this too shall pass, but there is a danger here, and when you got guys like Daryl Cooper and Patrick Casey and Pedro Gonzalez warning about it, you better listen.
- 38:13
- You better listen. So anyway, a lot more could be said, but I got a ride that's waiting for me, and I got to go.
- 38:22
- Conceptual clarity is saying the same thing. Could anyone deny that there has been, in the last few years, a rise in unhealthy characters on conservative comment threads in the sort you didn't see much previously?
- 38:30
- Absolutely, 100%. I've seen it, and if you're interested, I made a short video.
- 38:35
- It's like six and a half minutes on X yesterday, where I talk about some of this. In your opinion, would
- 38:41
- Lindsay and Patterson get any odor shield? They oppose the left, but are definitely not on the right. That's an interesting question.
- 38:47
- I'd have to think about that more. Lindsay, I think, is on the left. Peterson, it's more of an open question, but Lindsay, I would say, is actually more on the left.
- 38:57
- He's just against the left that's way too revolutionary. He wants to be a little revolutionary. I mean, he's an atheist.
- 39:03
- It's hard not to be kind of revolutionary when you're an atheist in some ways. There's very few atheists I know that are chill, and they're okay with religion and tradition and that kind of thing.