Dr. Joe Boot of the Ezra Institute on Christianity in Canada and Two Kingdom Theology

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We have a special guest with us today. Dr. Joe Boot is up in Canada. I'm not sure if I should mention that because someone might get offended by that and then they'll pull the plug.

I'm not sure if that's how that works these days or not. But Dr. Boot, no one is gonna listen to anything you or I have to say until we get one thing cleared up. And since you are a native of the United Kingdom, England itself, and hence are guilty of white supremacy and colonialism.

Can you explain to us, please? We Americans, we're just simple farmers. You know, you call us colonials. Could you please help us? What are we to think about Meghan and Harry?

Wow, that's a tough one to start me off with. Uh, well, I think that, I think that Harry is a grave disappointment to the royal family. Yes. And, well, let me just say that I was none too impressed with the Oprah interview.

Difficult to paint yourself a victim when you live in a castle off the taxpayer.

Yes, the memes that that created were pretty impressive. I did not mean to throw you a curve there. I figured after, now here's a question for you. Let's see, this is a real test. Who is the popular American atheist that you and I have both debated?

Dan Barker, maybe? Dan Barker. And so what I was gonna say was, that was as mean of me to ask you about Meghan and Harry to start as it was to ask you to do a debate after getting sick and having a car accident.

All right before doing a debate. I mean, how in the, do you even remember doing that debate? Or do you have to go back and look at the video and go, oh, okay, yeah, that actually happened.

Yeah, it's all a bit of a blur, but I was unwell. And the debate was about four and a half hours from where I lived. And on route, I got involved in a car accident in the snow.

I shouldn't laugh, I'm sorry. But it just seems like a comedy of errors.

Well, it made me late. That was true, I was very late to the debate. And the subject, I think, as I recall was, is there life after death? So I think I got up and said something on the lines of, well, I've been in a car accident and I can assure you that there is in fact life after death.

Actually, you claimed two minutes of brain death. And I was watching Dan because he and I have debated twice. And in fact, if you count the programs we did on a radio station, KFYI in Phoenix, with a shock jock by the name of Tom Likas, it would be much more than, I think we did like three times, all the way back in the 1980s.

I had hair, it was skinny, it was great. But just the look on his face when you made that claim, I think he was actually going, okay, if he really claims that, then how am I gonna respond to that? You didn't really follow up on it like that.

But yes, that was, I'm not sure if you've seen my debates with Dan, but in the second debate, he actually objected to the moderator because I was quoting from a book that he wrote. Yeah, I've seen that one.

Yes, yes, that was great. That was the point. That was exciting. Now, you are a Brit living in Canada. Now, I have friends down in Australia who are British, who live down there, and they have special terms of endearment that are not really all that endearing, but terms of endearment for folks that live down there.

Do the Canadians have anything similar for you folks, or are they too nice for that?

Canadians are a little too polite. The Aussies and the English have a much more, well, they share a sense of humor, I think, typically, that is sort of mutual fun Taking, and ribbing and sarcasm is very British and Australian.

Oh, yeah. So we have lots of slightly insulting phrases for each other, but for whatever reason, that actually didn't carry over to Canada. I'm not aware of any typical expression that the Brits will use about Canadians or vice versa.

Well, that's just because you haven't been listening to Ryan before you got in the room, so we'll let you all figure that one out. And also, you don't have the ashes. You don't have that going on all the time, so I suppose.

Well, that's actually really important in all of this. Some of the Commonwealth countries, like Australia, share the English sports, like cricket and rugby, and have tremendous enthusiasm for them. Both of those games are largely played only by immigrants in Canada.

There's a little bit of rugby, but it's very small. It would be more Canadian or American football.

Is that because the United States has infected them, or it's just too cold to play outside? Yeah, it's probably a mixture of both.

Canada is deeply affected and shaped by, despite it being part of the Commonwealth and the Queen being the head of state and it being the dominion originally of Canada, it has been, over the years, very shaped by the United States.

Although most Canadians, after living here for 18 years, I've learned, will often define themselves as not American. So Canada is a country with a bit of an identity crisis. We're not really British anymore.

We're not French, because you probably know a bit of the history there with French Quebec and after basically the war between England and France and North America falling into British hands. And so

For a while. There's a bit of a, yes. There's a bit of an identity crisis that's afflicted Canadians. And so they are very attached in more ways than one to the United States and shaped by its culture, as well as the English culture to a degree, but we're not American.

That's one of the things that Canadians seem to pride themselves in saying. I've never quite understood it as a Brit, because I greatly appreciate America and my American friends. The American is, as Winston Churchill said, the Englishman left to himself.

That's a good way of putting it. I'm not sure that the Colonials would have. I think that's exactly what the Colonials were saying. Yeah, leave us alone.

That's exactly what they would say. A lot of the Loyalists went North into Canada.

Right, right, right, right, definitely. Well, speaking of all of that, was it yesterday or the day before yesterday? We had a decision in Scotland, and I'm very Scottish, have spent many, many weeks up in Scotland ministering there, love the place, love the people, but you had tweeted yesterday about, seemed quite excited about the decision that took place there.

Tell us a little bit about it and do you think that it will have any impact in the situations that you all are facing there in Canada?

Scottish Court Ruling on In-Person Worship and Its Relevance for Canada

Yeah, so basically, some, actually, friends and colleagues of mine at Christian Concern in London, in England, and their Christian Legal Center, and I think ADF was intervening as well, took the case of about 27 Presbyterian Baptist independent ministers in a case against the Scottish government.

And again, for all of you, my American friends, Great Britain consists of four countries, essentially, which have a certain amount of devolved jurisdiction. So England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.

And so even though the church in England, because of a threat, just the threat of legal action, has been legally open almost without restriction since the beginning of the year, that they were not included in the lockdown at the beginning of 2021.

Scotland, with a certain amount of devolved power, actually banned in-person worship services, made them effectively a criminal offense to gather for worship. And of course, I mean, Scotland, over the past 60 or 70 years, it's been a tragedy to watch Scotland.

Scotland of John Knox, you know, that sent more missionaries per capita around the world than any other nation has sunk into a terrible decline. And there's strong nationalist movement there now as well that wants to separate from the United Kingdom, break up the oldest political unity in the Western world.

And it's sort of neo-Marxist socialist drift has been really striking and considerably worse than England. So this was a really important case. And certainly my friends and colleagues at Christian Concern were nervous about the way it was gonna go.

But the QC made a very interesting case. The lawyer basically said, look, you know, the position of my clients is that Jesus Christ is Lord and that there is an irreconcilable conflict here now between obedience to God and obedience to the state.

And in this instance, this particular judge, thankfully, recognized that, recognized that constitutionally, there hadn't been that kind of religious persecution since the 17th century and the covenanters.

And also recognized that the European human rights law basically would prevent this kind of, or would regard this sort of stance as discrimination. So both in terms of Scottish constitutional history and in terms of the European Court of Human Rights, he said that this is illegal, it's unconstitutional.

And interestingly enough, he also said that whatever gathering around a computer on virtually may be, it isn't worship. It's amazing how many Christian pastors and leaders seem to have struggled with that, but this judge understood what Christian worship was too.

So the, and he said that his ruling had to take effect pretty much immediately. So the ban on in-person gatherings has been lifted legally in Scotland and government will have to comply. The executive branch, I should say, will have to comply.

Now, as to whether it's relevant for Canada, well, we share the same head of state, of course, because Canada is a constitutional monarchy. And of course we have a governor and we would be thought of as a comparable jurisdiction.

So even though we had our own charter in 1982 in Canada, a sort of very bad attempt at writing a constitution, it doesn't afford the same protections as the American constitution. We didn't need one, we had the British North America Act here, but Trudeau Sr. wanted a charter and they've been browbeating Christians with it ever since.

But it is a comparable jurisdiction. We're part of the same Commonwealth. The decisions of major Western courts, including the US Supreme Court, of course, would have an influence on Canadian jurisprudence.

So I immediately sent the ruling to a friend of mine who's an MPP in Ontario and asked him to put it in front of the nose of the Ontario premier, I hope he does. But these rulings, this is the first major ruling about this ban being illegal.

I know the US Supreme Court has in a couple of instances looked at some local cases, but this is a very significant ruling in Scotland. And hopefully it will set something of a precedent. But whether it's taken seriously here obviously remains to be seen.

Now, obviously everyone down here is familiar with Pastor James Coates and the situation up there in Canada. I think his trial, I believe is in May, if I recall correctly, early May, something along those lines.

He's still facing one charge from the Crown. I'm not sure what the possible outcomes of that situation are. But I've listened, of course, to your webcasts and your seeking to encourage believers in Canada, specifically leaders of churches, to be clear about the lordship of Christ over the church, the importance of meeting as the church.

And of course we know there's, here in the United States, there's tremendous resistance to that even within church leaders and very large organizations. And I get the feeling there is a tremendous amount of resistance in Canada as well, even within the church, from church leaders along these lines.

And will this decision possibly, in some way, assist and aid in the movement to continue to have the church to meet and to have the freedom to meet? Do you see any progress along those lines? Or is Pastor Coates' release more of a public relations thing?

How are we to understand what's going on and what does it feel like on the ground right now?

So on the ground, I think among the leaders in the churches that were already emboldened to resist, I should say, who were already resisting, I would say that the brave and courageous resistance of Pastor Coates and unwillingness to call his heels in jail and then his subsequent release has certainly emboldened those who were already resistant.

I would say it would be premature to say whether there's any broader effect from it. There has been a very, very disappointing overall degree and level of resistance in Canada to this. The vast majority have gone along.

It's interesting that even in England where the churches are legally allowed to be open, almost unrestricted, the Evangelical Alliance there says in the region of 80 of churches have remained closed.

Astonishing. And here, I would say that generally, that there are pockets is the best way of describing it, pockets of resistance in the church. Now, with respect to James Coates' case, from what I understand, I mean, I do know his lawyer, James Kitchen, personally, but I haven't spoken to him recently.

But from what I understand, the last charge that hasn't dropped, they wanted that particular charge retained because they want to press this issue through the courts. I think that what happened, it seems anyway in this case, is that in Alberta, which is supposed to be the most conservative and the most libertarian in Canada, so this was tremendous shock, what happened.

It seems that a lot of political pressure was brought to bear on the premier, Jason Kenney, and that in all probability behind the scenes, pressure was placed on the courts and on the prosecution to withdraw or to drop these charges.

So it seems to be, it's difficult to see at this point as anything more than face saving. The provincial governments don't seem anxious for these things to go to the courts or to go beyond the lower courts.

I think government is worried about what higher courts will say constitutionally on this, because we have these two sections of our charter, section two are where the basic protections for us in the law are of assembly and worship and speech and so on, but section one puts a caveat around those in terms of, well, if the government deems it necessary, demonstrably justifiable to take away these freedoms or restrict them, it can do it.

But it doesn't seem as though the government is that anxious to have this dealt with before the courts. And so the charges against, most of the charges against Pastor Coates were dropped. So you could look at it as an act of intimidation of the church and of pastors.

You could look at it as a sort of PR exercise, as you've said, it just doesn't look good to have a law abiding pastor who's just trying to care for his flock in prison for being a pastor. That doesn't look good on the international stage.

And it could be that in part that they're not anxious to have this go through the courts. At the moment, it's too early to tell what impact this might have in Alberta or other jurisdictions.

Now, a lot of us have heard about Bill C -6 in Canada. And we've also heard about the legislation going through in Victoria in Australia, which seems to have a lot of, I don't know, I think if we did some digging, we'd probably discover a lot of similar people, organizations behind both of them since they seem to have a lot in common worldview wise and things like that.

What's the status on C -6? And what should Americans be praying about for their Canadian brothers and sisters in light of whatever the situation is right now with C -6?

Bill C-6 and the Criminalization of Conversion Therapy

Well, Bill C -6 is a bill to ostensibly ban what's called conversion therapy. And what comes to mind when people say that or use that expression is sort of electric shock therapy or some other kind of coercive practice, which nobody practices.

So it's a red herring in that regard. The target of this law is not what it appears on the face of it because this notion of coercive barbaric practices, just nobody does that, nobody's doing that. So it was from the beginning a highly suspicious piece of legislation.

It was first introduced as Bill C -8 and then because of a new sitting of parliament got a new number. Basically what happened is that it was voted on initially which took it into what they call committee.

And it was hoped that during this phase in committee, adjustments could be made to the legislation because basically what the legislation says is that any treatment or service that seeks to lessen same-sex desire or what clinically I guess would be called gender dysphoria as well, anything that seeks to lessen that kind of behavior or to change or alter a person's desires or behavior who is a minor, excuse me, I apologize for that, who is a minor, so somebody under 18, that would actually be a criminal offense carrying up to five years in prison.

Now, by the way, that includes, so this is not just, we're not talking now about simply psychiatrists or psychotherapists or professional counselors. We're talking about parents, pastors. So if you were a parent, let's say of a 16-year-old who is struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction and you went to a counselor, a Christian counselor or to a pastor for a series of counseling sessions with your child to try and address that, that would be a criminal act under this piece of legislation and you could go to prison for up to five years.

The same would be true for pastors offering any kind of service to minors. And then even with adults, it would be a criminal offense to advertise or make it known that this kind of service was offered so that to offer counsel to an adult even by making them aware, whether it's by a website advertisement or an advertisement on your church website or a brochure or anything that help for unwanted desires of this kind was available would under this legislation be a criminal offense.

So it was hoped that while it was in committee, conversion therapy could actually be defined because it really is just not defined. It's so vague, you can drive a bus through it. So that at least the law, even though they didn't seem there would be any stopping it because of the liberal government and their support within what they call the NDP here, which is even more radically progressive and left, that there could at least be amendments made that would give a very clear definition so that parents and pastors trying to help their own children or young people in their own church with struggles around their identity or struggles about desires, that there's some of the desires that they're having that are unwanted.

Instead of it being this being done, the bill just got worse. And gender, I think gender expression, I'm not a lawyer, I should remind the listeners, but there are some articles on the Ezra Institute website on this, some of which have been written or informed by lawyers.

So it tightens up on some of the detail. But I think that the issue of identity is in there as well. And so the bill has actually gotten worse in committee. It is not law yet. I think it would have to go through the house one more time and then be ratified by the Senate.

But everyone that I'm talking to in law who presented in committee, the lawyers who were involved from, whether it's the ARPA, the Association of Reform Political Action or the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, they're saying that they weren't listened to.

And this is going to be passed into law. This piece of legislation will become law pretty much as it is now written. And it's just gonna be a case of it coming before parliament again and then going through the Senate.

It is without doubt, in my view, the most threatening, the most dangerous piece of legislation ever tabled for the Christian and the life of the church.

In the United States, we have the mechanism of the Supreme Court that can analyze such situations and overturn such legislation. Is that the same situation there? Would that be the next step once it became law?

Or is that the final word?

Charter Challenge and the Canadian Supreme Court

Yeah, so that's a great question. So when this becomes law, which I am certain that it will, the only way to put a stop to it will be a legal challenge, a charter challenge. I mean, if you think about it this way, in this country, you can, under this same legislation, a pastor, if somebody came to them and said, I'm struggling with this or that sexual desire, pastor could counsel that person to view homosexual pornography, could counsel a child to go and have hormone therapy and surgery to mutilate their genitals.

That would be fine. And it's totally fine under the law for you to change in that direction. So that's perfectly acceptable. You can move in that direction. You can change in that direction. It's interesting that it's conversion therapy because what this really amounts to is a form of Western conversion law ban, the like of which you might see in parts of India.

It's an anti-conversion bill because you cannot effectively even, I mean, in the Australian version, I believe even prayer counseling, even praying with somebody around this issue, preaching may even be captured within this bill.

So I think that given the contradictory nature of it, that really what this does is actually limits people's choices. It limits people's free will and free decisions. If I want today to be a woman as a biological male, then I can go and get counsel, go and get surgery, go and get hormone therapy and have the taxpayer pay for it.

But if I'm a male struggling with some unwanted desires, I can't get help for that. That would be, or at least nobody could advertise it to me. And if I was a minor, it would be illegal and my parents or pastor would be criminalized.

So I think what's gonna happen, James, is pretty much as soon as this is passed, it's gonna get challenged very rapidly in the courts. And I suspect we will be in a process now for a year or two, once Bill C -6 is passed, of a legal challenge that will go right to the Supreme Court.

And at that point, we'd be appealing to the Supreme Court to overturn the law as unconstitutional and a violation of people's charter freedoms. How that would go is anybody's guess. You may have heard about the Trinity Western University case where the Supreme Court basically overturned itself.

There was almost an identical case 18 or 19 years before with respect to Trinity Western's College for Education to educate and prepare teachers for teaching in Canadian schools. And their right to have that was challenged all those years ago.

And they won in the Supreme Court, an almost identical case with respect to a proposed law school. The Supreme Court basically overturned itself and said, no, you can't have, and essentially, you can't have a Christian lifestyle document.

You can't have a Christian institution, basically. It has to be open to all those people who would want to practice any other kind of sexual practice while they're on your campus and part of your college and part of your university.

Otherwise, it's discrimination. So they overturned themselves. So it's a very progressive court. So it's very difficult to know how the court would rule in a constitutional challenge.

So here now, and obviously, the American system was not designed to function the way that it is now. But here now, the selection of Supreme Court justices is political nuclear warfare. I mean, there are no survivors left.

I don't know why anybody, honestly, would want to put themselves through the process. It doesn't matter how great your credentials are or anything else, you will be absolutely run through the ringer, as my mom used to say.

But is it as much of a political thing there in Canada, the selection of these justices, or has it not quite gotten to that level of circus theater that we have?

Yeah. Well, I mean, this may sound really strange, James, but we could only wish that we had that kind of theater. Because at least your theater demonstrates that there is a genuine radical cultural conflict and it's recognized that much of that conflict is taking place in the juridical sphere.

Right. And in the courts with activist judges and that the balance of courts can change the shape of the future. And there's conflict around that in the United States, which is as awful as it is to watch terrible things like what happened to Brett Kavanaugh.

There is no such controversy here. Of course, our justices are political appointees like yours. They're not elected. But it's largely a who's who of liberals. It's shades of red. There is no cultural public controversy around Supreme Court picks in this country.

That is foreign to the Canadian landscape. I wish it were not. I certainly don't think that it's ideal the way that the radicals in the US have now turned the appointment of Supreme Court justices into heresy trials.

But at least it manifests there is a cultural conflict left. In Canada, we don't see that. That's not part of the public discourse. It doesn't make its way into the public media. Most people would be thoroughly unaware of it.

Was this a, I wasn't gonna spend that much time on this, but was this sort of a straight line? There had to have been ups and downs. Canada hasn't always been like this. How could there be such a complete overthrow of even having the public dialogue and debate where it's just, it's an echo chamber politically now?

How did that? I mean, that's what they're trying to do here. Maybe it was the same process. I don't know. But how did that happen?

How Canada Lost Its Christian Consensus

Well, Canadian historians have asked that question. I think Mark Knoll wrote a book called What Happened to Christian Canada. And it's a very interesting question. It's a very interesting question. I mean, I would say that there are Canadian historians who would argue that originally, Canada had perhaps an even greater claim to being a Christian nation, distinctly Christian nation than the United States.

That could be disputed, but some have claimed it, that it was a very organically Christian, Christian, socially conservative culture for a very long time. It was Psalm 72, verse eight, in fact, is on the Canadian coat of arms.

He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. When I took my citizenship oath and became a Canadian citizen, I am allowed to keep both my British and my Canadian citizenship.

Behind the judge when we were being sworn in is the Canadian coat of arms and it's Psalm 72, eight. There was a vision for the dominion of Christ, God's dominion from sea to sea. And it was a culture that inherited, of course, it's Christian, deep Christian traditions largely from England.

And in Quebec, of course, you had the strong influence of Roman Catholicism. Quebec went first in the direction of radical secularization, but this really has been a process largely since World War II of the gradual creep of the state of basically social democracy, socialist democracy, I should say.

Christian leaders, even some of our most well-known Christian leaders championing state education, state-funded education. That was in Ontario, a Methodist minister. A famous politician here, Tommy Douglas, championing socialized medicine.

He was also in his early part of his career, a champion of euthanasia. But most of this change has happened since World War II. And I would say that a real tipping point for Canada was the introduction of the Canadian Charter, which was our own sort of new constitutional document.

And although this is vociferously denied by the justices, what's really happened is there's been the creation gradually of a hierarchy of rights under the Charter where really freedom of religion and freedom of speech, because we're subject to various hate speech legislation in various provinces here as well, has gradually come to the bottom of the pile.

So this sort of critical race theory, basically cultural Marxism, radical progressivism, whatever label you want to give to it has created a hierarchy of rights. And so at the center of the wheel of oppression as Foucault would have, I think, had it, you've got the white, male, middle-class Christian and the Christian family.

And everybody else on the edge of that is a victim of oppression. And Canadian politics in large measure, especially over the last 20 years, has sort of taken upon itself to reverse that and make the oppressed, the oppressor, the oppressed.

And that seems to have basically been what's happened in the courts. I mean, I regularly talk to Christians now who are seriously thinking about fleeing the country. Lots of young families. There's a family in my own church, young family looking to leave for Texas.

A lot of Canadians think, Christians thinking of going to America. You're absolutely right. It wasn't always this way. Canada was never perfect, of course, never wholly consistently Christian, but you can go back 100 years and read the debates of senators around the importance of, from both parties, around the centrality of the 10 commandments and the importance of both tables of God's law for Canadian politics.

And there was still a battle in the early 80s over the Lord's Day Act because of Sabbath laws, as recently as the 1980s, where the Sabbath was protected, whatever we want to make of that. So the change has been the takeover of education fundamentally by the state and it's radical, progressive, and increasingly a neo-Marxist agenda.

There's been periods of slowdown. What tends to happen here is liberals get in and if they get pushed out of government, which they do periodically, the pause button gets pushed on the radical drive to overturn every Christian norm and every historic Canadian tradition and idea.

And then when the Conservatives are out, well, the Conservatives never actually push back ideologically. So liberals just pick up where they were before because all the Conservatives have done, because they have no basis for pushback, is they press pause.

And then, so there's another period of time where you get pulled even further left. It's all since the French Revolution, of course, we're being dragged further and further that way. And all we ever do with a Conservative government is now we're just shades of red.

Canadian politics is shades of red. There isn't even fiscal conservatism really left in Canada. Now, there are small pockets of resistance within conservatism, and I think some significant developments may actually come in that regard this year.

So there are glimmers of hope. I'm involved in working with and talking to some politicians in that regard at both a provincial and federal level. But it's been, James, basically the invasion of all the cultural institutions.

It's the same story that's going on in the United States right now, but we're maybe 10, 15 years ahead of you. And the biggest driver of it has been state education.

Yeah, same thing here, obviously. Here's a theory for you. Let me see if this will help us to transition. Here's a theory for you. I think it's due to Tim Hortons because I think they put something in the donuts and that would explain why every corner in Canada, there is a Tim Hortons.

And what do you think of my theory?

Well, he's certainly a famous individual. I mean, maybe there was something in the donuts. I've been asked whether Tim Hortons is the prime minister of Canada. I think he probably would have done a better job than our present prime minister,.

But maybe there is something in the water.

It's so sad. It's just so sad, James, because the surrender of what was the true North strong and free and in our national anthem, if you look at the verses of the Canadian charter, we stand on guard for thee.

It's God keep our land glorious and free. And we've lost any real sense. And it's been especially seen, been made so painfully obvious this past 12 months that the idea of glorious and free, the true North is really just words at this point.

There's no substance left to it.

Well, I've started commenting. I first visited London in 2005 and have spent a lot of time there. And in fact, I was gonna ask you, which terminal at Heathrow is your favorite? Terminal two, probably.

Really? Okay. All right, all right, all right. I'm sort of a The Queen's Terminal, they call it. Yeah, I'm sort of a three, five guy because I did a lot of flying with B of A and I know where everything is, especially in five, I could get there in the dark.

But I've spent a lot of time there, a lot of time running. I think London is fascinating. I stay at the Royal Horse Guards Hotel down there along the Thames. And if you get up early enough, if you're willing to run before sunrise, you got the place to yourself.

I mean, I could do laps along the Thames past the eye and I'm the only person running. They're all looking at me like, must be an American, just so weird over there. I love it, love the whole place. But I noticed from the start, you're passing by all these testimonies to a Christian past chiseled in stone and the vast majority of other people walking past don't even know what those things mean anymore, let alone does it have any meaning.

It's just part of the landscape. It just doesn't connect to life anymore.

Yeah, well, I lived in London for a number of years. In fact, my first pastoral assignment was in London. I lived on the Fulham-Chelsea border, my wife and I, when we were first married. And I lived right on the edge of the Thames.

And London's an amazing city. It's a beautiful city. It's an amazing metropolis. Prior to these current restrictions, I would be typically in London four or five times a year for the Institute, working with partnering organizations in London, Oxford Circus, Christian Concern there.

And it's amazing when you, and even when you walk past the Houses of Parliament and you can probably see over my shoulder here on this side, no, this side, no, this side, there, this side, here it is.

That's Oliver Cromwell right there. And there's a statue of Oliver Cromwell holding the Bible. And of course, there's statues of William Wilberforce. I mean, you see these figures, they're absolutely everywhere in London.

And of course, that's why we've seen movements recently like Black Lives Matter. Seeking to, and by the way, there is a review going on right now under the Islamic mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, of all the statues and road names, or this is what's going on.

There's gotta be a review apparently of all of this history. But that's why, of course, they want to tear them down and pull them down and deface them, because this is what we're in revolution against.

We're in a cultural moment of perpetual revolution. This is, you know, it's Marxist to the core. Of course, it's following on from the ideas of Rousseau, but it is perpetual revolution. We've got to throw all of these people into the sea and start history all over again.

And it breaks my heart when I'm back in England. Because I knew what we once were. Right, right.

Yeah, and it is, you know, the old statement that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but the continuation of that that I've seen that is even more poignant for me is, and it's the curse of those who know history to have to sit back and watch it happening again and again, because no one will listen to them.

And that seems to be really the issue that we're facing today. A lot of this, obviously this all, you know, we can talk history all we want, but we're talking about humans here. And we're talking about what truly motivates human activity and human behavior.