Orwell's Prophetic Voice

Something feels weird, feels like I'm being watched.

I have a guest in the studio today.

I'm being surrounded by my friend, Richard Rodin, and we are coming at you today to talk about George Orwell on this episode of Conversations with a Calvinist, which begins right now.

And welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

And today I am welcomed by my good friend and friend of the show, Richard Rodin.

How are you doing today, Richard? Doing pretty good.

You've come a long way with your little podcast here from a couple of years ago with the cartoon character of yourself as your graphic to now you got a studio and a whole nine yards.

Yeah, I'm excited.

And if you're listening to this and you're not watching it, you're only getting half the experience.

So I do appreciate all my podcast listeners who actually go and listen.

But today, especially, you have the opportunity of seeing this face on your screen.

And I'm not pointing at myself, I'm pointing at Richard.

You have the opportunity to see Richard here in studio with me.

And today we're going to be talking about the subject of George Orwell.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with George Orwell, George Orwell was an author who wrote a book that many of us had to read in high school that was called 1984.

1984 was a dystopian novel.

It was written about a then future 1984 where the entire world would be under the thumb of what was known as Big Brother.

Big Brother was the governing authority which had the ability and the power to see everything that a person did, was able to interact with everything that a person did and was always looking out for anyone that had any opinions that did not line up with the party line.

And it was, again, a dystopian novel about the dangers of the lack of freedom and the lack of free thought, the lack of free speech.

And there's many terms that came out of the book, 1984 terms like newspeak, which is where they would take certain words and give them new definitions and therefore change the meaning of those words.

And what Richard and I talked about and the reason for today's program, and you'll notice his shirt, I'll have him sit back so you can, his shirt says make Orwell fiction again because we believe that in a way, Orwell sort of spoke with a prophetic voice.

Now, when we say that, we are not saying that Orwell was a biblical prophet.

Everything he said was not inspired by God, but what we were saying is he had some insights that he was able to sort of look into the coming future and recognize some things that were dangerous.

And the book that most people, again, know him for is 1984.

But there's also another book that is called Animal Farm, which is actually my favorite non-Christian work.

It is an allegory about the dangers of, really, I think it's about the dangers of communism.

There's some who debate about what the meaning is behind that, but we're gonna talk about Animal Farm a little later, but we're gonna begin by talking about 1984.

Now, Richard, I'm gonna throw a question to you right away.

You have read the book, correct? I read it a couple of years ago.

I didn't read it in high school.

I don't require it being reading in high school, but I did read it about two and a half years ago and right off the gate, I understood why everybody was talking about it at the time because I think James White had mentioned it because he called it the left's playbook.

Ben Shapiro from The Daily Wire had mentioned it a couple of times.

I'm like, well, I need to read this book.

So I read it and he wrote it in 1949.

He missed it by a few years, but it felt like he was talking about today just with a slightly different terminology.

But I have read the book, yes.

Yeah, and when I think about it, I think about a few years, I didn't read in high school either because we went to the same high school.

For those who don't know, Richard is my friend from high school.

Yes, we had the same English class together that didn't require this reading.

We read Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

But we did go to the same school and neither one of us had to read it in high school.

I think the generation before ours, when I mention it, the 50 and older crowd usually say, yeah, we read that in high school.

And the people that are our age in the forties and younger didn't read it.

And then of course, modern young people don't even know what it is.

Right, when I wear this shirt out in public, the people that are in their fifties or older understand it.

The people who are our age and younger look at me with dull cow eyes, like, what does that even mean? And I have to spend five minutes explaining it.

The lady today, we went to the store on the way here and he, make.

Or will fiction again.

Trying to figure it out.

Now my shirt is obviously understood by everyone because I'm a five point Calvinist.

I'm Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist, but this is becoming famous all around the world.

Yes, the podcast is going strong all around the world.

And it's because of you being willing to share and subscribe to the podcast.

Okay, anyway, going back to the show.

So yeah, a lot of people.

And what I find is young people have no idea what it is because you've got the older generation that had to read it.

Our generation that heard about them, heard them talking about it.

And then the younger generation, it's almost like it's been shielded.

It's almost like the education system now is like, no, no, no, we don't want you to see this because this is too real.

This is too close to what's actually happening.

And some people would say, well, 1984 is a long time ago, but again, it was future from his perspective.

He didn't know when it was gonna land, but he had a feeling that this was going to land.

And we feel like it did land right on our heads.

And many of the things that the book talks about, and just to give you a quick overview, and like I said, going back, I did read it.

I read it, a few years ago, I went through a period of what I called my dystopian novel phase.

I went through 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, did several books in a row.

Because when I'm reading, and again, everybody knows this is a Christian podcast, but just so you know, I try to, at least every third or fourth book that I, three or four books that I read that are related to my faith, I try to read something outside the faith just to be able to engage with the culture.

Again, this is part of the podcast, Scripture, Culture, and Media from a Reformed Perspective, being able to engage with the culture and to see what the culture's thinking, what's going on around me.

And sometimes I'll read a modern book, sometimes I'll read an older book.

And then I was just intrigued by how much of it and how much insight like Huxley and Orwell and those guys had looking to the future.

And Huxley and Orwell both had a similar view of what was gonna happen, and that was basically the loss of freedom, but they had a different way of getting there.

Orwell was focused on the Big Brother aspect and the idea of the government sort of demanding that no one think different.

And Huxley's was more, if I remember correctly, was more the idea that people would sort of do it to themselves.

They would make themselves stupid and not wanna read, and they wouldn't want to learn, and therefore it was sort of like the television.

If I remember in Fahrenheit 451, there was like a program that everybody watched, and it was the dumbest thing.

And the guy would talk about how it was nonsense, but everybody watched it.

And it was sort of like, you ever seen a Lego movie? Where are my pants? You know, it's like that.

Everybody watches this dumb show, but everybody is like sort of mesmerized by it.

And the idea was that with Huxley's view, it was gonna sort of be done, it wasn't gonna be the government that did it, so we were gonna sort of do it to ourselves.

Well, I haven't read Fahrenheit 451, but given what you've said, it sounds like social media has done that.

Exactly, exactly.

So we have a mixture of the two going on, the government overreach, and we are dumbing ourselves down by the moment with these phones.

Absolutely.

As we stare into oblivion.

Yeah, because when I was a kid, back during the Cold War, yes, I lived in the era of the Cold War, but all we needed was Sylvester Stallone to make Rocky IV and Rambo II, and we won both Vietnam and the Cold War in both movies.

So just so you understand, Sylvester Stallone was a one-man propaganda machine for Ronald Reagan.

He was a hero.

He was, he was a hero.

He went, Rambo II, he went and won Vietnam, Rocky IV, he went and won the Cold War.

It was all over.

We were champions.

We were, as the Karate Kid says, the best around.

Anyway.

So, I'm sorry, I'm all over the map.

We didn't bring a script today.

No, we didn't.

But yeah, social media, the Huxley idea that we're going to do it to ourselves, I think about the Cold War, everybody was worried, oh, our houses are going to get bugged.

Everything's going to get bugged.

And nowadays we buy bugs.

We buy Alexa.

It's like, hey, hey, wiretap.

Give me a recipe for tuna salad.

Well, that ain't just the Alexa, man.

I was talking to Crystal and my wife yesterday about, what was it? Oh, security cameras.

Just talking to them, I'm going to have to put some security cameras up on the new house because my dad with Alzheimer's makes sure he don't wander off.

And next thing I know, I pop my phone up and one of the first ads in Facebook is for security cameras.

And you just mentioned it.

I just mentioned it.

So yeah, they're always listening.

The telescreen is functional.

What scared me is I've thought about stuff.

Yeah, it's like they're in your brain, man.

I've been in a situation where it's like, I didn't even say it.

Like in my mind, I'm like, you know what? I really need some peas.

I put it up.

It's like green giant.

It's nuts, dude.

I've had to happen too.

I've been thinking about fishing and all of a sudden I got an ad for jigs and stuff pop up.

It's weird, man.

Well, that one's a little bit more regular.

Those of you who don't know, Richard is the fisherman's fisherman.

Him and Jack are- We fish a lot, yes.

As much as possible.

Absolutely.

Well, let's go back to talking about 1984 because I get off track.

1984, again, it's centered upon a single figure who's going through life under the thumb of big brother.

And he's in the book narrates his thoughts because as he says in the book, the only place that he has the ability to have any freedom is in his own brain.

A few centimeters inside of his skull.

Yeah, he can't speak anything.

He can't talk to anybody.

He can't trust anybody because there's always people around him that are willing to turn him over to big brother.

In fact, that's a big part of the story.

At a certain point, he thinks that he finds a group of people who are willing to go against big brother.

He thinks that he finds this, and again, if you've never read the book, spoiler alert for a 50-year-old book.

This book's 70 years old.

We shouldn't have to put up a spoiler alert, but we will.

And at a certain point in the book, he realizes he's befriended O'Brien, this character, and him and this woman are gonna become revolutionaries, and they agreed all these things, fighting back against big brother, only to find out that O'Brien, of course, is an arm of big brother.

Spoiler alert, he's a bad guy.

It's a terrible, it's a sad novel.

It certainly doesn't end on a high note.

It ends tragically.

But ultimately, throughout the book, there's this idea that the only place that you have any freedom is within your own mind.

There's no freedom to speak the truth.

There's no freedom to question authority.

There's no freedom to have any place where sense is the king.

Sense is not the king.

Common sense is what I mean, is not the king.

What is the king is big brother.

And if big brother says that the wall is white, even if your eyes tell you that the wall is black.

You better say the wall is white.

That's right.

You will say whatever big brother demands that you say.

And it's interesting how that connects to, in a sense, a religious point.

Because years and years ago, there was a leader in the Catholic church.

And I can't think of his name right now.

Maybe if you're a person who's up on your church history, maybe you can put this in the comments.

But there was a leader in the Catholic church.

And he made the point that if the Catholic church says that something is, even if my senses say that it's not, I have to agree.

Because at that point, the Catholic church had established a certain level of authority where they were speaking on behalf of God.

They were God's mouthpiece.

Yeah, exactly.

The Pope was God's infallible messenger.

And so he said, and it's written, and when I teach my church history class, I actually quote him.

I just can't, I want to say he was a Jesuit, and I can't just for the life of me think of his name.

But basically he said, he said, if I see that something is white and the Catholic church tells me it's black, then it's black.

And so it's interesting how Orwell may have been drawing from some of these things, because he had an antipathy towards religion as well.

In his book, especially in Animal Farm, which I'm gonna talk about in a little while, he has an opposition to the clergy and to religion because he saw that as an extension of this control.

And I know many people who feel the same way.

Many people who, I used to have a dear friend, he wasn't a Christian, but he told me, he said, religion is all about control.

It's all about my manipulation.

And so understand this, when we say Orwell was prophetic, we're not saying he was perfect, because he was not a believer that I know of.

I don't think he ever became a believer.

And so even though we're talking about him in a positive way, we're not saying he had it all together.

We're just saying that somehow, some way, he saw the writing on the wall of what little pieces he could see of what was going on and how it would grow.

And either A, he's dead on the money and he's prophetic in that way, or B, the left is, well, not just left, but governments have taken that formula and grown it.

One of the two was happening.

Absolutely.

Well, what we did, we sourced some quotes from 1984, and we're just gonna discuss how we see these quotes working out in our world.

And where did we get the quotes from? It's called bookriot.com.

Okay, bookriot.com.

So understand, we didn't source these quotes.

If there's any mistyping or any of these, we just drew these right from the website.

If you wanna go and actually look at the source of quotes, it's bookriot.com and just look up 1984.

And we've picked five, I think they had like 20 something.

25 top quotes.

And we knew we were limited on time, so we weren't gonna be able to go through all 25.

We picked the ones that we felt like were most meaningful to us.

And so as you're hearing these, just kind of understand that we're gonna be picturing and pointing out some things about how we see these connected to where we are today.

Because we live in a world where currently right now, the top women's swimming champion in college swimming is a man, a man who, if you see the picture, if you see the pictures of him in his bathing suit, it's apparent that he's a man and still very much a man.

And yet he is the top women's champion.

The head of our, is it our national defense? Who's the guy who looks like? Yes, I believe it's, no, he's the, he's over the hill.

Looks like Ned Beatty with a wig.

He's over health.

I can't remember exactly what his office is, but yes, he is a man pretending to be a woman.

Yeah, absolutely.

And again- And he was given woman of the year.

This year.

I'm not even kidding.

He was given woman of the year this year.

So they have, so the best woman in the world is a man is basically what they're saying.

It's insanity.

The amazing part of that, just what you just said about that, is the feminists are quiet.

That's what I don't understand.

Yeah, is they're allowing this to go through because it fits into the narrative.

It fits into the larger issue of pushing this agenda.

And this is one of those times where we think Orwell was prophetic because he was saying there's going to be a redefinition of terms.

There's going to be an inability to speak against these things without being canceled.

In fact, this very podcast may well get canceled because we've mentioned these things.

I've had podcasts in the past where I've mentioned things and I have gotten warnings from YouTube and I have gotten one at least that was taken off.

And so it's very possible that this may not be around.

This medium of communication may not be around forever because of that willingness.

So, but without any further delay, let's go ahead and look at these quotes.

And again, they're not, they're in no particular order and I don't have the page number.

So if you want to look these up, you'll have to do that on your own.

But these are all taken from bookriot.com.

The first quote is, this is how it goes.

I'll read it out loud.

And if all others accepted the lie which the party imposed, if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.

Who controls the past, ran the party slogan, controls the future.

And who controls the present, controls the past.

Now, think about that for a moment.

Think about just for a second what exactly is being said there because it's saying that if you can manipulate the past, then you're controlling the future because you're defining terms based upon a reinterpretation of the past.

And you've probably, Richard, I'm certain you have, you've seen guys who try to like reconstruct historical events and make them much different than what they were.

We see that now, there's a term for it.

I can't think for, I can't think, is it read? I'm not sure what the term is for it, but like an example of it would be taking what was going on with like the Civil War, taking the Civil War narrative and making it about slavery and make it about people of color and all that when it had nothing to do with any of that.

It had to do with the South wanting to secede from the Union and the North didn't want that to happen.

And then you have the beginning of this country.

If you're white, you're a colonial, you're a colonizer.

They're reconstructing that to where, and it's gonna create a division between white people bad and people of color good because all white people wanna do is colonize and destroy people of color and marginalize them and oppress them.

And it's insanity when it's not what happened.

Even with Christopher Columbus, yes, does he have some skeletons in his closet? Everybody does.

But to just focus on that and forget anything good the man did, but that's exactly what's happening, reconstructing the past to control the future because if they manage to make this past, change it to what they think it should be, then they can push that going forward to change the future to where they want it to be.

You see what I'm saying? So yeah, you see it all over the place, this constant erasure of history, constructing their own history to progress an agenda for a future that they want, where as we're seeing there's all power and control and you're only allowed to say certain things and do certain things.

And there's a term and I'm sitting here trying to think and it's not- I can't.

Somebody again in the comments- Reconstruction maybe? I don't know.

No, it's not reconstructionism, but in the comments, if you know what, the word I'm trying to think of, and this is one of the things I do sometimes I can't think of a word.

This actually happened to me in the pulpit.

Is it revisionist? Revisionism.

Thank you.

Historical revisionism.

Thank you.

We nailed it.

We got there.

We got there.

But again, go back to the quote.

That's what this is.

It's saying that if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history became the truth.

The lie passed into history and became the truth.

So for instance, let's say, let's use an example that is allegorical and not- Well, we can use an example from the book because if I remember context here, he was working for the- Wasn't he working for- Ministry of Truth.

Ministry of Truth.

And if a newspaper article came across that they wanted changed, he would change it and then send the original into the box to be burned.

So that's the extreme level where they're changing history in the present.

Fact checkers.

Right.

And again, our goal today is to sort of connect it to what we're seeing in real life.

And this honestly is, I post things all the time that get these little fact checker things that come up.

And the amazing thing that you see in those fact checker things is oftentimes you weren't wrong.

They just want to call into question and they'll say, well, this says this.

And it's like, it says it was a million people and it was actually a million and one.

You know, it's like, it's something very minute.

One of the first ones that happened back, I don't remember if it was COVID or what it was, but one of the first ones that happened- Get close to the mic, homie.

I'm sorry.

One of the first ones that happened, I've seen where I had a fact check, was there was a, I won't say it's conspiracy theory, but there was a concern that they were going to reduce, the government wasn't gonna allow you to plant seeds.

You couldn't garden.

They didn't want you to garden for yourself.

Yep.

And so there was a Walmart in Michigan and the guy had it on video where they had completely shut off the entire gardening department where you couldn't buy anything from it.

Now, the guy was just making the point that you can't buy seeds here.

Lego Martin Luther is being offended by you knocking him out of the picture.

I am so sorry.

But the whole video was him just saying, listen, they're not letting us buy anything from the gardening department.

And the fact checkers popped up and said, this didn't happen.

There's clear video of it happening, but none of the, it literally said, this is not true.

This didn't happen.

They didn't shut off the gardening department.

What are you talking about? It's clearly in the video.

Yeah.

It's like, I'm sorry, sir.

Your little pants were catching on fire.

Right.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

And that was one of the more extreme examples.

The rest of them are like what you're saying, little tiny nuances of the article.

They'll say, you know, a number wasn't quite right or whatever, but they're trying to make it seem, anything that goes against the narrative, they want to make it seem like it's untrue and it's false and you shouldn't even pay any attention to it.

Yeah.

Now go back real quick.

And one last thing, and then we're going to get to the other quotes, I promise.

But this is the last thing that this quote says.

It says, who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls the past.

Well, who's in control right now? The people in control right now are the fact checkers.

They're the ones who are making the decision as to what information you get.

And it was proven in court that Facebook did have specific fact checkers whose purpose was to eliminate certain conversations, certain ideas and certain thoughts.

They did not want those thoughts out.

If this is not the definition of ministry of truth and thought policing, then, you know, again, Orwell didn't see exactly how it would work out.

He didn't, you know, but he saw the idea, and it's certainly there.

We'll go to quote number two.

Now, this is Winston, the main character of the book, having a thought to himself.

He says, what can you do, Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and simply persists in his lunacy? So again, to make that a little simpler, what do you do against the person who you make a solid argument, he understands your argument, he understands that it's correct, and yet still continues to deny it? Well, there's a, if you wanted to go and read it, I think it was in Bonhoeffer's letters from prison where he talks about the danger of stupidity.

It's, that's clearly what he's talking about.

A stupid person isn't someone that isn't intelligent.

A stupid person is someone who denies basic reality and has no common sense.

And they've been basically indoctrinated into that belief system.

So you can, and they're more dangerous than a malevolent evil person, because at least in a malevolent evil person, you can reason with either through reason and instruction or through punishment.

I mean, people who commit crime, they go to jail, they get rehabilitated, they come out.

Yes, there's a recidivism rate, but it's not always, it's not 100%, some people change.

But the stupid person, like you said, and I'm just quoting how Bonhoeffer put it, the stupid person will literally scream his argument.

You will counter the argument and blow his argument out of the water with facts and reality.

And they will simply dismiss you and continue down their path, because in their mind, it doesn't matter what you say.

My reality, my truth is my truth.

There's your truth and there's my truth.

And my truth trumps your truth all day, every day.

And that's where we are.

Your truth.

Yeah, it's Trump 2024.

I'm just kidding, sorry.

That's a joke.

He said my truth trumps your truth.

Oh, okay, I got you.

I see where you went there.

Trump 2024.

Okay, all right, well.

I'm just saying, it's just someone who denies the truth, period.

Yep.

And there's nothing to do with that.

That's right.

Because you can't fight against it.

Yeah.

There is no weapon against that person.

And the thing is, and not to want to, we could side conversation this and go for another hour, but that's on both sides.

Those on the left, or those who are on the side that would be opposed to biblical Christianity, things like that.

And it's not always conservative versus liberal.

It really is, it's those who believe the Bible and believe the truth of the scriptures and those who don't.

Those on the other side would say, we're the ones who just don't look at the facts.

We're the ones who don't believe the science.

And so we have to understand that a lot of times there's a strong sense of self-righteousness.

And this goes back to Orwell, because those people who were defending Big Brother, those people who were defending, even the stuff they knew wasn't necessarily true, thought they had a greater goal in mind.

Like for instance, you'll hear people talk about the whole greenhouse gases, the carbon footprint thing, and they'll say, we know that this isn't really doing anything now, but we've got to make changes.

Therefore, we've gotta hurt people so that the pain, I mean, think about what was recently said.

Well, if you're having trouble paying for gas, go buy an electric car.

Okay, I'm having trouble paying $4 a gallon for gas.

I don't think I can pay $60,000 for a Tesla.

Thank you very much.

The idea that, well, we're just gonna put the pain, I mean, who's that guy on the evening show? Trevor Noah or? No, the Roman Catholic guy.

He's very, he's sort of well outspoken.

Oh, you're talking about Colbert? Yeah.

Stephen Colbert? Colbert, you know, he came out and he said, I'm willing to pay a couple of extra dollars at the gas pump.

In fact, I'm willing to pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla.

And he laughs and he walks off.

And I'm thinking, if there was never a let them eat cake moment, that is the most aggressive let them eat cake moment in the history of modern media.

And if you're not familiar with the let them eat cake, this is the reference where the queen said, well, the people don't have bread.

Well, if they don't have bread, let them eat cake.

You know, the idea, if they don't have bread, well, just let them eat cake.

Well, of course, because you're so disconnected from reality, you would look at somebody who's paying $4 a gallon for gas or is taking literally $1,200 to fill up a semi-tractor trailer to deliver the goods that you need.

And you'd say, well, he could just drive a Tesla.

Cause yeah, you can deliver thousands of pounds of goods with a Tesla.

Yeah.

And I'm getting a little passionate.

Well, and it, well, it's just the, it's easy for Stephen Colbert to say something like that from his ivory tower, because he's making several million dollars a year to host a television show.

And even when in the height of COVID, when he was hosting it from his living room via Zoom or whatever he was doing, he still was making his millions of dollars.

So he can go buy a Tesla like we buy milk at the grocery store.

Yeah.

And then when you're talking about let them eat cake, my first thought went to Nancy Pelosi standing in front of her million dollar darn ice cream freezer, eating her ice cream, talking about this is how I deal with COVID.

This is how I deal with being isolated.

I go to the ice cream freezer and pop it open and open up these giant drawers that's just loaded with, she's got a thousand dollars worth of ice cream in there.

And people are having trouble paying their bills and buying food because their businesses have been shut down.

This is not funny.

And if you're watching the show and you see me laughing, I'm laughing at two things.

One, Richard has a watch on it.

Every time he moves his hand, he's clicking the table.

No, it's my wedding ring.

Okay.

Them dang wedding rings, boy.

But you also said the word darn.

And if there was ever a Christian, you know, we all have our Christian slangs, you know, we'll shut the front door.

You know, those are things that, you know, we say just as sort of, but there's dang.

And then there's the southern version of dang, which is darn.

And you said- This is what happens when you bring a hillbilly redneck on your podcast.

He said her darn ice cream freezer.

That was great.

Okay.

At least we have a lot of sense of humor.

There's your modern version of let them eat cake.

Yeah, exactly.

She's popping open the ice cream freezer.

Yeah.

All right.

So number three, quote, we know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

Now, I brought this one up specifically because I said this, and maybe I just was having, because I'd read 1984 several years ago, and maybe this was just a reminder, but I remember when COVID hit.

And I do believe, and I don't want to sound too conspiratorial, but I do believe the responses that we have seen to COVID, the power grab that came as a result, and whatever you feel like about the history of COVID, how it came about, you know, and all that thing, you know, independent of whether you believe it was manmade or accidental or any of those things, the point is people in power saw it as an attempt to gain more power, and then they did not want to relinquish that power.

We see that in the mask mandates.

There are still places where you have to wear masks.

By the way, this is going to be used by other people in the future.

Yeah, I'm just saying, so don't spit into it.

I'll finish the podcast like this.

But these, you know, the idea that we would have to wear a mask to sit this close to each other, that we couldn't even sit this close together.

We had to social distance.

We had to mask up.

All of these things, we had to get vaccines, boosters, more boosters.

At this point, it's a booster every few weeks or every couple of months, and the idea is we don't want to lose control.

We've been able to gain a certain amount of control.

I remember going the first day that businesses were shut down.

We were here doing some work at the church, and one of the guys at church, I wanted to take him out to lunch for the work that they had done, and we drive over to Arby's, which is just a few miles from here, and we walk in and all the tables have the chairs up on the tables.

And I looked at him and I said, what in the world is going on? And my buddy, he didn't know, and I looked at the lady, she goes, the governor just shut down the state.

We can't have people in restaurants anymore because of the pandemic.

And I looked at my friend.

I said, things will never be the same.

And he thought I was being a little overdramatic, because I have a tendency to be a little dramatic, and I own that, but I said, this isn't me being dramatic.

This is me being somewhat prophetic, because what I'm saying is when this level of power is exerted over people, where they can demand this type of absolute obedience, no one can do anything without our say-so, they will never give up that power.

And we see that continuing.

It's just moving on to other things.

Now it's gone from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine.

That's gonna be the new thing that demands our allegiance and demands that we do certain things.

And this is, again, going back to the gas thing.

You're gonna have to, you gotta, they're talking about now having no-drive Sundays.

Yeah, and in Britain, they just did that.

Yeah.

That's where I saw it first.

Jordan Peterson popped it out there.

He said, I told you this was coming.

It's use public transportation and don't drive on Sunday, which is interesting.

They don't want you to drive on Sunday.

Sunday, the Lord's Day.

The one day.

Yeah.

So that, again, against religion.

And I'm interested in if they're gonna try it here.

Now I will say, at least here in Florida, we had a governor that, yes, he shut it down for a while, but he reversed that.

And now he's done with COVID theater.

So you do have one example of a man who, I don't think he took power to take power because I don't think DeSantis is like that because he gave it up.

You see what I'm saying? He gave it back.

Sorry.

That microphone is just- It is in my way.

But anyway, but yes, overall, it's seizing a crisis.

They seized COVID to have some power over the people and force us to do certain things.

And even Fauci now with this new variant coming out, he's come back on the scene, and Ted Cruz said something about him the other day, come back on the scene talking about, well, we may need to go back to the restrictions.

And I ain't having none of that.

I'm not having none of that.

But it's amazing how quickly COVID just went away when this Russia thing happened.

And now they're turning all their energy to using this to advance the green agenda.

That's it.

That's it.

It's all part of it.

It's all part of control.

All right, well, we got two more quotes to get to, and then we're gonna begin to close up because we're running long here.

So we're doing good.

Let's see where we're at.

Actually, we're only at 35 minutes.

We're doing good.

We're doing good.

All right, so quote number four.

You had to live, did live from habit that became instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

And again, this is the character, Winston, who's describing the way he lives.

He's saying you had to live with the instinct that everything that you said was being scrutinized.

As we said earlier in the program, the only thing that you had that was yours was your thoughts.

And remember in the book, the book opens up with him, the first time he's in his apartment, he had found one spot that was out of the view of the telescreen to where he couldn't talk because you could hear him, but he was able to write.

And he wrote his thoughts down, but he was even fearful in doing that because if they ever invaded his apartment, which they could do at any moment in time, if they found that, he would become a non-person.

Remember, they can make you an un-person.

You would cease to exist.

You would be removed from history, which leads us to what you see in our culture with this is the cancel culture.

They're not gonna make you a non-person, but they'll definitely make you non-relevant in a heartbeat.

And with everything that's, like you said, with this very podcast we're doing, we could be flagged, earmarked, and your podcast be removed.

And if I decided to do a fishing podcast one day with my name on it, and because I'm flagged here, I may be flagged there, and I'm gonna be able to do fishing.

Keep an eye out for that, Jack and Richard.

Wild Tales of the Sea coming at you.

Won't be the sea, buddy.

I get seasick.

It's gonna be the lake.

Produced by Keith Foskey.

If we ever get there.

But it's the cancel culture.

I mean, look at what Kevin Hart, because of something 10 years ago, he got removed from the Oscars.

People are dragging up stuff from way back in the day.

I mean, Eddie Murphy had to apologize for his 1980s Raw special because he made remarks about gay people.

All this stuff.

Do you know, I know you know Steve Harvey.

He did an interview with Jerry Seinfeld on comedians with cars.

Right, right.

I remember him and Seinfeld doing that.

There was a great moment in that where he said to Seinfeld, he goes, yeah, I had to apologize for something I said.

And Jerry said, well, why? He goes, because I got a television show.

He said, and all it takes is me say something and the sponsors go away and I lose a television show.

He said, if it was just me on stage as a comedian, nah.

So the apology wasn't genuine.

No.

It was just, I know I have to do this or else the culture will cancel me.

Because every moment of your life is now being scrutinized.

That's right.

I've said, I don't think, I don't know if I'd ever be able to get a job outside of some kind of ministry context or maybe a Christian school.

Because, you know, I have a degree in teaching.

I don't know if people know that.

My bachelor's degree is in social science with a minor in education.

So I could go and teach social studies.

I could teach, you know, high school, what? No, I'm just thinking, no, I'm thinking you teaching social studies, yeah, you wouldn't be there more than about two months.

That's right.

And you'd be removed because you'd be teaching the actual truth, right? Yeah, it would be really, really hard to go into that context and just be like, okay, I'm gonna teach what the book says, knowing there's revisionist history, knowing there's things in there.

And again, I'd become an un-person real quick, at least from the school's perspective.

Yeah, Mr.

Fossey's gone.

And then you'd only compound it by teaching it from a biblical worldview as well.

When the- Reform perspective.

When the opportunity presented itself in class discussion.

That's right.

So yeah, you wouldn't last very long in this culture at all when that happens, especially since, as my daughter has pointed out in some of her classes in middle school and high school, this idea of transgenderism, all this stuff, it's all being accepted because these teachers are afraid to say anything about it because they're gonna be fired.

And there goes their pension, there goes their income, there goes their insurance, everything they got.

Just like Steve Harvey said, if it wasn't for the, if I was on stage, it wouldn't matter.

That's why guys like Dave Chappelle can just say, bump y'all, I'm gonna say what I wanna say because you can't cancel me because I'm not beholden to anyone.

But yes, that's exactly what's going on.

And it's becoming increasingly, to keep this, to add the biblical element and the Christian element, it's becoming increasingly difficult for Christians because in places where you have the totalitarian state, like Australia and Canada, you see these pastors are being shut down.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Like their church is being fenced and they're being jailed because they refuse to go along with the narrative.

Yeah, in fact, somebody asked about this on the program.

And again, thank you listeners and thank you for the Facebook group, man.

We got over 230 people on our Facebook group.

We're doing great.

You guys have really been great at sharing the content.

Thank you for that.

But one of the persons actually asked us to address, there was a situation and I don't remember what country it is.

I think it was Holland, but I could be wrong.

But it was a pastor who was basically told they couldn't talk about sin at all, was not able.

And again, the gospel without sin is no gospel because sin is the reason Christ came.

The Bible says God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we can become the righteousness of God in him.

If you don't have sin, you don't understand righteousness.

If you don't understand righteousness, you don't understand the gospel.

You don't understand why Christ came.

So this whole idea of what's going on over there is just absolutely an affront to the gospel.

So thank you again, listener, for sending that question.

And our response would be, this isn't another example of totalitarian overreach.

It's a 1984 situation where we're gonna listen to everything you say.

And when you say something that we do not approve of, you're gone.

You're either gone or you recant.

Because even Winston, in the end of the book, he had an opportunity to recant and that required his face being stuck in a cage with rats.

If you don't say what we want you to say, I'm going to let the rats start eating your face.

And the end of the book ends with basically Big Brother had won.

Again, spoiler alert.

I'm saying Big Brother had won because he now loved Big Brother.

That's right.

And that's the whole point of the book is you will comply.

That's right.

You will eventually, because you have no other choice, comply.

And again, not to go on another side trail, but look at the preachers who are doing that.

Oh yeah.

I mean, who was it? I think it was Erwin Lutzer, and I could be wrong, but one of these guys, I think it was him, was on the steps of the Capitol in whatever city he was in, calling out for forgiveness for his white ancestors, for the sins.

Oh yeah, I remember that.

And he's down on his knees pleading for forgiveness.

And again, what are you doing? You're, one, you're taking this unbiblical approach to repentance.

You're taking this unbiblical approach to forgiveness.

One of our elders, Brother Mike, did a series in Sunday school on the idea of forgiveness.

And he really pointed out, he actually used a couple of really good examples of how, like when, like there was a shooter, some shooter shot someone and he died in the midst of it.

And so the families of the victims like went to the mother of the shooter.

It was like, we forgive you.

Well, she didn't do anything.

We haven't forgiven her for, and like gave her like a plaque or something.

Like, it was like this weird, and he used this as an example.

We don't understand the concepts of forgiveness anymore.

We don't even understand how that works and why, you know, where, you know, the transactional part of forgiving, and again, I want to get into another category here, but this whole idea of how we are interacting with these issues, it just, it's become nonsense.

Newspeak is all around us because terms have changed.

Ideas have changed.

Thoughts have changed.

We've gone away from the Christian model of right and wrong, the Christian standard, which is scripture, and we've gone into this nonsense.

And- And personal responsibility has changed because I'm responsible for something somebody did 200 years ago.

That's right.

You know, and- But the person who does something wrong today isn't responsible for themselves.

That's the insanity of it all.

Yeah.

It's the absolute insanity of it all.

Correct.

All right, so here's our fifth and final quote for today's program.

Not very, excuse me, not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

The heresy of heresies was common sense.

I'll read it again.

Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

The heresy of heresies was common sense.

And this ties directly into the other quote from him about ignoring the evidence of your eyes.

That's right.

It doesn't matter what the- That was the most essential command.

You ignore the evidence of your eyes as the most essential command because reality isn't what reality is.

Reality is what we tell you it is.

Like you brought it up before, I think at the beginning of the program, the swimmer.

Yes.

We have clearly evident, he was Will Thomas.

He was ranked 400 and something in the men's swimming.

He had no hope of ever being a champion.

So what does he do? He decides, well, I'm a woman now.

Goes over there, changes.

I do believe he's on estrogen therapy.

So he is, so he's- And his times have gone down since being on estrogen therapy, but he's still miles ahead of any woman in the field.

Because there is, and I hate to say it, and we may get canceled for this, there is a difference between men and women physiologically.

Oh my goodness.

And there's a reason for that.

There's a God-given reason.

God made men to be the protectors.

They're stronger, they're more agile.

I'm sorry, that's just the way we're built to protect and lead our wives, our children, the whole nine yards.

We're to be the protectors of our family.

Therefore, you're going to have a difference in physical ability.

Hello? And women are to be the carers and the nurturers of their children and the helpmate to their husband.

That's the way God designed it.

So naturally, if you put it into a physical competition, and see, here's the other thing that was brought up, that somebody brought up.

It's like, you know, I don't see any women transitioning to men trying to compete in men's sports.

Yeah, it ain't like necessary roughness where you put a girl on a team and she wins the game.

And it's not like she's just a kicker.

Yeah, yeah, necessarily.

There ain't no girl strolling on to a football team trying to be the wide receiver.

Or the left tackle.

Or the left tackle, or any of that, because now there are some cases, I've seen like some female powerlifters, but they're very masculine, female powerlifters.

I don't know if they're like juicing or something.

There are exceptions to the rule, but overall, if you take any girl off the, girl athlete who played soccer, and you put her on a football field with a 260 pound, let's take Jordan Davis who played, I know you don't follow sports, but Jordan Davis who plays, because I'm throwing all these names out there.

You have no idea what I'm talking about.

Jordan Davis was.

I know every iteration of Superman.

Jordan, I know.

Jordan Davis played for the national champion Georgia Bulldogs.

He was a defensive lineman.

He weighs like 340 pounds.

Beast.

Ran the 40 yard dash in 4.7 seconds.

Which is just, well, 4.4 and 4.2 is like world-class speed.

So he ran at 4.7 seconds at 340 pounds, or 300 something pounds.

That's a lot of man moving at a fast pace of speed.

Now, let's put 130 pound Julia playing running back, coming through the offensive line, and she gets plowed.

I'm just being real, folks.

This poor microphone.

I know.

She just gets plowed by 340 pound Jordan Davis.

Yeah, she's gonna get plowed.

Nobody in their right mind would let that happen.

Because it would be dangerous for the young girl to be on the field with those class athletes.

Why are we allowing men jump into women's sports and dominate them? There's a rugby player or something in Austria.

He's like 6'2", 240 pounds, playing football, their version of football with girls, and beating the dog mess out of them.

And we're allowing it.

Same thing happened in MMA.

Now we bring back- Fallon Fox.

Crushed the skull.

Just shattered her orbital bone.

There's no reason this person should be in the ring with them fighting.

And everybody with common sense knows that that's wrong.

Right.

And I'm gonna say this.

If you're watching this program and in your mind, you're saying, I can defend William, Leah, whatever.

I can defend him swimming against girls.

No, you can't.

No, you can't.

You can make an argument, but it doesn't change reality.

And you, in the realm of Orwell, you're on the side of those who would say, we're gonna trust this ridiculous thing rather than our common sense.

And you're gonna be forced to deny the evidence of your eyes otherwise.

You're a bigot.

You're hateful.

You're racist, misogynist, whatever you wanna be.

Whatever label they wanna throw on you because you refuse to reject the evidence of your eyes.

That's right.

Well, I wanna start to, I'm gonna draw us to a close.

I'm gonna switch over real quick.

I know you and I both are Animal Farm.

You've read it.

I've read it once.

As I said, my favorite.

And the only reason I wanna switch to Animal Farm is I mentioned earlier that Orwell was not a, religious, he was not a Christian.

He was, and in the book, Animal Farm, I actually talk about this a lot.

And I know this sounds weird.

I actually mentioned this at funerals a lot.

I do a lot of funerals.

And one of the, especially if I'm in a group of people that I don't think are believers, I will tell this story because I'm trying to get them to understand that the things that I'm saying are true.

And so I wanna connect them to something that maybe will cause them to really think through what I'm saying.

So I say, my favorite book outside of biblical books is a book called Animal Farm.

And older people will be like, yay.

And young people are like, what's that in Animal Farm? Sound like kiddy.

Is that about a zoo? Yeah.

And I say, in the book, there are all of these animals and they're all given human characteristics.

There's Conrad Napoleon who is the, or Conrad Napoleon who's the head pig.

And he's the one who sort of, everything's sort of centered around him taking control and how he rises to power.

And then there's Snowball and there's these other characters.

There's, but there's one particular character who is a raven.

And I tell the story this way.

The raven would fly over the other animals and he would come and tell the animals about Sugarcandy Mountain.

Sugarcandy Mountain was the place that only he could see because only he could fly.

And he could come and tell them about Sugarcandy Mountain, which was the place where if you were a good, strong, working animal, that you would die and you would go to Sugarcandy Mountain.

And here's the thing, the irony, is the animals knew that it was a lie.

And the raven knew it was a lie.

But it was a happy, hopeful, pie-in-the-sky view of the afterlife that kept the animals working hard and moving forward.

You see, that's the way Orwell looked at religion.

He looked at religion as a great lie because the raven's name was Moses.

And so the raven represented the clergy.

He represented those who say, God is gonna be there when we die and there's a promise of heaven for those who work really hard, which of course is not the Christian message at all.

The Christian message is heaven is for those who repent and place their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

But the point of it is, today, this is another place I think Orwell has been tremendously prophetic because today, many people look at the church and the promises of the church as nothing more than pie-in-the-sky.

They look at it as nothing more than a false hope.

And therefore, why do I need to invest in something that ultimately is not true? And when I do funerals, I compare this to John 14, where Jesus said, I go to prepare a place and if it were not so, I would have told you.

I say, Orwell says it's not true and we all know it.

But Jesus said, not only is it true, but if it weren't true, I would have told you.

But think about how Orwell is affecting the minds of people.

How many people do you know that just think all of religion and all of Christianity is just fake? It's just pie-in-the-sky? I got a couple of family members that way that are almost violently opposed to Christianity.

One, because they think it's pie-in-the-sky, we're all just, when you die, that's it.

Yeah.

You just cease to exist, one.

And two, and I think we mentioned this before earlier in the program, is religion is a means of control.

That's right.

It's the conservatives.

That's how they see it.

That's right, that's their view.

It's the conservatives.

You only want to control what people can do and you want to use the Bible as a means to restrict people.

But where's the control really coming from today? It's coming from the left.

It's coming from those who say, you can't say this is wrong.

You can't say that it's wrong for a boy to swim with girls.

You can't say that it's wrong for a man to dress like a woman.

You can't say that because there's nothing wrong.

Well, that's been their driving force from day one, is they want to throw out the accusation that all everybody else wants is control while at the same time doing the very thing that they're opposing.

That's right.

They do that constantly.

Another, and I know your point with the raven is about religion, and that was Oral's thing.

But while you were talking about that, and I agree with that 100%, that was his viewpoint.

But since Animal Farm is centered around communists, socialists, and again, there's some that disagree with that, there's also this element of the utopian lie.

That's right.

Socialism leads to everybody's equal.

Everybody is just this grandiose splendor.

Everybody's gonna be happy, and we're gonna live in this utopian society.

But everybody believe, instead of everybody throwing it out with religion as a false hope, they believe this is going to happen because we haven't tried it the right way here.

Everywhere else has been tried.

It's ended in tragedy.

Venezuela, China, you name it, it's happened.

Millions of people have died under that system because it becomes a totalitarian dictator state.

He was trying to say dictatorial.

There you go, redneck.

But they think if we try it here, it's going to turn into this, everybody's gonna be sitting around singing Kumbaya, everybody's got the same stuff, everybody's equal across the board, and it's never gonna happen because the only people that are gonna have everything is, like Animal Farm turns out, what were their initial thing? They wanted to get rid of the farmer because the farmer was the dictator.

That's right.

And ultimately, the pigs became the farmer, and everybody else was living in squalor because it didn't happen.

So, anyway.

Well, one day, I'm gonna have you back on the program, and we're gonna talk about how the same thought actually comes from your favorite television show, Star Trek.

Oh, boy.

As Gene Roddenberry created the perfect society.

Yes, it's true.

Which was ultimately a socialist nightmare, and I'll show you why on the next program.

And I know where you're going because Miss Stacey Abrams had a cameo on one of the new Star Trek shows.

Actually, I wasn't going there, but that is true.

But the point is- United Earth, right.

The idea of shows like that, and again, I think we could do another program on this, shows like that are pointing toward a future where everybody thinks the same because they've created a utopia.

And there's no currency, there's no money, so you don't have that, and everybody works for the joy and the pleasure of doing it.

That's right, that's right.

So, I got you.

All right, guys.

Well, this is gonna bring us to the end of today's program.

Richard, thank you for being on the program.

And I will say this.

I will get training in how not to hit the microphone before the next podcast.

Oh, also, I wanna mention, I wanna thank Crystal Roden, Richard's lovely wife, for donating this nice table.

I was using a big, white, kind of ugly table, but she donated this nice table which belonged to her grandfather.

And grandmother, yep.

And he actually sat and had many meals at this table.

And so, I'm thankful to have a nice, heavy, sturdy wooden table to hook our microphones to and to be in the program.

And I'm just grateful for that.

And I'm thankful for you being with us on the program today.

And tell Crystal we all say thank you.

Will do, and it's been a pleasure, bro.

Yes, sir.

Again, if you have questions or topics you would like for us to deal with on the show, or if you'd like for me to have Richard back or not, please send me an email at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.

Thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.