Political Victory and Christian Nationalism (Cody Libolt Tweets)

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Today's episode is going to be focused on two Cody Leibel tweets, and I'm not necessarily aggressively disagreeing with Cody here.

I think mostly his tweets are just fine, but I did want to add something because I don't think it tells the whole story.

It needs more nuance, more clarity, I think, in my opinion.

I'm using the word clarity, yes, because of Joe Rigney. Thank you for that, Joe. Now I feel guilty every time

I use the word nuance. In any case, Cody Leibel, yesterday, he tweeted out the video with the two young ladies at NYU that they're at the pro -Palestinian rally, and they're protesting, and they're asked why they're there.

What's this all about? What are the issues? They don't have a clue. They're just there.

They know they're pro -Palestine, free Palestine and all that, but they don't even know why they're thinking that way.

They're just there. She even asks her friend to help me. Can you help me explain the issues?

The friend has no idea. A lot of conservatives are making fun of this. Listen, it's not very nice, but hey, this is how it is.

I know a lot of young ladies. In my past, I've known a lot of young ladies like this. I used to live close to NYU, and so I'm very familiar with this kind of person.

This is pretty common. In fact, I know women in my life now that are like this.

Everyone's making fun of her. Here's Cody saying, make her famous. Cody, that's not very nice.

Cody retweeted this a number of times with different perspectives. One of the other ones was a very dramatic, sort of like, this is the end of civilization.

This is a dying civilization or something like that. Then he also retweeted Rod Martin, who said that it was funny that she said that she wishes she was more educated while going to NYU, which is very interesting as well.

Just making the rounds, all that kind of thing. I'm going to connect this to one of Cody's tweets in the previous day.

Now, Cody, I know you care about this kind of thing, so I'm not saying you were connecting these two.

I'm connecting these two to make a completely separate point. Maybe you would connect these two. Maybe you wouldn't, but that's not really the point of this video.

I'm just making the connection because I thought it was interesting. Here we are. We're mocking this lady for not knowing what the heck she's doing at a pro -Palestinian rally.

I want to connect it to this tweet. The day before, Cody said this. He said,

And it would be a disaster to attempt it. are morally unclean.

The most important broad goal right now should be the formation of a future generation capable of persuading the nation for the need of individual rights and the impropriety of the current state of affairs.

The nation must be persuaded that public education, especially the public universities, should be abolished.

It is immoral to force a person to pay for his own children to be taught to reject his values, which is the main goal of the public schools and especially the universities.

The intellectual life of the nation springs from the schools and universities and also from the churches and after that from its media and entertainment.

The centers of intellectual life are at the heart of our enemy's power. We must deprive them of these.

We must peacefully do what it takes to abolish the educational system. Turning to the immediate goals.

Expose the corrupt leaders that the good guys are voluntarily financing, such as the pinks leading the seminaries and churches.

Boot the pinks out of the churches in order to assure that churches survive. Teach people how to talk about the need for better ideas.

Do this by creating your own publishing platform or organizations or support those platforms and organizations that you agree with and that you like and trust.

Plan for a long battle. Our generation will not live to see societal reform, but we may help equip the generation that does.

Not bad. Not bad. As you can see, I agree with a lot of this and I think that a lot of this is very important.

So I'm not counter signaling education. I'm not counter signaling building our own platforms and the parallel economy type stuff, parallel publishing, stuff like that.

I'm not counter signaling any of that. In fact, I participate in some of that stuff. So all good stuff for the most part.

But what Cody's envisioning is sort of a kind of ground level, grassroots sort of intellectual kind of resurgence where we teach and persuade with convincing arguments and convincing media people to desire and want the right things.

And this is something that's actually common in Christian nationalism. A lot of Christian nationalists, like, for example,

Doug Wilson and James White's not a Christian nationalist, but I consider him a friendly. He's like this, too, where they envision sort of this bottom up kind of transformation of the

United States or any nation, really. It's got to start from the bottom. It's got to start from the people who will in turn, you know, their morality will improve and they'll in turn insist on moral leadership.

And that's it's got to be bottom up. You've heard that before many, many times. And I'm not against bottom up transformation, but it's not the whole story.

It isn't. And that is a little bit of a divide amongst Christian nationalists. And I don't think it's like the, you know, the death knell that's going to, you know, kind of divide us forever.

It's not like that. It's just a matter of emphasis. In my opinion, it's a matter of emphasis, because here's the thing.

When Doug Wilson says something like that, or maybe James White or anyone really that says something like that.

Um, well, I mean, from their perspective, that's what it has to be. I mean, Doug Wilson is not the mayor of Moscow.

Right. And he's not the governor of Idaho and he's not the president of the United States. He's not involved at those levels.

Right. He's not even in the administrations. So from his perspective, the work that he does is absolutely bottom up.

I mean, he's working. He's a minister in the church and he's got to administer the sacraments and he's got to counsel his people and he's got to teach his people.

And so education and sort of improving the morality of his people and guarding their hearts and shepherding his flock.

That's what his job is. That's all he does. And so and then, of course, he writes books and stuff like that.

And all of that is bottom up type stuff. And so from his perspective, from James White's perspective, from a lot of basically you and you and I's perspective, that's what we're doing.

I mean, that's what I'm doing with my children. Right. So I've got four sons and my goals with my four sons are to obviously, you know, teach them to love the

Lord. But I want them to be three times as much of a problem as A .D. Robles was.

And there's four of them. So you do the math. Right. I mean, I went to public school. So you do the math there. I want them to have an outsized impact on on on a positive future.

And that's what I'm training my kids to do. They're going to be a big problem. And I've got four sons so far. So, you know,

God willing. Right. I pray for that every day. So that's what that's what that's what I'm engaged in every day.

Right. I'm engaged in sort of this this intellectual and educational and and persuasion that that Cody is talking about here.

But but here's the thing, though, guys, most people are like this.

Right. Most people are like this. It didn't really take persuasion and clever arguments and intellectual exercises or activities to get her at the

Palestinian rally. She's not thinking she doesn't have any idea what she's doing there.

And she's she I mean, not I'm sure she would have like nothing more. It's not like he's hiding that she would have like nothing more than to to wax poetic about the issues if she knew about them.

But she doesn't know about them. And this is the reality that I think all Christians need to understand. Right.

A lot of people, a bigger percentage of people than you think are like this lady.

They go with the flow. They do what everybody else is doing. They want to fit in.

And so this is the thing like, you know, Cody says persuasion is the key, right? You got to persuade people to value the right things.

You got to persuade people with arguments and media and all this stuff. And here's the thing like like I mean, persuasion is definitely part of it.

But but how do you make an argument with with with this woman to get her to think correctly if she's not thinking at all?

She's just acting like you can't if you're not thinking if you're if you're if you're doing something, you're you care about an issue, but you're not thinking about it.

There's really no argument that you're going to hear that's going to persuade you otherwise because you're not thinking in the first place.

And so persuasion doesn't matter to most people. Right. Most people do what they're told.

And there really is like, listen, like the reality is, you know, as Americans, you know, we we kind of eschew like the class system.

Right. You know, and all of that kind of stuff. But no matter how much you hate the fact that there's different classes of people, it doesn't change reality.

Right. It doesn't change reality. And a lot of people that are not in the ruling class, they just do as they're told.

They do. And they feel and they act the way they're told to act. And we can see this, too, with with the

LGBT stuff. It's very easy to see with that because it wasn't that long ago that that Barack Obama, you know, was against a homosexual marriage.

Right. And and that that's just what the position was. And then the position changed.

And and all of a sudden, you know, everybody's gay in June, right? Oh, June's rolls are out. I guess we gay now.

You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. And it's not because they were convinced or persuaded that that was right.

It was that they went with the flow. They wanted to fit in a bra. I like Barack Obama.

He's my leader. And so when he was against gay marriage, they were against gay marriage. And now that he's for gay marriage, well, now they're for gay marriage.

Now June is gay month. Like that's how a lot of people are. A lot of people are like that. A lot of people are tutored and taught by the leadership, by the law.

The law is a tutor. And so how does this work? Right. So they you know, the leadership class, the ruling class, and they're everywhere, they're in politics, they're a bit in business, they're in media.

They decided what they were going to push, and they pushed it. And lo and behold, the people listened.

And the people that that that agree with it, they don't know why they agree with it. And the people that don't agree with it, a lot of them just stay quiet, and they go with the flow to this is just how people are.

And they've always been this way. And they're going to be this way. And so so so that's the reality.

And so intellectual activism, I'm all about it. I'm think it's good. persuasion.

It's good. Bottom up, you know, transformation, it's good. But there's also a way and we've seen it used for evil recently with the

LGBT stuff for top down to also affect positive change.

We've seen it used for negative change, and it can definitely be used for positive change. And so I don't,

I don't say that the top down stuff will won't work. I think that it has to be both.

It has to be both. And so education, I'm not counter signaling it, Cody, so don't hear me saying that.

But I actually have a much higher view of political. What did you call it here?

Let's see if I can find it really quick. He says that that a political victory is impossible while the voters and citizens are unclean.

I completely reject that. I completely reject that. It doesn't like from think of it this way from from the the pro evil pro

LGBT perspective. Most people in this country were not pro gay.

And the voters were not pro gay, and all that kind of stuff. And and yet, they became that way and how they become that way.

They were tutored by the law. We get a little bit of a glimpse of this, I think, in the book of Kings, like, like, if you think about the book of Kings, right.

So, by the way, if you like Christian nationalism, you're interested in the topic. And you're interested in like what the civil magistrate is allowed to do and how we should view them and, and how

God views a civil magistrate and stuff like that. Read the book of Kings. It is very, very insightful.

There's so much good stuff that you can glean from the book of Kings. But think of it this way, like, like Jeroboam, right, evil king, evil king.

And it's so interesting how he is rebuked by God. And it says that, that that Jeroboam has committed a lot of sins.

And he's also caused Israel to sin. Now, obviously, we understand that every person is responsible for their own sin.

So there's some way that Israel, you know, wanted to sin as well. But the thing is, the

Bible says Jeroboam with his, you know, reforms and his idolatry and stuff like that, he caused the people to sin with him.

I don't think he was like persuading people. Oh, yeah, you know, it's actually really good to worship

Baal. No, he just went and did it. He just started doing things. And the people saw that and, you know, they wanted to fit in.

And so they followed the king into that sin. And God blames Jeroboam for, for, for causing the

Israelites to sin. And so we can see that if Jeroboam was a good thing, he would actually have caused the

Israelites to do what was right. In fact, we have examples of this. There was a man, what was the king's name?

I think it was Asa. Asa, hold on, let me look it up real quick. Hold on. Yeah, it was Asa. I was right.

Excellent. King Asa. Here's what the book of Kings says, chapter 15.

He says, and Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David, his father.

He took away the sodomites out of the land and removed all the idols that his father had made.

That's top down. That's top down. If the people of Israel, which they definitely were, wanted to utilize sodomites in their everyday lives and stuff like that, he didn't try to persuade them that they shouldn't be sodomizing each other.

He didn't try to persuade them. No, he just took them away. He banished them. Get them out of here. We're getting rid of them.

And so now if you, if you wanted to be a sodomite, you had to do it secretly, or you had to, you know, do it in the back alleys, or you had to risk your life to do it.

But, but, but, but he, he top down said, no, no, no, no, we're not doing this anymore. That could happen today.

That kind of thing could happen and should happen today. And so what he's doing is he's setting the tone and the people have to follow or, or, or not.

And, but they're going to, there's going to be consequences there. That's a top down reform. It took no persuasion, no education, no intellectual arguments.

He just did it. And that's possible. That's possible. When we read the books of the Bible, we see so many examples of impossible situations.

Cody calls political victory an impossible situation, but we read again and again, God works the impossible.

You know, you know, Nehemiah asks for some money and has to be let go to go rebuild the walls. And the

King just is like, all right, sure. What? He just, he just said, okay, that can happen again.

We have the same God. The Bible continues. And also

Ma 'a Makah, his mother, even he, even her, he removed from being queen because she had made an idol in the grove and Asa destroyed her idol and burnt it by the

Brook Kidron again, top down his own mother committing idolatry and making the people commit idolatry as well.

He says, all right, not only are you no longer queen top down, I didn't persuade anybody. He just went and did it.

He did it. But then he destroyed her stupid idol top down and improve the situation of Israel.

No longer gave the Israelites opportunity to commit idolatry in that way anymore. And he didn't make any arguments.

He didn't try to convince anybody. He didn't persuade anybody. He didn't make a play to show how idolatry is wrong or any of that.

All that stuff is good by the way. But he was the King. He was a civil governing authority. He could do things really good stuff.

Top down political victory. That's that can happen again. Also, this, this is interesting too.

This is the next verse. And a lot of people say, you know, that are against Christian nationalism, that, um, you know, we can, it can never work because we, we, we never have a perfect King.

And so it's going to be in the name of Christ, but it's going to be imperfect and that's wrong. So we got to wait until Christ returns before, because there's going to be a

Christian nation, but only when Christ returns, because he's the only perfect King and he's the only one that can do it. Right. And, and, and, and all of that,

I just, I wonder where you, where you got that kind of perspective. Cause it certainly wasn't from the

Bible. It certainly wasn't the Bible. Listen to this, this next statement. We're talking about a good King, good

King Asa, who did that, which was right in the eyes of the Lord. He made all of these reforms, right? We're going through the list, but listen to the next verse.

But the high places were not removed. Nevertheless, Asa's heart was perfect with the

Lord all his days. He was devoted to the Lord all his days, even as in the same sentence that we got to believe both these things.

We've got to hold both of these things together. The high places were not removed.

Nevertheless, Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord all his days. We got to have a category for that.

We don't have to have the perfect Prince, Christian Prince or the perfect Christian president or the perfect Christian governor or whatever the case may be.

We don't. But he does have to be considering the

Lord and devoted to the Lord. And his heart has to be right with the Lord and, and, and, and, and, and making efforts and making reforms that have the

Lord in mind. That is good. God smiles upon that. So we don't have to be all dramatic about things where it's not perfect.

So therefore it can't be Christian. This is a very dramatic and overdramatic and a weird perspective that I have no idea where it comes from.

It doesn't come from the Bible. That's not how God talks about things in the past. And we, again, we have the same

God, we have the same God. And so no political victory does not require sort of a groundswell of, you know, you need 51 % of the people that say that abortion is wrong and should be abolished before you can abolish it.

That's not how it is. That's how politicians trick you into not doing the things that they should be doing.

That's, that's what that is. That's what that is. So I, if I, if I want to disagree with one thing in Cody's tweet, the idea that, that politics, political victory is impossible while the voters and citizens are morally unclean.

I don't agree with that. I think that is, that goes way too far. And so here's the thing, when it comes to this kind of transformation of a nation, transformation of a country, you need to have education.

You need to have intellectual activism. That's all really good stuff, but it's not enough. There is no amount of education that's going to cause this woman to start thinking she's not thinking if someone is not thinking your arguments have no effect on them because they're not thinking anyway.

And arguments require thinking. And if they're not thinking the arguments that require thinking are going to have no effect.

Lots of people, and this is not to their benefit, but lots of people just want to fit in.

And as Christians politically, we need to understand that reality. Not everybody is well thought is, is, is well, um, is, is thinking things through well, like you are not everybody's doing that.

And we need to recognize that. And the law really is a tutor. The law really does tell people what's right and wrong.

The law is actually a form of persuasion, because here's the thing, like, like, you know,

Cody's talking about persuasion in terms of, in terms of media, in terms of, um, you know, uh, education, intellectual pursuits and things like that.

Um, but, but oftentimes persuasion is, um, well, if you do this, you're going to go to prison, you're going to get executed.

You're that that's, that's persuasion too. And, um, honestly, let's just, let's just face it.

There's a big percentage of people that that is the only persuasion that they actually listen to the fact that if I do this, it's going to cost me my life.

It's not, that's not nice to think about, but there are a lot of people like that. And so the law itself is a tutor.

We, we know this from the Bible and it's just, we know this just from everyday life when we're just being honest with ourselves.

And so political victory is possible and it does not require a 51 % of people to be clean or morally good or anything like that.

What it does require though, is educated leadership that has the will to act, the will to persuade through the law, the will to teach through the law with a mind devoted to God.

I love how the King James puts it. His heart was perfect with the Lord all his days.

How could it have been perfect? He didn't remove the high places. That's something that you need to think through.

How is that? How, how can that be? Because I think that with our modern ears, we think it can't be, but obviously it be because the

Bible says so. And so now we got to take what the Bible says about this imperfect leader, but he had a heart perfect with the

Lord. And what that means for modern leadership, because it is removed a little bit from the time of the

Kings, but the principles remain the same. And so anyway, that's my two cents, this bottom up type revolution or transformation.

Yes, I'm for it, but political victory and top down transformation is not only possible, but I think it's necessary to happen.

It's got to be both. And that is the goal. In any case,

I hope you found this video helpful. God bless. You know, another good example of this is with, oh man,

I'm forgetting his name now too. Hold on. The reason I forgot his name is because I don't think he is named.

So the King of Nineveh, right? He repents. King of Nineveh repents. And he issues a decree for everyone to change their ways.

Everyone in the country, down to the cattle. They're all spared because the

King repents, top down. And that sets the tone and people just want to fit in.

And they repent as well. This is something that we should not think of as an

Old Testament relic that, you know, God was different back then, or he operated differently back then.

And that's not for us today. We shouldn't think of that as an Old Testament relic. That's something that we should pray for.

That's something that we should strive for, plot and plan and scheme for. It's definitely worth it.

So intellectual activism, yes, but also some of that stuff would be nice as well.