August 16, 2016 Show with C. Jay Engel on “A Christian Libertarian Economist’s Answers to: ‘Can We Rescue the Economy of the USA?'”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 16th day of August 2016.

You know, the great 20th century Presbyterian J. Gresham Machen said, everywhere there rises before our eyes the specter of a society where security, if it is attained at all, will be attended at the expense of freedom, where the security that is attained will be the security of fed beasts in a stable, and where all the high aspirations of humanity will have been crushed by an all -powerful state.

As I said, that's Dr. J. Gresham Machen, founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, one of the theological heroes during the fundamentalist modernist controversy.

There happens to be also a quote at the top of the Reformed Libertarian Facebook page, and we're going to be finding out more about Reformed Libertarianism or Paleo -Libertarianism from our guest today, who we have for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, C .J.

Engel, who is the founder and editor of reformedlibertarian .com, host of the aforementioned

Reformed Libertarian Facebook page. He is a registered financial advisor in Northern California, where he lives with his wife and children, and he also is a

Paleo -Libertarian. We're going to find out more about specifically how that is different from many who wear the label

Libertarian today. Today, our specific theme is a Christian Libertarian economist's answer to, can we rescue the economy of the

United States of America? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time,

C .J. Engel. Great to be here, Chris. Thank you for having me on. It's my pleasure.

And let me right off the bat give our email address for those of our listeners who want to join us on the air with a question of their own.

It is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the

U .S .A., and we would love to hear from you. You may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable, but we would prefer it if you at least identify yourself by first name, city, and state, and country.

Well, first of all, C .J., if you don't mind, before we even get into the main theme at hand, tell us something about your own

Christianity, how you came to faith in Christ, and how you became theologically reformed as a

Christian. Well, first off, I didn't start off my

Christian thinking from a reformed perspective. I definitely grew up in a

Christian home. My parents are still strong, conservative Christians, and I am the oldest of six homeschooled children where theology was at the center of our education, and so it's something that has been with me for the entirety of my life thus far.

I started becoming more and more interested in, you know, sort of a

Calvinist, not quite reformed perspective in high school. I became more interested in researching on the

Internet. Everybody listening to this show is more than aware of the fact that there's been sort of a resurgence of attention to the

Calvinistic doctrines and the doctrines of grace, and I was part of that. Those, you know, young people under the age of 20 that started researching and looking and discovering and making theology my own and coming to my own conclusions that may or may not be the same of my parents.

It was in college later on that I began to realize that there was a distinction between, you know,

Reformed Theology proper and Calvinism, which might be considered a subset of Reformed Theology.

I began, you know, pouring into the Confessions of Faith and, you know, the

Westminster Confession, and I wasn't sure what the difference was between the Paedo -Baptists and the

Credo -Baptists, but along the way, I began to notice the differences in Calvinist theology and how that has an impact on, you know, the covenant membership of younger parts of the family.

And so, as I began studying, you know, these things, I reached the conclusion that the

London Baptist Confession of Faith is what I would adhere to. And so, since I was about 18 or 19, so for the last six years,

I've been a Reformed Baptist and have subscribed to the 1689 Confession of Faith.

Well, you have a brother who shares the same confession right here, a member of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and we also adhere to the 1689

London Baptist Confession. In fact, every church that I have been a member of, well, this is actually the second church that I have been a member of since I became a born -again believer in Christ in the 1980s, adhered to the 1689

Confession. I was raised Roman Catholic prior to my salvation. So, it's great to have a fellow

Reformed Baptist on the program. And so, when in your life, as now you are a

Christian, when did this fascination with politics arise? And specifically, when did you start to gravitate towards libertarianism, or more specifically, paleo -libertarianism?

And we'll have you define that distinction in a moment. Tell us something about the political interests that developed in your life.

Well, that's an easy one, because I remember the road so distinctly. I went to a small, private

Christian college out here in Northern California, just outside of Sacramento. And I went to school thinking

I was going to be a pastor and attend seminary, and so I majored in Bible and theology. I also took a, or attempted to take, a minor in business administration, because I wanted to have some practical skills, and I know, you know, running a household and running a church requires some of those things besides, you know, theology proper.

As I was in the first class there, my first week of school, I realized that all this math and economics was definitely not for me, and I decided that I needed to focus more elsewhere.

At the same time, my then -girlfriend, soon -to -be -fiancé, and now wife, was in public policy, that was her major, and she was studying more theoretical things, such as government theory, politics, and things of that nature.

And I was jealous at the time of seeing her workload, looked over in envy and decided that I was going to switch majors.

And so it's kind of a funny story that I, it looks like I chased my wife around the academic world, and I suppose you could say that.

But as I got more into these classes, I began to really find great fascination with these things, especially the government and political theory.

And it's a funny story because I had quit my first major, or minor, excuse me, business administration because of the economic side of things.

And by the time I hit my senior year, my senior dissertation was on the Federal Reserve, which is the

United States Central Bank, and so that is economic land galore. So it's funny how I went in with one perspective and mindset and came out with something totally else.

But my college years were really the fundamental time in my life when I began to look into these things, develop a theory.

I'm the type of person that doesn't stop until I've solved all the issues. I see everything as a jigsaw puzzle, and if I see a hole in the board,

I'm going to make sure that it's filled before I can sleep at night. So really junior, senior years, when

I began to really develop these things, and of course after I graduated, and had much more time to read books than I do now, having two kids,

I was able to cram a lot of education, or re -education in some ways, into my brain.

And I've been very blessed by studying these things, and my wife is very appreciative of the fact that I now have an outlet on my website, and she can sleep at night without hearing me talk about them.

Well, praise God for that. So, let's come to a definition of libertarianism, because I know just from speaking with many

Christians who are very passionate in one way or the other about this upcoming presidential election, that there seems to be a lot of ignorance as to what libertarianism is.

People equate libertarianism with liberalism very often, not that they would view the libertarians as fiscally liberal, they seem to have some kind of an understanding that libertarians are for small government, but I think that there is some confusion about a libertarian's endorsement of socially and morally unbiblical practices and ideologies, and the government's involvement over what we are to think, say, and do.

I think that that's where a lot of the confusion lies.

But if you could, in your own words, describe libertarianism, and perhaps even define as a backdrop to that, capitalism and socialism.

Yeah, so, I mean, the confusion is not entirely the fault of those who are confused on the term libertarianism, and part of the problem, of course, is the fact that libertarianism, as it has become more popular, has reflected the trends of the masses.

And those conservative Christians, like ourselves, and like many of the people we look up to in our circles, including most eminently, an individual who has been very critical of libertarianism, would be

Al Mulder. And when he looks out and looks for the definition of libertarianism, he immediately comes to the

Libertarian Party, which is an official institution or entity that runs people for nomination at state and national offices.

And they look at the people that are representing libertarianism at that level. And so the first confusion that comes about is there's a failure to make a distinction between libertarian theory, independent of the party, and the party itself.

And this would be the same as confusing the meaning of democracy as a theory that has been in existence since ancient

Greece, and the Democratic Party today. If we define all of our theories in terms of the parties that wear that label, we're not going to get very far in discovering what is true and what doctrines are actually represented by the label.

Oh yeah, of course. I'm sorry? Go ahead. I'm sorry if I was interrupting you.

I was just going to say it's just like judging republicanism by Rudy Giuliani, who is a spokesman for the

Republican Party and was a mayor for New York City for the

Republican Party. And he is someone who is pro -abortion.

He's pro -homosexual rights. He marched in the gay rights parade.

So therefore, if you want to use the same kind of broad brushing, people should look at the

Republican Party and say, these people are just all entirely in favor of abortion and homosexual activism.

Yeah, exactly. It's the common confusion of defining

Christianity by Joel Osteen or someone that wears the label. We have to always draw a distinction between the definitions that we're referring to and an institution or entity or individual who wears that label.

So that's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is simply that libertarianism has become corrupted in its formulations over the years in an internal sense.

So those who have described themselves as libertarians have internal debates about what it means.

And of course, and this makes complete sense to us, the one that gets the most traction is the one that appeals the most to the general sentiment.

So if the greater masses are going to refer to homosexuality or the various transgenderism and all the other social progressive movements out there, and they're going to identify libertarianism with those, well, those that descend from that definition of libertarianism are not going to get as much traction.

And we see this all the time in Christian circles as well. Those who define Christianity in a more liberal, less biblically centered way are going to gain traction because it's logical that traction is gained by appealing to common and general sentiment.

And so that's the second thing I would say about libertarianism as it is confused because most people look at, well, how are the masses defining it?

Well, if you know anything about me, I don't much care for how the masses define things.

I get to the root of the matter a lot of the time. My general tendency is to dissent from the greater populace and what they think about things, whether that's socially, religiously, philosophically, or when it comes to political theory.

Now, when I was a little kid, I became fascinated with the study of dinosaurs and fossils.

So therefore, I knew that a paleontologist referred to something that was very old, ancient, and so on.

So what does that mean in regard to paleo -libertarianism? How are you different, and how is that stream of thought, that ideology, different than what is commonly known as libertarianism today?

Well, yeah. So let me define libertarianism in a positive sense. So let me do that, and then

I can articulate what we're trying to communicate when we use that paleo.

So libertarianism, I think the best way to define it is it's a legal theory that has political ramifications, but it's a legal theory which at its most basic and fundamental root, it holds that no man is allowed to initiate aggression or threaten to initiate aggression against the property of any other human being, and if he does so, then he is acting in a criminal way.

So when we think back to the classical liberals or the writers of the Declaration of Independence, things like that, we always hear this phrase that man has a right to his life, liberty, and property.

Well, what the libertarian does is they take that to its logical conclusion, they get into the weeds and get their hands dirty, and they define things like what is a right, and what is property, and what is life, and things like that.

And what they come up with is that what we mean when we say that man has a right to his property is that if anybody aggresses against that individual or his property, then he has violated that man's right.

And so libertarianism is the theory that holds nobody's allowed to do that. You're not allowed to initiate aggression or threaten to initiate aggression.

So it's fundamentally a legal theory. And then what the libertarian does is he applies it not only to the general citizens, but also to the government itself.

So if a citizen isn't allowed to come along and expropriate a certain amount of money from you in order that he may pay for the health care of his friends, well, neither is the government allowed to come to an individual and threaten to, you know, aggress against his body unless that person hands over the money so that the government can pay for the health care of some constituency.

So what the libertarian does is he has an ethical principle that he applies to everybody and says to himself, okay, the government is also made up of people.

Why should the government be exempt from the moral law or the

Ten Commandments, one commandment of which is thou shall not steal? So that's what the libertarianism is in a nutshell.

So how is that distinct, or what are we trying to communicate when we say paleo -libertarianism?

Well, I want to keep this, you know, short, but this refers to the history of the movement.

In the, you know, late 80s, or actually I should say early 80s, probably early to mid -90s, libertarianism was gaining popularity and a lot of people were misconstruing libertarianism not as a legal theory which talks about aggression, but rather as a way of living your life in a way that you can do whatever you want, think whatever you want, there's no consequences, there's no reference to morality or anything like that.

So they kind of misconstrued the theory. And what the libertarians, the paleo -libertarians at that time, what they did was they said, no, no, no, we can't do that.

We need to distinguish our own theory, a legal theory, from, you know, lifestyle libertarianism, or sometimes, you know, libertinism might be what people refer to it as.

So paleo -libertarianism said, we're going to go back to the roots of what libertarianism is and focus only on those propositions having to do with aggression.

That means that libertarianism can be, work with the social conservatives.

We can, as libertarians, or, you know, libertarians are allowed to praise the effort of the church.

We're allowed to be religious. We're allowed to appreciate natural hierarchies and, you know, things like teachers and parents and the natural authorities in our life.

All these things were opposed by the libertines or the social libertarians, or, you know, the new libertarians that all they cared about was upending the social order, and they were very anti -conservative.

Well, the paleos, they wanted to say, no, we're going to define libertarianism in a very strict way.

We're comfortable with strategically partnering with social conservatives. We have nothing against the church as an establishment, as a social good.

Things like that. So paleos, you know, you can think of them in two senses, going back to the root of libertarianism and being okay with social conservatives.

Now, some paleo -libertarians are not social conservatives, but they're not against social conservatives, and some paleo -libertarians, such as myself and most of the other ones, are positively in favor of social conservatives and traditional values.

Now, I know this is before your time, but I'm sure that you must have heard along your studies something about Barry Goldwater, who would have been, in the 1960s, a presidential candidate, and he is very often identified as a conservative libertarian.

Would you think that that is an accurate label of him, and why would you only go back as far as the 1980s in regard to paleo -libertarianism?

Well, paleo -libertarianism is an empirical historical phenomenon, and that's when the label was created.

It was created by a set of people. It was created by Murray Rothbard and Lou Rockwell.

Those are the ones that came up with the name. And they actually created that name based on a distinction in conservative circles by a professor named

Paul Gottfried. And what Paul Gottfried did is he said, okay, there's all these new politicians and think tanks and lobbyists that are coming out calling themselves conservatives, but we need to distinguish between this new conservatism and the old school conservatism of the 1920s and 30s.

So what he did was he said, okay, there's the neoconservative and the paleoconservative. So what

Lou Rockwell and Murray Rothbard did is they said, okay, well, in the same way that Paul Gottfried is doing this, we're also going to make the same distinction for libertarians.

Now, regarding Barry Goldwater, I think it's safest to say that he is libertarian -leaning.

I wouldn't call him a libertarian. And actually, in a history of American conservatism in the 20th century, he was actually part of what

Murray Rothbard called the new right, the post -World War II right, and the right that was distinct from what he calls the old right of Robert Taft and Albert J.

Knock and some of the journalists that opposed the FDR's New Deal and U .S.

entry into World War II. So Barry Goldwater was part of the new right, which is distinct from the old right.

And World War II is that dividing line on a time scale. So going back to the contrast between paleo -libertarianism and just modern libertarianism, which just typically goes by the title libertarian, like Gary Johnson, who is running for president of the

United States, would this be primarily a matter of social and moral values that would be the dividing line, or is it something more?

Does it even go beyond that into the military or even economic policies?

What would be the contrast there other than the moral and social values? Yeah, that's a really good question.

And this is something that I actually attempted to take on in a recent essay of mine. There's various factors that you can see.

Things like definitions are somewhat objective. You could define things however you want.

But the thing that I've come up with is, not only is there these cultural differences, there's also two other primary facets of paleoconservatism that would make them distinct from what you might call neolibertarianism.

Two of them include the whole localism versus nationalism in a non -accusatory sense of the word.

By nationalism, I don't mean fascism or something like that. I just mean as distinct from localism.

The paleolibertarians, they really want to focus on community -orientedness, local politics, the influence that the church has on the immediate neighborhoods around them, things like that.

Whereas I've noticed that the neolibertarians, all they care about is implementing what they consider as libertarianism, which in some ways and on some issues is much more libertine.

They're focusing on changing policy from Washington. So a good example of this would be the gay marriage debate.

The paleolibertarian would not praise the federal government issuing a mandate redefining marriage at a national level.

But the neolibertarians, they do praise that because they think that it's progress toward a more, according to their definition, social, free world where people can get married according to whatever definition they want.

The paleolibertarians, they don't praise any nationalization of the definition.

They want things to be local, small, sort of that old agrarian type tendency that you get among old -fashioned conservatives.

So that would be one issue is the nationalist, localist distinction. Another one that I found too, just in thinking about these things, is that the neolibertarians tend to frame their defense of libertarianism in terms of its utility, how much it helps society flourish and prosper.

Whereas the paleolibertarian, which agrees that a free world is going to be more prosperous, their entire defense of libertarianism is actually on ethical grounds.

So they say it is against the moral code, and some paleolibertarians are not

Christians, but others are, such as myself, who define the moral code according to the Ten Commandments. And we define libertarianism as the most ethical legal system because a lot of these criminal actions that libertarians would consider as criminal are actually outlawed by our ethical standard itself.

So those are three areas that I think are some important distinctions. Yeah, excellent. We're going to go to a break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of their own, we already have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

But if you'd like to join them with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And as I said earlier, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable. But don't go away.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the first 90 minutes of the program is

CJ Engel, founder and editor of reformedlibertarian .com,

host of the Reformed Libertarian Facebook page, registered financial advisor in Northern California, and a self -defined or self -described paleo -libertarian.

And he is addressing a Christian libertarian economist's answers to can we rescue the economy of the

United States of America. We're also talking about libertarianism in general and contrasting it with paleo -libertarianism.

And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Before I go to some of our listeners who have questions,

I just wanted to ask you about a couple of things in regard to some things you were mentioning before the break.

You were giving an example of a contrast between someone like Gary Johnson and the

Libertarian Party and a paleo -libertarian's understanding of marriage and how the modern libertarians like Johnson seem to be very joyful over the federal government's redefining of what marriage is, opening up the gates to homosexuals to participate in legally recognized same -sex marriages, which obviously will eventually lead to all different kinds of marriages, like a return of polygamy perhaps.

I can't imagine how that would not eventually become legal again in this nation and other types of even more disturbing marital relationships.

And you were saying that one of the contrasts is between federal or local.

Would this be a similar issue to federal and state rights contrast?

Yes. So that was just an example on emphasis.

I call them the national libertarians. And again, I'm not creating them out to be nationalists in what we would consider an accusatory sense.

But just as a matter of, and a lot of them would admit this too, what they care about is the most central government can have the most impact on the most amount of people, and so they want that government, be it the national government or even via the internet, an international government.

They focus on what can those governments do to make things better for whatever definition of liberty they're employing, which might include things like a so -called legalization of gay marriage.

But the paleo -libertarian or just the old -school libertarian, their focus is on the fact that local governments are safer.

When you take things to a national or international level and you focus on policymaking in those arenas, you invite big brother or big government in in so many other areas, in the economy, in social engineering, in education, in various other bureaucracies.

What the paleo -libertarian realizes is that taking things at a much broader level is going to be dangerous in the long run to individual and local sovereignty.

I think that there's a lot to be said about these distinctions, the fact that the localists and the secessionists, the nullification advocates, those that are willing to say no to federal government overreach, all of that comes from conservative circles, at least in our time in the

United States context. So the paleo -libertarian appreciates more localist movements and more emphasis on local politics and communities than they do new policies at the international or national level.

A friend of mine, I don't know if you're familiar with William Norman Grigg, but William Norman Grigg at one time was the editor for the

New American magazine. He describes himself as a Christian constitutionalist libertarian and he, during a discussion years ago as my guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, was saying that he is not in favor of same -sex marriage, but he does not believe the government has any place being involved in our marriages.

Now, I can have some sympathy with that, but I don't know how that would protect spouses from bigamists and things like that if the government was completely removed from a marital issue.

But beyond that, if you want to just put that aside, if we were to agree with that understanding, what

I don't understand about somebody like Gary Johnson and modern libertarians who are in favor of same -sex marriage is that it is enforcing legally the recognition of same -sex marriage as a marriage when there are citizens of this country, perhaps even the majority, who reject that notion and, because of cherished religious beliefs, view that as something that's an abomination and evil and wicked.

And it's one thing if your neighbor chooses to have some kind of ceremony with his same -sex partner or her same -sex partner that is called a marriage.

It's one thing if that happens. But when we who are Christians are forced to view that legally as a marriage and it involves our own lives in some way, especially if it involves perhaps our livelihoods and whatever kind of a business that we may have, that seems to be the opposite understanding to me of a libertarian, that they would want the government to legally declare something as binding, such as a same -sex marriage.

I don't know if I'm making sense to you, but if you could comment on that, best as you can. I wrote a little blog post,

I think it was last year in the fall, and people can find it by searching propaganda phraseology, gay marriage legalization.

And what I pointed out in this short post is that the whole idea of marriage legalization or gay marriage legalization is actually propaganda language.

Because two people coming together, having a ceremony, calling it whatever they want, is not illegal. People can do that.

You can go right now down to some pond or some park and you can do this thing and you can call it a marriage.

There's nothing illegal about that. What's happening is it's just not licensable right now.

So there's this push in liberal circles and in some neolibertarian circles to make it licensable.

But as a paleolibertarian, or I would call a true libertarian, there's no right to have a license.

There's no natural right that we have to go to the government and demand that they give us a marriage license, whether that's for gay marriage or even traditional biblical marriage.

I can't go down and demand that the government give me a license or my fiancé and I right now.

There's no right that we have to do that. And so the whole movement, it's just a cultural,

I would call it part of a cultural war, getting the masses to change their language and focusing on politics.

But it might even be called a sham. It's just all this fake movement that doesn't actually matter because there's nothing illegal about people doing things and in this area calling it what they want.

So that would be my comment on that. Now, I don't know if you are familiar with my friend, William Norman Grigg.

Oh yes, he's a wonderful journalist. Okay. Do you agree with his position that the government should have no involvement in marriages to begin with?

I do agree. Yeah, that would be the libertarian position. But let me clarify something on this.

There's no will for the government to verify that two people are married.

So that would be the libertarian position. I think there's a complete, it's completely a legitimate marriage if two people come together without the government.

And in history past when two people came together and there was no government present, I believe that those people were legally married in the eyes of God.

I don't think a government is needed in the equation of marriage. However, if there is some sort of contest or arbitration needed on property, if there is some sort of dispute when it comes to those types of things, well that's the role of the agency in society that has the ability to arbitrate between conflicts in that way.

And so there's a debate whether marriage belongs to the public square or whether it belongs to the church.

And the church has not been given the right to oversee marriage. That would be the Catholic view. The Calvinist view is that marriage is a covenant.

And it's a covenant between a man, his wife, and God. The church has nothing to do with it.

So the only role that the government would have is in a property -related dispute or arbitration.

That's where the government would come in and try to resolve those things. But when it comes to the definition of marriage itself, there's no need for the government to define it or verify it or license it or anything like that.

Now you would not think that the government should be able to ever step in to press charges and perhaps even arrest and fine or imprison a bigamist who, behind his wife's back, had a secret marriage and a secret family and that type of a thing.

I think those types of things, this gets into the libertarian theory of contracts.

And I wrote a lot of articles on this, and if anyone's listening and they want to write this down and look it up, I wrote, Should Adultery Be Legal?

A Libertarian View. And so this comes right into the very same thing about whether there's a government role in preventing adultery or giving consequence to an adulterous partner in a relationship.

And you might find interest in reading this yourself, Chris. But the conclusion that I come to is I don't see a natural need for the government to prevent this type of thing.

If there's any property involved and there's any breach of contract, then the government would have to come in and enforce that.

But no, if a man has a secret marriage and he does something like that, that can be resolved between those three individuals, some witnesses, parts of the community, and that needs to be resolved in a peaceful manner.

But there's no need for the government to come in and use force because that's the only tool that the government has. That's the only role that they would play if they were to play anything is to exercise force.

Everything else beyond force can be handled without the government. So if you can think of a situation in which force is needed, then, yes, you could make a case for the government being involved there.

But I think most of those issues that you just mentioned in adultery itself, and I have a carefully reasoned essay up that would be of interest to anyone listening, but those things that don't require force

I don't think require the government but actually require friends, family, Christians to come around and guide these two individuals in a case like this.

Okay, let's go to some of our listeners. This is the first time in quite a while that we have had a listener submit a question from Germany, but we have a listener in Heidelberg, Germany, and I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name, but it's

Amani, A -M -A -N -I. Amani from Heidelberg writes, with so many questions about the non -libertarian views of Gary Johnson, what are your views of Darrell Castle, not the

Constitution Party? I guess he's asking you to contrast Darrell Castle between him as a person and the party he's running under.

I'm not really sure why he worded it that way. Also, I find it interesting that he identified

Gary Johnson as a non -libertarian, but if you could answer as best you can the question.

Unfortunately, I haven't taken much time to dig into his positions on things, but from what

I've read about him… You mean Darrell Castle or Gary Johnson? Well, yes, Castle. From what

I've read about him, he seems like a great guy, and it seems to me, and this might sound controversial, but he said it too, he's more libertarian than the libertarian candidate.

So I think he's a great guy. Murray Rothbard, who's one of the premier or preeminent libertarian theorists in the libertarian movement, he once noted the fact that, and I think

Christians can really appreciate this, he judges self -labeled libertarians far more harshly and rigorously than he would a non -libertarian or someone who calls himself a constitutionalist.

For the non -libertarian, the whole focus of a libertarian appreciation for someone like that would be, is he going to increase or decrease the road to liberty?

And I think Darrell Castle is someone who wants to uphold the Constitution, which is a much more, it's a huge restraint on government gone wild as it has today.

And so I appreciate that about Castle, and I do think that his tendencies are in the right direction, and unfortunately

I haven't studied him as much as I should have. But the other part of that is we need to judge libertarians or self -labeled libertarians much more harshly because they're the ones that are representing or claiming to represent our theory, our political ideology.

And so when you have someone like Darrell Castle, who's a constitutionalist, and Gary Johnson, who proclaims himself as a libertarian, we need to look for things to praise in Castle and point those out, and point out the various ways in which he is better than the

Republicans and the Democrats. But if you have someone like Gary Johnson, who has a whole bunch of, you know, a whole series of things that can be said against him in contradictions with a libertarian ideology, we need to be all over that because those are the things that people are interpreting as libertarian.

And a good analogy of this is Christianity. There are certain people who wear the label of Christian, or even wear the label of Reformed, and yet they dissent in some very serious areas from Reformed or Christian theology.

And those people need to be, you know, rigorously accused as being wolves in sheep's clothing.

Why? Because people interpret those things as Christianity, and it's very misleading. So I think the same thing can be said about libertarians.

If there's someone that's claiming to be a libertarian like Gary Johnson, and, you know, the whole bunch of things that can be said against him,

I think we need to be vocal about those things. So do you agree with Daryl Castle's assessment of himself that he is more libertarian than Gary Johnson is?

Well, like I said, I don't have the knowledge to talk about that, but I think in some areas... And, you know, I think what motivated that comment of his was there was a question that was pointed toward Gary Johnson about whether or not a business is allowed to discriminate based on, you know, religious issues or sexual preference.

And Gary Johnson said, no, we shouldn't allow the business to discriminate. Castle's position on that is, yes, the business is allowed to discriminate because the business owner owns that property, and he needs to exclusively decide how those resources are spent.

And so on that issue, Castle is completely accurate to say, I have a more libertarian position on this than Gary Johnson does.

So I think, you know, based on that, from what I've heard, I think a case can be made for it.

Yeah, I mean, from what I understand about libertarianism is that the competition in a free market is really what we should allow to dictate people's choices on how wisely and how stupidly they run their businesses.

We shouldn't have the government enforcing a restaurant to serve everyone if they don't want to.

And if they become notorious for being racists or some strange thing that they're doing, then let them go out of business because of it.

But am I right in the way that I'm describing this? Exactly. And see, that really comes down to the meaning of libertarianism as I defined it in our first couple of minutes.

Should the government have the right to aggress against the business owner and force him against his will to serve a customer that the government deems worthy of being served?

And the libertarian answer is no. Now, maybe that business owner is doing it because he hates black people or he hates gays or he hates people that are left -handed or whatever stupid reason that you could give.

It doesn't matter because the business owner has the prerogative to serve who he thinks is best.

Now, on a moral sense, let's say he's hating this guy because he's Jewish or something. We would say that's a very immoral motivation for not doing it.

However, the libertarian position is even though it's immoral for that man to do it, it's also immoral for us to lobby the state to use force against that man.

Okay. We do have Jeff in Clinton Township, Michigan, who says, what are your guests' thoughts regarding theonomy and reconstructionism and its evident increase in popular discussion?

Now, that's very interesting that he says that, he asks this, because although I am not a theonomist or a reconstructionist,

I do have a number of friends who are both theonomists and reconstructionists.

I know brilliant authors and Christians who I really have gained a lot of insight on different issues that they've written about.

I've interviewed theonomists and reconstructionists, and it's interesting that a number of them that I know personally have always gravitated politically towards libertarianism when there seems to be a polar opposite contrast between the two thoughts.

But I have known theonomists who strongly backed

Ron Paul when he was running for president in the primaries and so on. So that is a reality, that theonomy and reconstruction doesn't seem to be apparently opposed to libertarianism, even though it may, on face value, look like it should.

So if you could respond to Jeff from Clinton Township, Michigan's question about what are your thoughts regarding theonomy and reconstruction.

Yeah, let me start by pointing something out for the record. And I want people to really internalize this, because I think it's very important to having a proper mindset when we approach this thing.

So, theonomy is, a lot of people, especially theonomists and followers of people like Greg Bonson or Gary North, what they'll say is that we can choose to have a theonomic outlook on political theory or a secularist or a paganist outlook on political theory.

There's only two views. There's a theonomic view and a secular view. Now, in that sense, they would say, okay, well if your libertarianism is coming from the moral standard of the

Bible, well then you're a theonomist. And so a lot of people will call people like myself and other Christian libertarians who rest on the foundation of the word as theonomists for merely that reason.

I don't think that's the best definition of theonomy, because as the case proves, it doesn't actually make a distinction between my position and their position.

So I think it's better to define theonomy as the perspective that it is, that governments today, in our

New Covenant context, are morally obligated to enforce the civil laws of Israel, of the

Mosaic Covenant. That would be the best definition of theonomy. And so under that definition, which

I think is more appropriate, and it describes the big three reconstructionists, R .J. Rushdini, Greg Bonson, and Gary North, it describes them in a way that leaves me out of it.

It leaves a lot of people who don't think that governments today are morally obligated to enforce that code.

It makes a distinction that creates an ability for us to actually have a productive conversation.

So once we define it like that, I would say that I don't think that governments today are morally obligated to enforce that code for the very reason that the

New Testament or the New Covenant abolished the old. So this gets into covenant theology, and of course there's people who would dissent from that view because there's two primary views when it comes to covenant theology in the

Reformed world. The first is the paedo -baptist view, that really the

New Covenant is the same covenant as the old, it's just that we have a new administration.

Jesus is the new administrator of this same covenant. But the Reformed -baptist perspective, and my perspective, and the perspective of the authors of the 1689

Confession, and of Congregationalists like John Owen, is that the New Covenant is actually not just the same covenant with a new administrator.

It is actually a different covenant. And since it's a different covenant, we can't morally obligate governments today to enforce what has been passed away.

And as far as J. Gresham Machen, who I opened up the program with a quote by him that you have at the masthead of your

Facebook page, founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Although he predates the label of libertarian, do you know enough about his political views where you could tell whether or not he would have fit into your category of politics?

Yeah, that's a tricky one, because everyone wants to claim Machen, right? Just like everyone would want to claim

Calvin. But yes, from my perspective, my readings of him, and the way I interpret him, I would say that yes,

I think of all of the Reformed thinkers in a major sense of the past,

I think that Machen is absolutely probably one of the closest to our position. There's other ones that are far less known, like one of Ron Paul's legislative aides in the 1970s.

Actually, he had two of them in the 1970s, Ron Paul during his time in Congress. He had

Gary North, who of course was a Reconstructionist, and he also had another individual by the name of John Robin.

And John Robin is a follower. It's a funny dynamic, because this is kind of internal baseball here, so I hope

I don't bore the audience, but Ron Paul had Gary North, who was a follower of Cornelius Van Til, who of course was very influential on the father of Christian Reconstructionism in the

United States, namely R .J. West, but you had Gary North, who's following in that line, and then you have

Gary North's archnemesis, John Robin. Yeah, with the Trinity Foundation. Yes, and he was a disciple of Gordon Clark, who was

Van Til's archnemesis. So it's a really funny dynamic that Ron Paul had these two legislative aides that kind of led his head.

I know I read an article by Gary North once, in which he said they sat at opposite ends of the office, and they would look over from each other's cubicles and not really speak much to each other.

But it's funny. So besides people like John Robin's lesser -known people, I would say that Machen is probably one of the closest reform thinkers to our position, yes.

And the reason I wouldn't call him a pure libertarian is just to be fair, and because he wasn't around when it was more specifically formulated in later years, after his time.

And John Robbins just went home to be with the Lord, I would say, I don't know, two years ago? I can't remember exactly.

I'm sorry? 2008. Oh, okay. But, yeah, he was quite a controversial figure.

Yes, he was. I did benefit from some of the things they published, though, because they published some of the things they produced.

The Trinity Foundation were from the 19th century, and some of the stuff was very good that they brought back into print.

But we are going to our break right now, and we are, believe me, we're going to get to the actual issue of economics that was supposed to be our main theme, but we needed to really thoroughly explain,

I think, from our guest's own mouth a definition of terms here, and hopefully we will be able to adequately address the economic issue.

Can the United States of America be rescued from our economic disaster that we are in?

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And, in fact, why don't we, before we go to the break,

I'll read you a question from a listener in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, and you can have time to reflect and answer when we come back.

Tyler from Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, he writes,

I have to enlarge his question because I'm going blind, and the typeface on this is very small.

Let's see here. Tyler from Mastic Beach, Long Island, says, Is the reason why our country is in such a mess because of the relinquishing of power slowly over the federal government in which does not honor

Christ? And perhaps you can think about that when we're going to our break now, and we'll get your answer when we return.

If anybody else would like to join us, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with C .J. Engel in Christian Libertarianism. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the first 90 minutes of the program with about a half hour to go is

CJ Engel. And he is a paleo libertarian.

And he is discussing how the United States can be rescued from its economic crisis.

He is a founder and editor of reformedlibertarian .com, host of the Reformed Libertarian Facebook page, registered financial advisor from Northern California.

And as I said, he is a paleo libertarian. And he's also a Reformed Baptist, just like yours truly, adherent to the 1689

London Baptist Confession. But I'm sure that there are a lot of Reformed Baptists who are vehemently opposed to Christian libertarianism or libertarianism of any other description.

And it may be that many of them just aren't understanding it correctly. But we just heard before that someone who,

Reformed Baptists have a great deal of respect for, Al Mohler, president of the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, seems to have a lot of objections to libertarianism.

But according to our guest, it's because he's judging the ideology of libertarianism by the

Libertarian Party, which is quite socially and morally repugnant in its views that have a lot of opposition to what the scriptures mandate.

And I happen to have a lot of respect for Dr. Mohler and have had him on this program and look forward to having him back.

But perhaps we could have him have a conversation with a Christian libertarian at some point so we can make sure that all things are properly defined and that there is a mutual understanding of what's being said here.

We are going to be discussing specifically the economic views of our guest in a moment and how he thinks that perhaps

America can be rescued from devastation that we are surely heading for if we're not already in it.

But before we go to that issue, as you may recall, CJ Tyler from Atlantic Beach, Long Island, New York, asked, is the reason why our country is in such a mess because of the relinquishing of power slowly over to the federal government,

I think is what he meant to say, which does not honor Christ. CJ?

The way I would approach that is my basic answer is yes, and then we have to define what honoring

Christ means. I think one of the problems that especially American Christians have is they think that it is honorable to Christ to elect a president into office who is very good at speaking in biblical terms and knows the right phrases to use and all of that thing.

And a lot of people consider this the Christian candidate. The problem is that God works through means.

He works through secondary causes. And so if you have someone who can repeat the scripture that has memorized everything about it and yet say he implements a socialist economy on the basis of his

Christianity, well, that's not honorable to Christ, now is it? So I think the answer to his question is yes, but we have to look at what it means and how an economy grows and how

God has structured an economy to grow and what happens if you disobey that or contradict it via government intervention to the economy.

So the honorable thing to do is not necessarily to invite someone onto the scene who knows the scripture and yet contradicts it in his government policies.

So I think that's really important to emphasize because a lot of times people get swept up in the catchphrases that candidates use or the narratives that they use about us being this great

Christian nation, but if they're not going to let the economy be free and let capitalism work, then it doesn't matter how much they quote scripture, it's still going to fail.

A good example of this would be in the Puritan era at the very beginning in the 1600s and Gary North actually has a very good essay on this and I think, don't quote me on this, but I think it may have been part of his dissertation or something important that he did during his college career, but he observed the fact that their socialism failed and the

Puritans had a, for a time, they had a socialist economy and it really caused a lot of starvation. Now, was that honorable to Christ?

Well, these Puritans had very good theology. They had some of the most appreciative theology in the history of the development of theological thought and yet because they implemented a type of economy that wasn't consistent with the way

God made human beings, that failed and it caused a lot of problems and it took a lot of time for those communities to recover from that experiment.

So the answer to Tyler's question is yes, but then we need to look at how has

God set up society to grow? You know, can the government create prosperity by fiat?

And since the government is doing that now, why isn't that working? So, my answer is yes, that not honoring

God is one of the chief problems that we're having today, but as individual human beings who are able to, you know, rational, you know, use reasons to investigate these matters,

I think we can also pull back the curtains and look at other reasons and what it means for us to not honor

God when it comes to economics. Okay, well, you and your website, or on your website, describe yourself as a subscriptionist to the

Austrian school of economic theory, if you could explain exactly what that means.

Yes, let me start by saying this, so the distinction between Austrian economics and libertarianism, and a lot of times people confuse these two and think they're the same things or don't realize what the difference is, but I think one of the most important differences is the fact that Austrian economics is descriptive, it describes what are the consequences of intervening into the economy.

If an individual human being is going to desire this or want to do this with his business, and the government implements price controls, what's going to happen?

So it's very descriptive, it doesn't say it's bad for the government to do that, it just said if this, then that.

Contrary to this, libertarianism is an ethical system, which means it's prescriptive. It says the government is bad, or it is acting in a moral and immoral fashion when it intervenes in the economy.

So there's a difference between Austrian economics and libertarianism, and a lot of people don't understand that, but they should.

So what is Austrian economics? Austrian economics is a school of thought, and its origin is in Vienna.

Karl Menger was the founder of the Austrian school in the late 19th century, and its claim to fame is that it does not analyze things according to models, according to empirical observation like most modern economics does.

Rather, it looks at things in a deductive sense. It looks at acting man as an individual rational human being who is pursuing his desires.

He knows what he wants, and he finds himself in a world of scarce resources, and he has to figure out and economize the things around him and employ these things to achieve his desire.

So for instance, I have $5, and I want to buy a sandwich, and I also want to buy a hamburger.

Well, this $5 is only going to get me so far, so I have to decide, I have to make a decision on which of these goods is going to satisfy my desire.

It has a better chance of satisfying my desire, and on that principle, I act.

I make my decision. So that's how all human beings are. Everything they do, whether they get out of bed in the morning, get off the couch and get outside, get out of the way of the television or the computer screen, everything we do is based on action.

And Austrian economics focuses its study on the individual itself, and that's why they refer to it as methodological individualism.

And we can compare Austrian economics to mainstream economics by the fact that mainstream economists use very fancy equations and models and all kinds of data, and they try to heal or fix or run or generate economic prosperity.

So Austrian economics is very unique in the sense that it analyzes human action and comes to economic law based on deductive reasoning instead of empirical observation.

Now, a lot of not only libertarians that I am familiar with, but even some more traditional conservatives would say that the neocons, the neoconservatives are fiscally very close in many ways to the liberal democrats and even socialists, and that they are really, both parties are really driving and have driven this country into levels of debt that are insane, that in some way enslave us to the whims of foreign nations and that neither party really has a fiscally responsible way of dealing with the

United States government and basically has got us close to another depression.

What is your view as a paleo -libertarian in regard to what is wrong with government spending on both sides of the aisle and how can it be remedied?

The problem with government spending is what it's doing is it's sucking up resources, scarce resources, right?

We live in a world where there's only so many goods that can be employed to satisfy an individual's desires.

So what happens when there is no government spending whatsoever, that's how we first analyze the way the economy works, is individuals are using goods for the ends that satisfy their desires, they can trade with each other and things like that.

What happens when the government gets involved in this and a lot of times there's this surface -level criticism that looks at the fact that our children and our children's children are going to have to repay this debt.

Now that's a good criticism, but it doesn't get to the root of the matter. The root of the matter is the fact that what's happening is they're actually sucking up our capital, they're sucking up our future prosperity by spending it today.

Government doesn't invest in a way that comports with the desires of the individuals and yet what we call prosperity is how well an economy can satisfy the desires of individuals.

That's what we call prosperity. So what happens when a government spends scarce resources is that it uses them in a way that individuals would not have used them.

At its very basic level, when the Democrats and the Republicans spend to the tune of trillions of dollars, what they're doing is they're spending trillions of dollars of resources in ways that are at contradiction with the way they would have been used in a free market.

One of the things that I have heard even very conservative Christian libertarians say is that government spending is out of control even regarding the military.

One of the things that has me concerned about libertarianism in general, one of the reasons perhaps

I haven't made the full plunge into it, I have libertarian leanings as I'm learning about these issues, but I would not fully identify myself as any kind of libertarianism yet.

I'm not saying that I'm certain that I never will do that, but one of the things that keeps this nation

I believe safe is the fact that the world knows that if we needed to we could annihilate the entire population of the world many times over and that looming threat is what keeps us safe.

I'm not saying that we're going to do that or should do that, I'm just saying that the looming threat is like a home where every member of the household is a trained marksman and it is known in the neighborhood that there is a lot of ammunition and a lot of weaponry in that home with people ready and willing and able to use it there's very little likelihood that there's going to be somebody climbing through the window to steal a television or do bodily harm to anybody in that house.

Now that's basically on a broader scale what I'm talking about regarding national security and yet you may be one of those voices that say that the spending on military is out of control.

What is your view on that? Well yeah, my perspective is absolutely that the spending is out of control and the way

I would answer this to you and to my former self and to many others who come from the conservative background is the fact that this really is not just a libertarian issue per se because if you look at one of the flagship publications of the so -called paleoconservative world which is called the

American Conservative theamericonservative .com and it was started by Pat Buchanan who was really one of the most popular members of the paleoconservative movement in the early 1990s those conservatives some of the journalists you can find over there are conservative ex -members of the

CIA people like Phil Giraldi publishes over there, Daniel Harrison is one of their best foreign policy commentators, but these are conservatives these individuals wouldn't identify as libertarian and what they always point out is that if the question is should the government cut back on its spending, then we need to realize that it actually has the capability of destroying the entire planet like 200 times over so if your view is what keeps us safe is that ability is other countries knowing that the

United States government has the ability to do that, then do we really need to do it 200 times over, and if we cut back that capability to destroying the planet only 100 times over that would save us a considerable amount of money and scarce resources, which is the true root of the problem, and you would still be able to say that our military can threaten the entire world in case that needs to be done and that's only cutting it back to 100 times over and I would argue that you should cut it back as far as possible because it's unnecessary to all you need to do is threaten the world one time over and you're safe, that's your standard of safeness then you don't need 200, you don't need 100, you don't need 50 or 25 you only need one time over is all you need to make yourself known in that way so that's the first thing

I would say but the second thing I would say too is since we already have all of those resources that have been spent in that way do we really need to up our spending every year to not stop at 200, to go to 500 times over and to build all of these new equipment why do we need state of the art destroy the world technology when we already have stuff that's been created so I think if your simple question is can we cut on spending and still be safe the answer is unequivocal and without a doubt yes!

Now could not the military still take very good care of its soldiers and make sure that those who have boots on the ground in various places who are actually face to face with the enemy that they are as protected as possible with state of the art equipment and that they are taken care of after the fact when they are sacrifice limbs and eyesight and hearing and all kinds of things for their country couldn't we still do that and even spend more on those specific things if other things that the government is wasting money on were to cease if the government was to stop the billions and trillions of dollars that are being spent in other insane and nonsensical ways couldn't the government still very well take care of the government and the military's needs take care of the military's needs

I'm sorry You know I think the way that you can accomplish the safety of our troops in a much better and more efficient manner is to pull them out of areas where they are not needed immediately

I mean we have 180 bases around the world places that you wouldn't even begin to imagine and those you know

I'd say 85 -90 % of those places aren't considered actual threat one of the more obvious places is in the

South China Sea and we're having these conflicts over these islands that are over there but there's no threat to the

United States national security and this is something that's been emphasized time and again on conservative outlets like the

American conservative and people like Phil Giraldi XCIA type people they offer no threat to the

United States national security so I think that if you want to protect the safety of the troops the first thing you need to do is pull them out of those locations and get them out of harm's way because there's no purpose in them being there and they recognize this a lot of the troops were for Ron Paul not because Ron Paul hated the troops or hated the military

I think but because his perspective on all this was well let's be a lot more cautious we're conservatives let's be more wary and hesitant about the way that we use our human labor and human capital in this dangerous function so the first thing we can do is to pull that out and cut the military budget by leaps and bounds and you'd still have the ability to keep them safe and all that so that's what

I would focus on I think it's very dangerous to expect the government to cut one area and apply it in an efficient way in another area

I think if we cut one area we need to get those resources back to the people as quickly as possible

I think that's the more realistic way of cutting government Now there seems to be a lot of libertarians who are against strictly guarded borders of the

United States what's your view on that? I think the border question can come down to two different types of questions the one question is whether theoretically or actually practically there should be borders or whether there should be zero borders at all that's a question of theory and borders the other question is whether there's actually a viable military threat at the borders so I don't see any military threat at the borders whatsoever but I do think on theory there's nothing un -libertarian about the existence of a border by virtue of the fact that people that are on the other side don't have a natural right to go onto property that is not their own

I think this is a very hotly contested issue in libertarian theory whether or not borders by the government are libertarian or not

I come down on the side that yes they can be libertarian by virtue of the fact that nobody has a right to go on property that is not their own to answer your question no

I don't see any military threat or anything but I do see the government subsidizing it would be subsidizing immigrants paying them to come across the border into property that is not their own and I think that's sort of a form of forced integration and it's actually antithetical to the libertarian perspective now obviously though you don't see a military threat at our borders now but if there was virtually no guarding or protection of our borders there certainly would be eventually and there are those who believe that there have been

Muslims with less than honorable motivations coming across the borders and so on obviously there obviously are dangerous people who have committed heinous crimes who have come across the borders and so on so there are obviously some of the families who have had their children murdered by illegal aliens coming over the border and so on might take objection to a lax border position well see my perspective on that is those things need to be handled in the same way as any other crime would be handled they need to be responded to in a specific small and local way and there's no need to nationalize the problem

I think that invites aggression invites conflict at an international level and I think things like criminality are much better more efficient and more safely handled on an individual and local level instead of acting in a broad general and preemptive sense of stopping all crime

I think we need to respond to crime as it comes to us and not at a national level I think the government has a tendency to abuse those types of powers when given it

I think you can find examples of that all throughout the 20th century especially it was the era of statism when the state was seen as the great protector not just of the area for which its jurisdiction was historically founded but over the entire world the state wants to control under the banner of safety and I think this is a perfect opportunity to employ the words of Machen when he talks about the fact that we live under a specter of statism in which safety is more important than liberty and I think yes there is dangers in living in a situation or context of pure liberty but it's far more safer to live under those threats than it is to live under the threat of an almighty state and I think that when you nationalize the problem you invite more conflict you lead to economic disasters and you also lead to realities like the police state and things of that nature as well

I think a lot of the conflicts between the state, the police forces and the people today comes directly from the fact that there's too many unnecessary lives, there's too much economic poverty that's coming about because of the government's intrusion into a state of scarce resources and I think when we the more we trust on the state to handle our problems the more the problems arise and are in a growth trend.

Well if you could just summarize and wrap up what you most want etched on our listeners hearts and minds before they leave this broadcast and just so our listeners know we have

Mike Gaydosh from Solid Ground Christian Books joining us for the last half hour of the program CJ had to leave earlier than expected today but if you could summarize what you most want to leave our listeners with in about two minutes time.

I think the most important thing for me is always draw a distinction between a theory itself and the most popular advocates of a theory

I think as Christians we should be especially in tune with the dangers of confusing theory with its most popular advocates who the masses like to follow we shouldn't be falling into that trap and I'd say that libertarianism has been massively confused and that's not always the fault of the confused like I said before but go to my site

I'm a stickler for definition I'm a stickler for getting things very precise and that's one of the things that I like to focus on I think people should know about libertarianism is that it's chiefly a legal theory based on a preceding ethical theory that has ramifications for our political theory and I think when you think of libertarianism like that you realize that it defines liberty in terms of justice and the right to life liberty and property and I think it's the most ethical and it's the most encouraging of a prosperous society as well.

And I think that I should have you make it clear where you made part company from Gary Johnson and the

Libertarian Party you are strongly pro -life and believe that unborn children need to be protected from murderers don't you?

Absolutely, I think of it as a very simple syllogism murder is defined as the taking of one's life in an unjust way, an unborn child is living therefore to take his life is murder and there's nothing more complicated to it than that I think that's entirely consistent with our ethical principles and the principles of libertarianism.

Well I thank you so much for being our guest today CJ Engel I look forward to having you back on the program at some point and I want to let our listeners know that the website you can go to to find out more about CJ Engel and reformed libertarianism or paleo -libertarianism is reformedlibertarian .com

reformedlibertarian .com and you can also go to cjengel .com that's the letter

C as in Carl or Charlie J -J -A -Y

Engel, E -N -G -E -L .com Thanks so much

CJ and I hope to have you back as I said some point in the future. I'd be glad to do it again, thanks for having me

Chris. Hey, my pleasure and we'll be getting you a recording of the program at some point today, God willing.

Okay, God bless you, take care. And coming up next, brothers and sisters and ladies and gentlemen is our friend

Mike Gaydosch of Solid Grand Christian Books, one of the sponsors of this broadcast he's going to be letting us know about some exciting new projects that are going to be hot off the press,

God willing, very soon so don't go away, we're going to be right back with Mike Gaydosch of Solid Grand Christian Books.

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Mike Gayosh who is founder and director of Solid Ground Christian Books which can be found on the internet at solid -ground -books .com

solid -ground -books .com and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron my first pastor, my dear friend and sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, Mike Gayosh Well thank you

Chris, can you hear me okay? Oh I can hear you fine. I'm honored to be with you

I know that we don't have too much time but let me share with you a couple of items that are hot, that are coming right hot off the presses the volume that is going to be coming out

Lord willing next week is by a man you've interviewed a few times, Tony Miano Tony has published a book entitled

Cross Encounters A Decade of Gospel Conversations and it is a masterful book with just an incredible amount of material that covers pretty much every aspect of evangelism that you can imagine dealing with street preaching and handing out tracts, going to malls speaking at abortion clinics he has a lot of practical tips in terms of even legal matters

Tony himself was a police officer for 20 years so he has a real knowledge of the law which comes in handy many times because there will be police officers who will come and they won't even really know the law they will be themselves in a specific area and Tony has been able to show them that what they are doing is legal that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing and Tony has just put together this masterful work that is a book that is patterned after the genius of Ichabod Spencer in A Pastor's Sketches you're familiar with that I know one of the men who has worked alongside of Tony in fact there are several men that have worked alongside of Tony and they've all spoken and I've seen

Tony in action he just has a boldness and a compassion for the gospel that is hardly matched in our day there are a few men who are as consistently passionate about getting the gospel out

I'm very excited about the opportunity to be able to get this book out Cross Encounters A Decade Of Gospel Conversation yes he is really trying to transform the entire ministry known as street preaching or street evangelism because he takes it very seriously he does not believe in mavericks and lone wolves who go out there with zero training without a church approving of what they're doing just to stand on a soap box and scream at people he's very strong in believing in the accountability of a street preacher to a local church and their elders and that's one of the reasons why

I'm so excited about the book and about supporting what he's doing he's made enemies along the way and that's okay usually the people who make no enemies are doing nothing and he's obviously stirring waters and I appreciate the boldness with which he goes forward with the gospel

Lance Quinn is a good friend he's now Senior Pastor at Thousand Oaks Bible Church in Thousand Oaks, California he was the assistant for John MacArthur for many years and he knows

Tony very very well this is what he says about the book Tony Miano's book

Cross Encounters is a gripping account of actual conversations between a gospel pleading evangelist and those who desperately need to hear the good news that Jesus saves knowing myself,

Tony personally and about his ministry of open air preaching I'm genuinely thankful for him and others like him who stand boldly on the front lines of the world's hostile unbelief and yet who remain as Christian preachers steadfastly unafraid to lovingly proclaim salvation by faith alone in Christ alone would to God that there were many more like Tony who risk inevitable ridicule for their faith and I'm just very thankful for the opportunity to be able to work with Tony on getting this book out and the goal and the prayer is that it will stimulate a small and growing army of those who will go forward in a variety of ways,

I mean not everybody is called to stand on a street corner and preach, but the opportunity of being able to give out an appropriate gospel tract to a person in a even in a very brief conversation that you may have with them on an airplane or in the mall or wherever you might happen to be

By the way, I just have to give a brief plug to our friends who are running the

G3 conference and I'm so glad I'm thrilled to learn today that you are going to be there as well, manning a booth or a table for Solid Ground Christian Books Yeah, hopefully a lot more than a table

I'm looking, I'm going to try to take over the place I'll be happy to just give me a corner somewhere in the room and I'll be very happy I just want to thank

Pastor Josh Bice for enabling me to go to the conference and to have an exhibitors booth there and I'll be right next to the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals table and they have asked me to help them out as well at their table and I'm just so thankful to the generosity of all folks including some very dear friends and brethren in Christ who have helped to sponsor this program who wanted to make sure that I got down there for all my expenses to be paid to facilitate that and I can never thank all of you folks enough for this

I'm looking forward to, with great anticipation being at the G3 Conference, January 19 -21 in Atlanta, Georgia and some of the speakers include

Paul Washer Stephen J. Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcom Dr. James R. White, Tim Challies Conrad M.

Bayway, there goes a name from the past Pastor Mike, Phil Johnson of Grace to You Ministries and many more,

I mean this is one of the largest lineups for a conference I've ever heard of and most of these speakers have been on my program and I'm going to try to get those that haven't been on the program on very soon prior to the conference and the conference website is g3conference .com

g3conference .com What else do you have that's ready to get off the press? I just today was contacted by a lady who has been working on bringing back some of the old works which of course is something that Solid Ground is best known for her name is

Miller Faree and she has already had published through Banner of Truth, Jewels of John Newton Amazing Grace for Each Day of the

Year and another book called The Heart of Horatius Daily Meditations from the

Writings of Horatius Bonner and she has approached me about publishing, the possibility of publishing two new titles, one is called

Mornings with Macduff and John Ross Macduff, better known as J .R.

Macduff is from Scotland, he was born in 1818 and he was a tremendously gifted man,

Spurgeon said of him, for sound doctrine presented scripturally and devotionally with its application to the

Christian life, you cannot go beyond Macduff and she has worked on this book, it's called again

Mornings with Macduff and in the Providence of God I just heard from her today and just today my son and his wife came home with their little baby

Lily Kate who was born on Sunday morning and Jonathan has been reading

Macduff and has been overwhelmed by a work called The Bow in the

Cloud and he received the copy that he's been reading from his father -in -law and he had asked me about Macduff and I told him,

I said I've known about Macduff for years, I've read his works and I said he's just tremendous, well then just today

I get an email from this dear lady who is looking for somebody to publish this book on Mornings with Macduff my response was immediate, she was blown away, she couldn't believe what

I told her about the fact that here we have my son and I have been just reveling in Macduff's devotional writings and there's just a simplicity, a brevity and a beauty all together in the writings of J .R.

Macduff and you can find his writings available in smaller packages but what this lady has done is put together a full year's readings selected from his devotional writings and I told her without hesitation that I was going to delightedly pick up this project and run with it and then there's a second one that she's also got ready to go which

I'm not as familiar with him though what I've heard about him has been very favorable is James Smith James Smith was actually do you know who

James Smith was? He pastored the New Park Street Church in London from 1841 until 1850 and do you know who followed him?

Charles Adams Spurgeon Smith was a very gifted writer his unpublished autobiography is published on Grace Jem's website and this is a book called

Journeying Through the Seasons with James Smith and so we're working on these two projects and they may be able to be available sometime in September if she's as far along as it looks like she is with these books and they're ready to go to press we could have them out as early as the beginning of September so both of these are devotional works they're works that are solid theologically and they're very warm experientially and what

I'll try to do over these next couple weeks is see if I can pick up a couple of good endorsements and be able to get these books published.

Well it's always good to know that there is a ministry such as yours where you don't have to break out in a sweat when going through the catalog on the website for solid ground

Christian books wondering if something that you're purchasing is going to not only poison your mind or the minds of somebody else because it's such a trustworthy source or resource for the best in Christian literature and it's such a shame that so many of the

Christian book outlets that are available on the internet and even some of the local stores although the local

Christian bookstore is a vanishing breed but it is true though that quite a number of them belong to be out of business or deserve to be out of business because as Hank Anagraph used to appropriately say that most

Christian bookstores should have a sign hanging over the door that says enter at your own risk but I'm just so happy that whenever somebody is asking about a place to find good books

I can immediately two websites come to mind, solid -ground -books .com

solid -ground -books .com and also CVBBS .com our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CVBBS .com

we've worked together for years and years all the way back to the time that Fred Huebner and CVBBS and I'm very thankful that they're still going

I know that they went through a rough time but they've bounced back and they're still alive

I'm getting notes almost daily on Christian bookstores that are closing we just recently had a local

LifeWay bookstore close and it seems like almost every week there's another one closing and so the local bookstores really are becoming fewer and fewer

I know that there is a new bookstore up in the Florence area

Sheffield, Alabama called The Rock and I don't know if you've gotten in touch with them yet but Victor Bracken is running the store there and it's brand new, beautiful store and I'll tell you, you walk in that bookstore

The Rock, it's in Sheffield, Alabama and I'm telling you that place is just loaded they've got all the sermons of Spurgeon they've got the works of Owen and Bunyan and Brooks they've got a ton of solid ground books as well it's one of the best,

I think it's one of the finest bookstores, probably the finest in Alabama Well, I've got to get in touch with the owner of that place

You do, yes, you do and it reminds me of the old Rock on Long Island where Josianne Stone used to own that place and she had the guts to sell things that most other

Christian bookstores stop selling like anything that was critical of Roman Catholicism and all that kind of thing

Josianne was very bold and refused to stop selling things like that even though they were politically incorrect and that went out of business years ago

I remember they used to sell tickets to the great debates that I used to organize with Dr.

George R. White and the Roman Catholic apologists and that was very fond memories

Yes, she was a wonderful, wonderful lady I used to spend a lot of time over there and that's probably one of the places that I was inspired to consider getting more involved in distributing and even publishing

Christian books but it's been now over 25 years since we first did

Thoughts for a Young Man by E .T. Ryle Anything else that's going to be hot off the press,

God willing? Well, with the way things happen around here I mean, if you had asked me this morning

I would have had no more ones but now I've got two, besides the one by Tony Miano I'm not thinking of any at the moment

The one by Ron Gleeson We're still at work on getting

Ron Gleeson's book on the Second Amendment We're hoping to get that published before the Second Amendment is removed

And I was very thankful to God that Iron Sharpens Iron had a role in that book getting published by you

That's right, that's exactly right I'm excited Bill Downing is a pastor in California when

Bill read the book and it wasn't even in its absolutely completed form yet and Bill just said it was the best thing he'd ever read on the

Second Amendment and Bill's a big hunter and committed to the importance of the

Second Amendment That's going to be a very interesting and a very important book especially with the election coming up That's why we're really hoping to get that out within the next several weeks and get that promoted to a point where people will really pay attention to it

One of the things I've noticed over the years is that friends of mine, some of them pastors some of them just your average

Christians who may not even be theologically reformed as you and I are who might not order some specific things that you offer that are specifically addressing the doctrines known as Calvinism or the reformed theology but I know that there are quite a number of Christians who greatly value what you offer on many other topics because of the trustworthiness of the authors that you choose and there are quite a number as you probably know

Arminian pastors who have libraries filled with authors that are theologically reformed or from ages past were theologically reformed and yet they are speaking so biblically and faithfully to the word of God on various issues and many different kinds of issues in the

Christian life that they can't deny that these things are wonderful sources of information.

Especially in the day and age in which we live where there is so much that is not just shallow but is just so blatantly anti -Christian and yet masquerading as being

Christian I think it's important for us to begin to, in some senses we need to draw the circle tighter and closer but in other ways we need to be willing to extend our hands a little bit more to brethren who do stand with us on the most important issues even if their understanding of how it was that they came to be saved is still clouded because we all have we are all clouded in some areas in our minds the question is, is the root of the matter in them?

Do they truly understand that God saves sinners and that they were saved by the grace of God even if they can't fully articulate how that works out, especially in eternity?

Well, I really want our listeners to get an idea in the next two minutes or so of basically how you would describe what you offer there at Solid Ground Christian Books so they know really what they're getting into when they start investigating your website and so on.

I think the thing that is most important in our ministry is that we have sought to carry a wide variety of books that will minister to every age group we have books that are especially geared towards the young children we have books that are written by some of the best

Christian writers who have ever been, who have written books for the children and for young people and for young adults and for young marrieds and all the way up even to The Light at Evening Time which is a book for senior saints and for those who are preparing to enter eternity and so we have books that are more geared towards pastors that are more scholarly we have

Greek commentaries we have just a whole variety of things that will minister to people at pretty much any level any stage of the

Christian life new believers, seasoned believers people who are going through times of coolness perhaps, lukewarmness perhaps and we even have a book called

The Marks of a Backslider by Andrew Fuller and An Assurance of Faith by Louis Berkoff covering a whole variety of subjects and doing so by always pointing people back to the scriptures that is the most important thing scripture alone, faith alone

Christ alone, God's glory alone and grace alone we believe the five solas of the

Reformation the five points of Calvinism and we are very thankful for what you are doing and Iron Sharpens Iron for the stand you take and I know that you get some criticism because of the way some of the people that you interview and you don't interview people always that you agree with but that's the way we grow, is to hear from other sides and being able to have them addressed from the scriptures

Amen, and we're out of time and the website for Solid Ground Christian Books is Solid -Ground -Books .com

Solid -Ground -Books .com I'm looking forward to seeing you this January at the

G3 conference, God willing I thank everybody for listening especially our new listener in Heidelberg, Germany who sent the question in I want you all always to remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater