The American Churchman: Are Christian Nationalists the Woke Right?

Welcome, Travel Updates, and the David Platt Documentary

Welcome once again to the American Churchman podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. The American Churchman podcast is brought to you by TruthScript and it is dedicated to inspiring Christian men to embrace their divine calling.

We explore a range of topics. My co-host is Matthew Pearson. How are you doing Matthew?

I'm doing good, John. And I was gonna ask how you're doing, but you're sounding a little sick. So sorry to hear that, but my environment's also a little bit different. I'm outside in nature right now because my apartment's Wi-Fi is not working, but I'm blessed to have some wonderful friends here who are letting me use their back porch.

Is that because of the hurricane? Nope, nothing to do with hurricane. Our Wi-Fi route is just being stupid and we need to call someone about it. So my roommate and I will probably do something about that soon, but so now I'm here in this lovely environment, so yeah.

Yeah, well, I know you and David did the podcast last week and I appreciate David doing that with you. So you probably already talked about the hurricane, but last time I talked to you, there was a hurricane approaching and it was the second hurricane and you're alive.

So thank God for that.

I'm right here, yes. Was in Tampa for that, so that was a blast. That was fun.

I saw you cleaning up with guys from, I think the old Glory Club chapter that you're in, like chopping up branches and things like that. And that looked, you know, I just remember when blizzards come through, that's the closest approximation for me in New York.

My brothers and I would go around the neighborhood and just see who needed help with getting a tree out of the way or something like that. Yeah, that's really cool though. I took note of that. I was like, that's great that there are people cooperating and helping each other, that neighborliness.

We need to cultivate and keep that. So Altra says, he's back. Our favorite Presby is back. Yeah, you were gonna get more than sprinkled in this shower, but it doesn't seem like it was as bad. What did it go down to, like a category three?

Yeah, it made impact as a category three, which for a while they had been saying that was gonna happen, but there was like the day of it, there was a report that would be a category four, which is pretty terrifying, but it got down to a category three.

Nevertheless, it was still pretty destructive to good parts of town. But funny enough, my parents have a condo in Treasure Island and that got hit harder, but somehow that got hurt harder by Helene than it did Milton, so beats me.

But yeah, hurricanes are weird, but it's part of life living in Florida, growing up in Florida, so it's just how it is, but it's wild.

Yeah, I know. Florida, I found out this years ago, has the most tornadoes per square mile than any other state, which kind of shocked me because I associate tornadoes with Kansas and Alaska and Texas and Oklahoma.

I've never seen one here.

I hope I don't never see one, but we had quite a lot with Milton, so. Oh, I'm sure you did.

Well, anyway, yeah, I am sick. I am gonna be relying on Matthew a little bit here. My mind is foggy. My wife actually had this like two weeks ago, I think. I think it's the same one. And she was just kind of like no energy, headache, couldn't really think.

It's kind of weird. I am stuffed up, but it's like, it seems like it taxes my mental energy more than anything else. But I was away over the weekend. I don't know if you saw pictures on X and stuff, but I was with a bunch of guys, William Wolfe, Andrew Isker, Tim Bouchon put on this conference, Joseph Spurgeon was there, Rod Martin was there.

And it was a great time, but I drove all the way out there to Indiana and drove back. And Tim and I were actually doing some recording in a recording studio too. So it was a long trip for me. It was like a three day thing or four day, four days of being in Indiana.

And then, yeah, I guess five days total with the travel. So anyway, I was fighting it the entire time. I was like taking DayQuil and I was throwing everything I had at it, but it caught up with me and it's like right after the conference.

So anyway, I appreciate your prayers because I have a lot going on the next few weeks. And Matthew, have you gotten a chance, speaking of a lot going on, have you seen the David Platt thing at all?

I mean, I've seen him. He's going to like some new country or whatever. I saw a few tweets about it, but I have not kept up with it now. Oh, okay.

So maybe you're not aware. There's a documentary out. It's in two parts. The first part was released Sunday night and it's all over social media. I would encourage people to go check it out, therealdavidplatt .com.

You might find it interesting, but it seems awfully interesting that David Platt has this trip coinciding with the release of this. I don't know if that was on purpose or what, but anyway, check it out.

And we're going to persevere there. We have a lot of stuff to talk about today. We have, it actually, the topic is not, we don't have like multiple topics, but the topic itself, I think I could talk for probably two hours straight, which I won't do just because there's been so much controversy over this, but we're going to get into whether or not quote unquote Christian nationalism is woke right.

Or, you know, is it the same thing as wokeness, i .e. social justice 2020, BLM, CRT, all of that. Is it the same thing except for people who are more on the right politically? So I've done a little bit of content with CJ Engel about this already, but we'll talk about it some more today and get Matthew's thoughts on this.

The Infinity of God

First though, we have an attribute of God to discuss. We're going to be talking about the infinity of God and I'll just throw it to you, Matthew.

What is the infinity of God? Yeah, certainly. So for this topic, I kind of just, I usually go to a bunch of different texts to kind of get something going, but right now the majority of my presentation will be from Bovink on this topic.

So if you ever hear me say something and it sounds very familiar, it is not at all original. It is probably just plagiarized from Herman Bovink. So, and he's a very wise guy, very smart guy. So I do not feel bad about doing that at all.

But before we even begin to get into what divine infinity is we're going to take a look at, we're going to read five verses from Psalm 147. So this is the word of the Lord. Praise ye the Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our God, for it is pleasant and praise is comely.

The Lord doth build up Jerusalem. He gather us together, the outcasts of Israel. He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars. He calleth them all by their names.

Great is our Lord and of great power. His understanding is infinite. So notice that last word of our Psalm which I chose to do it from the King James, but notice the last word. His understanding is infinite.

The way in which we would define a divine infinity in like just very simple, straightforward terms is basically this. God is not limited by anything finite or creaturely. Basically it's talking about how God is limitless.

There is nothing by which he is bound to, nothing which actually limits him. God is, he's infinite. So infinity as an attribute is a positive concept. God's infinity, there are various ways in which we can speak of it.

It's not just infinity is this and no more. They're based off the circumstance in which we're speaking of infinity. It can have various implications. So many different uses depending on the context. So for example, if one means that God cannot be confined by time, then his infinity would coincide with his eternity.

So if we wanna speak about God's eternity or God's infinity in relation to time, we would refer to his eternity. If one wants to speak of how God is not confined by space, then we would speak about his infinity in relation to his omnipresence.

If we wanna speak about infinity in relation to the fact that God is unlimited in his virtues and that in him every virtue is present in an absolute degree, we would speak about God's perfection. So infinity is just a very multifaceted attribute in that based off the circumstance in which we're speaking of it, you can refer to various other attributes as well.

Because remember our lesson on simplicity, all that is in God is God. Some important things to know about divine infinity as well. Divine infinity is not referring to an infinity of magnitude. So like when I say magnitude, I mean like people may speak of boundless dimensions of the spatial universe.

So it's not referring to an infinity of magnitude because God is incorporeal and without extension. He doesn't take up space. So it's not saying, oh, God takes up all the space in the world. No, God is without a body.

Of course, God, according to his divine nature. Divine infinity is also not referring to an infinity of number, God being the smallest or the largest, because this would contradict the fact that God is not an infinity of number because he is one.

God is simple. So we went over divine oneness and divine simplicity. Divine infinity instead would refer to an infinity of essence. Or in other words, we would basically say, God is infinite in his characteristic essence, absolutely perfect, infinite and intensive, qualitative and positive sense.

So by virtue, that's very confusing topic, but God's very own essence cannot be bounded. He is pure perfection in that nothing limits him. The only thing by which God is actually limited by, if we were to say God is limited by anything, is he can't contradict himself, and that's it.

So that was a lot. This is a lot to get through, but that in a nutshell is the infinity of God.

Yeah, that was excellent. So this encompasses more than just, because I was thinking with infinity, you're thinking of like his eternality, and it's more than that. You know, the thing that I know confuses children sometimes and then atheists like to use is when there are like limitations, can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?

That kind of thing. Would that refute his infinity? I mean, I know what I would say,.

But what would you say to that? Well, I would just, the way that I would respond is I would pose a different question about, can God do this? I would say, can God light bulb blue, red fart, yellow, green underwear?

Does that make any sense? That's not really a coherent sentence. So to ask, can God create a rock so heavy he can't lift it? That's like, yeah, you've strung a ring of, like you've strung words together.

That somewhat makes sense. Same way I've strung words together, but the point, the principle being God cannot do anything which is irrational or illogical. Now God can do things that are beyond our understanding or beyond our comprehension that we have a hard time, we have a hard time reasoning to, and that we have to ascend to by faith, for example, the Trinity.

But even when you look at something like the Trinity, the Trinity itself is not a contradiction in terms. It's the fact that there are three persons sharing the same essence who are still distinct persons who we distinguish by their relations.

It still makes sense. The thing is, is that it is something you can't get to without special revelation. You can't look at the created order around you and say, God is Trinity. You have to have him reveal himself to you.

So that's just, yeah, you are not at all saying that, oh, God can't do this. See, therefore God is not infinite. No, obviously God cannot contradict himself because if God contradicted himself, God would cease to be.

And if God ceased to be, everything in reality would cease to be. There'd be pure nothingness, which is obviously not the case.

Yeah, no, that was good, man. Are you taking systematic theology and going over some of these things right now? Not at the moment, no.

I mean, I have an intro to pastoral and theological studies class, but that's kind of like more of the baseline stuff. We haven't really dug too deep in there yet. So this is just me being a spurg.

So yeah. Yeah, well, you articulate it well. And that's something that I've encountered many times on college campuses, whether it's that example or another example meant to try to pose some kind of attribute of God against itself.

And it's a fun, you know, like the answer is no. And that's what I usually say. It's like, no, he can't engage in logical contradictions because that's part of his attributes, his logic. And so you're asking him to not be God at that point.

And so his infinity, I mean, he's also, he is logical, he is, there's no contradiction within him. And there isn't within our own hearts, but not within him, either morally or logically or any other way.

So.

I mean, it's almost like asking, can God cease to exist? Oh, you say, God can't cease to exist before you're limiting God. And it's like, no, like everyone understands that to ask if God can make himself cease to exist is a contradiction and would, it would just prove, if an atheist said that and someone said, oh, of course God can, that would just prove atheism in a sense.

But I mean, that's obviously ridiculous. It's obviously silly. And even atheists know not to ask a dumb question like that because they could put the piece together. So they should also be able to recognize that to say, can God create a rock so big he can't lift it is just a contradiction in terms.

You know, speaking of atheists, I saw a clip this morning of Richard Dawkins on with Jordan Peterson. I don't know if you've ever watched, I guess they did an interview. I don't know if it was recent, but they're asking about the historical Jesus.

And Jordan Peterson is like dancing around the whole thing. He can't tell you whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead. And Richard Dawkins is like on the scientific wavelength of like, we have to have empirical proof of this.

It was kind of hard to watch. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. It was a little hard. I was like, come on, Jordan, come on.

Well, cause he's like, he's such a smart guy, but he's too smart for his own good in some ways. And it's like, I don't know. He's, I've, see, I never really jumped on the Jordan Peterson train. Like a lot of, I know a lot of people that have, like I never really got on it.

I've seen enough clips of him to know like, yeah, this guy is interesting. And you just wish they'd make the jump already. I do know that his wife converted to Roman Catholicism. So it's like, well, someone close to him is accepting, you know, the Christian God.

So we just need to get him to make that step. And then for the final step,.

We just need them to become Protestant. So. I think his daughter might be Protestant. I'm not sure if she's Catholic or evangelical of some variety. I was trying to figure that out a few weeks ago cause I was reading something.

Yeah, I don't know.

She may be Catholic or Orthodox. That's like the trendy online right wing thing to do right now. So she's probably that. Are we not trendy right wing? Is that what you're saying? No, no, no. Cause we, no, we don't need to be trendy or right wing.

Or no, we do need to be right wing. We don't need to be trendy.

Right, right. All right. So we're going to talk about this article. There's so many thoughts that I could share, but I guess there's two ways we can go about this. We can either read it, go through it, or you've already read it and I've skimmed it.

And we can just talk about the major points in it, I kind of favor that. So let me just show everyone the article. And I should probably mention, this podcast is sponsored by TruthScript. If you want to support the podcast, you can make a 501, it is a 501c3.

You can make a tax deductible donation. You just scroll to the bottom where it says donate. You can also contribute to TruthScript. There's a lot of great articles. I'm actually really impressed with how, I think my brother and there's a whole team he's got that will edit these things and they're just doing a good job.

But the one that was posted on October 17th is entitled Our Christian Nationalists That Woke Right by JJ Eisenbaum. And JJ, I'm wondering if this is his first article cause I don't recognize. Yeah, it is.

It's his first article. And I think this is pretty cool, Matthew. So JJ, it says in his bio, is a janitor and a junk hauler by day and a mathematics tutor by night. Now, what a combination. And anyway, the rest is pretty standard general stuff.

But I thought that was kind of interesting. Some of the smartest people I've met are blue collar guys. But this is the article. And yeah, let's just start talking about some of, maybe we should set the groundwork first.

The term woke right. I don't know of a lot of people who use that. James Lindsay is probably the most prominent figure who uses that online. And if you don't know who James Lindsay is, he was part, what is his claim to fame?

I think that he was part of this kind of a hoax with two other professors where they had really, it's kind of funny. They had really showed how vacuous the social justice left is. This was a few years ago.

When they submitted to these leftist journals, these articles that were ridiculous, like rape culture at dog parks. And they did one where they rewrote Mein Kampf and they just switched out some few words and they were accepted.

And so James Lindsay since then has been involved. He's from the left more, but in fact, he told me that at a conference. He said, I'm a liberal. We were at CPAC. He's like, I'm not sure what I'm doing here, but that was 2020.

Since then he has found a place in Charlie Kirk's organization and that's how you might know him. So anyway, that's where you hear the term. I'm gonna have to have you take over Matthew. My sickness is creeping up on me here.

Why the Term “Woke Right” Is a Misleading Smear

So the term woke right. What does it mean?

Yeah, woke right. So I began to see this sort of pop up in about the past almost year-ish I'd like to say, maybe eight months to a year. And basically what it seems to be trying to do is conceptualize both Christian nationalists and people on the more dissident right as basically they accept this woke framework that the left has set up, but they just simply inverse certain things.

And so there's like this idea of victim complex. There's this idea of race and ethnicity really do matter and play a part in society. And so because people on the dissident right and Christian nationalists right will think in certain categories which fall outside the standard boundaries of like classical liberal orthodoxy.

When I say classical liberal, I don't actually mean the classical liberalism of the founding. I think that those guys, to use like online lingo, they're a lot more based or keyed than we like to give them credit for.

There's no sense in which their classical liberalism is anything like Dave Rubin's classical liberalism or something like that. But basically if you don't accept those premises and you think in more early modern, even pre-modern terms, you're seen as basically accepting a critical theory framework which is something that only libtards do, that only woke people do, and therefore you are now woke, right?

And so that's the way they kind of try and frame it. So they may look at circles of the online right that basically say they like to talk about, like they'll repost these anti-Semitic memes about the JQ or something like that.

And they'll be like, see, this is just like critical theory, but they're just reversing white people for Jewish people or something like that. And so then they'll take that framework and be like, because all the dissident right and Christian right likes to evaluate groups and talk about identity and things like that, they're therefore participating in this sort of thing as well.

So it's pretty silly though. I mean, I get where they're coming from and why they do it, but I just think that it's overly simplistic and you're basically just trying to uphold like the post-war, post-civil rights movement, like you're trying to uphold that consensus by beating the left and then looking to the right and being like, you're just like this and trying to use the same hammer.

So that's kind of how I view it.

Yeah, I think that's a good summary of it. I've seen some people are putting in the chat, Neil Shenvey online uses it. I think Joel Berry from Clear Truth Media uses it. So these are less prominent names, but James Lindsay is probably the most prominent.

And it's kind of convenient in a way. I'm not saying that all these guys use it for this purpose, but I could see it being used for this purpose to say, hey, look at me. I'm reasonable. I'm moderate. I'm not crazy.

Here I'm standing in the middle and then on my right side is this ditch, on my left side is this ditch. They're both woke. I'm not. And I pointed out before that liberalism itself and again, everything you just said about liberalism, liberalism itself though, this commitment to the greatest amount of personal freedom, participation in markets, the greatest, well, we're seeing it right now at the election, unbridled sexual constraints, lack of constraints so that you can't not have the punishment of having a child.

I mean, that's really the result of liberalism right there. Diversity being our strength, culture and ethnicity and these other things, religion not being important. We can share a society as long as we're individuals.

That's the kind of liberalism I'm talking about. That has its own heroes and villains, right? They see, they look at the quote unquote woke people, whether they wanna say it's woke right or woke left and they create a hierarchy.

It's inescapable. You're gonna have to say there's these forces out there that threaten us essentially. And so what are some of the reasons that, because you made the argument and I see, look, there's a disparity.

Jewish people let's say have more money than white people, therefore they're oppressors. And right-wing people are more aware of that kind of thing than left-wing. Actually, I don't even know if that's true.

To be quite honest because all the No, I mean, yeah, I don't know if that's quite true either because you see a lot of free Palestine people, JQ posting too.

I know, I know. I'm gonna say it's mostly the left that's obsessed with that, so, but yeah.

But maybe they, hey, they can use as an argument for where woke right and woke left kind of intersect. So, you know, I guess we're helping them with their thesis. Yeah, horseshoe theory.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so whether it's that, or I'm trying to think like what are the other things they bring up to say that you're just, I've seen the accusation that woke right is standpoint theory just like social justice and woke left is because we think that certain things are situational.

So for example, let's take something like gun rights or welfare or I don't know, you know, different social policies. And in certain circumstances, we will say, I'm saying we, because I'm including our, because we will probably get called this because we're conservative and we're more conservative than James Lindsay, who's a liberal.

We'll say something like, hey, there's gonna be different restrictions in areas where you, like there's less responsibility. They're gonna need more, a heavy hand of the government more. They're gonna need a stronger police force, for example.

You know, there's things suitable for that environment that aren't suitable for other environments. And they'll turn around and say that standpoint theory. You're saying that some groups have different truths than other groups, which we're not saying, but that's what they'll say.

So those are the, can you think of anything else that makes them drop parallels here? Well, yeah, no, I think another, it's kind of going off of what you said with like standpoint epistemology, but I would say that on the more, what they would call woke right, there's a sense in which like classical conservatism, especially as seen within paleo-conservatism is incredibly particularist in the way in which they view government and the way in which they view like customs and cultures of different peoples.

And so they're very particularist in that different people, different customs, different cultures have these different things that will necessarily change how they may be governed or something like that.

And so what that may lead some people to do is they'll say, that's just like standpoint epistemology because you don't have like this more universalist framework of politics or of human. So they may say, you don't even have a universalist framework of human nature basically, because all people are the blank slate.

But in reality, it's not woke to acknowledge that because I mean, it's just, it's the classical understanding, especially if you're like, a lot of our audience, I assume is more in the reform tradition.

If you read someone like a Johannes Althusias, if you read a Franciscus Junius, if you read Calvin, if you read Vermigli, if you read anything they have to say about politics, something they always acknowledge is that different peoples behave differently, different forms of government that among the civil magistrate are permissible to do based off the character, customs and culture of the people.

And that's why different laws are instituted in different places in different regions. And if you really want a very succinct picture of this, I would highly recommend reading, not Johannes Althusias, but read him too.

But Franciscus Junius is the mosaic polity. But I just, I think that's something that's very important is understanding particularism. But I think that a lot of these more like classical liberal, again, classical liberal in quotes, well, a lot of these guys will think is that particularism is standpoint epistemology when it's not, because particularists still acknowledge that there is a universal truth, which all things like have to adhere with, but that there are distinctions, there are differences within life, which actually have implications for how you do politics.

When it seems that a lot of the more liberal people who have a more universalist understanding of things, I mean, it's a reason why the people that wanted democracy in Iraq, they're like, oh, it'll work there because they're humans just like us.

And it's like, yeah, they are humans just like us, but they also have an entirely different history than us. They're used to different things than us. So yeah, that's the end of my shmeal there, at least.

John, I think you're muted.

Ha, there, can you hear me now? I can, yes. Jesus acknowledges this too, because he talks about the fact that it was because of the hardness of heart that God implemented these regulatory rules concerning divorce in the Old Testament time.

And even when the disciples are taking grain, he says that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, admitting that there are these situational things that direct certain laws, in other words.

And it doesn't mean that there aren't universal laws. There certainly are, but they will manifest themselves differently sometimes in different environments. That's all it is. That's all, at least I see.

So with that said, it's, you know, I don't think they're gonna call Jesus woke, right? Or woke in any sense. There, you'd have to go back and look at all the Greco-Roman philosophers. Everyone's woke under this paradigm because they're talking about things that are pretty much inescapable, that if you wanna engage in the political, I guess you're woke.

Hierarchy, Ideology, and Utopianism on the Right and Left

So the three things, maybe to shift gears here, the three things that I noted, and you can add to this, that are differences between the woke right and then the woke. The woke right, or I shouldn't even say the woke right because I don't want to, I don't wanna like use that term in a positive way.

I don't think we should use that term at all. But if you wanna say conservatives to the right of James Lindsay are woke right, they have these differences. They are not interested in ripping down hierarchies.

That's pretty much the core of the woke movement is realizing that there's these hierarchies that needed to be ripped down. And I realized someone might say, well, conservatives wanna take care of the deep state and that kind of thing.

Well, that's true. We do wanna get rid of the deep state, but we see that as an artificial corruption of hierarchy that it was because of the destruction of intermediary forces, voluntary associations, weakening of the family, labor relationships, all these kinds of things.

Because of that, the state ends up growing. And so we want to actually restore hierarchy. We see this as something good and natural. And so we're positive about hierarchy when we talk about it. The left and the woke right, they don't want to admit that they engage in hierarchy at all because they're totally egalitarian and against hierarchy.

They're always about extending equality, social equality in wherever they go and all their policies. So this is a key difference. The right is interested in a ordered freedom that includes hierarchy for positive good.

The left, the woke, that's why they're destructive. They don't want any of that. So that's one thing. Another thing, I'll just say these two things real briefly is the left engages in a totalizing critique, meaning we just talked about universality, but they will, like feminists think everything's related to feminism.

So critical race theorists see racism everywhere. There's no neutral activities. The quote unquote, woke right, or in other words, conservatives, we don't do those totalizing critiques. We don't reduce reality to some very simple precept that is the key to explaining the whole.

And we can talk about that more. That's ideology really. And then the other thing, this is a really, I think, basic thing is we're not, our critiques are not based on outright lies. The woke, that was one of the main issues with them.

There's racism, there's this, there's that, but then they couldn't back any of it up. Oftentimes, it was just, you know, the police are racist. Why? Well, if you have to ask the question, you're the one that's an oppressor.

I mean, it did not value truth at all. And that does not describe the right at all. So those are three things. Those are major things that would distinguish conservatives from quote unquote, woke people.

What are some other things, Matthew? Or are there other things that you can think of?

Are there other things that they would use that would like differentiate.

Who are called the woke, right? From the Yeah, like what, yeah, what's, why is this a ridiculous canard?

Yeah, yeah. I think a good point that you brought up that I wanted to expand on is the point on hierarchy. As you said, the woke are at least in theory, not so much in their practice, but in theory, they are like explicitly egalitarian.

I think in practice and a lot of them by fantasy, they really do kind of just want to like basically enslave white people. I'm not really, I think that's actually the case, but no, in theory, they're egalitarian and they see these hierarchies and institutions and they seek to tear them down.

Whereas anyone, to use a phrase you use, which is a bit longer than woke, right? But I like it a lot. Anyone to the right of James Lindsay, anyone to the right of James Lindsay, the way in which they view it is they are right wing.

They are more conservative. Therefore, hierarchy is something good because there is a created order and important, sorry, there are squirrels running, distracting me. Important to the created order is the fact that there is a hierarchy instituted.

I mean, look at Genesis one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, God at the top. And then as he creates, there's hierarchies, man over the beast, then husband over wife, then husband and wife over children.

I mean, hierarchy is literally fundamental to the classical system. And even when you look at non-Christian sources like Plato, Aristotle, all these people, hierarchy. So those of us to the right of James Lindsay, what we seek to do is to actually not tear down these hierarchies and just leave them down.

No, if there's anything like the deep state, you want to get in there and remove it, but for the sake of true, good, godly hierarchy. So that is something that we do uphold. And then when people like hurl accusations of like, oh, patriarchy, yada, yada, yada.

And it's just like, that's not coming from nowhere because we do believe in a sense that there is like hierarchical systems in nature. And that is what characterizes being right wing is recognizing that hierarchy is something good.

Now, are there sometimes hierarchies where justice is not always there and it can be abused? Absolutely. I mean, look at husbands who abuse their wives, look at states that become tyrannical and enslave their citizens.

That kind of thing happens all the time, but it doesn't mean that it is intrinsically bad. So hierarchies going corrupt is not necessarily mean that it's bad. But yeah, that's like the only really thing, the big thing that I thought of from your list of what to add on was just to kind of expand on the fact that like our goals are totally different.

You may want to claim that, oh, you guys have the same framework, but say that I grant the premise that we do. I'm woke, okay? Look guys, I'm a critical theorist. This is how I view the world. Say I were to grant that, my goals are still entirely different.

The way in which I seek to like use this is entirely different. And I think that's what a lot of them.

Don't want to acknowledge. Yeah, and some of the points that the article makes are that this term, so getting into the etymology of it, this term woke, this was created by leftists. And they wanted to imply that people who did not see the abuses and oppressions were asleep still.

So it was an insult against those who weren't woke. Now, of course, they're running from it, but that's why it was originally created. And there is an element of authorial intent here, like they used it for their issues and it was a kind of a smear tactic, I guess you could say.

And the term has been somewhat transformed. It's been co-opted by the right as now a smear term against them. And he makes the case that this is somewhat vacuous as far as the term itself. It never like in and of itself had a, I mean, it's not even good grammar.

It didn't have like a comprehensive definition. It was a rhetorical device used to propel a social justice movement. And we've had those for centuries. So this isn't like a brand new thing, but the use of the term was supposed to be providing support for the latest iteration of Black Lives Matter essentially, and maybe to a lesser extent, the Me Too movement.