Architects of a Political Third-Way for Evangelicals: Carl Trueman- "Republocrat"

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We're going to talk about this book today,

Republicat Confessions of a Liberal Conservative by Carl Truman. I think if he wrote it today, it would be super controversial probably, and he would have a lot of attention given to this particular book.

But when he wrote it in 2010, that was not the case. And so this is going to be part of a series I'm doing, and it's not sequential.

It's not going to be like there's another installment tomorrow and next week. But during the course of the year, I'm going to talk about some other figures,

Tim Keller being one that I've talked about before, but we'll talk about maybe one of his books, Generous Justice, perhaps.

We'll just go through it and give you some quotes and talk about it. We might talk about Stephen Nichols' book,

Jesus Made in America. I'm not sure yet, but there was a string of books that came out that when they came out in the early 2000s up until about 2015 or so, they weren't that controversial because it just wasn't a fight in evangelicalism like it is today, the political fight that's going on.

Of course, underpinning this is a theological fight, really. It's not ultimately political, but that's the form

I would say that it's been taking. And that's from the outside optics and the interests that are involved from the world's perspective, they tend to be more political interests.

And of course, with everything that's happened politically, especially within the last two or three years, this fight within evangelicalism has really ramped up.

And so books like this, which once, well, today would be blamed perhaps for the drift that's happening in evangelicalism and they would be identified as Trojan horses.

At the time that they were written, they were not identified. In fact, Michael Horton endorses this book.

It says on the front cover, will delight, frustrate and encourage healthy discussions that we have needed for a long time. You have, interestingly enough,

Michael F. Byrd from Crossway Bible College in Australia endorsed this. For those who don't know, if you haven't been listening to this podcast for any length of time,

I've played some clips from Michael Byrd. I've showed some tweets from Michael Byrd. I mean, he is well entrenched on the left wing side of the evangelical.

If you want to even call what he believes evangelicalism, I don't even know. I played a clip of him talking about,

I believe the individual's name was Fleming Rutledge, but it was a clip with Walter Strickland at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He used to come and speak when I was a student there. And he talks in this interview, you can find the clip probably on my

YouTube channel. There's some other places as well, but it's for the kingdom diversity department. And he says that, well, we need the womanist perspective essentially.

So I'm going to have my students read her so they can understand from a woman's perspective what the book of Romans says.

That's a good sample of where Michael Byrd is at. And so I just wanted to let you know that as well.

It's interesting to me, but we're going to go through the content of the book. Not just, we're not talking about those who, we're not putting those who endorse this book on trial or anything.

I just, I find it interesting sometimes the kind of people who do endorse books and why they think it's worthwhile.

And particularly actually the introduction to this book from someone who considers himself a conservative's conservative.

And I'll show you what he has to say in the introduction to the book. But all that to say, this will be part of a series that I am titling or a theme that I am titling

Architects of a Political Third Way for Evangelicals. Architects of a Political Third Way for Evangelicals.

And I would see Carl Truman as someone who helped lay some of this groundwork at a crucial time in 2010.

This is before it was really noticeable. It wasn't that popular yet, but he was saying things that are now being said and now they're being identified at least as, oh, that's where some of this left wing, this leftward drift is coming from.

Now, Truman is known for right now being a conservative's conservative.

By people I don't think who've read all of his work, they've read his book, his most popular book,

I believe now, which is Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which I've read. And I am gonna give you some thoughts hopefully later this week on that book.

Probably it won't be long, but I have, there's a lot of good things I have to say about it, but I also, there's some concerns.

And I think it would be helpful, this reason I'm doing things in the order I'm doing them, I think it's helpful to do this book first, this

Republic crap book just to help. I don't know, I don't know why

I thought that. But I guess maybe to help people maybe understand that, hey, look, some of the things I might say about Rise and Triumph, it's not just like I have an ax to grind with Carl Truman.

I'm gonna bring up some other things. On this podcast, I've talked about Carl Truman a number of times. I've showed you things that he said about Grove City that just seem confusing at best, or just shielding the school and the school's honestly poor, unwise, and wrong decisions at worst.

And commending Karen Swallow Pryor. I've shown you things from Carl Truman that really make you scratch your head.

And I've wondered for a while, because he has this reputation, well, how can this be? Well, reading this book has helped me figure out, oh, that's why.

And so we're gonna talk about that. And he's in the, I believe he's in the OPC, if I'm not mistaken, the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I probably should have checked that out before I did this. I will, let me see if I can look that up real quick, just because I don't wanna speak out of turn.

I think he was at least part of the OPC. But he teaches at Grove City College, and he did teach at Westminster Theological, yes.

He was a pastor, actually, let's see, ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, so I was right about that. Okay, so before we get to that, though, let's talk about this.

I want to let everyone know two things. One, announcement. The Adirondack Men's Retreat with Dr.

Russell Fuller is in full gear. We got a place, we got a price, and I'm just gonna let people know up front,

I was planning this as something primarily for the church that I attend, but I thought, well, I'll include some people from the podcast.

And what I've received has surprised me. A lot of people really wanna come, and that could be just because there isn't a lot of this.

Men's retreats have gone the way of the dodo bird. Men's ministries have kind of gone the way of the dodo bird.

And it's also possible that there's not a lot of options available for good, solid conferences.

I saw that when I was in Texas with Joel Webb and A .D. Robles, the people that drove so many miles to, I just thought, why?

Why are they coming so far? And I think there's a demand out there, and it hasn't really been tapped into.

There are some quote -unquote alternatives, right? There are a few alternative conferences, but I think one of the issues is most of the people that are platformed there, they're not naming names.

They're not saying really, really outlandish truths or real truths, but considered outlandish in the eyes of the world.

They play it safe more. And so having someone like a Dr. Russell Fuller, who just doesn't care what people think.

He cares what God thinks, and he's made that quite clear. He actually has skin in the game. He's sacrificed for it.

I mean, it's attractive, I think. That's a man's man. That's a man who really understands what it is to sacrifice for the

Lord and to be tough. Those are tough decisions. And I will tell you this, and this, I don't care.

People are mad at me for it. It's just the truth. The vast majority, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people on the conservative quote -unquote evangelical side,

I'm not talking about the obvious social justice warriors. I'm saying on the conservative side in evangelicalism tend to have a problem with cowardice.

It's just true. And I'm not putting much definition to that other than you can see the sacrifices that Dr.

Russell Fuller has made, and you can compare what he's done and what he's been willing to say and who he's been willing to label a false teacher to what others are unwilling to say.

And there are situations, obviously, where it may be, especially for a temporary period of time, it may not be advisable to say certain things.

I get all that. I'm just telling you, after years of now being in this, that's just my, my analysis of evangelicalism is very similar to my analysis of mainstream political parties and politics.

Most of the Republicans are not very brave people, and it's the same, unfortunately.

Dr. Russell Fuller is totally, I mean, it's, I'm trying to think of a political figure, maybe

Josh Hawley, I don't know. Someone who's brave, who just does the right thing, doesn't care, I don't know.

But Dr. Russell Fuller is certainly someone of character, and I think it's someone people wanna hear from.

And so I have received lots of messages from people in the Midwest, the Deep South, they wanna come, and it's a bit of a sacrifice.

And I feel, I've been thinking about it, because I thought, man, this thing is, it's two nights. It's one full day, and then there's

Sunday morning, and there's Friday afternoon. So it's like two days, two nights. And I'm like, man, if people are coming that far,

I wanna try to see if there's something else I can do here. And I don't know, I'm still thinking through that, if there's something else in the area that I can plan, as maybe after Sunday, or that Friday morning, or something like a pre thing,

I'm not sure yet. I'm thinking through that. But the retreat itself is going to be

Friday afternoon, you come, and Sunday morning, or Sunday afternoon, I guess, you leave.

So we'll have Sunday breakfast, and then that's it. That's how it's planned right now. Well, Sunday breakfast, we'll have a service, and then that's it.

But gauging from some of the support that has come in, or at least the interest level, this may be something that we can do also in the future.

And we'll see what happens. I'm gonna see what happens with the retreat. I've been given kind of the okay to have as many as 100 people, so I gotta cap it there.

I can't go over that, because the facilities won't allow for it, and I couldn't find facilities that were bigger.

So this could go quick, and I would just recommend go to the info section, go to the website, sign up, so that your name is there, and you can have a guaranteed spot at the retreat.

The deadline is October 1st, cost is $184. You get all your meals, you got two nights of sleep.

I think if someone, I've had already one person reach out. If you wanna donate to this effort, and if you've wanted to donate to some of my efforts, but you need a 501c3, this is a good way to do it.

You can donate to Grace Bible Church, and I have the address there. You can just send a check to them, and that will help.

We may, if we get enough, we may just be able to even start to minimize the cost. And if cost is an issue, that's something that you can email me privately about, and we can talk about maybe how to get you there and all that, but it is in the

Adirondacks. So the closest airport's probably Albany, I would think, Albany Airport. And then if you just let me know you're coming, and we can try to,

I can try to do my best to coordinate rides and that kind of thing. It may be possible that you might have to get a rental or figure out another arrangement of some kind, but I will do my utmost.

I just give you my word on this to try to coordinate and arrange rides as much as I possibly can.

There might be limitations depending on how many people come, though. So we'll figure that out as we go, but if you wanna come and you know that you can come and this is something that you can commit to, then

I would commit because I think it's gonna fill up pretty quick. And by the way, I had a message from A .D.

Robles. A .D. Robles is coming. Now, I don't know what I'm gonna have him do yet. If anything, maybe we'll just let him relax, but I might have, we might do like a panel thing.

I don't know yet, but A .D.'s gonna be there. Dr. Russell Fuller's gonna be there. We'll see who else ends up coming, but it should be fun.

It's in the Adirondacks. It's at Camp of the Woods in Speculator, New York, and all the instructions are there in the info section if you want to sign up for this.

I also wanna let you know about Quipping the Persecuted. Quipping the Persecuted is a ministry for Nigerian Christians that helps aid them with things that they need, so food and water and that kind of stuff, but also just equipment like bulletproof vests, body armor, that kind of thing.

Like walkie talkies, some gear that will help protect them from terrorist attacks, because that's happening an awful lot there against Christians from Muslim factions, and so it's an organization that I believe in, and I know the person who runs it, and so if you're looking for organizations to donate to, because let's face it, you were donating to Crew or some other organization, and they went woke, and you're looking for alternatives,

I would suggest checking out Equipping the Persecuted. Their website is equippingthepersecuted .org.

Now, let's get into the issue at hand. We're gonna talk about this, this book,

Republicrat Architects, and my series title is Architects of a Political Third Way for Evangelicals, and I'm gonna show you,

I'm gonna blow up this whole thing so you can see what I'm talking about here. This is, and that's

Karl Truman there on the right, that's the book, and this came out in 2010. In fact, if you go to Amazon, I'm gonna go there right now,

Republicrat, it doesn't have a whole lot, let's see here, it has 46 ratings, 46.

Now, if you look up, like, rise and triumph of the modern self, how many ratings does that have?

It probably has thousands, let's see. Yeah, 1 ,641, so Karl Truman wasn't as known for this, he wasn't as big of a name at that point, but this is the book that he did write, and I don't know to what extent it's influenced things, but I would be,

I think, naive to think it hasn't influenced anything, especially given the people on the back who have endorsed it in some way.

You have a professor of church history at Reform Theological Seminary, Andrew Hoffecker. You have

Tina Moore, dean of Breakpoint Centurions Program, Derek Thomas, professor of theology at Reform Theological Seminary.

There's Peter Lilback, president of Providence Forum, author of George Washington's Sacred Fire. It's interesting that Peter Lilback, it's just interesting to me.

I thought, it wasn't Peter Lilback, I should probably look this up, too. I thought he was, let's see,

Westminster, the president of Westminster, if I, president and professor of historical theology, yeah, president at Westminster Theological Seminary, so yes, yes.

So yeah, there are some influential people who have heard this, and I, you know, this is, and Cartram is now a big name, and so I think it's important to know kind of what he believes, or at least did believe in 2010, and I think based on things

I've seen on even the last year or two, he probably still believes a lot of this stuff. So that's part of the reason we're going over it, and doing it before I talk about Rise and Triumph of the

Modern Self, and let's see, what else? I'm trying to think what other introductory remarks I have, not really many, but for those who don't know,

Karl Truman, now you know. Now, here's what Peter Lilback writes in the foreword to this particular work.

He says, here's a scholar who relishes the writings of Karl Marx, but who is inherently, intrinsically, and immutably committed to the

Reformation spirit of Martin Luther and John Calvin. So I want you to think about this, a scholar who relishes the writings of Karl Marx, but inherently, instinctively, and immutably committed to the

Reformation spirit of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Well, isn't that what we've seen since 2000, I don't know, 14, 15, 16, and then really ramping up in 17, 18, 19, and then super ramping up in 20?

Isn't that what we saw? It was people who claimed to be reformed theologically, but were somehow politically on the left.

It was very confusing. For a lot of people, and that's basically what Peter Lilback says about Karl Truman. It's like, hey, and Karl Truman included it in the introductions.

Karl Truman's not running away from this. Yeah, relishes the writings of Karl Marx. And Truman has his critiques for Marx, but still relishes the writings of Karl Marx, but hey, he's reformed theologically.

And so Peter Lilback makes this observation about Karl Truman. And it's interesting, there's even a critique of what

Karl Truman writes in Peter Lilback's endorsement or his foreword to the book, because he talks about how

Karl Truman can overstate his case and things like that. It's just, I was like, this is kind of a weird introduction or forward,

I should say. But that's a part of the book. And so then you have,

I'm gonna just give you what Karl Truman says about, oh, I remember what I was thinking of. Let's see here.

Gospel Coalition, Republicrat. I was trying to remember, and now it's come to my head, that this book was actually highlighted at the

Gospel Coalition in 2011 by none other than Kevin DeYoung. That's right, June 23rd, 2011,

Kevin DeYoung talks about this book. So why don't we wait until, maybe we'll get to this if we have time at the end.

I'll just read for you his conclusion. This is an important and relentlessly interesting little book. Truman wants Christians to be more realistic about what politics can accomplish and how political ends are accomplished.

He wants Christians to stop throwing around words like socialist, fascist, and Marxist willy -nilly. He wants Christians to show no tolerance for those who draw

Hitler mustaches on Bush or turn Obama into Heath Ledger's Joker. He wants Christians to avoid making partisan politics the determination for who's in and who's out in our churches.

And above all, he wants Christians to think more critically and independently about politics. To all this, I say yes and amen, even if along the way,

I may let out an occasional I can't believe you just said that. So there's Kevin DeYoung writing for the

Gospel Coalition in 2011, talking about this third way book of Karl Truman's.

This book that, well, it's not, in my opinion, it's not your typical average, what you'd consider from politically or conservative theologically people, politically conservative and politically theological people, because Karl Truman is politically more on the left.

He's had some social issues he agrees with Christians on, but even some of his logic and some of the terms he used and everything, but one of the things, and you saw that in this conclusion by Kevin DeYoung, one of the things you see is this kind of this, can we turn down the rhetoric kind of thing?

And we've seen this at the Gospel Coalition since then. It's been used, it's been weaponized. It's, if you talk about there's

Marxism out there, you're just, you shouldn't use those terms. And it's like, yeah, but some people are actually

Marxists, right? And we've been dealing with this for years. This is in 2011, guys.

It's 2011, Kevin DeYoung, Karl Truman. So when you wonder, when

I've wondered even like, why isn't Karl Truman doing more? Why, wait, how come Kevin DeYoung hasn't really hit this thing out of the park that, well, when you look back at some of the things that they wrote not like that long ago, maybe they're changing their minds in some of these things.

That's perfectly acceptable. But they were saying things that now if you said them, you would probably be categorized more easily on as being friendly with the left or something like that.

So anyway, Karl Truman complains about being categorized at the time he wrote this, but it's not even close to what's happening now.

And so let's talk about the book itself. Okay, so we talked about the Gospel Coalition and they noticed it, but I don't know if a lot of other people did, but I think some important influential people saw this book.

Thesis and Purpose. The thesis of this book, that conservative Christianity does not require conservative politics or conservative cultural agendas.

Okay, that's what Karl Truman says the thesis of the book is. Now, it's an interesting thought.

Conservative Christianity does not require conservative politics or conservative cultural agendas. I've spent whole episodes ripping stuff like that to shreds, just saying like, look, if you want to find a

Christian, you're never gonna find a perfect political outlook. And the

Bible doesn't tell you everything about what kinds of government is the best for certain societies.

And it gives you moral principles. You have to apply them. So we're never gonna find a perfect political party so long as men are involved.

We understand that. But if you're looking for a Christian tradition, in politics, then the paleo conservative tradition or the

Burkean conservative tradition in England and America is the closest we have to this.

It rests on Christian assumptions that have made their way through tradition and time into our legal systems and our public mores and all that.

So you have this already, but somehow there's a pretending today, like, well, there's these two political views, they're both secular,

Christianity transcends them, and that's it. Well, Karl Truman seems to be more in that vein of thinking.

There isn't a relationship between conservative Christianity and conservative politics or conservative cultural agenda.

Now, of course, Karl Truman is pro -life. He is, and I'm gonna show you some things that maybe you'll raise your eyebrow at, but he is pro -life.

He is against same -sex marriage. He's pro -traditional marriage, that kind of thing. But what you would think, that's a conservative cultural agenda, isn't it?

I would think so. That's part of that, wouldn't it be? But he makes a statement like this. So what are we to take away from this?

I mean, it's rhetoric that has been used since he's written this book by many others to try to really squelch support for Trump, Christians getting involved too much in politics,

Christian nationalism, right, all of that. And so I just find it interesting he's saying this in 2010.

Now he says, the primary reason why I agreed to write this book is my belief that the evangelical church in America is in danger of alienating a significant section of its people.

Okay, so his thesis is, hey, look, you can be a conservative Christian. You don't have to believe in those conservative cultural agendas, right?

You don't have to believe in that. You don't have to be so gung -ho about, like, what would that be, I guess, marriage? I don't know. You don't have to be gung -ho about that.

Well, who is he appealing to? He says it right here. The reason he agreed to write the book, his belief that the evangelical church in America is in danger of alienating a significant section of its people.

Well, who are those people? He says, particularly young people through too tight a connection between conservative party politics and Christian fidelity.

For example, the use of abortion, for example, abortion, listen to this. For example, the use of abortion as a wedge issue and as a clear dividing line between Republican and Democrat parties has the potential to kill intelligent discussion on a host of other political topics.

Well, what about if the Republican party has a platform against abortion and the Democratic party has a platform that enshrines abortion?

What about then? That's what we live in. That's what we lived in even in 2010. But he's saying in 2010 that using abortion as a wedge issue,

I mean, come on, that's not really for serious people. Intelligent discussion doesn't use abortion as a wedge issue. Really?

I mean, is that not connected to a whole view of what life is, valuing life, where divine command comes into play?

And I mean, there's a lot of questions that get answered once you answer that basic question.

And to be consistent across the board politically, if you're pro -life, there's going to be other things that you are also for and against.

And this, I made the point before that it's not like you have all these different political views out there.

And each individual one is, the Democrats get this one, the Republicans get that one.

And you just keep switching it up because, oh, sometimes the Democrats are Christian, sometimes Republicans are Christian. And no, there's actually a little more consistency than that.

There's more of a holistic view here. Conservatives, political conservatives. And this is changing because they're becoming progressive.

Their modernity is affecting political conservatism, but traditionally, paleo -conservatives, right?

And even some of their descendants have, they are building upon or drawing from a

Christian framework that applied to all kinds of things. That would include their view of the economy.

That would include their view of marriage in the household and hierarchies in general and labor relationships and school and governments run healthcare and the environment.

And all these things are connected. Foreign policy, even. All these things are connected in some way.

And so it's not like someone who, it's like, well, the Democrats, they'd be really great

Christian, political option for Christians if they just took out that abortion thing. Well, if you take out the abortion thing, a lot of other things would go, is my point.

It's part of a fundamental assumptions that we'd have to peel the onion layers back to see, but they've grown into these two different basic, two different political camps.

And that's changing, like I said, I think because it's not that the Republicans are going farther right, they're just trailing along the

Democrats and they're becoming more and more secularized and affected by modernity and they're where the

Democrats were in the 90s for the most part. I mean, they're just trailing, but there was a political philosophy.

There still is a political philosophy that took into account Christian understandings of reality.

And that's why Republicans tend to be more pro -life or at least conservative, political conservatives tend to be more pro -life.

So he's saying that we got to get the kids, the kids are leaving. So how do we get them? How do we keep them? Well, the use of abortion is a wedge issue.

We've got to stop doing that. That kills intelligence discussion. Then he says, so that was the beginning of the book.

At the end of the book, he says, the identification of Christianity and its practical essence with very conservative, very conservative politics will, if left unchallenged and unchecked, drive away a generation of people who are concerned for the poor, for the environment, for foreign policy issues.

So there you have it. There you have it. These young people in the church who are or could be in the church, man, if they look at Christians and the

Christians are, they don't have the same concern for the poor, they don't have the same concern for the environment or for foreign policy issues, then man, they'll just leave or they won't stick around.

And that's gonna be the end. That'll be horrible for Christianity. For survival, we need to make sure that we care about those things.

So this, I mean, I've heard this so much since then, just talking about current social justice activists in the church.

But here's Karl Truman in 2010 making these same kind of statements as if the church doesn't care for the poor.

I mean, look, I've pointed this out many times. It's conservative states like Mississippi that are impoverished, but give more to charity than liberal states like Massachusetts and California.

It's Republicans that give more to charity than, so don't give me that. Don't give me that. The environment,

I mean, I'll tell you what, the most trashiest places I've ever seen in my life are cities run by Democrats.

So don't give me that. Well, it's the Democrats that have, or the liberals or something that, and conservatives just don't care for those things.

Liberals do. Foreign policy issues. He's writing this 2010. So this is probably after the

Iraq. Well, this is during really the, whatever that was in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So I think the young people he's probably talking about were against war. Well, turn that around.

We're in 2022. And now what do young people think about Ukraine and Russia? I mean, there's

Ukrainian flags all over the place in my neck of the woods. It's just, it's interesting, that particular issue.

But, you know, he couldn't have predicted that, I guess. But it wasn't,

I'm skeptical whether or not it was really, this is more complicated than I wanna get into right now, probably.

But I have a skepticism that it was primarily driven by the need or the desire to go into those places was driven by conservatives.

I think that there was an appetite to punish those or bring to justice those who had inflicted harm on our country in 9 -11.

And I think that opportunists, this is such an oversimplification, so I'm getting in trouble probably, no matter how

I come down on this right now. But I started it, so I'll finish it. That opportunists, eventually at least, some opportunists were able to take advantage of that spirit and then harness it to some of their own agendas.

And what they thought, you know, would be, but I really, I think the initial let's go in, it was based on information that we had and the desire to bring to justice people who had just committed a heinous terrorist attack.

It was not a let's go nation build. You know, I don't think anyone started out that way. Anyway, I digress from that.

And I think that issue is a little bit funnier than the other two. But it's leftists don't seem to have a problem when it's their war,

I'll just put it that way. A good reputation, he says, with outsiders is after all, a basic New Testament requirement of church leadership.

And that general principle should surely shape the attitude of all Christians in whatever sphere they find themselves. So if we don't have a good reputation as the church with Democrats, okay,

Republicans and Democrats, then man, that's bad. So we should be able to transcend this, have a good reputation with both.

Here's the thing, Jesus also said though, that if the world hates you, it hated me first. You can't serve two masters.

Rejoice when you're persecuted. I mean, there's all kinds of other things in that book and examples of people who were persecuted that show us, hold on a minute, this is the guy who liked

Martin Luther, remember? It said in the beginning, in the intro, hey, he likes Karl Marx, but he likes Martin Luther, or he appreciates things about both.

Well, Martin Luther, you know, talk about a political, politically, well, he wasn't a prisoner, but he was certainly hunted for his political views.

I mean, look, that's someone who didn't have a good reputation, have a good reputation with the papists, he can't.

So have a good reputation with the secular religion of social justice, good luck. You're not gonna have one. So this is wishful thinking.

And in 2010, maybe it seemed like you could do that more. You know, this was when

Obama was howling around to some extent with Rick Warren. I mean, hey, we can be do this, and it's a different world now.

Well, I think in 2010, those who were, I think, who were able to put two and two together and look at the signs of the times,

I think they were able to see this at that point. But it's obvious now, this kind of advice from this book doesn't work today.

There's no way. You can try your best to have a good reputation in the sense that, hey, he doesn't lie, he doesn't steal, he doesn't, his neighbors, the people who actually know him personally, which is what that's about, what he's quoting, qualifications for elders, the people who actually know you know that you're an upstanding person.

Little bit different than, we gotta make sure that the Democrats think well of us or something.

I've seen that one twisted so many times. It says, the gospel cannot and must not be identified with partisan political posturing.

Partisan political posturing. What if the political posturing is we should have the right to preach the gospel?

What if that's what it is? So we just wanna share this message, and that becomes a political issue. Guess what? We're very close to that.

Some places that's already an issue. Is that partisan political posturing? What if one party says we're for it and one party says we're against it?

This book is not intended as a plea for one party for one political philosophy over another. It is rather a plea for seeing the situation as more complicated and less black and white than is often the case in Christian circles.

Now, part of me agrees with this or likes this because I think he wants to get away from ideological thinking.

At the same time, there are some issues that are binary. There are. And you have to take a stand on them.

And there isn't a way between, okay, let's give it a modern example that he doesn't get into, but okay, gender is fluid, gender is fixed.

There's no third way, right? There's things like that, there's no way. Stealing is wrong, stealing is okay under certain circumstances, right?

There's no third way there. So there's examples of that that make their way into politics that you aren't going to, you have to side with the party that's going to support biblical morality.

And like I've said, if you want to trace out where biblical morality has influenced a political philosophy, it's gonna be in that paleo -conservative tradition.

By 1997, Karl Truman says, however, I had switched my allegiance to the liberal Democrats, the party of the center or perhaps center left in British politics.

That is basically where I have remained. That's what he says in 2010. I don't know where he is now, but I think it's important to just let you know that's what he says about himself.

This is where he's coming from. So he doesn't wanna push this on people, but this is where he's at. And before that, he voted conservative.

He voted for Margaret Thatcher. He talks about this, but then he thought they got too corrupt, so he's gonna vote for liberal Democrats. But as we'll see, he actually agrees with a lot of their policies.

So, and that's British politics. So, and I would be outside of my area if I start trying to comment on British politics.

But here's some good things. I wanna start off with some good things. Here's some things that Karl Truman says that I just think these are actually good thoughts.

These are profound. These are worth thinking about. Some of these are true. Here lies the heart of the problem of the new left. Once the concerns of the left shifted from material, empirical issues, hunger, thirst, nakedness, poverty, disease to psychological categories, the door was open for everyone to become a victim and for anyone with a lobby group to make his or her issue the big one for this generation.

I think that's profound. Now, this might be for Great Britain more than the United States, because I think in the United States, since the second

Great Awakening, the left has been, at least since then, has been very ideological in our country.

In other words, ideological, I talk about this in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, which you can get, by the way, on Amazon, or you can go to worldviewconversation .com.

I'll send you a signed copy. I talk about ideological thinking. And to sum it up, it's really this philosophy that reduces everything down to some simple precepts.

And so human condition isn't as important as concept and making sure that concepts are applied so that looking at life and thinking, reducing everything down to patriarchy or equality or,

I don't know, some kind of oppression, and then everything gets colored in that lens. And so we need to get rid of the police in a community because we've traced some oppression back to them, or we think that we can see some oppression in a local department or whatever, maybe nationally.

But not thinking through, what's the public cost of this? When you actually get rid of the police, you're, okay, things are more equal now in your mind.

But just because they're more equal or because there's less oppression from the police doesn't mean someone else isn't gonna come in and now the gangs run the place or the mafia, and now there's more oppression and it's worse.

And so thinking through the consequences and the human cost and the condition that humans go through is one thing conservatives have generally done a lot better than progressives because progressives have these innovations.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could live in a world where this was the case? And sometimes it is. There have been times, less so lately, but there have been times when it's like, well, yeah, that would be nice,

I guess. That can't happen, though. Or we would need to take these incremental steps to get there, and you're unwilling to do that.

It's all about immediacy. It's gotta happen now. And who cares what the public cost of this is?

Who cares who dies along the way? A couple of eggs have to be cracked. Okay, so what? No, we've achieved our goal.

That's ideological thinking. So I think now that everyone's gotten an education in that,

I think that's what Garl Truman, though, he doesn't like that. He thinks things are more complicated than that.

We don't want to fall into that trap that everything's an either or, that there are some things that take incremental steps, there are some things that are more complicated, that we need to think through more deeply.

And I would say, yes, that's good. The claim he's making is that the left, at one time, wasn't really that ideological.

They had more empirical issues, hunger, thirst, nakedness, poverty, that they were concerned about, and that it wasn't just about taking some idea of equality or inclusion or,

I don't know, whatever their abstract thing is and then imposing it. It was about looking at the needs from the ground up and then figuring out mechanisms by which to meet those needs.

That's what he thinks. Now, I don't know if that's true. Maybe in England it is. In the United States, I think there probably was some of that.

I think even some of our grandparents who were FDR voters probably were a little bit along these lines, but there was always ideologues in the mix, in America, at least.

Now, today, he says it's psychological categories that are always open for everyone to become a victim and for anyone with a lobby group to make his or her issue the big one for this generation.

That's what he sees as the problem with the new left versus, I think, what he sees himself more as in the old left. So he's not as ideological.

He's more looking at real -world problems, thinking about human condition and not just applying some kind of idea to everyone that they must now all get in lockstep with.

And so that's the difference between the new and the old left in his mind. So I would say this is worth thinking about more.

He also says, I want to ask the question, however, whether America was ever that great an exception to secularization or whether secularization can take various forms.

I think it's an excellent point he has. He says, some of which, ironically, look rather religious at first glance.

Could it be that both Britain and America are both fairly secular, but that America expresses her secularity using religious idioms, while Britain expresses hers through the abandonment of such language?

That's a, I think that's a brilliant thought. And so he's saying that basically, why can't

America become secularized, but in the process use religious language to achieve it so that you have a secularized state, you have perhaps not as much today, but just before the time

Carl Truman was writing in Christian circles. And to some extent, you still see this idea that America is almost like Israel, this chosen nation.

But it's not, the religion isn't actually about worshiping

God and about what the Bible teaches. It's more about what the figures that make it

America, what it is. And they become the saints almost. And then, and I'm saying beyond hero.

I mean, they get a glowing status. I mean, he gives some good examples of this actually in the book of painters who will put like Jesus next to like Thomas Jefferson and stuff as if they're kind of like Thomas Jefferson is just carrying out

Jesus's plan for America or something, stuff like that. And that does exist.

But I think he might've accidentally made a point that makes more sense today than when he wrote it in 2010.

I think the social justice movement is your best example of a secularized religion. And I've gone to great pains in my book,

Christianity and Social Justice to outline how they even use religious language. The temple of democracy.

They've taken these secular things and they've made them now religious. You made their own religion.

They cry out to the government when there's something wrong that happens. Government's God, government will save us.

So I don't know if Carl Truman meant to make that point exactly, but I think that's a good point he's making.

And I think it's a precursor to what we're actually saying. I think he's more talking about quote unquote Christian nationalism here or what's called that today.

He says, another area where secular mentality impacts the church is the identification of the nation of America with God's special people.

And I think to some extent, like I just said, there is some truth to that, that there are people who have done that. And I think in the religious right, that has been a problem in the past.

I've never really been on board with that. I think that what makes America special, if you wanna say that there's an

American uniqueness to us, is that there was a lot of Christians who lived here and there was a lot of, not people are people, so it's not perfect, but there was a lot of practicing biblical principles concerning morality.

And that has blessed us, certainly. Proverbs gives us a lot of principles and we practice them.

The way will go well with us. We will reap a blessing. And so it doesn't mean that we have a special covenantal relationship with the

Lord, like Israel did. I think a lot of the Puritans believe that, but I've never really bought that. So anyway,

I think Carl Truman's critiquing that to some extent, and I don't disagree with him necessarily on all that, I don't. But that's the good part.

And here's what Carl Truman says that makes me think, and there's a number of things, but here's one of the things he says that make me think he's on that third way, that Tim Keller kind of third way, similar to that.

He says, as the left adopted such concerns as gay rights and abortion as touchstone issues, those of us with strong religious convictions on these matters found ourselves essentially alienated from the parties to which our allegiance would naturally be given.

The parties of the right, while representing to an extent, or at least on paper, positions on these matters, which we are comfortable, yet also represent policies in other areas where we find ourselves in fundamental disagreement.

If you do not think an untrampled free market is the answer to society's ills, and if you believe there is such a thing as society and government that, as a democratically elected instrument, has a role to play in healthcare and helping the poor, where do you turn in a world where the big issues on the left are gay marriage and a woman's rights to choose?

Now, you see some straw men in this. Where does the right ever say that, I mean,

I'm sure there's people you can find on the political right who say this kind of stuff, and it's ridiculous, more libertarian probably, but where do you find people who say stuff like this?

An untrampled free market is the answer to society's ills. Does anyone really think that that's the answer to,

I mean, it might be the answer to some things, it might help some things, but it's not the ultimate answer.

And he says the party's on the right, while representing to an extent, at least on paper. I mean, look at that, like, well, they don't really represent positions on marriage and abortion, it's on paper.

They might be right on the marriage thing, especially today as they've shifted, but on the abortion thing, I mean, we just had

Roe v. Wade was overturned. So, I mean, listen to that, though. And he says the parties to which our allegiance would naturally be given on the left.

That's the place where Karl Truman says our allegiance would naturally be given to these parties, except for the fact that, oh my goodness, they have abortion and, listen, there's,

I can't think of one thing on the left that would attract me to them. Even if, look, let's say they were pro -life and pro -traditional marriage all of a sudden, and they kept all their other positions, on the border, on foreign policy, on taxation, on education, on critical race theory.

There literally is nothing I can think of on the left that I'm like, oh yeah, that's the Christian way, or I'd be attracted to that if it weren't for, man, they have these positions on abortion.

I just can't think of that. I can't conceive of that. But Karl Truman, that's where he's at. Like, well, in 2010 at least, well, as long as they didn't have those two issues, that's where I would be.

So this is kind of where, I think, in the book, this is where he's writing from, this perspective. And it comes out in the book.

And he says he's not writing for a political perspective, but there you really have it. He's saying, look, I'd be on the left. I'd be on one of these left -wing parties if it wasn't for the fact that they were for same -sex marriage and for abortion.

And that's pretty much the position Keller has taken. That's pretty much the position of the evangelical third way, except that even that's cracking now.

They're even starting to go, some of the more extreme elements are going more towards the left on abortion and on marriage.

But that's still, I think, in evangelicalism, that's still kind of like, you can't do that. You're not supposed to do that. Those are two issues that you keep.

But there's all these justifications now. You can vote Democrat as long as you rationalize it in some way and think that they're gonna do more to help women than the pro -lifer who's gonna make abortion illegal.

So that's where we're heading with all this, and that's where we've headed since 2010. Now, there's also somewhat of a,

I don't know what I wanna call it. I just said it's an out -of -touchness. I don't wanna really use the term elitist, but it reminds me of academics that I got to know, to some extent, in various academic places of higher learning that I've been in.

But he kind of channels that attitude to some extent. And I could've given you a lot of examples.

I just wanna give you a few, and it makes me wonder whether or not he understands really just common, ordinary folks.

Let me give you an example here. He talks about Glenn Beck. Now, I've got my own critiques of Glenn Beck. I think Glenn Beck is terrible when it comes to certain historical things in America.

I don't think he understands the founding to the extent that I would hope. I don't think he really understands Christianity.

There's a lot of critiques. I turned them on the other day, and I was just floored by how ignorant some of the things he was saying was. But all that to say,

Glenn Beck, especially during the time he's writing, 2010, I recognize that during the

Obama years, Glenn Beck took some very hard stands against what Obama was doing, and did correctly identify this is

Marxism. And he took a lot of shots for it, and he was right about that.

And this is what Carl Truman has to say. He says, it is hard to take seriously a man who identifies

Marxism with a welfare state. Marxism is actually a philosophy of history and economic organization that sees class struggle and the movement of capital as the inevitable dynamo driving history along.

The welfare state is no more distinctively the preserve of Marxism than philosophical ignorance is distinctively the preserve of talk show hosts.

Ha ha ha, right? I mean, it's just oozing with sarcasm, with,

Glenn Beck, you don't understand the definition of Marxism. It's a philosophy of history and economic organization that sees, it's like, okay, you gave me a definition.

Tell me how that works practically. That's what Glenn Beck's talking about. That's what he's talking about. Glenn Beck is saying, yeah, these policies, this is what

Obama's doing, this is Marxism. And Carl Truman has to come in and be like, well, technically, no, this is the definition of Marxism.

And it's like, dude, where do you live? Is this academic world or is this real world? Real world, this is what

Marxism would look like if someone who kind of believed in it tried to implement it. This would be one of the steps.

Anyway, second, the claim that a welfare state is designed to stop anyone from getting a boo -boo is nonsense.

So Glenn Beck talked about how Marxists, or the liberals, the left, wants to try to minimize harm so much.

And I mean, look, I grew up in that generation where everyone gets a trophy and you always have to wear a seatbelt and a helmet and don't drink from the hose anymore.

And I know all about that. And that totally is true, especially today.

I remember when I was driving as a repairman, I literally saw the transition of kids playing outside to hardly any kids playing outside.

I mean, there's such a fear that kids are gonna get hurt. Anyway, as I searched high and low on Mr.

Beck's website, I could find no data to support the claim that that was indeed the intention in any of the modern developed democratic economies with a welfare state.

And as far as universal healthcare provision goes, that's all of them bar the USA. So in other words, we're the only ones that don't have socialized medicine is what he's saying.

Third, where are these countries where the welfare state is endorsed only through the barrel of a gun? So Glenn Beck talked about that that's what's gonna happen, that if you bring in...

In fact, let me see if I can just tell you what he's critiquing here. I think it would make more sense for people. He says, this is what

Glenn Beck said. Now we've got a choice to make. Do we choose the fundamentally transform America to a

Marxist spread the wealth cradle to grave nanny state where no one gets a boo -boo? And as we have seen in country after country is only sustainable through the barrel of a gun or do we come to our senses and realize that spending and taxing kills business and stop with the pensions that literally pay out 30 times what we put into it.

All right, so Glenn Beck is obviously using some hyperbole there. But he's making a point on a popular level.

And Carl Truman, it's like he misses that. Just like, oh, he doesn't use textbook definitions for Marxism.

Oh, it's not. Where can I find a reference that says that where anyone says that that's what they believe in on the left, that they don't want people to get a boo -boo.

And I couldn't find data to support the claim that there was indeed the intention in any of the modern developed democratic economies.

Well, of course, they're not gonna come out and say that. They're not gonna say it, especially in that form.

Our official policy is that no one gets a boo -boo. No, they're not gonna say that. Third, where are these countries where the welfare state is endorsed?

Only through a barrel of a gun. As I said, we are talking here about every democratic industrialized country other than the

USA, not places such as North Korea and Myanmar. Okay, so whether you wanna use the example of a sword like Romans 13 does or barrel of a gun or whatever, force, okay, force.

If you don't pay your taxes, if you don't fund the welfare state, what happens to you?

Yeah, force. And yes, in many democratic societies, they've gotten rid of the death penalty, so it's probably not gonna be the barrel of a gun, but there's going to be force, there's going to be social ostracization if you try to oppose this stuff.

That's his critique of Glenn Beck. I mean, it's just, it left me stunned a little because he keeps doing this to others.

He did this to Bill O 'Reilly, he does this to Rush Limbaugh to an extent. He says this too, let me read you another one. In the world where the mere mention in Christian circles of the

Huffington Post or the Rachel Maddow Show, where opinions are worn in the sleep and open for debate, can provoke cries of horror from the

Christian right, it is surprising that nobody has forged any connection between Fox News and the subtle subversion of the

Simpsons. That's right, the subtle subversion of the Simpsons. Now, I'm not gonna argue that the

Simpsons, there wasn't some subversion there in the sense that the Simpsons showed what really a dysfunctional family and made that normative.

Okay, sure. But you're gonna try to connect, okay, so Fox put out the

Simpsons, so therefore Fox News now has to wear that around its neck. It's like such a weird connection to make.

And he's trying to call it hypocrisy, like, well, you should be mad at Fox News because the same corporation also has the

Simpsons on another channel, just like you are about Rachel Maddow and the Huffington Post. It's like, what?

Okay, I guess if we're gonna start to do this second degree, third degree separation stuff, then sure.

I mean, I don't know, Carl Truman, you were at a college that had critical race theorists speak in chapel.

I guess you must be all, come on, are we really gonna do this? Come on. So there was a bunch of examples of that kind of stuff in this where I'm just like, does he even get what common working class people, how they talk about things and what they mean by them?

Trump probably threw him for a complete loop because most people understood what Trump was saying when he said things, even things that were exaggerations.

They knew kind of what he was getting at, but it's like, if it's outside the academic speak and the precision of which academics speak, and I like precision, and I would prefer someone with precise talk other than Trump, but if it's outside of that, it's just like, oh, they are knaves, or they are, you know, what does he say here?

The ignorance is distinctively the preserve of talk show hosts. It's like, come on, really?

Okay, well, I don't think you earned, what Glenn Beck said, the sense in which he spoke,

I would call it the, his inclinations, his suspicions, his gut were actually in the right place on that, on what he said.

He was going in the right direction. His instincts, just like Trump's instincts, were kind of in the right place, for the most part, on a lot of things, and just because they don't articulate it in this really precise academic fashion, they become the poster children for ridicule and scorn.

And that's something that I would have heard from left -wing people in academia. I wouldn't,

I thought, I just expected more from Carl Truman, that he would be someone who would attempt to understand more what someone like a

Beck is tapping into and what he's actually saying. Anyway, gun control.

Let's talk about some of the issues here. Gun control. While much of the political rhetoric is conservative, in conservative religious circles, focuses on abortion, one never has to scratch too far below the surface to find that a host of other biblically somewhat more ambiguous issues are susceptible to the same black and white.

Christians believe this. Godless liberals believe that rhetoric. Gun control is one such issue.

Several times, I've heard the argument that if the right to bear arms is restricted today, they'll be locking us up without trial tomorrow.

Worldwide, there is very little evidence that these two phenomena are inevitably, necessarily, and causally linked.

But in a narrative going right back to the founding of America in 1776, there is a strong rhetorical connection that seems almost impossible to break, mainly because arguments against it are just that, arguments, and not the kind of gripping narratives that really drive so many beliefs and convictions.

So what he's saying is that these aren't really arguments that are being made by the pro -gun lobby or conservatives when it comes to guns.

They're not really making arguments. What they're making, they're just making these appeals. They're using rhetoric. They're telling stories.

That's what they're doing. And so therefore, you can actually kind of minimize what they're saying because of that, except that they do make arguments.

They do. And every time this issue comes up, you see on the news channels and wherever, really.

I mean, it's everywhere. You see the arguments. You see both sides. Carl Truman doesn't really try to understand and accurately represent them.

So, I mean, their arguments are that if you take the guns away from good guys, bad guys are going to still inevitably get ahold of weapons or guns.

And the point of allowing guns is to, for personal protection as well as, according to our

Second Amendment, which Britain doesn't have, but according to, and it's part of our history, is to be able to match the government if the government becomes tyrannical.

That's the point of it. And so if that's your concern, then you're gonna wanna keep the right to bear arms.

And of course, that has played out in some countries. Guns are taken and the government is able to then more easily enact its tyrannies.

It happened in Germany. It happened in Russia. It happens in a number of communist places. I believe Cuba, that happened. I mean, that's one of the things that tyrannical totalitarian regimes tend to want to do.

And it's one of their initial steps is see if they can get guns. If they can get the people's ability to defend themselves and take that, then they can more easily take control if they have nefarious intent.

And there's another argument here that's really from a Christian perspective, and it sort of flows together with the other stuff, but it's just the idea that people are responsible to defend their home.

And that's part of providing, to defend, not just to accrue things for family to consume, but also to defend those things.

And defending one's land or one's place, one's people has been a hallmark of, well, it's really every civilization, but Western civilization has held up as heroes, those who do such things.

And so they need an ability in our modern day to be able to do that. That means you have to have a gun in order to do that.

I think it's, in most places, and there are exceptions to this sometimes, you can arrange for other mechanisms by which you're gonna pay a guard or something who has a gun, right?

There's things you can do to protect. Sometimes you live in areas you don't need that protection as much, but for a lot of people, that's gonna be something for personal protection and for their family's protection they're gonna want or need.

So I think that Carl Truman here is, I mean, he just kind of skips over all of this and talks about, well, that's just trying to scare everyone unnecessarily because they're not gonna lock us up without trial tomorrow.

Well, they might, they might not. Maybe some people do go far and say things that, but the reality is it's possible.

It's possible. The government has more of an ability when the populace isn't armed. And because they're more mismatched.

And there's very little evidence that these two phenomena are inevitably, necessarily and causally linked. Well, it's not, do you need evidence for that?

Like, I mean, evidence is good to have, but like, I can just, you think about it, you just reduce it to a very small level.

Okay, like the bully's got a bat. I'm not allowed to have a bat. Who's gonna win the fight if there is a fight, right?

Like it's not, I don't know, it's not like a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out. But he's looking down on this and he says, it's just, it's not logical.

It's just, and it's biblically somewhat more ambiguous. You know, this is something that Christians, in other words, this is something that Christians shouldn't have a hard fast view on.

Well, let me give you a hard fast view from a Christian perspective. Fathers, husbands, you should be able to provide and protect is part of that your family.

There you go. However you choose to do that, whatever mechanism you use, I will say that in our day and age and where I live, it would be impossible in my mind to do such a thing without a firearm, okay?

So yes, we can have that debate. Are firearms necessary for that? Is that, we can talk about that surely, but that's the principle that we'd be working off of.

And so there's where Christianity comes into play in this. Carl Truman doesn't really go there. Government operated healthcare.

He says Sarah Palin's reference to death panels is a great example of story trumping logic. It was a flourish of rhetoric with no evidence to support it and the logic was skewed.

Is investing this power in the democratically elected government really worse than investing in the private insurance companies that decide which claims to honor and which to refuse?

He's talking about when Sarah Palin insinuated or said there would be death panels under Obamacare.

He's saying basically just excoriating her for that. He says, at least with the government, one has the chance, however slim of throwing them out of office in a while.

National health systems are not perfect, but they are far from the nightmares that have been depicted in some recent discussions about the

USA. And indeed, when only one country in the entire industrialized world does not have some form of universal healthcare, it may just be that such systems have actually proved rather popular with the majority of the democratic world's people, precisely because they have proved compatible with political freedom and quite capable of delivering decent service.

So here's what he's saying. He's saying, look, most people all over the world, they think in democratic societies that having universal healthcare, having government -run healthcare is a good thing.

And it seems to work quite well. And there's no death panels. And Sarah Palin is just, it's ridiculous what she just said, except for, and this is where I just,

I'm gonna get a little personal myself here, except for the fact that we're actually starting to see exactly what

I think Sarah Palin was talking about already in our country. And we don't even have full -blown Obamacare, I think, what he wanted.

But we've taken enough halfway measures that we're just about there. And it's,

I actually just witnessed this with my grandfather to an extent, to be honest with you, because California is one of the most, the worst areas for socialized medicine in this country.

And the quality has gone down significantly. Anyone who lives in an area like Los Angeles knows exactly what

I'm talking about, exactly what I'm talking about. You have illegal migrants who have come in, have overburdened the healthcare system.

The quality has gone down. Hospitals are forced to, they shut down if they can't pay for it.

You have, in my family, people who have gone to the hospital, my grandfather was essentially killed because of this, because negligence is at an all -time high.

There's not an incentive or a way to really, to hold people accountable in this system.

When it gets tossed to the government, it is very hard to do so. And in this whole issue with the late ailment that I cannot reference on YouTube, it has become almost impossible to sue for negligence if it's labeled that particular disease, even if it's not that, even if there's a negative test for it.

I mean, we're seeing this play out before our eyes. And if someone's older, which, by the way, in insurance claims, if you're gonna take a hospital to court, let's say, because of negligence, something like that, and it's an elderly person, the payout's gonna be hardly anything because they're gonna calculate, well, how many more years would they have lived and what income would they have made?

And so it just becomes, it's such a disincentive. So of course there's a devaluation of people.

And if you are incentivized for every death that you get related to a certain types of diseases, read between the lines, people,

I can't say what I wanna say on YouTube, then of course, it's not like a panel that you go before that has a judge and a wig, it's not that, it's just naturally what happens.

When you have limited resources, and you have, and there's lack of, when you have limited resources, and you have little responsibility, because there's no one holding anyone's feet to the fire, hardly at all, that's reduced at least, so there's no accountability.

Limited resources, low accountability, that's what's gonna happen inevitably, and that's what happens when you have the government running healthcare, because guess what?

It's not your elected representative who's in there making the decisions, it's a bureaucracy. It's a bureaucracy, it's not, you can't just vote those bums out, it's a lot harder to do.

Carl Truman, I can't understand how naive he can be in this. That naive thinking, Sarah Palin had more accurate thinking on this than Carl Truman has on this, had on this in 2010.

Carl Truman is thinking, well, you just, it's democratic, that's where the accountability comes in.

Yeah, not so much. You should probably read the book, The Demon in Democracy, really good book about how democracies can become totalitarian.

Anyway, that's, and I don't need to look up a bunch of stats and stuff to even show you this.

This is, I think, everyone's, who lives in a super progressive state, that's the experience they're getting.

I live in New York right now. You don't wanna go to most of the hospitals here right now. And government getting its hands in things and regulating things has caused a lot of this.

And it's not like a binary choice. Again, this is what Carl Truman doesn't like, is these binary choices, these simplistic choices, but then he gives them to you.

So it's like either insurance companies or it's the government. Well, how about something else?

Why not go back to free market? So it's not insurance companies that are running everything. It's not the government that's running everything.

It's people and they're making their own decisions and there's charities that come in. And if local municipalities want safety nets and things, that, you know, but it's really primarily religious groups, charities that are the ones taking care of people.

That's how it used to be and not that long ago either. So we don't have, we basically have a form of socialized healthcare already in this country through a series of mechanisms and corporatism.

It's a meshing of these corporations or insurance companies administer some of this stuff, which has jacked the price up too and created barriers for people.

And of course the barriers create shortages, not barriers, but the increased demand creates shortages when people meet those barriers and then can't meet them and have to go on the dole.

And I, yeah, I mean, I know people from Canada who are, they come to the United States for certain procedures because, yeah, certain things we can get in Canada, but other things we can't.

It's why there's a whole industry surrounding certain kinds of surgeries popping up in the Caribbean, on these islands, outside of the regulations.

So anyway, I just, it's amazing to me, Carl Truman can say some of the things he says, but he does.

So let's keep going here. So we have that particular issue, government regulating man -made climate change.

On this issue, he says, I have heard climate change referred to as a religion and as a liberal conspiracy.

This is interesting partly on the grounds that it represents a strange disconnection of the creation mandate from notions of environmental stewardship.

Political conservatives, politically conservative Christians seem reluctant, even hostile with regard to any application of the notion of care for the environment.

And he does this kind of thing a lot where he'll be like, well, here's what the Bible would tell us. Here's the principle from the

Bible and it's out of step with conservative political thought. Except it's like he doesn't even interact though with what

Christians actually believe on this topic. Yes, it's not climate change. Climate change isn't a religion, no.

Climate, that's, who would even phrase it that way? No, it's not climate change, it's environmentalism.

It's using issues like the idea that there's man -made climate change as a way to bring in more government regulation, to extreme regulation, which would cap and trade, that kind of thing,

Paris Climate Accords, as a way to do that, but in preference to certain animals sometimes, because more than climate change, it's all kinds of things.

We're going to prioritize this particular animal rather than humans.

And treating them as equal or something, that's the environmentalism. And climate change or global warming can go along with that.

It doesn't necessarily have to, I guess, but the whole push in environmentalist circles, like the

Sierra Club and stuff, it's totally religious. If you start looking at what they actually say about the environment, there's a

Gaia thing under current in a lot of this. They attribute deity, attributes of deity to the environment, kind of new agey, kind of Eastern religion.

So that kind of stuff does play into it. Anyway, he says, this is interesting, partly on the grounds that it represents a strange disconnection of the creation mandate from notions of environmental stewardship.

Well, only if you assume that it's legitimate and that, like there's a number of assumptions that have to be made here.

One would be that global warming is actually happening. Two would be that it's man caused. Three would be that we can actually do something about it.

Four would be that we can do some, that we should give up our sovereignty to global regulations or regulators, or states should give it up to the federal, the national government, national government should give it up to international government of some kind in order to regulate this.

I mean, there's so many things here packed into this. And it's like, well, if Christians don't go along with that, well, they just, they don't take their environmental stewardship seriously.

Well, how about this? How about maybe there's Christians like myself who are conservationists, and we do believe that we should care for the environment.

We do believe that we should do so in a responsible fashion, but we don't believe that there's manmade global warming that is anything that can be, and that is possible to correct through government action.

How about that? Is that even an option? I mean, at the time he wrote this, 2010,

I think it was, there's a few more years ticking on Al Gore's implosion clock when it would be too late to reverse the trend, and we would have cities underwater.

Well, we've long passed that point. And the people who believe this stuff don't even, say they believe this stuff, don't even seem to.

Obama's house in Martha's Vineyard, why would he buy a house and put it right on the ocean where you think it's gonna be underwater?

Makes no sense. Flying around in your jets all over the place. I don't think even a lot of the activists who say they believe in this actually believe, politicians,

I should say, not activists, actually believe that. There are diehard activists who do believe it. But he says,

Christians seem reluctant, even hostile, with regard to any application of the notion of care for the environment. That's not true. That's just not true.

In my mind, it's just slander. So just because they won't go along with the whole global warming thing, even though there's been tons of information out there showing that this either isn't true or it's very hard to determine, or it's impossible to figure out whether or not man can do anything about it, or compared to the pollution that's going on in China, there's really, we're a drop in the bucket, or I don't know, what was that university?

Was it Oxford in England where there was a scandal of those emails that were leaked showing that this was kind of a hoax?

And so even all the stuff that has happened in regard to this issue, the fact that scientists in the 70s were saying there was a coming ice age, and of course that wasn't true, and now they've switched it.

And then now it's not even global warming, it's climate change. All, and the solution's always been the same, more government, all these things that stack up to make someone who's working class very skeptical of this, just because they don't buy into all that, they don't care, they really just don't take their environmental stewardship seriously.

I mean, that's the implication here. And that's Carl Truman. This isn't like, this isn't some left winger today that's writing this.

That's Carl Truman on abortion. He says, I myself am pro -life. Contrary to current cultural logic, my politically liberal instincts concern for the weak combined with my evangelical commitments concern for the sanctity of life to put me in precisely that camp.

Nevertheless, I'm suspicious of the way in which abortion debate plays out in the American political arena, where it seems to be something the right often uses as a little more than a means to drum up cheap votes for its candidates.

What is the actual Republican record on abortion like? Not very impressive. Is the one who votes for the pro -choice

Democrat candidate less culpable on the abortion issue than the one who votes pro -life

Republican? Knowing that the candidate's rhetoric will in no way be matched by any legislative action.

Using abortion as a wedge issue at election time to polarize opinion will not achieve that for which

Christians all along, the reduction and ultimate elimination of legal abortions.

Well, that's a great argument that Carl Truman's making for voting for Democrats who say that they'll reduce the number of abortions without making it illegal.

That's all it is. This is, and especially in 2022, this is dumb logic.

Roe v. Wade was just overturned because guess what? Donald Trump got in the White House and appointed some people to the

Supreme Court. So, you'd hope that Carl Truman would make some, would say something about this.

Say, look, I was wrong. I published that, I was wrong. But I don't expect that. This is the kind of logic that I think you would get from a

Karen Swalwett Pryor. This is exactly the kind of logic David Platt put in Before You Vote. This justifies, vote

Democrat, vote for the people who are pro -murder because well, they might be able to actually reduce the number of abortions or they actually might be better on other issues and the

Republicans aren't gonna do anything anyway. Now, in all this, I wanna just point this out.

I thought this was a little thing he said, but I thought it was really important. Carl Truman says this about democracy.

He says, the nature of the democratic process itself imposes limits on radicalism. Elected politicians have various constituencies to whom they need to look.

Now, that to me is where Carl Truman sees, I call it a mechanism for moderation, but that's where he sees in some sense, some hope.

Democracy, that democracy is gonna keep things accountable. Democracy is going to make sure that if something wrong happens, it's corrected.

And I have no reason to believe that, especially in 2022, when we just saw what just happened in the last two years, two years ago mostly.

Do you really wanna trust that? You really think that mechanism is also beyond the pale, perfect in every way that you can't have stolen elections potentially?

I'm on YouTube, so I gotta be careful here. So, I mean, it's naive thinking on Carl Truman's part, just naive.

And I think that's what a lot of honestly colors this whole thing. It's just, it's naive. Here's the thing

I wanna end with. It was understood, it was commonly understood at the time of the founding that in order to have a people who could steward a

Republican form of government, you would need to have virtue.

And in order to have virtue, you would need to have religion. And the only religion that they were accustomed to having was a form of Christianity.

There were different forms of Christianity, but it was Christianity that held sway. Nine of the 13 colonies were basically, today they would consider them

Christian theocracies, but they had state churches at the time of the founding. If you don't have that, if you don't have that mechanism for responsibility, religion, virtue, then democracy, now

I'm saying a Republican form of government, that's what we have. We don't have a democracy really, but a form of government in which representatives are elected, in which the people have a say becomes corrupted and the people no longer have a say.

Totalitarianism is inevitable. Order must be made of all the chaos that's erupting as a result of people's irresponsibility.

We are living in the death of a republic right now. And I think,

I don't know if Carl Truman, he seems to hint at that in the book at some, that America might be kind of in the twilight years, but why?

Why isn't it? In order to have some of the things that some of these people champion so much, like democracy, as if that's gonna save us or something, you have to have something undergirding it.

You have to have virtue. You have to have religion. And if you don't have that, then you're not gonna have quote unquote democracy or as I like to say, republican form of government.

You just won't. And in order to have those things, then you need Christianity.

And as Carl Truman, who is a Christian should know, then the best thing that we can do is as much as we can, not just evangelize and make converts and disciples of Christ, but more than that, exert a

Christian influence in politics. If you don't have that, how in the world do you think you're going to, a religion that says lying is wrong and you'll be punished in the afterlife.

Even our national government understood this, the people in our national government in the founding era.

That's why in our constitution, you have to take an oath. Why would you take an oath of office if there's no systems of rewards and punishments after this?

Why? Makes no sense. Why not just break it? Lying's fine, I guess, right?

Stealing's fine. No, those things aren't fine. And as long as you justify them for some social justice cause, like, well, in order to get to equality or something, we got to do this thing.

There has to be a sense of order. There has to be a moral imperative that's fixed and that people believe in and hold to in order for there to be any civil order or societal order.

You just can't have the two. You can't have one without the other. So these are some of my thoughts on the book,

Republic Crap by Karl Truman. My conclusion is that I think he was blazing trails that he possibly didn't even know he was blazing in 2010.

And we're reaping the rewards from them today. And I don't know if this is, if Karl Truman's even, he believes in all the things that he said at that time, but I, and if someone knows something,

I don't know, please send it to me, but I haven't been able to find anything that says he's retracted any of this stuff. And so I wanted to bring this to you before I talk about Rise and Fall of,

Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, just because I think it is somewhat of an important book to understand kind of the philosophy that Truman has.

And you can see there, there's the elephant donkey, the elephant donkey that looks kind of weird on the front of his book.

But there you have it. No personal anything, animosity, nothing against Karl Truman whatsoever.

In fact, I think some of his points are pretty good. Like I said at the beginning, I just think that he is part of a group of Christians who were, and perhaps still are, blazing this third way trail.

That it's the Christianity transcends the political spectrum where there's this in -between that Christians can believe in somehow that is the true

Christian way. And we ought not be discipled by, as Ed Stetzer likes to say, all these

Christians being discipled by Fox News. I don't think Ed Stetzer gets it. And I don't think

Karl Truman quite understands either what common people are, how they're conceiving of some of these things.

He makes some good points, but it seems like it's from, he's perched in the academy as he makes these points. All right, that's my critique.

That's my, that's just, those are my thoughts. And maybe you think I'm wrong. Maybe I am wrong on some things.

You can put your thought in the comment section and I'll be happy to take a look.

And hey, I have on a few occasions, I have retracted things. So if you find something that I said that you think was wrong, let me know.

God bless, more coming. And don't forget about the retreat info section. Go to the link there.