A Boomer Gets Redpilled

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00:11

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I am your host John Harris. We have an important discussion today on redpilling.

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Some of you who are in the internet discourse, you understand exactly what that is, especially if you're younger.

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But if you're a little older and you haven't maybe seen the Matrix movies, which I don't necessarily recommend, or you haven't just been part of the political discourse over the last few years, that may be a new term for you.

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But I want to talk about this a little bit with my guest. And he's actually waiting if I can push the button.

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There we go. StreamYard's been a little laggy with me today. But Mike D 'Virgilio, I hope

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I got your name right. We were we were practicing this beforehand. And well, I live in New York where there's a lot of Italians, you know, is that where your family's from?

01:00

Well, Sicily to Boston and Brooklyn, in the West Coast, and it's a long story.

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But yeah. OK, sounds like my family went through Ellis Island, that whole thing, side of the country to the other and all that.

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But you wrote this book. And of course, you're a graduate of Westminster Seminary. You're a businessman and an author.

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And the Way Forward is the name of the book. Going Back to Find the Way Forward is the title.

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And so before we get into it, where can people find your book if they want to buy it? Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

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OK. Going Back to Find the Way Forward. It's there. My website has, which is just MyName .com, which

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I can spell later or whatever. With the apostrophe? No, we talked about that. We go to MikeDVirgilio .com

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if you want to get Going Back to Find the Way Forward. I want to just kind of let you talk because I went through your book and I was saying this beforehand, but I'll say it for everyone else out there publicly, that what

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I've noticed over the last few years, really since 2020 especially, is huge shifts happening in the way people think about politics and the conditions they live in.

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And as generational things happen, as Gen Z also becomes a voting age, they have their own perspective on what's happening.

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And it seems to me, and I've talked about this before, but sometimes baby boomers get offended at me for saying this, but I try to do it nicely, that baby boomers grew up in a world that was so different.

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I mean, it was literally, it was a different country. When my parents talk about when they were kids, it's hard to even relate sometimes, especially if you're in Gen Z.

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I mean, as a millennial, I at least remember the 90s, but just running around the neighborhood and it was safe and schools weren't pushing all the propaganda they're pushing now.

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They push some propaganda, maybe they didn't realize, but there was prayer in schools. I mean, we could talk forever about just the differences,

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I'm sure, socially speaking. But what I thought was interesting about your book is that you are a baby boomer and you've kind of made this transition.

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And I think many baby boomers are making this transition to adapting their political thinking.

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And it's not just their political thinking, it's more than that. They're sort of their social paradigm and Christians included to suit the situation we're in now, realizing that it's not, we don't live in the 1960s and 70s and we're never getting back to that.

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And so maybe start with just autobiographically explaining to us the transition that you made in your thinking on politics and social matters and then why you made that transition.

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Why it's a long story, because I became a born, we called it back then, born again Christian in 1978 and found out,

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I discovered Francis Schaeffer probably a couple of years in. And being Italian, my dad was

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Catholic, Italian, Democrat, and he would never change. And I ended up voting for Jimmy Carter. Don't say that to anybody.

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But I found out with Reagan, I was a conservative and then I was weaned.

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And this tells part of the part of the story politically on The Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review.

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And, you know, I call it con ink now as a con. But post

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World War Two consensus conservatism, that was the thing. And I bought it hook, line and sinker.

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But it's interesting because I became politically involved, got disillusioned with we were in California at the time, but the

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Republican Party hated social conservatives. Look what that's done for them now. And just slowly got disenchanted with the political process.

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The Republican Party only seemed to lose, you know, progressivism and this statism just got bigger and bigger.

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And what did the Republicans do? You know, then then Bush came along and I bought all of that.

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We bought globalism and the whole thing, free enterprise, you name it. And then 2006, the midterm election and the

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Republicans got destroyed and I was distraught. It was like nothing changes.

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So I started an organization called the Culture Project because, you know, Breitbart hadn't come around yet.

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But this idea of politics downstream from culture. So I thought that's the answer, because we've been on politics for how long?

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That hasn't worked, obviously. So it's culture, which, of course, it is. That's obviously both. And so started that organization.

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And Herb London, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but he was the president of the Hudson Institute in 2009.

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I was at a trip. I tell this in the book a bit in New York City and got a meeting with them at their headquarters.

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And it's interesting because I was on the culture kick and I was being my kind of demonstrative self.

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And he he says, well, politics is pretty important because it's the distribution of power in a society.

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And as I say, it wasn't a rebuke, but it was like. Oh, very wise man, you know, so it's like my thinking started to, you know, and then

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Breitbart came and like everybody's like, OK, now it's culture, we really have to fight for the culture and.

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And then. Obama and then Trump, because that's my book, the premise of my book is he kind of broke everything and everyone and.

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I was no fan, as I explained in the book. At all, I despised

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Trump. The idea of Trump was distasteful to me, but interestingly enough, my daughter went to Hillsdale College 2010 to 14 and I became a huge fan of Larry Arnn and he started the

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Hillsdale Dialogues with Hugh Hewitt, who is his establishment of conservative, as you can find in the universe.

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Yeah, but they talked about Trump 2015, 16 and sort of opened my mind to him.

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And Larry Arnn especially, I was just like, hmm, OK, maybe

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I should listen to this guy. And of course, the people who were anti -Trump were so irrational. And unhinged,

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I thought nobody can be that evil. Then in February, I got I got National Review for since the early 1980s and they had the anti -Trump issue.

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And I read some of it and I was disgusted. I was just like, really? And then fast forward to the we were in Illinois at the time to the the primary and Cruz or Trump.

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And I was really and my mother -in -law, I called her and she's Trump, pro -Trump, and she talked me into it.

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And I guiltily voted for Trump and my wife voted for Cruz. But then, you know, my thinking just started to see what the left was doing and the media was doing and how the

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Republicans were just went along with it. You know, there would have been no

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Trump -Russia collusions if the Republicans didn't hate Trump and sins of omission just let it go along, you know.

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So that was all that time was opening my eyes more and more and I was reading different things and like the idea of free trade and offshoring all production to China and Asia to save a few cents at Walmart.

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At one time, I thought that was a good thing. I'm ashamed to think that, you know, America first.

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Right. Our countrymen first. And so but then the big thing was COVID, which, you know, you were talking about boomers and re -assessing.

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I talk about in the first chapter about my red pill journey, but also liberals. And I distinguish between real liberals who believe in truth because my second chapter is that's the dividing line in Western culture.

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It's true. If you believe in truth and we know you and I, John, that truth is a person and it's metaphysical.

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It's not just the way things are. And so liberals, so we know that now.

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How many Naomi Wolf? I saw her become back to becoming a theist on Steve Bannon's War Room.

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Yeah. You know, the last thing I could imagine happening and on and on. So that was the thing.

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So that so I started questioning every authority, experts. My cousin's a doctor and he said the first month of COVID, it's a scam.

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I said, really? And he started going against vaccines. And so my whole just studying and reading about that.

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And so and I couldn't look at anything the same way. You know,

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I mean, I I realize too many people become cynics. And everything's a conspiracy.

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And so I, you know, try to develop some kind of wisdom that hopefully

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God's given me to say, OK, you can't throw out the baby with the bathwater, you know, because the medical industrial complex, big pharma, big food, big agriculture, all of it, you know, it's killing people and.

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And there's not one good Republican and everything anybody does is, you know, tainted and so on and so forth, and I mean,

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I'm rambling a long time, so I don't have any questions or where to go, but yeah, yeah, no, I do. I always do. I just I could not help right now.

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No, thank you. It's been amazing. You know, I'm going to be 64 at the end of the month.

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I'm not really sure how that happened, but God's teaching me.

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I mean, as I say in the book, I hadn't really I was going to go to get a Ph .D.

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to publish, probably study political philosophy. But since then, I got involved in business and it was just raising kids and all that stuff just, you know, yeah, and it was this whole situation that I need to have a

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Christian biblical philosophy, a political philosophy. It's like and this book really has helped me.

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I'm still in the journey. I got this book called The Real Lincoln because of you, you know, because I'm really kind of processing.

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That's a red pill. I imagine so, because I've been ambivalent and libertarians despise the guy and I'm like, yeah, they used to.

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I'm not sure if they still do. I mean, libertarians have gotten so left there. See, they seem like a party committed to leftist social issues and gay rights now to me.

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No, they are. I mean, yeah, the who they voted, who they. Yeah, I mean, really? Ron Paul's, you know,

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I don't know where that wing went. It's got it. Well, they're secularists. And I argue in the book against secularism that it's we're on the other side of it.

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Secularism is a lie. The myth of neutrality is a lie that somehow we can have this naked public square where we all get along around the wedding table and we all have our little religious positions and then we'll kind of debate and see which one wins.

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Right. Ever. And it's just garbage. But that was a very transitory moment, I think.

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And you happen to live through it as someone who's a baby boomer. You grew up in a world where it seemed like that could be possible, especially

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I don't know if you grew up in California. That's where I did. L .A. Yeah, I say because my parents grew up probably, you know, very close to where you were.

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I mean, they were in like, you know, Van Nuys, Panorama City. Yeah, I was in the San Gabriel Valley. So that's that's the valley.

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Right. And they grew up in a world and they still have fond stories about it. And it seems like it's just awesome.

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It's an amazing world. It seems like it was the high point of America almost, you know. Well, you know,

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California was my grandfather, Sicily to Boston. Twenty seven.

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He moves to Montebello, which is outside of L .A. And it was just nothing, you know, and it was the you know, the

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Golden State. Right. Everybody came in the 60s. I was born in 60. You know, it was just it was awesome.

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And I grew up, you know, as a teenager in the 70s and it was rock and roll and it was just beautiful.

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I loved it. And they have so destroyed my home state that is just depressed.

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Yeah, you probably don't like going back. That's what my parents. Yeah, everybody. Well, a lot of my relatives have moved out.

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Yeah, my mother's 91. She and my sister and her husband moved to Phoenix recently just to get out because it's just bad, you know.

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But it seemed like especially there, but, you know, not just there, the whole country, you could multiculturalism worked.

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You know, you had people that generally seemed to respect our values, believed in God, celebrated our holidays, participated in our national pastimes.

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And well, Aaron calls that a positive world, right? It's a Christian. Right. It's a good thing. Right. Right. Traditions, even if you were

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Jewish or whatever, agnostic, you still. Yeah. And you were expected to speak English. And this stuff went without saying.

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And and of course, we had the Soviets. You had the Cold War to just juxtapose what America was.

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And and now it seems like that is all totally come undone. And people are going back to what seems to be actually in some ways more natural as far as as larger groups, especially in California, as larger groups of people that share more in common with each other move in to that state.

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They tend to conglomerate together and seek their own self -interest over the interests of the state.

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There's that participatory spirit that you probably remember in the 60s being more prevalent just isn't there.

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And what I find with a lot of people around your age is they seem to think that the institutions can still be trusted, that the medical establishment, the education, the government, even to a certain, you know, sense in a certain sense is still seeking our good and wants to do the right thing, even though there's people that have their strong disagreements.

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But they're all on the same team, which is Team USA. And what we really need to do is just replace the people who are overseeing these things, because the mechanisms aren't the problem.

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In fact, if we had the right people in charge, we could probably get back to prayer in school because, you know, we'll find these little things that make us think that that's the key, you know, that unlocks every door.

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Prayer in school would unlock every door, not realizing the actual conditions in our in our schools and in the medical establishment and everywhere.

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And the quality has gone down. I mean, I live in a kind of a sleepy town. Someone would say apple orchard country here in New York right now.

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And my local school had a controversy, a scandal really last year where in the gym, apparently, you know,

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I don't know all the details because a lot of this is hidden and there's controversies. But a lot of the parents are saying that people at the school knew that in the locker rooms, kids were being essentially raped and by gang raped by the people on the sports teams and that this was a common thing.

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And it came out because one small town, New York. Yeah. Small town in New York. One kid squealed about it and then it became a huge thing.

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But the school is trying to protect itself. And, you know, this really only got local pay.

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I think it was in a local paper once that there was a meeting about it. And but my only point is to say that the schools are in shambles.

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You know, the local school actually is the one that came over down the street from my house to paint a mural about our local area.

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Right. And you would think I live on the Hudson River. There's apple orchards and they put all this homosexual stuff.

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There's two lesbians. It's a farmer with a rainbow flag on. The beauty of your story, even that proves the premise that I argue in the book that secularism we're on the other side of secularism, which has basically become a new paganism.

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And you can't secularism is a lie. And as I there is a bumper sticker I saw in church some years ago that said an empire built on lies cannot stand.

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And in the doomers, as I call them, the people who are just negative about, oh, it's all going to hell in a handbasket and hope

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Jesus comes back tomorrow or whatever. No, no. This is as bad as it is.

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Is it's good because so I'm slowly reading through Isaiah with John Calvin and the first six,

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I mean, think I'm in Chapter six. And the judgment that God is threatening them with because of who they are and what they're doing.

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See, we tend to think of judgment as an end in and of itself, that God is just going to crush gone, put him in prison forever.

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No, God's judgment is a mercy. So I see it's sad that it's a disaster and so many have to suffer.

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But we can't see we're just human beings or sinners. And less this conflagration of garbage happens.

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And that's what's happened. That's to me why this is a great awakening is happening. Well, you hit on something that I've been hearing my whole life as I have gone to Christian political events and so forth is you will hear over and over that if we don't repent,

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God's going to judge us, right? As if it's this impending thing. Right. And we still have the ability. He's not judging us now.

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Yeah, we can avoid it somehow if we just do what they say, which means usually, you know, electing the right people, praying, be more spiritually disciplined.

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And usually we blame ourselves. It's because the church did this or that. That when you hear people say we this, it's like, no, we don't.

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Yeah. Right. Oh, I've realized now how ridiculous that is. It's you know, we and but I think the the mindset of your generation and I'm not saying you in particular, that's great people in that generation who still have a memory of this general

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Christianity is that that's really what needs to happen. We just get our act together as the church and we do evangelizing and change hearts and minds.

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And for the power structure, it's fine. Basically, you can leave that alone. Everything is working as it should, except for the fact that there's just some evil people in these spots.

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And we need to just have a revival so good people can enter these spots, which, you know, what's wrong with that?

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That sounds pretty. What's so interesting about that is that there's some kind of amorphous kind of if we just.

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Jesus, I don't know. There's no like plan, there's no. OK, we need to do

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X, Y and Z. No, no. It's up to my organization. That's the plan. Sadly, that's true.

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And so I got to tell more of the story because after so COVID was like, boom.

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So the stolen election to say it's not stolen, whatever. The trick of this, the election of 2020.

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So Trump loses, so to speak. I was depressed. Does that have ever been?

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I was just like they won. This is over. America's time is just so depressed.

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And so it was a week or two later, I found Steve Bannon's war room on YouTube. And I knew

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Bannon somewhat, you know, from the administration and Breitbart or whatever. And so, as I say, he he he got me out of the fetal position and to mix metaphors, he talked me off the ledge.

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And I actually, after watching him for a little bit, I had some hope. And so because his his his mantra is we have agency, we can change things were made in God's image.

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Of course we can. I used to mock the because of my I believe my eschatology, which I talked about in the book some.

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Yes, I believed that the world was going to hell in a handbasket. Satan down here wins.

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We lose. But of course, we live forever and happily ever. And that's awesome. But I didn't realize how much that affected how

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I interpret everything. And here's Bannon, who's a Catholic, Irish Catholic agency.

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You can change things. And I used to mock the idea that I could change the world because I've always been very idealistic. That's why the

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Culture Project, I can still change the world. And and then I read. Oh, I'm forgetting it right now.

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But to change the world by a sociologist from Virginia, James Davison Hunter, and.

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And he didn't believe that, clearly, he saw faithful presence, you just hang out, be a

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Christian in whatever environment you are. And what? What?

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Do something right. But then slowly I became a mill in my eschatological perspective, which seemed to turn me more negative because there's just nothing you can do about this.

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You know, just be faithful and do what you can do and preach the gospel. And and then Bannon, it's just so bizarre.

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God has a sense of humor. And his other mantra is action, action, action.

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We must do something. And his program is basically a platform for people all mega all over the country, lots of Christians to we got to get involved.

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We got to do something local, local, local, local. The the precinct project. So we're involved in our local

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Republican Party here, my wife and I. So so he really did. And so after J6, I was depressed again.

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And, you know, I'm just and we can do this. We can. And then I see the whole red pilling wake of an awakening of so many people, especially left liberals and so on and so forth.

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And yeah, but I had so I'm going to start writing this book because it's positive. I tell my wife, I have this idea about Trump in this book.

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And awakening and she goes, write it because I had another book in my mind. So it was a little.

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Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I don't. OK, I'm sorry, because. But I had no theological framework for my optimism.

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And I've got to figure this out. So I thought it was God's revelation in creation, which it is in a way.

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But in August of twenty two, I became post -millennial in my theological perspective.

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I mean, it was a total shock to me. It's dropped out of my head on my head of the sky. And it's like, oh,

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Christ is at the right hand of the father ruling now. OK, so I wanted to tell you this specifically.

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Then I'm going to let you talk. OK, if everyone says Ephesians six, even Naomi Wolf Wolf said that some guy at this medical freedom conference, she asked him, why are you positive?

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And, you know, he goes, Ephesians six. So what's that mean? And he talks about a spiritual battle. And slowly she came to believe in God again because there's evil.

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Right. But nobody talks about Ephesians six in light of the context of Ephesians one.

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Christ ascended, he is now the king of kings over all authority, all rulers, all power, any name that can be named, he's over it now.

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So you can't you can't look at Ephesians six in isolation outside of Ephesians one. And that's why we can have confidence in victory, because Jesus is pushing back the fall and the curse as far as it's found joy to the world.

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Hmm. As far as the curse is found, as far as the curse is found. So that's that that put it all together for me.

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And then I just let me ask you, so I want to I have a lot of questions. I want to start with the red pill analogy, though, and for those who don't know that essentially it comes from the matrix.

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Right. But it's this idea that there you can have the truth or you can decide to be asleep and live the lie.

24:47

The red pill is the truth. So when you get red pill, that's when things, you know, you're you see things clearly for what they are.

24:54

Exactly. When you you talk about this in your own life, that you were red pilled, that you saw things for what they were, and that changed how you thought, how you lived, what your strategy was.

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What was the moment or was there a moment? You talked about a few things that made you see things for what they were.

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And then, you know, what were things what was reality when you realized, you know, what what lies had you believed before then?

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Oh, my gosh. Well, because it was political initially, most all right.

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That it just it started to make sense to me. The whole idea of con ink, the conservatism.

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And, you know, I've learned so much since then. It's insane that I call conservatism liberalism in a skirt now because the post

25:43

World War Two consensus was Buckley National Review.

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And this kind of idea of putting together emerging libertarianism and basically it's liberalism, right?

25:58

Classical liberalism, whatever you want to call it. Fusionism, I think, is what they call it. Fusionism is the word. Yeah, exactly. And and so that was to break out of that and realize

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I'd been scammed all these years. And I don't mean they intended to scam us. Right. But maybe there were some.

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But I don't want to be that cynical because I think that's a sin. But that was huge for me because it's like,

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OK, now what? And that's why now I'm a what am I? I'm a populist.

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I'm a populist, nationalist, Christian conservative. So Ben is a populist nationalist, and I know what conservatives think of populism and how much they despise it because they're globalist.

26:40

They're elitist. They're top. Well, not really. I think. Yeah. Clyde Wilson, I think he had the sort of seminal essay on populism in the 70s and points out that populism in the

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United States has always been from the right. It's always been a conservative instinct. Again, what did you call?

26:56

Who was that again? I just want to hear Dr. Clyde Wilson. He wrote an essay in the 70s about populism.

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I can't remember the title of the essay, but it's considered one of those great essays on political thought.

27:08

And he's a historian. But he makes the point that you can go on probably Google and type in Clyde Wilson populism.

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But he makes the point that in the United States, it's always whether it's Andrew Jackson opposing the federal, the bank, the

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National Bank, or, you know, whether it's even like the Shays Rebellion and and and some of this stuff, you know, we don't might not even necessarily like all of.

27:34

Sure. Sure. Some of the ED characters that get caught up in these things. But it's always been the know nothing party, the sort of the concern over a

27:44

Catholic in the presidency. And there's moments where a sort of you don't know where it came from, but a wellspring of popular opinion all of a sudden ascends to get really upset about something.

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And usually it's because it's all I think Clyde Wilson points out. It's always because the left is foisting some innovation on the people and they don't want it.

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And so that's a conservative instinct. When when political theorists today seem to think about populism, though, they're thinking in terms of socialism,

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Marxism, European populism. That's my understanding, at least. And I'm not a political philosopher by trade, at least.

28:22

But but anyway, back to your book, though, the red pilling. So it sounds to me, you correct me if I'm wrong. You got to a point where you you saw that these these abstractions that you had been sold, which would be like, you know, the free market is the participation.

28:40

And that is the highest good. America is built on an idea. America is built on an idea of freedom.

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Yeah, we're we're really just all deracinated individuals with individual rights, but with we don't have obligations to each other.

28:54

Yeah, you can do whatever you want with your your body. You can be anything you want to be.

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And conservatism basically bought into the diversities, our strength. These are all things that. Yeah, that's what

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I would say. The conservative, like you say, Buckley National Review. But these guys bought into that.

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And every talk show host today, pretty much the major ones, at least in conservative media, they parrot all this stuff still.

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Yeah, I'm still stuck on this. Eric Erickson, you know, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity. And, you know, all these guys are parroting the stuff that's so innovative, so new.

29:30

But see, that's only appealing to a boomer set. It is. I really is.

29:36

No, it is. There's no doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah. But very few. I mean, young people are not, you know, we don't get our.

29:44

You know, the younger folks don't get their information anymore from the boob tube and radio, blah, blah, blah.

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So you just can't. That's what the Internet is, the Gutenberg press of the 21st century. It is such a blessing.

29:58

You know, the Rome thought they could snuff out the Reformation and there's no possibility that the globalist elite, whoever they are,

30:05

Uniparty could snuff out this populist nationalist Christian. Well, it's still in its infancy stage,

30:12

I think. Oh, most of the podcasters are also in Turning Point USA. Even I would say is mostly that still.

30:19

But I think there's shifts going on. Certainly. Well, and we are. See, we're so we're building cathedrals.

30:26

We're not going to live in. Right. Yes. So we have such a narrow, myopic view of this has to happen tomorrow.

30:34

And if not, everything's going to be a disaster. But, man, we. Yeah, I look at this as an enlightenment, enlightenment experiment.

30:41

Well, you keep using that word. I want to zoom in on that a little bit, that there's an awakening or enlightenment or something like that happening.

30:49

What is the counter narrative then? Because we just described what we view as or we blame for some of the mishaps over the last decade.

30:59

What about the antidote to that? This awakening you're talking about? Describe it in the anecdote, meaning against the awakening.

31:09

No, no, no. I mean, what is the awakening? What is the thing you're positive about?

31:16

Is it a restoration of the idea that we're an actual people intangible loves order

31:21

Amaris? What is it? It's you know, well, that's a huge question. And that's kind of what we're all involved in is trying to you know, my books is a little bit of a from a nobody, you know, just to say, here's my observations and what this could be.

31:36

But, you know, there's a there's a complete. Transformation of how we see things now, and this is just starting and it's going to take a long time, you know, but just the education

31:48

I went through in this to see how the reason I call it going back, because because we have to see, like I argue about there's certain ways we interpret the founding.

31:58

And I just had a just yesterday on a text group text. This guy said all of the founders were basically deists.

32:07

I said, no, no. And this is a knowledgeable lawyer, Christian.

32:13

So crazy. Yeah. But see, so that's why we have to really we're fighting for the interpretation of the founding if we're going to refound it.

32:20

And America was a Protestant Christian Republic. Right. That's why we have liberty.

32:25

You can't get secularism. You can't get liberty out of secularism. All you get is tyranny. That's why I call it the

32:31

Berlin Wall is my favorite metaphor because it's cracking bad right now and there's no way it's going to stand.

32:37

I tell in the book how I voted for Reagan. I was there when he said, put it to the Soviet Union, the ash heap of history.

32:42

And it's like, OK, Ronnie, sure. And then the Berlin Wall, he says, you know, tear down this wall. Mr. Gorbachev's like now he's really lost.

32:50

It ain't happening. Was it two and a half years later? So an empire built on lies cannot stand.

32:55

And that's where we are. And to rebuild it is going to take really understanding. I mean, how

33:00

America was founded. I read a great book, I guess. Remember it? But I quote it in the book.

33:09

Oh, here is a patriot's history of the United States. And oh, Larry Schweickart. Yeah, it's so good to see how they came from the different parts of Britain and such and and how they founded the colonies.

33:22

And it was the different. But it's not where all men are created equal. That's yeah,

33:29

OK. But that was just like that comes from Jefferson, right?

33:34

So, you know, who was wasn't even a deist himself, really. But, you know, just to see how this all developed and how we have to.

33:41

That's why I'm so encouraged by this heritage idea of heritage America. And we need to be together as a people who who have common interests and, you know, culture, right?

33:53

Yeah. And I use the word Babel, I don't know how many hundred times in the book, because that's we're at war with Babel.

34:00

Well, let me ask you this. Just as a so I don't know who immigrated to the

34:05

United States. Was it your grandparents, great grandparents? So my my grandfather, my mom's dad came directly from Sicily at 16.

34:12

OK, his his his wife, he met in Boston. Half her siblings were born in Sicily, but she was born in Boston.

34:18

And then my my dad's great grandparents came from Sicily, Palermo mainly.

34:23

And they settled in Brooklyn. So how do you see this as someone whose ancestors were immigrants to Ellis Island?

34:32

Because one of the debates going on right now, especially on X, is over immigration.

34:38

And as people are rethinking the foundations of everything, you know, because it used to be remember when

34:44

Bush era, it was always like, well, it's the illegals, right? It was always that it was always the illegal immigrants are the problem.

34:51

We want lawful immigration. But there was never it was never worked out like the assumption was,

34:57

I guess you could have unlimited lawful immigration as long as you put a rubber stamp, then it's fine.

35:02

And now people are just rethinking all of that and saying, wait a minute. Right. We can't just let anyone in here because the

35:08

Biden administration is even arguing a lot of what's happening now is legal because it's asylum seekers. So so so here's the question

35:15

I have, as since your grandparents, you know, they immigrated to Ellis Island. Where do you see yourself in all of this in Heritage America and all of that?

35:22

And I think I have an answer for that, but I want to hear what you say. Very interesting question. Yeah. My grandfather.

35:29

We insisted they speak English in the house. I mean, it was just not allowed to speak

35:35

Italian. The only time they my grandmother and he broke into Italian was when they argued.

35:41

So we knew they were having a problem and they went to went to Italian. And so there was just this, you know, everybody who's coming to America today illegally, whatever.

35:53

It's an abstraction to them. You know, it's just not. There's just something that those generations, you know, when

36:01

Italians were little brown people, you know, they were discriminated against big time. Yeah. Right. And and yet they were fully assimilated.

36:09

And I love that about America because I see people, Asian people. You can't tell.

36:16

They don't sound Asian. Right. But their third generations and they're just as American as the next guy. So that's still possible.

36:22

But I believe that the globalist elites want to break that because they hate the idea of America.

36:28

It's satanic. I mean, that's yeah, this is all from the devil. I mean, the the whole globalist movement is

36:33

Babel in. This seems like what the left is able to to take a group.

36:41

I mean, they do this with even African -Americans or black people who are heritage

36:48

Americans, many of them, in a sense, some of their ancestors were here very early on. Right. But they're able to take them because there's enough difference there.

36:55

And and they have their own culture that they've built. And they will use that with. And I find it very interesting because you'll have people that never experienced slavery, never experienced segregation, never experienced some of the things that are part of the folklore of their culture.

37:12

Right. But they will hold on to those things tighter than even those who experienced them did. And and it becomes a wedge against the majority.

37:21

It becomes a way to rip down the supposedly

37:27

Anglo -Protestant white hegemony. That's why black conservatives are pilloried, you know, because they just they're not going along with the.

37:34

Whatever the narrative, you know. Right. And I live in a New York, so there's a lot of Italians and stuff. It seems to me

37:39

Italians were like, like, I don't I can't see a scenario. Maybe maybe

37:44

I'm wrong, but where, you know, the great, great grandchildren of Italian immigrants are going to one day say, you know what?

37:51

Like we're together and we're against the rest of you and we're going to politically oppose you. It just doesn't seem like that's as prevalent.

37:59

In fact, in my area, I would say a lot of Italians, who are especially the more traditional

38:04

Catholic Italians, probably make up the ranks of the Republican Party in my area. Right.

38:09

Well, you know, because I just read the Twilight of the

38:15

American Revolution or no, no, no. The Age of Entitlement, I call.

38:22

Well, I think that's I think that's the most important one of the most important books of the 21st century. Yeah, because that was a whole red pill thing for me, too, to see how the civil rights movement, what it did.

38:32

And blacks, they have been used by the left and everything that they've gone along with because of the left has destroyed them, destroyed their families, their culture.

38:43

And that's what the left is. It's it's a it's a contagion. And that's what's being revealed. I'm so that's why

38:49

I'm so encouraged among the the ruins. I mean, I could not be more encouraged.

38:54

I could not be more thrilled every day knowing God is sovereign and there's going to be suffering and who knows what's going to happen.

39:00

We can't. So I got to ask you this sort of at the end here. But sure, you mentioned post -millennialism. So I go to the church

39:06

I attend is a premillennial church. I still hold to premillennial historic.

39:12

OK, I you know, I've told people I'm kind of it's not been my main focus.

39:17

In seminary, we had to study it. And at the time, I the reason I erred more towards a dispensational premillennial paradigm is because I thought imminency.

39:27

I saw I saw that throughout the New Testament. And I figured, well, that seems to be more pre -trib. But anyway, it's not been something that shaped my worldview as much as someone like yourself.

39:39

And and I've made the point many times, at least from my perspective. And maybe this is just because my parents,

39:45

I think, are more, you know, they grew up, you know, they're boomers. I said, right. They grew up.

39:50

My dad was even at MacArthur's church and stuff. So, you know, they're they were steeped in that sort of premillennial dispensational and maybe a little more responsible side of that.

39:59

But they were steeped in that. But that didn't seem to affect any of our civic engagement or the idea that we should.

40:08

My dad would always talk about leaving a heritage for your children's children and that kind of thing. But obviously, that is not what

40:18

I don't know how the numbers shake out. There's some people who obviously feel that way in that tradition that are still, you know, looking for political solutions and this kind of thing.

40:32

But there's a whole lot of them. And it may be it's the majority. You're talking dispensational premill?

40:37

Dispensational premill, yes. OK, who from from your generation specifically? I'm talking about a very type of person, not just a dispensational premillennial, but also a boomer.

40:45

Who's that? Right, right. Where they they're an escapist. They're looking for.

40:52

It's not healthy, right? It's really bad. And I don't know how maybe you could explain this to me and then explain how postmillennialism sounds like it was an encouragement to you.

41:02

But they they seemed on the one hand to say if we just repented America, you know, we could write it all back.

41:09

And then on the other hand, they say it's getting so bad, we're waiting to be raptured out of here. And I don't understand how you walk around with those two things in your mind.

41:17

Right. But a lot of people seem to have that. So so I don't know if you have a perspective on that, of how that kind of a person even functions.

41:26

Maybe you were that kind of a person. And then for the postmillennial side of it, a lot of guys, that's their red pill.

41:32

It hasn't been for me. I think I was maybe I don't know. I other things I think led them to kind of where I've come down.

41:38

But but I want you to explain to everyone, how is that for you? A big red pill or a big encouragement?

41:44

The postmill? Yeah, postmill. Yeah. Well, yeah. So I the last chapter,

41:49

I actually do a little explanation of a postmillennialism because everybody

41:54

I know and I've read pretty extensively on it now who critiques postmillennialism has no idea what it actually is.

42:01

I thought I did for my whole life and it was nothing I was going to ever consider. And then I just misunderstood it.

42:06

And so so I don't want to make that an issue because there are dispensational pre -mill that we all want our country back.

42:15

We know who the enemy is. So we don't need to argue. Right. But I'm asking you. I know.

42:20

Thank you. But I had already had the optimism, right? With Bannon. And I knew there was we could make a true difference in this world.

42:30

This was not this was not an illusion. Whatever whatever my eschatology was, you know, it was just like,

42:36

OK, but I didn't have a framework theologically. And that's what has become so encouraging, because I heard

42:44

James White. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he he became postmill. And I'll never forget it.

42:50

I was out for a walk. I was at my buddy's house down in Miami and I'm walking and listening to him.

42:56

And I walk upstairs, I go upstairs and I tell my wife and friend, I go, I think I'm becoming postmillennial.

43:02

And my friend mocked me. And it was so funny because, wow, it's I can I this is this is real.

43:09

And then Doug Wilson said it was a week or two later in the talk somewhere. He said, now you have the theological justification for your optimism.

43:17

And I said, that's it. That is it. And so Psalm two, Psalm 110, first Corinthians 15.

43:24

He will put all his enemies under his feet, you know, until they're gone. And the final enemy is death.

43:29

And so and I get into that. But I see that Jesus started building his kingdom when he rose from the dead, ascended to heaven.

43:38

We use evangelicals never talk about the ascension. But that's so critical because the only reason

43:44

I can have the optimism is he's at the right hand of God ruling. And we see that in was Daniel seven, you know, the coronation right of the king.

43:53

And he's gone up there and now he's ruling. And no matter how we live by faith, not by sight. And that's why you could look at the stuff that happens and realize,

44:02

OK, Jesus has got this. And what do we do? So we pray because we work like it depends on us and we pray because it does depend on God.

44:13

And I mean, we can change things. And that's why I've for my kids, my kids, kids. And who knows how long what you asked earlier, how long this will take or what form it will take.

44:23

But I'm more than encouraged, guys, your age and just on Twitter, you're just seeing a whole panoply of young people who are big on Twitter.

44:31

Yeah, it seems like, you know, a lot of. Well, I think this thing is bubbling up.

44:38

It's making a difference. A lot of zoomers who are having kids now and young millennials, especially.

44:43

Or I mean, I think that's the thing for us. Like we're looking at it thinking for a boomer, it's easy to be like, well,

44:49

I don't have much time left a few decades. It'd be great to just be raptured out of here and, you know, whatever.

44:55

I'll enjoy my retirement for us. We're looking at our little kids and we're saying, we what world are they going to inherit?

45:04

And, you know, I guess whites had had grandchildren. He said that changed everything. It changes stuff. It changes stuff.

45:09

So anyway, I know I would love to talk to you more about this, but I do have a hard break. If people want to find the book, though, it's called

45:16

Going Back to Find the Way Forward. Trump, A Great Awakening and the Refounding of America. You can go to Amazon, you can go to Barnes and Noble or you can go to Mike D.