Road Trip DL: Asking Some Questions of Eric Conn, Reviewing the Debate with Tim Barber

Road Trip Setup, Weather, and Travel Logistics

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name's James White. I think I hit all the buttons right there. Hey, I'm just gonna let you know right now, I can show you the radar thing. It's very colorful.

Lots of pretty colors in the Denver area right now. Lots of oranges and yellows and greens and all sorts of things, which means, you know, I'm not overly concerned about the electricity. I'm not sure what would happen if the park's electricity went out.

Um, I think it'd pretty much dump us, but I do have the batteries and stuff, so I'm not really sure. I've never seen that happen, so I don't know. But the thing that could take us out completely is I'm on Starlink.

And so the new Starlink stuff, the receiver, transmitter, used to call it a dish. It's just a flat thing. You know, it now just lays in the ground. It's not even on a stand. The old one we had, you know, was on a stand, and so it was sort of up in the air, and it moved and did stuff like that.

This one just has a little fold-out thing, and you just lay it on the ground. And I do have a weight on it to try to, but if a good gust of wind could send it into my neighbor's slot pretty easily, I have a feeling.

So I don't know. That would take us out. That would be it. That would be the end of that. But anyways, welcome to The Dividing Line. Obviously, a road trip dividing line. I'm still in Denver. I'll be talking about the debate we had on Friday.

On Wednesday afternoon, I think it's gonna be around four o 'clock my time, I think. We've been moving it on Joshua Hames' webcast, and I will be putting out the link for that once I have it. I will be debating Dr. Jared Longshore.

We're gonna be, those of you who were listening last year from October, well, November through December, I did hours on the subject of the new covenant, the covenant in his blood, what it means to be consistently reformed.

And when I mean reformed, they're ultimate authority of scripture, sovereignty of God, salvation is completely the glory of God, and therefore the doctrines of grace, unconditional election, particular redemption.

These are things that I think are biblical.

And vitally important,.

But I also think that they're fundamentally inconsistent with paedo-baptism. And I can talk about the historical issues, what brought that all up historically, if we wanna do that, and that's perfectly fine.

But my focus is gonna be on Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10, because that's the longest extended passage in scripture that talks about the new covenant and relates it directly to the finished work of Christ. That's where you gotta go.

That's where you gotta go. And so it's only two hours long. I've done probably eight hours on the subject, so two hours, that means only one hour. I can only say one eighth of what I've said before, so it might not actually end the controversy for some strange reason, but there you go.

That'll be on Wednesday, and that'll sort of be in lieu of the dividing line. So we're gonna do dividing line today, the debate on Wednesday, and then I will try to get a program in toward the end of the week, because I get home on the weekend from up here in Colorado, and got work to do in here, Rich has dreamed up all sorts of things to make it fast and simple for me to set up, and to have a second camera, to have what Rich feels is better lighting.

I mean, I can look up there, and I can see that this side of my face is darker than this side of my face, and that bothers Rich. He's got a little of that ADHD, whatever it is, stuff going on. And so we'll be working on stuff like that.

But also gotta get that background thing done. I had a super cool idea as I was sitting here watching the clock counting down for something to put over the couch here, because up on the wall, you can't see it, I have the really nice, it's the Alpha and Omega logo.

I mean, it's what the program starts with. That very logo is up on the wall up there. And you can have those made into like blankets and stuff. So I'm gonna have a Alpha and Omega blanket printed up. They're about expensive, and lay that over the couch.

And with the stone wall thing that we wanna do, not stone choir, believe you me, the stone wall image we wanna use, that should look really, really neat. But again, I've never understood why anybody wants to look at me anyways.

I'm a aging, fat, old Scotsman, and fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. So there you go. Wow, okay. And thank you very much. Hopefully everything stays attached out there in the wind.

It's really, it's really blowing it.

I love it.

I love feeling the thing moving around and stuff like that. Until it starts rocking and you've worried about tipping over, then it's a little bit different. But right now, it's a lot of fun. And I, again, thank all of you who support us and allow me to do this.

By the way, I was gonna do it this time, but stuff got in the way. I'm going to, maybe on that one on the way home, I want to make specific mention of the local churches that I spoke at on this last trip, and thank their pastors, their elders, their deacons, their people.

I think especially the last two that worked with the debates found out just how much work goes into that. It is not easy. You really have to believe in what you're doing. And so I'm very, very thankful.

I've had the opportunity to make more contacts with local churches. And I was talking with Pastor Aaron from New City Church yesterday at lunch. And New City Church is sort of like my new connection here in Denver.

And we're talking about doing some bigger things next year, Lord willing, if Colorado and Arizona are still in the same country next year. But just the, you know, I explained to him, I said, you know, we've always had, it's always been our insistence that Alpha Omega Ministries is not a church.

We're not going to act like a church.

We're here for the church.

And how things have turned out since COVID has thrilled my soul. I love doing this. I'm so thankful for a patient wife. People say, you know, your wife's not with you. She's taking care of her mom.

And I honor her for that.

She works hard at that. Those of you who are caretakers know that's not easy. She's still working in the sense that at an age that I will not mention publicly, but it's only slightly less than my age.

She's still teaching aerobics. She is in fantastic shape, such a strong woman. And a caring woman and just blessed for 42 plus years of marriage now to have her. But anyway, she did say this one, this unit is so nice looking and so functional that she could probably, you know, take some trips with me in it, but the other one's not so much.

But anyway, you know, I know I'm on the road a lot. I don't know what next year is going to bring, but I do want to, I do hope and pray that I'll be able to continue to get into these churches, meet these wonderful men, you know, they're real pastors.

You know, when you're, I'm not nothing against those of you who have big, large churches, but the pastors who work full-time shepherding a flock and everybody in the flock knows them. You know, the smaller churches, the local churches, those are your real pastors.

Those, I love, I love the fact that I will come and I will speak and I hope and pray that there'll be people here in the Denver area that will go visit New City Church or they went and visited with the debate or the little mini conference we did or whatever and find a church home there.

Maybe, you know that there was a church that had this, you know, cause New City is so much like Apologia. We are very much on the exact same pages. And so I love when we go into churches and then six months later, a year later, I hear from a pastor, hey, you know, someone came when you were speaking for us and you know, they're now vital members of our church and that's what we want to have happen.

That's the whole reason to do it. And I'm so encouraged by meeting people like Pastor Aaron, Pastor James. It's very much an encouragement to me. And I need encouragement and they need encouragement right now, I'll be honest with you what's going on, but in general, it's very encouraging to me.

Judgment, Debt, and Faithfulness in a Rebellious Nation

Okay, there is so much going on right now. There's so many different topics. I mean, the United States of America is what $32 trillion in debt. 75 of the tax money that is collected goes directly to interest payments on the debt.

We are living in a situation where because we have ignored God's law, because we hate God's ways, because we murder unborn children and we mutilate born children and we dishonor marriage in every way possible.

And we will not submit to God's law and we are focused totally upon the fulfilling of our own lusts and desires. As a result of all of that, I'm watching the tree out there. It's like, okay, as long as it's still standing, I figure I will be too, but it's blowing good here.

Because of all the things, all the rebellion that this nation is guilty of, it's gonna come tumbling down. We cannot sustain a $32 trillion debt. And what has happened is we elect, we, the people in Washington, by their position of power, by giving government money to people.

I mean, I saw something about an illegal alien, an invader, and that's what it is. There needs to be law. God's law established borders. God's law established the necessity of being able to identify nations and to be able to identify who is a part of this nation.

That is not some anti-Christian thing to go, you know, it seems really stupid to let all sorts of military age Chinese men into the United States and then we don't know where they go. Yeah, we're gonna pay for it.

We're gonna pay for it.

But I saw a thing where a illegal alien on government subsidies left a receipt and they had over $14 ,000 in their EBT account. How many of us would like to have that? But they take from us to give to them.

They're our enemies. The people in control are our enemies. And they are robbing us blind and it is a horrific situation and it's all gonna come tumbling down. The real question for us today is how do you remain faithful?

How do you represent Christ in the midst of judgment? That's where we are. In the midst of judgment, how do you represent Christ? And that's where I think there's a lot of different answers. I wish the discussions were less heated, but that's where we are.

That's where we are. And so, you know, I just saw a clip that I do think someone had said the Trump campaign should put this on blast every day between now and the election so that every single person sees it 20 times.

Kamala Harris is not a smart woman. She is on the real dull side of the intellectual spectrum. That is not an insult. Have you ever listened to her speak? Have you noticed she's not done a press conference?

There's a reason. Now we knew what the reason with Biden was. In the 90s, Biden was a disgusting, vile, lying, plagiarizing jerk, but he could talk. You know, he's the one that went after Clarence Thomas and oh, man, a lot.

You're being highly insulting to ditzes everywhere. Well, ditzes generally don't know when you're insulting them anyway,.

So it doesn't really matter.

When Biden went after Clarence Thomas, and I imagine Clarence Thomas has had to sit back and chuckle a few times at things that have happened, but Biden's argumentation was horrific. He was like a vile, lying man, but he could speak.

We knew once he became president, and some of you remember hearing me say it. Algo will tell you I said it. I said, I can't believe in 2019 that he could even run for president. I could tell then the man was in great mental decline, so we know why he was a word salad, but she's not that old.

This is the way she's always been. Every position she has held, she got it through political avenues, not because she ever earned any of it, and the world, our enemies, the United States enemies around the world are just going, please, please, how much more money can we send you to get her to be the president?

I said, I mean, Taiwan might as well just put their hands up and surrender.

If this woman's elected.

I cannot even begin to imagine the degradation of a nation that would have that woman as a candidate for dog catcher, let alone president, let alone president. It is utterly astonishing. I don't know how anyone can sit there and go, wow, God must really have it out for us.

Yes, he does, and there's a good reason for that, and there's a good reason for that. So the big challenge is how do we faithfully testify of God's truth in a nation that hates God's truth? Well, it probably will not make us popular.

I get that, I get that. All right, so with all that stuff going on, the economic stuff, the stock market, once again, when I think of how difficult and challenging things are gonna be in the future, we probably won't be able to continue doing this, and there's a lot of things that we won't be able to do, and we'll be working a whole lot harder just to have enough food to eat, and we're all gonna be in the same boat.

And you know what? If we, it's been my sermon, folks at New City will tell you, I mentioned it in my sermon on Sunday. If we don't right now make a firm commitment to not love the things of this world, to have our affections focused upon what scripture directs those affections to, if we don't do that, we're going to suffer right along with the world.

I mean, we will suffer the external stuff, but the point is we are supposed to have joy. We are supposed to have joy, and where does that come from? That comes from recognizing what Christ has done for us, the depth of our sin that has been forgiven, the joy of the fellowship of the saints.

We've taken so many things for granted, and we have been kings and queens for so long in food and clothing and everything else. While this stuff goes away, we'll find out who's truly committed to Christ and to his ways.

We really, really, really will.

So I'll keep preaching that message as we can. All right, so amazing things are happening around the world, Ireland, Belfast. Now, I've only been there once or twice, really enjoyed my time there. Not sure what the Christians are doing there, but this Marxist leftist rejection of biblical law, biblical law, you need to apply God's law in a society, you need to know who the citizens of your society are.

That means you need borders, you need laws, you need things like that. No question about it, no question about it. And given rebelling against that, we see what's happening, the violence. And of course, we see the governments will not restrain the non-citizens with weapons, but they will attack the citizens who don't have weapons.

It's in Ireland, it's in Europe, it's here in the United States. We've been taken over by our own enemies. And you may go, well, why? Again, it goes back to judgment that is coming upon the West for what it has done.

And it's a matter of sin. As unpopular as that term is among secular humanists, we have to not be embarrassed to say it's sin. So with all that going on, we've run into this strange situation. And I'm going to, I'm only gonna spend so much time on this, and then I wanna talk about the debate on Friday night on open theism.

Eric Conn, Aristotle, and Ethno-Cultural Consensus

But I'm learning things, okay? I'm gonna admit, there were other people who sniffed this stuff out long before I did. There have been times over the past couple of years I've seen people say things, and I'm like, I'm gonna try to read that in a friendly manner.

But boy, you know, that could be read as having some pretty sinister stuff in the background to it. Well, yeah, there's a lot of sinister stuff. And I didn't know about it. Anybody who watched the last two programs, I've talked about people defending Hitler and all this incredible stuff that has been going on in reformed circles.

And I would have to assume it's happening elsewhere as well, but it seems to be finding a particular home in reformed circles, which makes me go, why, what's going on here? And so I was, you know, Twitter X, whatever, I prefer Twitter, is a primary way in which I communicate with other people and DMs and things like that.

I don't like Facebook. I've never done Instagram. I don't do TikTok. I'm not a communist. I'm not a Chinese communist. And so that's where I see a lot of stuff, okay? And so I, it simply came up in my feed, a quote from Eric Kahn.

Now, Eric is the CEO and founder of New Christendom Press, host at Hard Men Podcast, co-host at the King's Hall. That's from his own description, his own bio on Twitter. So I see a lot of his stuff. My understanding is he's sort of a part of what we would call the Ogden Group.

And so I had asked a question. I had asked, what is with this dark red with blue eyes theme that I'm seeing all over the place? A bunch of the people that I blocked last week, their picture, dark red with this blue stuff in it.

And you start seeing it over and over again. Andrew Torba has it. A number of people have it. And like I said, a number of people I blocked had it. And so I'm like, what is this? I'm just like, okay, I don't know.

I'll ask.

And I got a number of different answers. Generally, some type of based MAGA something. Some people said it's a couple of years old. Other people said it's primarily started after the assassination attempt of President Trump.

I can guarantee you, I ain't gonna be using those colors in any way, shape, or form. But Andrew Torba, who has a long history of saying things that show a tremendous immaturity. I first heard of him, Gab, during, we were all figuring we're all gonna get kicked off of Facebook and Twitter, and we're not gonna be able to talk to each other and stuff like that.

And that was when I first found out about him. But then sort of watched him going off into some really strange stuff. But he posted a article on philia from Aristotle. And Erikan reposted it and said, Aristotle was right.

So here's what he posted. Aristotelian concept signifying philia. Aristotelian concept signifying friendship, ethno-cultural consensus between members of the same city. Now remember, cities in Aristotle's day were significantly smaller than cities today.

Most nations in Aristotle's day did not have as many citizens or people in it as Phoenix has today, by a long shot. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the United States. Millions and millions of people.

So no, far fewer people on earth back then. So you're talking about almost, almost talking about neighborhoods, okay? I mean, that's how much smaller things would be. Rome, okay, was fairly large eventually.

Aristotle's day, it wasn't that huge. But anyway, so here's what's been outlined. For Aristotle, democracy is possible. Remember, democracy. Not representative, constitutional representative type stuff, but for Aristotle, democracy is possible only within homogenous ethnic groups.

While despots have always reigned over highly fragmented societies. Now again, in that day, how highly fragmented could you be? You can't have people flying in from the other side of the planet. You can't.

Now you've got all sorts of different ethnic groups that could be in very small areas, relatively speaking. You know, I think of Paul mentioning the Scythians in Colossians, and you go back in history and all sorts of wars, all sorts of ethnic strife, but within a relatively small area.

I mean, from our perspective, within the area of a medium to large size state in the United States, like Arizona, it's fairly, lots of land, and you could have all sorts of different ethnicities within just that one area in the ancient world.

So despots have always reigned over highly fragmented societies. A multi, and this is in bold, a multi-ethnic society is thus necessarily anti-democratic and chaotic, this according to Aristotle, for it lacks philia, this profound flesh and blood fraternity of citizens.

Tyrants and despots divide and rule. They want the city divided by ethnic rivalries, the indispensable condition for ensuring a people's sovereignty accordingly resides in its unity. Ethnic chaos prevents all philia from developing.

A citizenry is formed on the basis of proximity, or it is not formed at all, okay? All right, there are elements of truth in almost everything. And let's use an example. There was a relatively brief period of philia across the United States starting on September 12th of 2001.

And what happens is when a nation is attacked, there will be a drawing together, a laying aside of differences. But I said at the time, unless this is connected with a heartfelt repentance and change in the parts of people, it's not gonna last.

It's gonna be gone in a matter of months, and it was.

It was.

And again, the people in a nation, we are a divided nation. We are a divided nation. And some of it is ethnic. The left has utilized ignorance and just sheer stupidity to divide us along those lines. But that's not where all of this, the vast majority of my fundamental enemies, the traitors in this country look like me.

White Anglo-Saxons, they look like me. The vast majority of them. And they've sold their soul, and they've sold this country for money. They're greedy. That's all there is to it. It's greed, that's where it comes from.

And so, you do have to question just how far you can take Aristotle's stuff because he could not have imagined nations as large as Russia, China, United States, Brazil, India. And obviously, all of those nations have ethnic divisions.

I mean, look at what's happened in Russia, Kazakhstan, and all those divisions down there. And of course, the Uyghurs in China, and every nation has that. There's divisions along those lines all the time.

And the wonderful thing was the United States, when it was closest to its founding principles, overcame so much of that. There was a unity. Even during the Civil War, you could have men from the North and the South meet during a lull in the battle, and there's almost no difference between them.

And so, a common commitment to the United States to a high view of mankind, God, God's law, can overcome so much of that. But that was abandoned. That really started being abandoned, I think, especially in the 1920s, post-World War I.

World War I changed Europe much more than it changed us, but a lot of those ideas came this direction as well. And so, here's my concern. When I see something about Philia here, I go, what's that supposed to communicate?

But I could see how this could be abused, because Aristotle did not have a Christian understanding of man. He's just talking on a general basis, and on a general basis, you can talk about how a city-state with 40 ,000 people in it can remain unified.

But from a Christian perspective, what we're dealing with today is having to deal with a secular society that believes that we're highly evolved animals. And the secular society has no basis for even addressing man.

And Aristotle did not have what we have. We have Christian revelation. We have Romans 1, Aristotle didn't. And Romans 1 is, in and of itself, a light that is 10 ,000 times brighter than anything that Aristotle could ever offer.

Sorry, all you Thomists, but it's true. Live with it. And so, why would we go there? That's what I asked Eric, I said, but we have so much more. And he's talking about tiny little city-states with, it would barely be a small-sized city in our world.

So, and he's talking about direct democracy. We don't have direct democracy. The founders specifically rejected it. So, what's the connection? And I, unfortunately, I'm sure he's busy doing other things, and I have not seen a response from him.

I got responses from everybody else. But it's like, is your name Eric Kahn? So maybe he'll respond later. I don't know. But I was concerned because I also saw a pinned tweet on Eric Kahn's Twitter thing.

And just checking to see if someone's trying to tell me something here. Oh, yeah, okay. The pinned tweet from October 25th, 2023 on Eric Kahn's thing says, sad reality, Christians today have been catechized to disdain their cultural heritage.

We're told Constantine wasn't great. The Crusades and Christendom were evil. The Dark Ages were real.

All lies.

We have been taught a false history of discouragement and disenchantment. Well, he was called Constantine the Great, but history would tell us. And by the way, there was so much embarrassment about this that fake documents were created hundreds of years later to change this narrative.

But the fact of the matter is Constantine was a politician. And Constantine was primarily concerned about the unity of the empire. And Constantine was not baptized as a Christian until right before his death.

Now that was not uncommon in that day. And that's something everybody needs to be reminded. Of a fact, and that is, there were a lot of different views of baptism in that day. Infant baptism was not apostolic.

It did not develop the apostolic period. It comes along much later. And even then it was emergency baptism. It wasn't the norm. And when it did start becoming the norm, it was for all the wrong reasons, et cetera, et cetera.

But delay of baptism was common because of the development of a bad theology, that baptism washed all your sins away. And therefore you want to get as many of your sins washed away as you can. So you delay it until right before you die.

But of course, people died of heart attacks back then. And then he was baptized by an Arian Bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia. And that's what they tried to change. They tried to change the history on that and hide that.

Because everybody knew Eusebius was an Arian. He was a heretic. And Constantine did not uphold the Orthodox faith of Nicaea. So exactly why was he great again? Oh, well, he ended the persecution against Christians.

Yeah, he did.

It was a political move and a useful one. And we can be thankful for that. But I don't know what you mean. We're told Constantine wasn't great. Oh, I don't think Arianism is great. So what's that supposed to mean?

So maybe I can ask Eric, what makes Constantine great? What is it that you feel is disenchanting of people, to be honest, about the history of Constantine? Then we're told the Crusades and Christendom were evil.

Yeah, they were. I've taught about the Crusades. Do you know what the Children's Crusade was? All those children that were slaved out? Have you listened to the sermons? Do you know what the purposes were?

Do you understand how indulgences got into all this? Are we really thinking that painting a cross on your armor as you go to slaughter the Muslims was a good thing? It's a great thing? No, I'm not saying rolling over and playing dead to the Muslims would be a good thing either.

But you've got to put it in context. You're crying out loud. I thought we were reformed. I thought we believe what the Bible says. I thought we believe that you even examine the theology of every generation of people calling themselves Christians by the higher authority of the word of God.

That's what I thought.

That's what I've been doing all this time. I sometimes think I'm almost alone out here doing it anymore, but that's what I thought. And I just want to go, what do you mean that, when one of the Crusades hung a left sack Constantinople weakened it all just simply for the money because of all the political stuff in Italy between all the little city states there, this is great.

I mean, certainly had an impact on Europe, helped with the rise of the middle class between that and then the black death and stuff like that. You have the middle class certainly had impacts, but how does that make that great?

I don't get it. And Christendom, okay. When Luther visited Rome in 1510, and he saw the Pope riding through the streets of Rome on a horse in armor and was scandalized, was Luther wrong? Was that a good thing?

I'd like to know why. I just, I'd like to. The dark ages were real. Well, okay. Sometimes that's exaggerated, but at the same time, it is true that during that period, the average human being born anywhere in Europe never traveled more than seven miles in any one direction from place to place.

They suffered from anachronism. They thought that things had always been the same. Literacy did collapse even amongst the clergy. So if the dark ages weren't real, then what are you saying wasn't real?

Are you saying that literacy was as high during the medieval period as it was during the Roman period before that? Are you saying there was many schools? Are you saying there's as much travel, libraries, learning?

What are you saying?

I don't know. I don't know.

It might just be a reaction against some kind of imbalance somewhere, but it doesn't mean that there isn't a true recognition that there was a real dark period in European history. So what's that all about?

I don't know.

And I don't know how for a Christian having an honest view of Constantine, the Crusades, formalized Christianity that didn't have a gospel. How is all of that discouraging or disenchanting?

I don't understand.

I don't get it. So yeah, I don't know what to say about that. I don't know about all that stuff. All right, let's shift gears. And it looks like the worst of the storms of looking at the radar. That's an amazing thing to be able to sit here and look at a screen and see these massive storms going off into past Denver, out into the wide open plains of Kansas.

I'm gonna tell you, Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas, man, they're just, there ain't much there. You can grow a lot of cool stuff there, but if you like mountains, no, that ain't gonna help you that much.

Tim Barber, Open Theism, and Why Rebuttals Must Be Real Rebuttals

So Friday night, Tim Barber and I had a debate and man, it's been, well, I've gotten used to it. When you have a debate and there's a certain, there's small little clicks of people that represent the side that you were debating, you're gonna see all sorts of weird stuff on the social media and people will get strange.

But Tim Barber is a really nice guy in person. He's got a wonderful wife, great kids. We had lunch with Pastor Aaron and shot the breeze and I talked about getting old, stuff like that. But, and I had said from after the week before the debate with Alex, I said, wow, I really hope that both debates are gonna be similar in the sense of, wanna be able to do things in the future, be really useful as far as the debates are concerned, that kind of stuff.

Well, it didn't turn out that way. And I said on Twitter and oh, you know, let me just say, if you've never done a debate in your life, I don't know why you think you can engage me on having a discussion about debates.

I've done a few.

I've got a little experience, actually decades of experience now. 30, it was August. Oh yeah, here we go again. August of 1990, so 34 years ago, I did my first debate. I've learned a little something over the years about it.

And so some of you who sit there, you can't even debate the guy at the Jack in the Box drive-thru. And yet you're gonna get all huffy-tuffy about something that was said. I'm sorry, I ain't listening.

You've got no standing. I said on Twitter, I'm going to make a rule for any future debates that I do. If you want to read, and if you need to read your opening statement, fine.

Read your opening statement.

No, no, no problem. I've read opening statements in the past. I generally don't do that. But okay, fine, read your opening statement. But rebuttals, there's a meaning to the word rebuttal. And rebuttal does not mean prophesying.

Because if you do what Leighton Flowers does, what Jimmy Akin does, and what Tim Barber did, you're pretending to be a prophet. That is, they had their rebuttals written out. They had their closing statements written out.

So what you're doing is you are prophesying as to what the content of the debate is going to be. Now, do I listen as carefully as I can? I bought and listened to, well, no, I bought the book, but he provided, because I couldn't get hold of the audio.

So Tim was nice enough to get me the audio so I could listen to it. So I listened to his book, and I listened to his videos, at least the ones that seemed to be relevant to our topic.

And I listened to it.

Because yes, I wanna know where my opponent's going. And I am not in any way, shape, or form complaining about crafting your presentation to refute what the other guy is gonna say before he even gets a chance to say it, if you're going first.

Done it many, many times. No problem at all. But that's not rebuttal. That's not your closing statement. A rebuttal. And I'm not talking about the collegiate debate stuff where you just have to, you talk as fast as you possibly can.

And that's how you get points. That's worthless, utterly worthless. What I'm talking about here is in meaningful debate where you are seeking to honor the subject, honor the person you're debating, and more importantly, honor the audience that's there that night or day, or is gonna be watching in the future via the old days, videotapes, and now on YouTube.

If you wanna honor them, then what you do, when you do your rebuttal, you rebut what your opponent said, not what you expected them to say, not what you hoped them to say. You rebut them. We are buffering here.