A Christian Political Vision: Libertarianism, Theonomy, or Paleo-Conservatism?

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00:10

Hey everyone, welcome once again to Conversations. We have an exciting podcast for you today that's,

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I think, going to help you navigate some of the questions that over the last,

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I would say, six months to a year have really come up in evangelical circles, conservative evangelical circles in particular, concerning things like what is a nation?

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What is theonomy? Is theonomy a good thing? Is theonomy Christian nationalism? What about libertarianism?

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Is that acceptable for Christians to be involved in? A lot of these questions are open right now, I think probably because of a few things, but most notably,

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I think, especially with young people, the acknowledgement that the conventional approaches just haven't seemed to work.

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People are looking for something that is going to protect their freedoms and help them to continue, at least conservatives, the existence that their parents and their grandparents presumably have had and they want to enjoy and pass down.

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We have a guest today who's thought deeply about these things, actually has a similar trajectory to myself,

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I think, in particular regarding influences and looking at different options and then rejecting some and embracing others.

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I'm going to invite to the podcast today, for the first time, C .J. Engel, who has a

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Substack. You can check out C .J. Engel at substack .com. He has a Twitter handle, ContraMordor, and then he is the host of the

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Chronicles Magazine podcast. Everyone should get Chronicles Magazine. With that, C .J., thank you for joining us and helping us navigate some of these things.

01:55

Glad to be here. Thanks, John. Yeah, my pleasure. So let's start here. You, I mean,

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I don't know how old you are, but I assume we're probably around the same age, not too far apart.

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We've grown up at a time when conservatism has been changing.

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In fact, I didn't know it until recently, but that more paleoconservative line that I'm now advocating more,

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I guess that kind of died when I was a kid. I didn't know it. I didn't know it was happening. And conservatism just feels dull, the political conservatism in the mainstream.

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It doesn't seem like it's accomplishing what I think

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Christians in particular want to see done. We both lived in this time, and now we're looking at the landscape and thinking, where did we go wrong?

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And I'm wondering if that same question is what has propelled you into considering some of these things.

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What happened? Is that kind of, am I getting it right? Is that the sense that you see in yourself and from other younger people?

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Yeah. I mean, the extent of the left's revolution, you know, where it's taken us over the last, even just five to seven years.

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I mean, things have been going in this direction for quite some time, but over the last five to seven years, it's obvious to anyone, not even paying attention, you don't even have to be paying attention.

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It's not just there for those who are looking for it. It's everywhere we look, it's in the periphery, that there has been a complete transformation of our culture.

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And there's, you know, all of our instincts that existed in the 1990s, where, you know, my friends and I call them just sort of grill

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Americans, they can just get on and everything will work itself out. It's just so obviously not the way that people thought it was going to be that people are really having to dig deep and reinterpret everything from political theory to political instincts to, you know, the role of man and Christian man in the world.

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I mean, so everything has to come under the microscope and everything has to be rethought. I think that that's part of a growing consensus among younger people is the world made by our grandparents and parents are not sufficient to confront the political enemies of the day.

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So I think that's what a lot of it, you know, personally for me, and we'll get into this. I know we want to talk about it, but I came from just a general like neoconservative family, just sort of a

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Fox News Republican Bush era family. You know, it was the Ron Paul years that really set me on the course of looking deeper than just beyond the headline news, which is true for a lot of people.

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I think the first initial spark was just the complete obnoxiousness of the libertarian movement that really made me question what it meant to be part of a political ideology that was characterized by just people with completely different lifestyles and value systems and cultures belonging together based on a shared agreement with propositions, right?

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Abstractions. And that's sort of the same. I just, you know, I began to realize what

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Richard Weaver once realized about the socialist movement that while you may disagree with people that are close to you and live similar lifestyles to you, those community aspects are more important than, you know, getting the abstractions agreed upon.

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You know, that's kind of what a lot of people realized about the socialist movement in the 1930s and 40s.

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And I realized the same thing about the libertarian movement is that I didn't want to characterize myself as agreeing with all of these people who had these just this weird persona, this weird environment and milieu.

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And I just didn't want to be a part of that. And I wanted what I had built into me sentimentally at a deeper level.

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And I realized that there was much more to political theory than just blueprinting out just propositions, deriving them deductively and all of those things that there is a difference between like the universal abstractions and the real empirical institutions and communities that are so much more.

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There's so much more grounding and there's so much more sustaining. And that's really the spark that set me on this, you know, rethinking what it meant to have a political theory.

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Yeah, I do have a similar trajectory than to you. And I wasn't as deeply involved, I think, in libertarianism.

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I did vote for libertarian candidate Bob Barr. I think it was the first time I voted in a presidential election. But, you know,

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I was attracted to some of that because it seemed constitutional. I thought maybe it was going back to something that we had lost and then quickly realized what you're saying.

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And I wasn't able to figure that out for years why they were so characterized by fragmentation.

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And like it's, you know, Calvinists have a cage stage reputation when they want to find

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Calvinism in every verse in the Bible and it's kind of like an ideological tunnel vision. But libertarians,

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I found, were much worse. They'll argue about anything. And so anyway,

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I just want to relate to that and just say, I think there's a lot of viewers right now who are nodding their heads saying, oh, yeah,

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OK, that's that's exactly what I've been thinking. So you kind of rejected that.

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And I don't know, maybe we need to get into details just a little bit for those who are still in that philosophy.

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I know for me, it was the non -aggression principle in the free market just don't seem to you can't reduce everything down to those two issues.

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And it just seems overly simplistic and abstract to me. I hear you saying something similar.

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Is that your critique? Yeah. So my my critique of of that is more of a methodological critique.

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Why is it that we can approach politics in terms of like that's a very like you would take like the most basic propositions that we can find and we deduce further propositions until we come up with this political theory.

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So the non -aggression principle is not a starting point. People refer to it as like the an axiom.

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It's actually not an axiom. It's actually like a summary statement of a certain logic about the meaning of property ownership within the state of nature and how that property ownership relates to when you bring other people into the equation.

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So like the great libertarian thinkers like Murray Rothbard and Hans Hoppe, they'll start with this state of nature and then they'll introduce

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Robinson Caruso as the only person in the scenario. Then what happens with it like he mixes his labor with the land itself and creates his property.

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And that's important because when you add more people into this equation like Friday on the island, you begin to derive these like these these standards by which you can like determine who owns what and who has the right and proper use of this property and all these things.

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Then you build out from there and you get this whole blueprint for how society works. And that's basically like libertarianism.

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And Marxists have the same starting point. Marxists do the same thing. They just have different definitions and they chase their definitions and their formulations and their deductions all the way down to their own

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Marxist paradigm of world politics. And so I think it's a methodology. I had to go all the way back to the realize that this is an inappropriate application of the state of nature.

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And I had to go all the way back to the beginning and kind of find out where I went wrong because libertarianism is actually extremely precise.

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It's precisely consistent. You can come up with a formulation of libertarianism that really doesn't contradict itself.

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But then the question is, is that the proper use of political theory is to get things precise in an ideal world?

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And does it accurately account for political reality? And what is political reality? And so I kind of ask those questions to get myself out of that libertarian world.

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Yeah, well, one thing that was great explanation. One thing some people who are still attracted to libertarianism might be wondering is,

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OK, but isn't that how it works? Isn't it Robinson Crusoe? And then someone else comes along and you create boundaries and property rights and all of these things.

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What do you disagree with in that scenario that you just painted? OK, so, you know, one of the thinkers that I that really helped me to rethink these things was the libertarian

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Hans Hoppe. Right. And so he has this. And you've heard of this. People listening have probably heard of this. But he just he realized that there was what he called a covenant community where people with their individual property rights can come together and form a community.

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And when you form a community of people, you you have to you have to give up certain things.

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You have to create rules through that that basically transcend the community itself and the community.

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The people in this society have to adhere to these rules. But then it dawned on me that the continuity of this community was was people would have offspring and that new sons and daughters would come up and their rights were integrated within this community.

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They're fought. They they were you know, there's the theory of representation. So they their fathers would be the ones together that are representing and facilitating these rights from the individual through the community in this community itself preceded the individual.

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Right. And so then when the when the fathers die and the sons grew up, they're still within the boundaries.

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They're just this mixed situation. And then you look back at like the you know, the

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British you know, the British tradition of legal theory, like Edmund Burke would be like the father of modern conservatism.

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But he was resting on older people like John Seldon. And John Seldon pointed out that the entire history of Western civilization is the combining and separating and migration of these groups of these communities that carry with them rights and duties and obligations.

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So you can come up with this blueprint of how a covenant community can work like on Sapa. And then you realize that's what history is.

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It's the development of these things. And our rights are integrated into political society.

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They don't you can't take them. You can't abstract them from that and then apply them onto a system. It doesn't work like that.

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So everything is historically based. Everything is, you know, results from history and from the political dynamics of your parents and your grandparents and your ancestors.

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And everything is within the context of a social order. And I begin to realize that that's that's entirely consistent.

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No one's rights are being breached when they come into a society and they're integrated in because the society itself and the orders and the rules and all those things preceded the individual.

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The individual didn't proceed only in an abstract way. It is an individual proceeded society. And this is this is the classic contribution of traditionalist conservatism.

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This is what Edmund Burke was saying. This is what Joseph de Maistre in France was saying about the French Revolution is he had never met a human being.

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He'd only met Frenchmen and Englishmen and Germans. He had met people that were born within a context.

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And these the social order is the thing that determines the rights and liberties and duties and obligations and restraints and boundaries on the individual.

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The individual is not born free and everywhere in chains. He's actually born within the context of a structure, of a political structure.

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And he needs to adhere to those things, you know, over history. And so that's that's kind of the point of conservatism is you're born within the context.

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And it also makes you realize that, you know, the blessings of liberty are something that have been earned.

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We are blessed to live in a political or, you know, Westerners were blessed to live in a situation in which their ancestors had, you know, been able to achieve these liberties and apply them within a specific political order.

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And that's the blessing of living in the West. Yeah, no, that's awesome. You're reminding me of when

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I read How to Be a Conservative, Roger Scruton, and he talks about community, the society, the present society being actually.

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It's connected to the past and the future. It's it's a I don't remember the exact quote, it's a famous quote, but he has like he references a constitution, ourselves and our posterity, people who weren't around for the

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Constitution were part of this framework that was then and that framework came from somewhere else that came from, you know,

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British common law and stuff like that. One of the turning points I know in my life, in realizing what you're talking about,

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I don't know if you read this essay is Richard Weaver's two, I think it's two types of American individualism.

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Have you read that? Yeah. And he talks about the more the

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Northeastern transcendentalists and how they did believe you were born into this state of nature.

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And then he talks about more of this individualism from the South that says you're actually born into a community with obligations.

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And that just cleared so much up for me. I thought, oh, yeah, we are. That's the truth. We are born into a community with obligations attached to it.

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We learn that in a family. So so you reject this libertarianism. But the crazy thing, the crazy thing is that's actually like the idea that you can be born into a covenant community, which is one rendition of a political society, the idea that you can be born into that and you have the obligation to adhere to the structures and the strictures that you're born into.

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It actually doesn't breach libertarianism because there's no rights that are being trampled when you're born into that situation.

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When you're born into a family, there's rules in that house. Even as stupid as no walking on the carpet, which in my house was a crime.

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You can't walk on the carpet in that situation. And your rights as a as a as a child in that situation are not being breached.

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Right. It's just the first level of your integration into political society. There's no rights being breached.

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You're born into a situation to a context. Right, right. Yeah. So and I think most libertarians would agree with that.

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Right. Right. Yeah. Of course, that's just the way the world works. You have to be born into a family. You have to learn before you can have responsibility.

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But then the question is, like, you know, does your father as a child, does your father represent you?

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Does he have the right to does he have the right to make decisions on your behalf? He does. Right.

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I mean, right. Like he you don't ask consent for a child to change his diaper. I know these are stupid arguments, but like you just can see that this entire structure of the world and you grew up, you have obligations and you have to fit within the structure of the community around you.

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You know, do you think some of this comes back to just a sense of natural law, divine providence, the way

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God structured things and conservatives, paleoconservatives adhering to that, saying we want to try to to live within that and match that, but knowing we don't live in a perfect world.

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And so there's more of a I guess a live and let live reasonableness.

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I see to paleoconservatives that I don't see as much in libertarians. And there's you know,

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Tom Woods is maybe an example of someone who is reasonable more on that libertarian side. But but in general, a lot of libertarians tend to be a lot more high strung and want to impose these abstractions.

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And there's a revolutionary mindset they have, whereas conservatives don't seem like they have that as much.

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They're acknowledging there's there's a providence behind the existence that they inhabit. I think that's true.

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I think that libertarians could be split. And this is one of the problems is libertarianism. The meaning of libertarianism to me is just the adherence or the assent to the non -aggression principle.

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So you can have all those other things in the background. And they're sort of like sub libertarian, they're like extra libertarian things.

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But yeah, I think mostly there is that like that sort of like Trotskyist mentality to universalize and to apply, you know, individual rights as they formulate it onto the world, for sure.

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Like that's probably like the main aspect of libertarianism. And they're very critical of like community dissent and local dissent.

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Like if you look at like the like the regime libertarians, they're really critical of local level, you know, political decisions that in their mind are at odds with the non -aggression principle.

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They would rather have a central body enforcing libertarian ideals.

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Right. So like, yeah, that's probably the main thrust of libertarian. Probably the people surrounded at the Mises Institute are the exception to that.

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Yeah. Yeah. And that's the odd thing, too, is there are people I just interviewed someone who writes for Mises and I'm like, well, we probably get along on most things.

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I don't see a problem here. So behind all this, before we leave libertarianism,

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I don't know if you'd agree with this or not, but do you think that there's a different anthropology at the base of some of this that libertarians and liberals tend to have an optimistic view of man?

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And it gets back to that state of nature where man is born into a situation where,

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I don't know, there's a goodness about him or perfectibility about him. Whereas I think conservatives traditionally have been more suspicious of that, thinking that actually one of the reasons we need to be born into societies for stability and for structure is because the descent into chaos and sin and anarchy and all these things is an ever present threat.

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And and so man is not good innately. There's that Christian infusion.

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Is that spot on? Would you agree with that? Would you change that construction? No, I think that's true.

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Of course, there are libertarians for sure that that think of man as evil.

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And that's why they don't want the state, right? Because man can't be trusted with that kind of power. But for the most part,

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I do think that that would be a major distinguishing mark of libertarians. The overall milieu of libertarianism is an optimistic view of man for most of them, for sure.

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And like the paleo conservative thrust is that man is not perfectible, that he is corrupted.

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He'll always be corrupted. And therefore politics is forever. You can't transcend politics. And this is one of the points that I've made in a recent essay.

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Well, for Paul Gottfried's anthology, the fact that that politics isn't something that we can transcend and the mistake of the 20th century was thinking that we could transcend politics.

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There's different there's different like like so the libertarians will use like their own formulations of the law in order to transcend politics, whereas like the administrative state will use experts and technocrats and like, you know, economists and all these things to transcend politics.

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It's like the science of like, the science of like administrating justice, administrating rights, administrating all these things.

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So they have different ways of transcending politics. But the paleo conservative point is that politics is actually forever.

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You can't transcend it. You have to always be engaging in this struggle between mutually exclusive visions of the world.

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That's kind of the meaning of politics. And that's history. I think it's why so many historic people who study history end up looking at some of these more innovative ideas that are of recent origin and thinking, man, these don't work, actually.

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So. All right. So you're not a libertarian. You did you ever call yourself a theonomist or.

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No, I never. You never did. But I'm familiar with it for sure. Well, I'm curious why you're familiar with it.

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Is it just because you're a Christian and that was presented to you or where did you find out about theonomy? Well, I mean, theonomy, like, you know, they were they were like historically that the theonomist, like if you consider like the

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Christian reconstructionists in like the 1960s and 70s and 80s, like the theonomist themselves were integrated into the libertarian movement organically, like Gary North and Rush Dooney, like Rush Dooney is like the founder of California homeschooling.

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So like the theonomists were always there. They were always behind this. I mean, Gary North was chief of staff, chief of staff.

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He's the chief economist for Ron Paul. So they've always been part of that. So when you interact in these circles and you write for Lou Rockwell, you write for Mises, you're inevitably going to come across them.

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I had a website, reformed libertarian dot com, where I was just exploring the connectivities between reformed

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Christianity and libertarianism and obviously reformed libertarian like that. That just touches the heart of like theonomists are into that integration as well.

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They have a different methodology, but that's how I came about them. And I really, you know, I really spent a lot of time together with a buddy of mine just interacting with them and trying to understand them.

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I thought about it for a little bit, but I never I never took the plunge in that direction. It never made exegetical sense to me.

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Yeah. OK. And that's I want to explore that a little bit because I I did go harder into that.

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I actually for a time, if I can remember correctly, this was a while ago, but I think

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I even had put on my Facebook that you had political views. You could put and I think I put Theonomist at one time and I was reading a lot of Greg Bonson, especially, but I had read some

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Rush Dooney. I had read some Gary North, some who Gary DeMar, you know,

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I was looking into these guys and thinking like, well, this is it. Right. It's if it's not the libertarian thing, it's this.

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And of course, they have their own arguments for why what they're presenting is more constitutional. And so because everyone wants to kind of hitch their wagon to the founders if they can.

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Right. And say, well, they they're we're just saying what they were saying. In fact, I'm reading a book now, Mission of God by Joe Boo.

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And he says some of the same things, of course, trying to route it through the Puritans. And so, you know, and there is positive stuff.

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I actually still recommend some of the books on God's law that I thought were so helpful for me to understand the applicability of it.

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But there there is something missing. And and I've since then realized that it's not perhaps comprehensive.

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I'd be curious, though, to hear your critique and what you saw that you found lacking in theonomy, because I think a lot of this audience or I don't know a lot, but it's certainly a portion of this audience is probably into that.

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Yeah, there's there's different cases for theonomy. My my critique of theonomy would be broader now than it was then.

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I consider libertarianism and theonomy and classical liberalism to be types of universalism where there is one standard or one law to be applied to all peoples.

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Otherwise, they're lacking in justice. I think that's sort of the the meaning of universalism.

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And I'm not a universalist in that way. So I think theonomy and libertarianism can sort of get along in a in a way that I am critical of now that I wasn't then.

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But my case against theonomy then then was much more related specifically to the nature of the

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Mosaic economy or the Mosaic covenant and the function of civil laws, the function of God being able to give specific civil laws to a people in a way that has since expired.

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And I don't think it's exegetically justifiable to take a situation that has expired and apply those same laws today.

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So the theonomists come in two forms. One form is that they think that this covenant is basically the same.

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It's like one covenant with two different administrations. And so they use that type of language to justify the fact that civil law has not expired.

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It's still applicable today. The other type, they call themselves like general equity theonomists.

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And in my opinion, that's a misuse of the general equity clause in the Westminster Confession. But what they mean by that is even though you can't say that it's the same civil law to be applied to the same covenant, they can say that God's law,

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God's provided and revealed law for one people. You can't beat that. And if you can't beat that, you might as well adopt it because that's the mind of God itself and therefore it's a perfect law.

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So those are the two like arguments for theonomy. I think Bonson and North and Rushdunik are sort of especially

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Bonson would be in the first category. I think general equity was responding to arguments made in the 2000s, especially when

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I was involved. I think the general equity theonomy sort of came out of that. People started adopting more of that type of thing.

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That's when you get like all the 1689 Baptists who call themselves theonomists is because they don't necessarily believe that it's one covenant, two administrations, but at the same time in looking for a perfect law, they would just make the argument that you can't beat that.

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So my argument for the first one is that I disagree with the argument that it's one covenant and two administrations.

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And so I don't even need to really deal with anything more than that because it's an inappropriate use of the application of the mosaic economy onto today's economy.

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The second one, I think is actually a problem of universalism. I think it's completely unnecessary and unflexible to apply something in such a rigid way.

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And it's an abuse of the function of the Bible in our daily and political lives.

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Yeah, I think I agree with that. I've said, because I'm friends with people who call themselves general equity theonomists, it's kind of popular right now.

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And people have even said, who are listeners to this podcast, like, well, forget about Christian nationalism.

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Like if the label is a stumbling block, let's just be general equity theonomists or something. And I'm thinking, yeah, well, that's not going to really like the media is going to make hash me to that too.

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But, you know, what I hear them saying often in a simplistic form is just like, can't we just be biblical?

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Can't like doesn't the Bible have wisdom? And I sympathize with this. Isn't Israel's laws or weren't they supposed to be a light to the nations?

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Didn't the queen of Sheba come and marvel at Solomon's wisdom? And to all that, I say, well, yeah, you know,

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I do think like there is something that obviously there's something to learn there. We're given the Old Testament and this is the character and nature of God is given to us as an example and applied in laws.

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But but yeah, I do agree with what you're saying. Like this isn't these are more principles that we in general, there are like the

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Ten Commandments are certain laws. But most of the legal code of the Mosaic law is just going to be principles we can maybe draw that are applicable.

28:48

And it's going to suit the context. Right. That's the other that I think that's the other thing you were saying is that this has to be something that actually works in the society that we live in right now and that people will in general accept and be able to live under, not like it's a popularity contest, but that it's it's something that can actually be enforced and it's going to run.

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This is more the conservative libertarian thing we're talking about. It's going to run with the traditions and the obligations that already exist and not just steamroll them and destroy them.

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So, yeah, I mean, so I think I'm with you on that. Yeah, this this is why like this.

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I really heavily promote the distinction between particularism and universalism. The idea that there's one law and it can be applied in the same way to all peoples is very revolutionary.

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And it's very leftist. It's which is which is ironic. But in my opinion, it's a very leftist instinct to take a single law and expect all people to to change their political systems in adherence with this one single thing.

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I think that's a type of leftism. And I really do emphasize particularism, that there are particular cultures that have to take into mind particular threats, particular enemies and particular political situations.

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And even like the instincts and sentiments of the people themselves, they have to integrate those things into their political decisions.

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And so I differentiate between universalism and particularism. And that's like that is the main difference between paleoconservatism and neoconservatism or paleoconservatism and libertarianism slash theonomy.

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Just this idea that you can have this universal rule that all people, all peoples, all nations, regardless of their background, regardless of their political threats, they have to adhere to this single thing is a very revolutionary thing.

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And I agree more with like this is in my opinion, this is John Calvin's view that there's there's there's like specific situations, specific threats that we have to craft laws in in reference to like different nations struggle with different things.

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And so therefore, there's a lot more flux to the situation. And there's a lot more variety between the nations depending on their circumstances.

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And it's not just law, it is politics as well. Politics is distinct from law. And this is what I do make a distinction also between like politics and legalism.

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And I think that one of the mistakes of like modern political theories is it is legalistic in the sense that they take a body of law, and they expect all people to adhere to it.

31:31

They expect all political systems to change their functions and their initiatives, you know, to adhere to the single universal legal standard where I whereas I think in much more in a situational contextual scenario like so like you're going to have laws related to like the, you know, the promotion of like transsexualism in a different way in 2023 than you would in the 19th century, like there would be no need to like create laws about transsexual propaganda in movies in the 19th century, because it wasn't a threat at all.

32:05

Right. But in 2023, you have to change your strategy and change your priorities in light of the changing dynamics.

32:13

Sure. So let's let's flesh that out a little bit more. So people, that was a great explanation.

32:20

I've said that Christian nationalism, at least those who positively advocate it, most notably Stephen Wolf, is about trying to preserve and secure specifically

32:30

Anglo -Protestant, at least in the context in which he's writing, heritage of some kind.

32:35

Right. It speaks English, English forms of worship, symbols, all of that.

32:42

And theonomy, you can go back and actually you can find a lot of quotes in some of the people you cited earlier.

32:49

The theonomist seemed fine with mass immigration, replacement, doesn't really matter what language or what culture, as long as they apply the law of God, that's what we're concerned about.

33:00

So obviously, that's going to bring you to totally different views on things like border security and immigration and that kind of thing, or at least it could lead to that.

33:10

That's a specific distinction that I see. And I think the paleoconservative side would be more like, no, we're trying to preserve our heritage, what we've been passed down, the true, beautiful, good things.

33:22

We want to keep those things for our children. And some of those things are things like barbecue. Right. There are things like they're there.

33:30

And I'm picking that specifically because it is a cuisine. So there's a less of a moral, quote, unquote, aspect to it.

33:37

But it's something that you value in your culture. This is our food. It's ours. It has that possession about it.

33:43

And we don't want to give that up. We want to defend that and make sure that that can continue.

33:50

So so anyway, that's that's one way that I've tried to make that distinction. What would you say, though?

33:57

And this will help us get more specific to the people who just say, well, look, every society is held accountable by God to not sanction murder, let's say like abortions wrong no matter where you are, no matter who you are.

34:09

Right. So this idea that morality is universal in one sense. Do you make a distinction there that there is a universal morality, but the application is different?

34:19

Is that what you're saying? That's true. But that's also a legalistic perspective.

34:25

That's also a legalistic issue, whether like murder is wrong as a legalism. You know, I really want to emphasize that there's a distinctly political category in that politics refers to, you know, like it refers to something broader than just just the laws themselves.

34:42

It refers to the interests of the of the of the nature of the realm. It refers to something that's specific to like an overarching culture, not just the specific laws within it.

34:52

And so, you know, the the types of the application of things like murder are actually they could be similar.

35:00

But I'm talking more like in a political sense where like you're you're you're looking at protecting a certain way of life independent of those legal things.

35:10

So you can you can find more universality in the laws. But I don't think you can find as much universality in the political struggle and in the keeping and protection and preserving of culture itself.

35:22

Like I think that like things like like like like English and French and German architecture,

35:29

I think that there are political reasons for halting like the infusion of like Islamic or African architecture and artistic influence into the public domain in those countries.

35:41

So that's not really like a universal law question. It's more of a political culture, like how do you protect the identity of the realm?

35:48

And those are things that can vary. And the law of God doesn't really specify exactly how you deal with those situations.

35:55

And so this is one of the reasons that like on things like immigration, things like culture and even even ethnicity, even like the idea of prosperity, like prosperity, posterity and ancestorship, those don't really matter because the law doesn't really speak to them because the law is, you know, it's very specific about one, you know, one situation.

36:15

And so it can't have a broad answer to those things. But I think those those political questions are where the variance lies.

36:23

And that's where we need to focus on the difference to differentiate between Christian nationalism and like theonomy and things like that.

36:31

No, that's good. So so one of the examples I thought of in murder because murder is just such an easy case,

36:37

I think, to for people to accept that, well, that's wrong like across time and space in the legal sense.

36:44

We're not talking about a political sense here, but in a legal sense, if you go back even one hundred and fifty years in some places in this country, dueling was accepted as as part of the fabric of society.

36:57

It's a tradition that had been passed down and you didn't you weren't murdering someone if you killed someone in a duel.

37:03

It wasn't now it would be seen that way today. Right. But at that time, it wasn't seen that way.

37:09

So was it murder? And I'm not sure if that's kind of what you're getting at, is that there are these contextual things that will channel or determine how how some universal law is applied.

37:25

But those things aren't necessarily that's not politics. So where is the integration then?

37:31

I guess it would be a good question. Where's the integration of these universal laws that God has laid down and politics?

37:37

Where does that come up? I think the point of politics for the paleoconservative is to look at where things are now and where the threats are to a way of life.

37:46

So it's not like I'm sitting here trying to like come up with this Anglo -Saxon ideal. Right.

37:52

Right. You know, this is paleoconservative is very non -ideal. It's looking at what what are the sustaining aspects of our culture that need to be sustained?

38:01

And where are the threats coming from? Right. These can be like. So, for instance, like paleoconservative is not committed in an absolute way to constitutionalism.

38:11

It's you know, it's committed in an absolute in a more absolute way to its own people and its heritage. This is why there's conversations about a

38:18

Protestant Franco, because at what point is that? Yeah. So at what point can we say that the

38:24

Constitution has already been subverted and obliterated? Because our ultimate commitment is not to the

38:30

Constitution. Like in in the 16th, in the 17th century in England, those people were proud of their heritage, they were proud of their culture, and they didn't need an

38:40

American Constitution to to bolster their freedoms because, you know, because that's the way it is.

38:45

So we don't have this like ultimate commitment to any one system. So that's just the thing that I would emphasize is that politics is always in flux.

38:54

And perhaps it is unfortunate that we live in a world where we need a Protestant Franco, if that's the solution.

38:59

But those are the types of conversations that we need to have is to what extent do do we have to make, you know, exercise political will in order to do what's right for the people that we belong to and the people that we want to preserve and protect.

39:12

Right. So that's it's it's much more circumstantial that politics is circumstantial.

39:17

Politics is not the same of morality as morality, which is universal, which is universal, which does have universal standards, because, you know,

39:26

God is going to judge us. You know, our righteousness has to be perfect, according to his law.

39:31

That's not politics. Politics is the role politicians, political leaders actually have a

39:37

God given authority to make decisions related to like, in a way, this is what

39:44

Stephen Wolfe says, in a way they represent and mirror the power of God. They have the authority to make decisions that bind the realm.

39:52

Like, that's a lot of that's a lot of authority. They don't they don't just they don't just take like law.

39:58

They don't just take either administrative, positive law or like mosaic law and just apply it to society.

40:04

They actually have the power within themselves to make rules for the realm. And in some ways, they're above the law.

40:10

I mean, this is an ancient debate, too. But, you know, but this is this is Stephen Wolfe's position, that in the lead in the ruler is embodied the authority to to decide the exception of the law to look outside the realm and see what is the most important things to make political decisions on.

40:26

This is why in his chapter on the Christian prince, he talks about the fact that the ruler mirrors

40:31

God, God gives him authority to make decisions for the realm, even if they're outside.

40:37

That's a lot of responsibility. There's a lot of there's a lot of corruption that can take place.

40:42

But that's the type of authority that political rulers have. Right. And that's and they are held accountable to God for that, how they use that in an eternal sense.

40:52

That's why we take an oath on the Bible in our tradition to say that there's divine rewards and punishments that are coming.

40:59

And, you know, because this is such a powerful office having the sword and wielding that, then you need to make sure that that's that's the only check, really.

41:08

So I think that's helpful. It's it seems I'm going to use a word, but Boomer Con, it seems

41:14

Boomer Con to look at the Constitution is almost like a suicide pact is something that first of all, to assume that we're somehow living still under it.

41:25

I mean, I guess in some vestigial ways and in some maybe some certain legitimate ways.

41:30

But for the most part, we are kind of post -constitutional. And and then to assume that, you know, if we just get back to that, it's like I'd love to get back to that.

41:40

I really would. I think probably you would, too. I mean, that'd be great if we could get back to federalism and constitutional republic and all that.

41:48

These are great things. But as you're saying, the situation we're in right now is different than the situation the men of 1789 faced.

41:57

And what do we do in this situation? And it is going to I think that's why these unconventional things are coming up.

42:03

And some people want a national divorce and some people want a Protestant Franco. I'm not like opposed to these guys.

42:09

Like I'm thinking they're trying to figure something out that's going to help protect their people. And that gets back to the what you're saying about conservatism, right?

42:17

It's really about protecting, preserving, loving. Loving is key here.

42:24

The people that you grew up with, the community that you're in, not being in love with ideas. This is the

42:30

Franco conversation is interesting because it's a really good example because his seizure of power was illegal.

42:36

Like it was not consistent with the Spanish legal order for a military general to take power.

42:45

That's an illegal thing, right? But he made a political decision on the basis that it would have been better for him to subsume power into himself than to let the

42:56

Marxists control the government. In his mind, in his calculation, in his decision -making, he said that it was better for the

43:05

Spanish people, not in an ideal world. He wasn't sitting there crafting what's the best for Spain in the ideal world.

43:10

He said, my alternatives are Marxists leading Spain with their atheism or his defense of Catholic Spain, right?

43:20

We're not Catholic. So it's not like we're saying that we need a Catholic Franco.

43:26

We need someone that represents the organic culture of America to defend itself, even against the things that we are trained to love and preserve, like the constitution.

43:37

Because our conversation here isn't about constitutionalism versus Protestant Franco.

43:44

Our conversation here is about, is Protestant Franco better than any other alternatives that are legitimately on the table right now?

43:53

What's happening right now in DC, what type of power is being wielded by the left, and what are our alternatives to that?

44:00

We're not saying that the founders made a mistake in drafting the constitution. They should have gone with a dictatorship. That's not how politics works.

44:07

Politics is specific threats, specific enemies, and specific solutions and friends that can be juxtaposed to those problems.

44:16

So what do you make of the guys right now on Twitter? And this is interacting, this is integrated into the

44:23

Christian space on Twitter. People like James Lindsay and others who are more, well, they're on the left.

44:33

I'll put it that way. But they have gained an audience somehow since the woke movement in these more conservative quote unquote settings.

44:41

And so you have a lot of like Fox News listeners now listening to them and wanting to do what they say, thinking there's a lot of wisdom there.

44:50

And of course, they are making the arguments, I think, that you just said that, well, we just need to go back to the constitution, as if I don't even think his conception of the constitution would be ours.

45:00

But that's just the solution. And anything that's short of that is un -American.

45:06

You're just not American, I guess. If you don't want that, which is crazy to me, because if you grew up here, you speak the language, you have whatever, you're invested here.

45:16

Unless you have this abstract idea that you have this freedom of speech in his conception and freedom of assembly in his conception, unless you hold to those in an abstract way,

45:26

I guess you're really not an American. That's the sense I'm getting. Are you seeing that? Yeah, of course. Yeah.

45:32

And that's the problem because I don't think that that's not a political argument.

45:38

That's a utopian argument. We should get back to the constitution. How is that engaging in power? How is that legitimately confronting the threats?

45:45

Because right now, the left is the most powerful influence in the

45:50

Western hemisphere, and they have no interest in returning to the constitution. So if you want to return to the constitution, you have to demonstrate how you can politically do it.

46:00

And I don't think it's politically feasible. I don't think that's the nature of legitimately and realistically confronting an enemy.

46:09

You can't just return to something from 200 years ago. All we have to do is just assent and agree to go back.

46:17

This is one of the lessons of power that James Burnham talked about in his Machiavellian book.

46:23

You can't just look at theory and well wishes and ideals. You have to look at where are the mechanisms and machinations of power.

46:32

You have to wield actual power to confront power. You can't just have this dream of returning to something better.

46:40

I'm a big returner. Let's return to the pre -industrial age, but that's not a legitimate political argument.

46:48

That's just a sentiment. That's just a whim. That's just whimsical. That's not a political argument.

46:53

So the idea that you can return, and the idea that it's good to pursue that, it ignores the fact that the liberal -neutral rhetoric is actually what fuels the left.

47:04

They rely on conservatives taking positions of neutrality and taking positions of apolitical action.

47:13

They rely on conservatives not acting in order to get their way across.

47:20

The left doesn't care about neutrality. The left doesn't care about the constitution or liberalism or all of these individuals, all the rhetoric that we find admirable.

47:30

The left doesn't care about any of that. So they have an incentive to keep their opposition, the conservative movement, to keep them in a neutral world, to keep them fighting for something.

47:40

When you absorb all that energy and all that bandwidth into taking a position of no position, you actually prevent them from confronting the left.

47:48

That's what the left loves. The left loves neutral, centrist Republicans that don't have committed stances on these issues.

47:59

So would examples of this be every time you hear a conservative say, well, if they wouldn't have done this to the

48:04

Muslims, how they're treating those Christians? I bet they wouldn't have done that. Because the point they're making is, well, they're not being fair.

48:11

It's appealing to they're not being neutral, as if that's going to work.

48:17

Same thing with the Democrats are the real racists or whatever. It's like the same thing. And it's like they don't care that they're hypocrites.

48:25

Yeah, hypocrisy is a feature of their movement. It's not a weakness. They actually are like they say, well, you're the real racist.

48:34

You're the ones being anti -white. It's like, yeah, that's part of their agenda. That's part of their function. So even things like color blindness, that's not a that's not a political that's not a political stance.

48:46

That's a whimsical. I mean, it's it's well -intentioned for sure, but it's not it's an apolitical stance.

48:53

It's not taking a decision. It's not making a decision. It's not fighting for a specific group of people and defending their way of life.

48:59

It's trying to get out of it. Well, someone who doesn't judge people by the color of their skin and their personal interactions.

49:05

And right there, judging by the content of the character. And that's not they don't calculate business deals based on in preference, let's say.

49:12

And they're someone like that. You know, that's that's good and fine and great. But I think what you're saying is then but taking that to the political level of like, let's die on the hill of of of color blindness.

49:27

I don't know how we got onto this, but I guess we're here now. So that that's not it fails to recognize what's happening right now.

49:35

And a good example, I think. Go ahead. Go ahead. Real quick. I was just going to say another

49:41

James Lindsay thing. It just popped into my head regarding this is I think it was Paul Godfrey or someone said anti -white racism.

49:49

Right. They use that phrase. James Lindsay was on that like a duck on a Junebug with this is this is woke.

49:57

Basically, he wants to paint that as woke because you're recognizing that there's some kind of an attack on tangible people, white people, instead of recognizing the

50:09

I guess the philosophical commitment they have to race being a social construct or something like that.

50:16

Like you're you can't call it anti -white racism. Is that I think that's what I'm talking about right now.

50:21

I don't know if you have something to say on that. No, no, I agree. I think I think the problem is, is that like you're responding to political you're referring to political movements with a different type of argument about like how you should function as individuals in your daily life.

50:36

You're not right. So like if you have if you haven't this is this is one of the it's one of the dilemmas of the

50:41

American situation right now is you have a left that is operating on racial categories and you have a conservative movement that is refusing to.

50:49

And so there's no one to defend the enemy of the left. There's no one to defend them because the left saying, you know, whites need to be repudiated because of their history of colonialism and racism and all these things.

51:01

And we need to you know, we need to push for the not even the not even the equal treatment, but the positive treatment of all these minorities.

51:09

And there's there's no political response to that to defend the whites. And so what happens is we're inevitably going down.

51:16

We're going down a really dark hole and there's going to be racial dilemmas all over the place. And that's kind of going to characterize the future.

51:23

And it's not going to be fun for a lot of people to go down this path. But the fact is that the left's creating this and it's not a political response to stay colorblind.

51:32

It's just not I'm not saying that you have to like, you know, make white your only like commitment and all that stuff like, you know, it's a very dangerous line to walk into this area.

51:40

But just pay attention to the political dynamics of it and be aware of the consequences of not confronting the left based on its own categories, because what you're doing is you're neutralizing your own opposition.

51:54

You know, you have no there's no one to defend heritage Americans. And that's you know, we're not even allowed to identify it, let alone defend it.

52:01

We're not even allowed to say. Yeah, but just recognize recognize where that rhetoric comes from.

52:07

I mean, it's it's it's it's purposeful. Like they're putting us between a rock and a hard place. You have to either not defend yourself or you have to be a white nationalist like this.

52:16

Usually those are the political options. It's really it's a dilemma, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want the white nationalism.

52:23

I'm not that. But I do want to defend the what the who the left is trying to go after.

52:28

Exactly. Needs to be defended. And exactly. And it's the same with the Christian nationalist thing, I think, where Christians are being targeted.

52:36

And I've argued before, I think the whole let's go anti white is really more at the end of the day, it's related to the hating of Christianity because it's hating

52:45

Western civilization. It's and what crafted or really what was one of the main influences on Western civilization,

52:52

Christianity. It's embedded in everything. So behind that, I've always thought there is an attack on Christianity and now people are realizing it.

53:01

So what's the response? Well, hey, let's recognize they're attacking Christianity and let's have a Christian nation. Let's let's get back to a

53:07

Christian government and let's keep these infusions of Christianity that had existed for centuries.

53:14

And now that's being treated the same way. You're not allowed to say that again. I don't want to keep ratting on James Lindsay, but I guess because in the last week he's just been on a roll.

53:23

He does personify a certain mentality, you know, like it's important to because he really does embody,

53:29

I think, what's been wrong with the like the conservative movement, like their their addiction to, like, neutralism and the neutrality of institutions and liberalism in a world where the left's not interested in having those conversations.

53:41

You know, like, I think he really does perfectly encapsulate that mood. And he's a he's a great person to talk about,

53:47

I think. Yeah. It's not about James Lindsay himself. No, it's not at all. And I like the guy. I've met him. He's I like him on a personal level.

53:54

But the tweet I was thinking about is something someone sent me of him on this trans stuff that there's going to be this

54:02

Hegelian thing going on between the Christians on the one end who are going to be proud to be anti -gay and then and homophobic and then the the trans activists and LGBT people on this other end and that we shouldn't fall for it, that it's a trap.

54:17

Right. If we start responding to the threats, we are falling into the trap.

54:23

We're actually losing the war and we're going to end Christianity, I guess, effectively, which theologically,

54:30

I know that can't happen, but that's what he's saying. We're going to end Christianity, neutralize it if we respond to the threats before us.

54:36

I just think that's insane. Like we what do you want us to do? We're being attacked.

54:42

Well, don't defend yourself. That's what I hear. Yeah, because in his mind. In his mind, there is no like it's really crazy.

54:50

He doesn't really see. The Christian base, like the Christian masses as actually believing these things, he's kind of he kind of thinks it's like this minority position among Christians, which is bizarre to me, because like ninety five percent of Christendom for over a thousand years has taken these exact stances, probably even more radical than conservatives today.

55:12

You know, like that's that's definitely the norm. On the other hand, I definitely think there is a class and attention coming.

55:19

And I do think the regime in Washington is going to exploit these frustrations.

55:24

And I think they're going to criminalize, if not formally, then economically, they're going to criminalize these types of opinions for sure.

55:34

I think it is people can don't get caught up in traps like that. Their traps are coming and they're going to use they're going to use the things that you hold so dear.

55:43

They're going to use like I call it homo aversion, like the distaste and the dislike and the moral repugnance of homosexuality.

55:50

They're going to use these righteous mentalities against you. James Lindsay is right on that.

55:56

On the other hand, he's wrong that we should that we should stop speaking out about it and stop holding these positions.

56:02

That's that's lame. What's your advice then to Christians out there? Because I think you're right about that. There are these traps.

56:08

It's obvious it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the left is going to pounce on the slight.

56:14

I mean, we saw January six. So they're they're going to pounce on anything that happens and characterize the whole right as as terrible because of the actions of a few or whatever.

56:23

So what do you say to Christians who are frustrated about the target situation we just saw? Yeah, again, this is particularism like some people are uncancelable.

56:33

Some people have their own businesses and they live in red America and they have the obligation, the duty to take advantage of where God has placed them to speak out and to be bold.

56:41

Other people are in a more fragile position and they rely on the jobs in order to take care of their families, their their wives and children.

56:50

That's your priority. And so you don't want to put yourself in a really stupid situation and harm your family either.

56:56

So again, where are you personally? Do you own land? What can you do with that land?

57:02

Do you have a job that that allows you to be more uncancelable? If so, you have a duty to defend, you know, the

57:08

Christian heritage, our Christian heritage and your ancestors and your posterity.

57:14

You have a duty to stand up and to do that. Don't be afraid, but be wise. You know, like my like I have a wife and kids largely for the most part,

57:22

I'm basically economically uncanceled. I can be on Twitter with my own name and speak boldly because I can't be fired from my economic situation.

57:31

And I'm bold to say whatever I want right now. If I wasn't in that situation, I have friends who work for like Apple or something, but their families rely on that income, their structure, their house.

57:42

They own like an acre of property. Why is it better to speak out at their work and lose their homes and their property, the things that are sustaining them and their family?

57:50

That's dumb. So I would say like particularism is really important here. Look at where you are, what you can do.

57:56

If the only thing that you can do is build up your children and be a role model to them, then do it. If what you can do is get on local school boards and you live in the red area and you can continue to bolster that community and prevent leftist takeovers, then do that.

58:10

You have an obligation to do that. So look around you and look at what tools you have and don't be ashamed of the fact that all you can do, given your economic situation, is to take care of your family and your kids.

58:19

That's noble work. Yeah, no, that's that's really good advice. OK, bigger question.

58:25

And this this may be a loaded question and a trap that you want to reject the premise of. I don't know. But it's a question that's asked a lot.

58:32

What is the the or a Christian approach to politics?

58:40

What should Christians do politically? And sometimes it'll be phrased. What's the biblical approach to politics?

58:46

How would you answer those questions if you got them? I would emphasize particularity, you know, like I would say the

58:52

I would say that the the role of a Chinese Christian is different in politics than the role of an

58:58

English or an American Christian in politics. I don't think that where I don't think that we should reject the way that I approach politics is it's not an aspect of the gospel world.

59:10

I don't believe that politics is a continuity of like the Great Commission and the expanding kingdom of God.

59:17

I think the kingdom of God in that sense is spiritual and it's behind all of world history, from the worst excesses of the

59:25

Bolsheviks to the greatest moments in English Anglican history, like the kingdom of God was in both places at the same time.

59:32

I think our role in politics is as created human beings and we have natural obligations to our family, natural obligations to those that are around us in our communities and those that we're related to on a broader level.

59:45

I think those are created obligations. I am a two kingdoms person. I believe that these things are obligations based on a created nature.

59:53

I believe the fact that we're part of the kingdom of God in an ultimate sense and that we're saved and we have an eternal destination does not nullify the types of commitments and obligations that are part of our humanity as created beings.

01:00:06

So we have commitments to the church and to the spiritual realm, but we also have commitments to the natural realm, which is temporary.

01:00:12

These natural obligations and duties are good and we should fight for them in light of our own particular heritage and in light of that heritage going forward.

01:00:21

So I am very much a two kingdoms person. I reject the R2K, the radical or reformed two kingdoms, which says that the church has nothing to do with politics, but I do believe that in the classical two kingdom paradigm,

01:00:33

I think that we have obligations, temporal obligations and eternal obligations as well.

01:00:39

That's exactly what I believe. That's good. I love the way you phrased it. I'm trying to think where to go from here because there's so many questions, but we need to land the plane here soon because we've been recording for about an hour.

01:00:52

Any final thoughts that you want to just bring to the attention of Christians? What I think some are going to struggle with is if you have a mindset, if you grew up in, let's say, circles, libertarian circles, theonomy circles, or just,

01:01:10

I don't know, neoconservative circles, any of these kind of modernity, I don't want to say modernity driven, but these political philosophies that are the result of the modern situation, this is going to be a hard pill to swallow.

01:01:26

I'm wondering if there's any spoonful of sugar that can make the medicine go down. For me, one of them has been, well, look, you see particularity in the

01:01:33

Old Testament. You see it even in God telling them not to wear mixed fabrics and to look different than their neighbors.

01:01:39

That's particularity. What kinds of things can you say that might help people that struggle with this?

01:01:48

This is kind of a cheat answer, but read history. I think that you can read theonomy and stuff into Calvin, which people have done, but if you read chapter 20 of Calvin's Institutes and you're actually looking for particularity,

01:02:04

I think you'll find it much more obviously and transparently than if you're looking for theonomy. I would say take these things and read them back into the things that you've already read.

01:02:15

He keeps saying there's this allegation that we are insulting

01:02:21

God when we are abrogating certain aspects of Mosaic civil law. Let me read this.

01:02:32

Some laws are not preferred when they are more approved, but they have different regard from time and place and the condition of the people.

01:02:41

There's some things that are abrogated and some things that are enacted, and the way we can distinguish between them is what's relevant to the current situation.

01:02:48

What is relevant to the specific political aspect? You'll read Calvin with a particular lens, and you see it everywhere in chapter 20.

01:02:56

He says one nation might be more prone to particular vice were it not so severely repressed.

01:03:02

He says that some things need to be repressed harshly. They don't even need to be addressed at all. It just depends on the people and what the political situation is.

01:03:11

I would say just keep in mind that the magisterial Protestant political theology is much more particularistic than universalistic.

01:03:20

This is the entire point of even Richard Hooker and the Anglicans and the

01:03:26

English reformers. They were all dealing with these particularistic situations. None of them approached things as this one -time given law for all peoples in this universalistic way.

01:03:36

All of them taught the fact that it is the role and the function of the ruler to defend his people based on their own heritage and history and cultural sentiments, to defend those things in light of universal morality.

01:03:51

You just have to look for particularity everywhere. You can't read it through a universalistic lens because what you're doing is you're reading it through a modernist lens when you're doing that.

01:04:00

I noticed that recently with Pierre Bré, I was reading his book on the civil magistrate.

01:04:06

Well, it's not his book. It's a collection of his essays, but he talks about the obligation that the magistrate has to make sure that idolatry isn't publicly venerated.

01:04:18

It's interesting, though, because the way that he applied that, and he was just across the lake from Geneva where Calvin was, and the way

01:04:25

Calvin applied it in Geneva and the way that all these different localities approached this topic and the penalties associated with it and what they would punish and what they wouldn't was different because you even see

01:04:36

Pierre Bré later in his life talking about basically Catholics and Protestants can live together. We can do this.

01:04:42

It's like, wait a minute, didn't you say? Well, yeah, of course he did, but he's also looking at the people who are under these and what promotes the peace and prosperity.

01:04:53

Some are going to call that pragmatism, I suppose, but it's not pragmatism.

01:04:59

It's not the ism. It's just wisdom, I would say. Yeah, it is wisdom. I think that's true.

01:05:04

Some people say we don't want to go back to the magisterial reformers and their teachings because it was bad for Baptists.

01:05:11

That's a common thing, but we're in 2023 responding to 2023 challenges based on 2023 enemies and 2023 friends.

01:05:20

I don't think anybody, if they legitimately think about their Presbyterian neighbor, is afraid that he's going to endorse something that'll burn you at the stake.

01:05:27

That's not how politics works. Again, you're applying specific universal situations in a universal way.

01:05:36

Nobody's going to do that. Politics is about friends and enemies based on particular situations and particular challenges.

01:05:45

The idea that we can't learn from Calvin because he was applying it in one way doesn't mean it's going to be applied today.

01:05:54

Nobody's going about thinking that our number one priority right now is to make sure that all advocates of believers baptisms are taken out, and then we can address the transsexual movement.

01:06:05

You know what I mean? We have to be really realistic. People that are dealing with these things, they have to realize that politics is particular.

01:06:13

It's always particular. I went in the YouTube comments yesterday, and I think they're very well -intentioned, and they were respectful.

01:06:20

We're going down this line of, what are you specifically going to do to homosexuals?

01:06:27

What are you specifically going to do to Muslims? I'm like, I'm not going to do anything.

01:06:33

I don't have that authority. What you have to understand about this whole

01:06:39

Christian nationalist thing, I don't care for the label, but the people like Stephen Wolfe, who are positive examples, try to appropriate this.

01:06:48

What they're saying is that, look, we don't have every detail worked out, and nor we have these huge hurdles first.

01:06:55

It's a big tent that's approaching these huge particular threats that we face today.

01:07:03

We're not working out right now, okay, when we have this Presbyterian utopia or Baptist utopia, what are we going to do?

01:07:11

It's so... I just sense ideological thinking behind it.

01:07:17

Yeah, because politics isn't blueprinting. That's not what we're doing. We're not getting into the details. We're not crafting the ideal order.

01:07:24

It's an approach. Christian nationalism, as Stephen Wolfe describes it, is an approach. It's a method of determining what is good or bad, and how to figure that out, how to set your priorities in line.

01:07:37

It's not trying to articulate the ideal tax code or the best

01:07:44

GDP targets. It's very broad. It's looking at the political aspect of priority making.

01:07:51

Yeah. No, that's good. Well, we'll probably have to have you on again, because I'm sure there's a lot of questions sparked in people's minds.

01:07:58

I do want people to follow you. If you're on Twitter, ContraMordor, and then where can they find the

01:08:07

Chronicles Magazine podcast? iTunes? It's on iTunes. It's on Spotify, and Google, and all those places too.

01:08:15

The YouTube channel's where the video goes, so just look for Chronicles Magazine. I think they're redoing their website, and we'll have more live links.

01:08:22

But yeah, just look for Chronicles Magazine on YouTube, and then I think the actual RSS page is chroniclesmagazine .captivate

01:08:29

.fm, or whatever the captivate... I'll look for it. I'll put it in the info section.

01:08:34

Yeah, that's fine. Okay, yeah. And you can find it anywhere, though. Yeah, and then cjangleatsubstack .com

01:08:40

if you want to read some of the essays. I know you've written on some of this stuff, theonomy, and libertarianism, and all that.

01:08:46

Somewhat. Yeah, it's actually funny, because I'm trying to focus more on paleoconservatism, and Paul Gottfried type stuff, but I keep getting sucked back into the religious words.

01:08:56

It's really funny. No, I totally understand that. And I'm sucking you back to some extent, because there's a whole lot of people that even in my audience, they're not exposed to people like Paul Gottfried.

01:09:08

They're not reading Richard Weaver. They're not reading paleoconservatives, Roger Scruton, whatever. They're still watching

01:09:16

Fox News. They're not getting Chronicles. And so I feel it's a duty that I have to try to introduce them to better thinkers.

01:09:23

So anyway, you're one of them. So thank you. Yeah, I should also mention, too, I have another podcast, Contra Mundum, with Boniface Option, Andrew Isker, on Twitter.

01:09:34

He's a more popular account than I am, but he and I do a podcast, too. And so we have fun. We do those once a week.