Owen Tries to Rewrite His Woke History - Part 2

Today's show is sponsored by Curios Consulting. That is Curios with a Y. K-Y-R-I-O-S. Real estate investing can be intimidating. That's why you don't do it alone. Curios Consulting gets you from no real estate to your first rental property.

My friend Steve did it right here in New Hampshire, and he wants to help other Christians do the same. Visit consultingbycurios .com. Again, that's with a Y. Consultingbycurios .com. No more excuses. The world needs more Christians with passive income, not more passive Christians.

Make it happen. The link is in the description. We are going to make it, my friends. We are going to make it. What a day. This is a great day. There's just so much going on. There's so much positivity in the air.

I don't know. Can you feel it? I can feel it. Man, the New York Mets just completely curb-stomped the Yankees. Two in a row, man. Wow. Epic. Epic. It's brutal, man. I watch a lot of Yankees, too. I'm not one of these Mets fans that hates the Yankees.

I like the Yankees, but I watch a lot of Yankees, too, and they are on the downswing right now. They lost like three out of ten, and their lineup actually kind of sucks. They got Volpe. He's good. Soto, obviously good.

Judge, obviously good, but besides that, that's a third of their lineup. The second two-thirds of their lineup is just horrible. It's a real situation, and the Yankees are in first place, so you can't take that away from them.

They're in first place. They have the best record in the league, all that kind of stuff, but man, all is not well in the Bronx. That's for sure. I watch a lot of Yankees YouTubers, too, just to see their reactions, especially after a Mets win.

It's a guilty pleasure of mine to watch fans in suffering, and everyone is just in complete chaos panic mode, and the Mets, man. They were 11 games under 500 not that long ago, and now they're at 500, and it's just, it couldn't have happened in a better way.

Everybody's hitting. Everybody. It is quite a scene. I stayed up late, too, to watch the game. There was a big rain delay, and the game finished after 11, whatever, which was too bad because I was gonna go fishing.

Ben! I was gonna go fishing, and I was gonna wake up early, and so going to bed late, I didn't know if I could do it, but I did get out there today, and I had a brand new lure. I just bought it at Dick's, and I was gonna try it out, and on the second cast, my friend, on the with a pike, and it was terrifying, actually.

It was very strong, and every time I would get it close to the boat, it would jump off. It would jump in this direction, out of the water, and I was worried that as I was reeling it in, it was gonna jump towards me, and these pike have thousands of razor-sharp teeth.

I was really nervous, but I eventually got it in, and it's 10 and a half pounds. 10 and a half pounds. I hit the goal just a couple weeks after I set it. Now, I gotta go for 20. I gotta find a 20-pound pike, my friends.

Wow. Wow. I landed another one, too, shortly after, a few casts later, and I actually lost the lure. A brand new $10. Actually, it was like a $14 lure. $14 lure. I lost it on the second fish, but I'm gonna buy another one, because obviously, there's something going on with this lure.

Man. In any case, it's a great day, and it seems like a perfect day to get back to this horrendous conversation with Neil Shenvey and Owen Strand. Dr. Owen Strand. This is just too funny, man. So many people noticed how boring this video is.

It's just so boring. Oh, and I discovered a new term. Somebody had coined the term for these books back here, and I've always made fun of the books behind the shot and stuff like that. Well, somebody I saw on Twitter calls this a credibility library.

Credibility bookshelf. So, you put these books back there, and it's supposed to project an air of credibility, but I gotta be honest with you. None of these books look very used. These are like mint condition, never been opened.

That's what these kind of books look like. I do have a bookshelf. I do read on occasion, but my books are, you know, they're obviously well-worn, you know, and there are certain books that I reference constantly.

Anyway, the point is, I thought that was funny. Credibility bookshelf. I've got my own credibility bookshelf back here, you know, so you know I'm not a weasel. Let's get to it. Part of our democracy lies a principle we hold sacred, free speech.

It's the cornerstone that.

Supports oppression, and we are promoting... What in the world was that? That was weird.

What happened there? Oh, whatever. Let's just continue. What they call a, quote,.

Massive social transformation that's intended to dismantle all these systems of oppression. So, you know, Rufo is not wrong to say, actually, this does go back to the critical race theorists.

It's all, it is interlocking in their own words. At the very heart of our democracy lies a principle we hold sacred, free speech. It's the cornerstone that supports every freedom we cherish. Yet in today's digital age, discussions about our wealth, our rights, and our future are being silenced or overshadowed in mainstream narratives.

This leaves many feeling voiceless in conversations that are crucial to our financial independence and security. This is where Wealth Protection Research steps in, armed with a mission that's never been more critical.

Wealth Protection Research is not a financial advisory firm. They're defenders of free speech, committed to giving a voice to the silenced. Wealth Protection Research tirelessly seeks out financial experts.

These are the voices that challenge prevailing narratives, especially as we navigate the uncertainties of the 2024 election. Wealth Protection Research has created a 2024 Wealth Protection Report. This free report highlights the three best ideas for protecting and growing your money.

Again, text ideas to 76626 to claim your free copy. Support free speech. It is. When you came to write that pamphlet, I am actually struggling. I cite it in my book, Christianity and Wokeness. What was the.

Initial short book you wrote about? Yeah, so Pat and I wrote a booklet in, I think it was 2019, is entitled Engaging Critical Theory and the Social Justice Movement, published with Ratio Christie, which is a great student ministry on colleges around the U .S. and maybe around the world.

But they do apologetics, and so they published a series of booklets, and one of them was ours on Engaging Critical Theory and the Social Justice Movement. I think they said it's, you know, they've given out or sold thousands of copies by now, so it became very popular.

Yours was the first.

Resource I came across, because I'll bring my biography in a little bit, we'll keep talking. Man, this is, who listens to this? Honestly, what, what, who is this for? I just couldn't imagine, man. Like, I guess that, I mean, in fairness, like, there are some people that, you know, might be considered boring that I listen to, but man, I can't imagine spending 40 minutes, which I'm definitely going to do.

I can't believe this, man. Listening to these guys prattle on about nonsense for 40 minutes, and, you know, like, Owen's very deeply concerned, and Shen V has a stupid grin on his face, like, this is just awful.

I mean, I guess not too many people listen to it, because look, there's only almost 400 views, 373 views after a day. It's been out for more than a day. Man, like, I just can't imagine. Look, he's got a new one that came out four hours ago, 32 views.

Like, I just, man. I didn't know what Critical Race Theory was. Truly no idea. I've got an idea. Sorry to do this here. We're going to go ahead and play it at one and a quarter. I knew that there was a lot going on, of course, in American civilization and the church that was not good, and I knew that I did not agree with the way that people on the left framed lots of cultural events from the mid -2010s, roughly, up through, you know, 2019, 2020.

There were major evangelical conferences that had presentations. So he presents himself here as, I knew from, like, the mid -2010s that I didn't agree with the left framing. No, you didn't. That's a rewrite of history, Owen.

That's a rewrite of history because you were woke not that long ago. I'm talking probably less than five years ago. You were woke. You were writing articles about all the white cops out there shooting up blacks like hotcakes.

That's you. So maybe there were a little, I mean, here and there you would see, but let's not pretend that you were this guy who I noticed. I already knew. And then I saw your amazing booklet and I finally figured it out.

Like, no, you didn't. You were duped. You were bamboozled. You were fooled. And look, there's nothing wrong with that. Lots of us were fooled. And I'm not saying I always saw it. I saw it earlier than Dr. Owen Strawn.

That is for sure. But the thing is like, you know, like you're woke, Owen. Well, you were woke. And in many ways you still are. And we've proved that over and over again on the channel. This is the, like, that's good.

Let's just let him continue. Again, I knew I did not agree with, but like a ton of the reason I cite my biography is because it's not because I'm self-important. It's because I think my experience and maybe yours to some degree fits with a lot of people out there where they knew there was stuff happening.

You knew in the, in the trees over there, in the darkened forest, there might not be good stuff going on, but you didn't know what it was. And so then critical race theory in 2019, this very month, five years ago was framed in a resolution at the Southern Baptist convention as basically a neutral or maybe even positive reality, a reality, a system that would help you understand the world better.

An analytical tool was the famous phrase. And it was when CRT was framed in that way that I think a lot of us sat up in our chairs and said, wait a minute, what is this system? What exactly is this? What is it arguing?

Is it positive? Because it's associated with all these evil developments in culture. And I don't agree with those one bit. So I had to do what you were just talking about doing. I had to kind of become a pedagogue to myself and, and order these books.

But honestly, Neil, this is where this comes back to your, your short book. There wasn't much to order on, on the right, so to speak among conservatives or Christians. I picked up cynical theories. I see it there over your shoulder by Lindsay and Pluckrose.

And that was very helpful, actually. Oh man, did you see that smile from Shen V? Okay. I want you to look, I want you to look at Owen reference, the cynical theories book, which I have never read and I never will.

Not my kind of thing, but that credibility bookshelf, that, that is such a good term. I am jealous. I am envious of not coining that term credibility bookshelf because Owen references a book behind Neil and look at the smile on Neil's face.

He's like, this is what it's all for. This is what he imagined when he put the books on his credibility bookshelf. This is what it's all for. He gets the shout out. Yes. I'm well read on the right. So to speak among conservatives or Christians, I picked up cynical theories.

I see it there over your shoulder by Lindsay and Pluckrose. Yeah. He's like, yeah, it worked. It worked. The credibility, I got the credibility. I got it. It's just too funny, man. And that was very helpful, actually not a Christian book at all, but, but a very sharp book, a very well thought out book, at least in many respects, don't agree with everything in it to be sure.

And then your book was, I think, I think this is accurate. Just about the only Christian book I could find on these matters. That's not true, man. That's not true. There were others, there were others.

And to be perfectly honest with you, reform people have been writing about these things for quite some time. And not everybody knew about them because you know why they didn't know about them? Because they were written by people that little weasels like Owen put on the naughty, naughty list.

They're in the dark forest where you'll, you don't fear to go unless you're going to go and call them anti-Semitic or racist or things like that. So that's the, that's the truth. So Owen, you might have been clueless and I'm not going to dispute you because I know you were clueless.

You were clueless. You were woke and probably in a lot of ways, again, still are woke, but not everybody was clueless. Not everybody. There's a really, really great book called guilt manipulators in the age of, in the age of, I'm sorry, productive Christians in an age of guilt manipulators.

A really good book. And it's, it's not about critical theory proper, but it is about these topics. And honestly, I don't care about critical race theory. Who cares? I don't care about the, the specifics, you know, the foundations, you know, some people do, and they are interested in learning about some of that stuff.

I'm not really so much concerned with that. What I'm more concerned with are the applications, like the results, like the, the ideas as they exist now. So do I care if someone knows that these ideas come from critical theory, if they're saying something stupid, like, you know, you know, you're racist because you believe you should be on time for work.

No, I don't really care so much about the foundations. That's for other people. That's for academics. For me, I'm like, that's brain dead. And I'm going to explain to you why that's brain dead in a very simple, easy to understand way.

And that's how my book is written. You know, it's not written, you know, with references to critical race theorists and stuff like that. That's for other people. I don't care so much about that stuff.

What I care about is when somebody says, hey, we should have reparations because, you know, God is a God of justice. I want to be able to decimate that argument in a very simple, easy, concise, and funny kind of a way.

And that's what, that's how I write. That's how I think these things through. So anyway, yeah. Owen, you know, he was clueless. How did it feel to be on the very early end? Of course, we had the Dallas statement of 2018, June 2018.

So that's six years ago, very important. But how did it, how, how did it feel to be on the early end of defining these things and responding to these things? It had to be lonely. It had to be difficult.

Was it? A little bit. I mean,.

When Pat and I wrote our booklet for Rational Christianity, we kind of thought that would be it. Like here, we got this booklet out. It's very careful. It's very precise. It's very charitable. We don't go around yelling.

Everyone's Marxist. Everyone's going to die. We're just like, hey, these are bad ideas. We know you mean well, but you have to reject these ideas. They're going to corrode your faith. And we thought naively at the time, well, once Christians see the idea of what they are, once they realize, oh man, I didn't realize what these ideas actually were that were being, then they'll just pull back.

It'll all be over. We'll put out the fire. It's done.

But yeah, so that's an interesting point. I'm not going to argue with him on that, but I do want to emphasize something that he just said there. He said, naively, we thought that we'd show them, you know, what the truth was and we show them the foundations and the rot there and people would change their minds.

That's not how people are. You really need to understand this if you're going to not live your life completely frustrated in every way. Because, you know, and Republicans are notorious for this. You know, facts don't care about your feelings.

Well, I mean, that's true. Facts don't care about feelings. But the people generally don't care about facts. They really don't. Unless there's a feeling there as well. And I've said this many times, and I always say it sounds so silly, but it is so true that, you know, you won't, you won't believe something regardless of the facts, regardless of the details.

You won't believe them until you want to. You won't believe something until you want to believe it. So I know a lot of like, you know, apologist types say, well, if I could just prove the existence of God, like, like Neil was talking about that earlier, that's why God no apologetics, like he wanted to demonstrate the existence of the Lord to his unbelieving friends.

And so he learns all these arguments and facts and things like that. And the thing is, like, in my opinion, apologetics is for Christians, right? Because everyone's gonna see your facts and your arguments and your evidence.

And if they don't want to believe, they won't. They won't. And that the best you can do is they're gonna file it and say, well, you know, I guess, you know, maybe Jesus did rise from the dead, but you know, strange things happen.

You know what I mean? They're not, because they don't want to believe it. And so this is not to say that, you know, you believe whatever you want and it becomes true. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is though, that when you're dealing with a person and not a robot, when you're dealing with a person, they have to want what you're selling, essentially.

They have to want what you're arguing for before they will accept it. And so the reality here is that it was naive of Neil to think that, and I've been in that place. I'm not trying to make fun of him.

I've been there before. I've thought that way, but there has to be more. And I saw a tweet just the other day that was a really good tweet. It said something like, you know, we severely downplay the amount of influence on our theological beliefs that our friends have.

And so when you find yourself believing certain things, a lot of times you can trace it back and it's like, well, my friends who I have a great time with, who I enjoy talking to, I might've disagreed with them at the time, but was it really that I heard a new argument that I've never heard before that made me agree with them?

Or was it more, I wanted to be in with my friends more. Listen, some people are going to hate what I'm saying here because they think they believe that human beings are basically robots. That's not how human beings work.

That's not how human beings work. And honestly, this is one reason why I actually am a white boy summer supporter. I am. I think it's a good thing. Obviously, I don't think that every single person who supports white boy summer is the best person around.

But what I am saying is, though, that the push of Christian nationalism, Protestant Christian nationalism in the United States, they don't need white boy summer per se, but they do need to have the arguments.

They do need to have the Bible support, the theological foundations. They need all that stuff. But they also need a feeling, a feeling that there's something desirable in Christian nationalism, in Protestant Christian nationalism, in Anglo-Protestant Christian nationalism, if that's how you want to slice it.

There's something attractive. There's something interesting, fun, something you want to be a part of. And I'm not white, obviously, but I think white people are great. White people are A-OK by me. And I like the culture in the United States.

I like the Anglo-Protestant culture. And I like the traditional stuff. I like where it once was. And I walk around my town, and it's just so awesome to be in New England because it just goes back so far to the founding of the country.

And you see these historic buildings. And I love that. That's home to me. That's home to me. Ever since I was a little kid, I used to live in Windsor, Connecticut. And right there, there's the Webster house that Noah Webster lived in.

And I always thought that was so cool. All of these foundations of our culture, our society, were right in this general vicinity. And it's just so awesome to live here and be here and be among it and be part of it.

It's just, it's awesome. And I'm not Anglo. You know what I mean? I'm not white. But I'm part of this culture now. And this is my culture. These are my people. And I love it. I love it. And I love being Puerto Rican, too.

You know what I mean? I love being Puerto Rican. But if you just teleported me from New England to Puerto Rico, and now I lived in Puerto Rico just instantly, there would be a lot of parts of that culture that I just don't get.

And I wouldn't fit in. And then there would be some parts that I would because of how I was raised and stuff like that. And some of the cultural traditions that I have that are a little different than my Anglo friends.

But I think it would be hard. I think people are naive sometimes how hard it is to live in a different culture, live in a different area. And now you got to assimilate to Puerto Rican culture. And it's just the expectations on you and the traditions and the things.

They're just all different. They're all different. So anyway, that's something that I want people to understand that watch my channel. You have to have the arguments. You have to have the academics, the foundations, and the evidence and stuff like that.

That's all wonderful and great. But you have to remember, you're not dealing with an artificial intelligence. You're dealing with a human being. And so if you're a jerk, but you have all the right arguments, nobody cares.

Nobody cares. Nobody's going to want that. You got to have an attractive message as well. And I like that too, because with White Boy Summer, for example, and maybe I'll talk more about White Boy Summer in a minute.

I'm not really that knowledgeable about it, but I don't get all of the hand-wringing about it. My guys on the Fight Last Feast Network, they really don't like White Boy Summer. And I honestly, I don't know where that comes from.

I don't get that. I don't understand. I don't understand. But white people have been beaten into submission. I mean, they've been taught that they're these evil people. They don't have a culture. They don't have traditions.

They're supposed to really despise themselves. And obviously not every white person despises themselves, but a lot do. A lot do. But what I think what needs to happen here is not only are white people all right, they're like, it's okay to be white.

Everyone gets that. But also it's good to be white. It is. It's good to be white. It's good to be Puerto Rican. There's a lot of things about Puerto Ricans that I love. I mean, I love everything about being Puerto Rican, but it's also good to be white.

And I think for other white people, like, no, no, this is an attractive life. Not only do we have to not agree that we suck, but also it's good. It's good. There's nothing wrong with having a little fun there.

There's nothing wrong with that. People think white people stink, but I've got evidence to the contrary. I mean, Tears for Fears exists. Leonard Skinner exists. What more do you want? That didn't happen.

Mayonnaise is pretty good. I've got a taste for mayonnaise now. I really do. When I was a kid, I thought mayonnaise was so gross. But as an adult, I realized how foolish.

I was when I was a child. Mayonnaise is great. Next five years, woke evangelicals kind of kept pushing and going further and drifting further afield. Now, I do think in the last year or two, maybe two or three years, I don't know, but there has been a shift.

People think, wait a minute, once you get to trans issues, evangelicals are suddenly like, wait a minute, wait, we didn't sign up for this. We thought we were just trying to make America more fair and equal and trying to love our brothers and sisters of color.

We didn't sign up for transing kids. We didn't sign up for genital mutilation. So I think in the last, again, two or three years, there has been something of a turnaround where people have said, you know what, all those crazy people like Shenbi, we thought they were crying wolf and screaming and raging.

Maybe they had a point. So I'm not going to say I've never in my life said, oh, shame on you. You're too little, too late. No, I applaud. Praise what you want to see more of. I love the fact that people are turning around and reexamining these ideas and saying, are they?

I agree with you on that one,.

Too. And I get a little flack from my friends about this. Like, I'm not one of these guys, too little, too late. I like to encourage people, even if they're taking small steps, I like to encourage people.

I've encouraged Andrew Walker many, many times publicly and a few times privately because I've seen some positive developments in him. Even Owen here. I mean, Owen can tell you, you know, if he's honest, I don't really trust Owen at all.

But back when he was first coming out as a non-woke person or at least positioning himself that way, I sent him encouraging messages a couple of times, maybe more than a couple, when people were hating on him and coming after him and all this stuff.

And I sent him positive messages. Hey, man, listen, this can't be easy. You're kind of in Big Eva and that's that's woke paradise. You know, but just just know like it's worth it. And look, we got your back, man.

We haven't seen eye to eye all the time, obviously, but we got your back. Don't worry about it. I agree. I agree with Neil. But here's the thing, though. Here is the thing. There are some people like Owen, like Neil, that have positioned themselves as anti-woke, but they are not going far enough.

They just aren't. They just aren't. Owen is still very woke in many ways. He's not all the way. And a lot of the stuff he says is not old school woke, but it's still coming from the same perspective when he deals like someone like Stephen Wolfe, when he invents kinism out of thin air in people, when he thinks that I'm a kinist.

Owen told me that I might be a kinist, which is so preposterous. And kinism isn't like the Scarlet Letter, by the way. That's the other thing. Like they use it as like you're a Nazi, essentially. And, you know, honestly, kinism, I don't agree with it.

Is it like the biggest deal in the entire universe? Obviously not. Obviously not. And I think when you do break free from the woke spell in its entirety, you can see that. Like, yeah, I don't agree with that.

And maybe I don't like it and I don't want to be friends with people like that. But at the end of the day, is this our big problem right now? No, it's not. No, it's not. I can have a friendly relationship with someone who's a kinist and he thinks that, you know, a marriage like mine might be inappropriate or maybe even sinful and stuff like that.

But, you know, when you're over yourself, that's not the end of the world. I'm pretty confident in my positions when it comes to kinism, but I'm not going to debate it with anybody. It's not that big a deal to me.

It's not that big a deal to me. Do I have to treat them like a leper? I don't think so. I don't think so. In any case, we've been at this for 30 minutes. We didn't get very far, but we're going to go through this at one and a quarter.

Look at, look at Neil's face. Look at Neil's face. He's confused. He's like, did you just say kinism isn't that big deal? Oh man. God bless you guys. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless. Oh yeah.

If you want to see some of my opinions on kinism, I did a couple of Twitter shorts when I was in the Dominican Republic and I was at a wedding. I was at a wedding between an Italian and an Italian and a Dominican.

It was a beautiful wedding. And I remember making some comments about kinism and all that kind of thing because, you know, a lot of Dominicans, like they want to marry Dominicans. You know what I mean?

And Italians are the same way. I always think of the old Italian grandmother that wants nothing more than her son, Antonio, to marry a nice, pretty young lady named Maria. You know what I mean? And it's like, that's how Italian grandmothers are typically.

Are they the worst people in the world? You must disconnect from grandma. She wants you to marry another Italian. It's just crazy stuff, man. Anyway, God bless.