Latest / V / Evita + John Daniel Davidson: Who Should Define ‘American’? (Ep.176)

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Evita + John Daniel Davidson: Who Should Define ‘American’? (Ep.176) · V

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome to Bongino Report Early Edition. I
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: am your host, Davida, and today I am joined by
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: a very special guest, John Daniel Davidson, who many of
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you may not know, I actually worked with him at
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The Federalist.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: He is one of the most incredible writers.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I just have to tell you guys, if you go
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to thefederalist.com, you look up John, he has some of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the most readable but thoughtful pieces. And also, to you
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Protestants in the chat, John and I were the only,
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  Speaker 1: two of the only Catholics I guess Sam was a
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Catholic when he was there, too. But two of the
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  Speaker 1: only Catholics.
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  Speaker 2: At the Federalist.
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  Speaker 1: And so we had a little alliance of the Catholics
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  Speaker 1: versus the swarms of Protestants at the Federalist.
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  Speaker 2: And it was a lot of fun. So, John, thank
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  Speaker 2: you so much for being here.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Evita. Yeah, our Catholic numbers are
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: now sorely lacking at the Federalist. I'm standing nearly alone
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: against the Lutherans now.
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  Speaker 2: It's tough out there, but you know what?
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  Speaker 1: But we were always reminded by, I think it was
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Sean Davis who always said, no sectarian wars in the chat.
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  Speaker 2: We're not allowed to fight about that here.
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  Speaker 3: That's right.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: We got to train our fire at the real enemy here.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Well, John, I wanted to have you on.
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  Speaker 1: I've been actually wanting to have you on for a while,
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  Speaker 1: but you have a difficult schedule because you live in
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Alaska and I live on the East Coast. which makes
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the time difference pretty hard to figure out.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: But we figured it out.
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  Speaker 1: And I wanted to have you on really because your book,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Pagan America, had a massive impact on me last year
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  Speaker 1: when I read it. I feel like for my whole life,
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  Speaker 1: and I think even older Americans, that it's hard to
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  Speaker 1: define what America.
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  Speaker 2: Is and who we are.
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  Speaker 1: And even more now, we are just grappling with this
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  Speaker 1: question constantly of American identity.
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  Speaker 2: Who are we? What are we?
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  Speaker 1: And you so eloquently laid that out in your book.
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  Speaker 1: And so I wanted to get into your book, but
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  Speaker 1: I first want to play a video for you, get
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  Speaker 1: your reaction to this, because many of you will probably
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: remember that Vivek Ramaswamy had kind of a crash out
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  Speaker 1: over Christmas. He went on this long Twitter rant and
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  Speaker 1: he said, Americans are lazy because they watch a lot
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  Speaker 1: of Saved by the Bell.
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  Speaker 3: I guess, or something.
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  Speaker 2: Something like that.
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  Speaker 1: And so therefore we need mass, not illegal immigration, we
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  Speaker 1: need mass legal immigration because Americans just aren't up to par.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: And so now Vivek is running for governor in Ohio
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  Speaker 1: and he's still constantly being confronted with this question. He's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: being haunted by this Christmas crash out and he's having
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  Speaker 1: to answer the question of what it means to be
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  Speaker 1: an American. And I don't know what America even is.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't know if he's doing a good job
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  Speaker 1: of articulating it. So I want to play for you, John,
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  Speaker 1: this video of Vivek arguing for what it means to
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  Speaker 1: be America and then a little side commentary from Wade Scott,
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  Speaker 1: who if you look him up on X, he's a
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  Speaker 1: great guy, kind of contextualizing a little bit, analyzing it
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  Speaker 1: a little bit.
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  Speaker 2: Let's play that video.
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  Speaker 5: We also have to retain and preserve a culture to
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  Speaker 5: assimilate into.
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: And we're not heading in the right direction, Will.
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  Speaker 5: If our own kids, 85% of kids who graduate from
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  Speaker 5: high school, can't answer those same questions, we've gone too
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  Speaker 5: much to a participation trophy culture rather than a championship
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  Speaker 5: trophy culture.
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  Speaker 3: I think that's the essence of America is we're founded
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  Speaker 3: on exceptionalism.
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  Speaker 6: For Vivek, the center of American culture is hard work,
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  Speaker 6: specifically academic work. But there's one problem.
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  Speaker 3: A kid in China right now is four years ahead.
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  Speaker 3: of a kid in the United States.
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  Speaker 6: So by his definition of American culture, China is more
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  Speaker 6: American than America is. And a Chinese kid who can
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  Speaker 6: speak English and watch his.
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  Speaker 3: Schoolhouse rock is practically George Washington.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so obviously America's struggling to define America. And it
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  Speaker 1: seems like everybody's had this visceral reaction to Vivek. Like,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if I can define America, but this
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  Speaker 1: is not it.
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  Speaker 2: John, your reaction.
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  Speaker 3: So I'll say that you're absolutely right. about this question
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  Speaker 3: of American identity. The question of American identity is the question,
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  Speaker 3: it's the fundamental question, the most important question in our
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  Speaker 3: political discourse right now. And it's the question around which
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  Speaker 3: all of the policy debates actually revolve, whether we recognize
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  Speaker 3: it or not, not just on immigration, but obviously on immigration,
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  Speaker 3: but also on trade, on foreign policy and foreign aid,
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  Speaker 3: on DEI in the military and DEI and transgender ideology
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  Speaker 3: in our schools. Everything has at its heart this debate
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  Speaker 3: and this question about who are we and what are
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  Speaker 3: we doing here? What's the country for, right? And Vivek
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  Speaker 3: is a perfect avatar for this misguided conception that has
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  Speaker 3: seeped into our collective consciousness over the past five decades
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  Speaker 3: that America is an idea, right? It's just an idea.
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  Speaker 3: It's an abstract set of propositions to which anyone in
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  Speaker 3: the world can subscribe. And if they adopt these ideas
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  Speaker 3: and profess them, then presto chango, they can become an American.
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  Speaker 3: And this is totally at odds, I think, with how
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  Speaker 3: Americans have understood themselves and our project and our nation
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  Speaker 3: for most of our history. Certainly the founding generation, but
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  Speaker 3: most Americans through most of our history have not said
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  Speaker 3: and thought that America is an idea. We have understood
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  Speaker 3: that we are a nation, an actual nation of people
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  Speaker 3: with a shared past and a common future and Vice
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  Speaker 3: President J.D. Vance articulated this wonderfully both last summer at
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: the National Conservatism Conference in D.C., but also later at
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: the RNC convention in his speech where he talked about
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  Speaker 3: his own roots in Kentucky and talked about his family
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  Speaker 3: and his children and his hopes for their future. We
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  Speaker 3: have to get over this idea that America is an idea.
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  Speaker 3: Because if it's an idea, then that doesn't really leave
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  Speaker 3: any room for the American people as a people, as
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  Speaker 3: a people with a distinct culture, with folkways, with habits,
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  Speaker 3: with a way of life, and with religious beliefs, with
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  Speaker 3: a common language. with common stories. And those are the
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  Speaker 3: things that actually are the stuff that a nation is
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  Speaker 3: constituted of. And we don't hesitate to say this about
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  Speaker 3: other countries, but we're hesitant to say it about our own.
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  Speaker 3: And we bought into this propaganda that America is a
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  Speaker 3: nation of immigrants and that we're all, you know, we
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  Speaker 3: come from every corner of the world and diversity is
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  Speaker 3: our strength and multiculturalism defines us. All of that, I think,
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  Speaker 3: is a lie. And people are beginning to figure it out.
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  Speaker 3: Even if they're not able to totally articulate it to
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  Speaker 3: themselves or to other people, they sense– and this is
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  Speaker 3: why people reacted so strongly to this Christmas X post
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  Speaker 3: from Vivek. People sense that that's not right. There's something
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  Speaker 3: wrong with saying that America is just about meritocracy and exceptionalism.
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  Speaker 3: I think people understand that can't be what America is
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  Speaker 3: about because that doesn't make any sense. If America is
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  Speaker 3: an idea, then let's email the idea to the rest
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  Speaker 3: of the world so they can all become Americans in
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  Speaker 3: their own countries too, right? It's nonsense. And yet that
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  Speaker 3: is what our managerial class has foisted upon us, I think,
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  Speaker 3: for very nefarious reasons.
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  Speaker 1: Well, John, there's something– there's a tension even for people
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  Speaker 1: who have been in this country for a long time
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  Speaker 1: because the vast majority of Americans are not Native American.
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  Speaker 1: The vast majority of Americans– did not have their ancestors
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  Speaker 1: come over on the Mayflower, although many did. And so
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  Speaker 1: there's a response to that. Well, we are a nation
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  Speaker 1: of immigrants and there's almost an embedded mythos that we
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  Speaker 1: are a people, we're a salad bowl essentially is the
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  Speaker 1: argument that a lot of people like to make. And
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  Speaker 1: on the Statue of Liberty, there's this line, it says,
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  Speaker 1: give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning
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  Speaker 1: to breathe free. And this idea that America is just
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  Speaker 1: a place where anybody can come and be an American
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  Speaker 1: and we really aren't anything other than just a land
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  Speaker 1: of economic opportunity is so deeply embedded in the culture
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  Speaker 1: that I think people, when they hear what you have
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  Speaker 1: to say, have this visceral reaction. Well, I come from immigrants,
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  Speaker 1: so therefore I can't get on board with that. What
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  Speaker 1: would be your reaction to people who have that sort
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  Speaker 1: of visceral reaction?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that it's easy to kind of
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  Speaker 3: misunderstand this. And it's obviously easy to accuse somebody of
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  Speaker 3: being racist or xenophobic, which, yeah, I get a lot
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  Speaker 3: of that. I'm sure you do, too. Just for being
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  Speaker 3: on the right, you get accused of that. No, but
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  Speaker 3: being an American isn't about being a descendant of the Mayflower.
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  Speaker 3: But it's okay for us to say that someone who
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  Speaker 3: is a descendant of the Mayflower, whose family and whose
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  Speaker 3: ancestors have been in this land... you know, for 400
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  Speaker 3: years is more American than Vivek Ramaswamy, whose parents came here,
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  Speaker 3: you know, whose parents were immigrants, right? So he's a
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  Speaker 3: first generation American. It's okay to admit that some people
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  Speaker 3: are more American than others. And so, you know, that's
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  Speaker 3: not something that's insulting or it's not something that's a
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  Speaker 3: problem because we don't have a caste system here. And
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  Speaker 3: the reason we don't have a caste system here is
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  Speaker 3: because America is founded on the The Christian religion and
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  Speaker 3: the ideals that are derived from it. So just like
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  Speaker 3: anyone can become a Christian, right? Christianity is a universal religion,
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  Speaker 3: any human being. can become a Christian and we hope
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  Speaker 3: that they all do. Anyone from any part of the
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  Speaker 3: world can become an American. It's possible to become an American,
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  Speaker 3: but that's the key thing is becoming an American. And
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  Speaker 3: what does it mean to become an American? Well, it
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  Speaker 3: doesn't just mean earning a lot of money. It doesn't
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  Speaker 3: just mean being really good at math, which I guess
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  Speaker 3: is what Vivek thinks it is. It means adopting American culture. Well,
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  Speaker 3: what is American culture, right? And this is where the
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  Speaker 3: idea of multiculturalism kind of comes in as this insidious idea.
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  Speaker 3: wedge to destroy the idea of America itself. American culture
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  Speaker 3: isn't multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is an ideological concept that was introduced
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  Speaker 3: at the end of the last century for revolutionary purposes.
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  Speaker 3: It was part of a cultural revolution in America that
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  Speaker 3: was pushed by ideologues on purpose to destroy American culture.
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  Speaker 3: When we say to become an American, you have to
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  Speaker 3: adopt American culture and really culturally become an American. And
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  Speaker 3: There's specific things that we mean by that, right? That
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: means you have to learn the English language. You don't
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  Speaker 3: have to become a Christian, but you have to accept
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  Speaker 3: Christian moral precepts. And what are those? Those are the
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  Speaker 3: things that are at the heart of our founding documents.
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  Speaker 3: The proposition that all men are created equal is a
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  Speaker 3: Christian proposition. It cannot subsist or maintain coherence outside of
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  Speaker 3: the Christian religion. No other religion posits this. No other
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  Speaker 3: moral system instantiates this. And so it means you have to,
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  Speaker 3: if not become a Christian, accept Christian morality as the
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  Speaker 3: basis for civic life. And then there are many other
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  Speaker 3: intangibles that have to do with it. Part of becoming American,
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  Speaker 3: I think, and this is where a lot of us
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  Speaker 3: whose families have been in America for a long time
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  Speaker 3: get it wrong, is become attached to a place in America.
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  Speaker 3: America is a physical place. It's not an abstract idea.
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  Speaker 3: So part of being an American is being an American
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  Speaker 3: that's from part of America. You're from the Midwest. I'm
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  Speaker 3: from Alaska and Texas. I have allegiances to those places.
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  Speaker 3: I moved back home. I'm talking to you from my
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  Speaker 3: home in Alaska now, a few miles from where I
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  Speaker 3: grew up. That's not to say you can't move to
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  Speaker 3: a different part of America, but being attached to America,
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  Speaker 3: to a place in America is a part, an important
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  Speaker 3: part of being an American. And it always has, even
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  Speaker 3: as we were a nation of that was settling the West,
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  Speaker 3: that was on the move across the continent, people brought
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  Speaker 3: their cultures that were specific to certain places with them,
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  Speaker 3: which is why you end up with, you know, German
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: colonies in Texas and places like Fredericksburg in Texas that
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: still has all these German folkways and places in Wisconsin
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  Speaker 3: that still have you know, Swedish folkways. They moved across
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  Speaker 3: the continent, having arrived from the places they arrived from,
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  Speaker 3: adopting American culture and American customs and folkways and ways
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  Speaker 3: of life as they went. And that's what created the nation.
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  Speaker 3: That's what settled the continent. And so the answer to
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: your question, well, what does it mean to be an American,
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  Speaker 3: isn't like this pat answer. It's textured. It's deep. It's multifaceted.
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  Speaker 3: And it's the same way as you would talk about
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  Speaker 3: any other country that has customs and cultures and traditions
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  Speaker 3: and folkways. It's also true of this country. And I
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  Speaker 3: think that's something that people like Vivek Ramaswamy don't understand.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I love what you were saying about the regional
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: beauty of America. It is different growing up in India.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: rural Wisconsin, and then I come to Florida, and the
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  Speaker 1: culture is completely different. But increasingly, I feel like that's
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  Speaker 1: going away. And I feel like it's going away globally.
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  Speaker 1: You look at the whole world, and it probably has
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  Speaker 1: to do with the internet and the digital age kind
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  Speaker 1: of just erasing all of the uniqueness of the world
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: or the uniqueness of this country, also mass immigration. There's
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: a really great point about who decides what America is,
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  Speaker 1: You said, should Uvaik be defining America if he's been
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: here for not that long? And I think people ask
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the same question about Ilhan Omar, who's trying to define
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: what it means to be an American and having input
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  Speaker 1: on American foreign policy and domestic policy.
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  Speaker 2: And she hasn't been here very long either. She was
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: not even born here.
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  Speaker 1: And it seems to me that there's a pattern with
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: people who have not been here that long who tend
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  Speaker 1: to want to put things that are not the American
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  Speaker 1: people first? So in Vivek's case, it would be GDP
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  Speaker 1: over the American people, right? So is it good for
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: America to have mass legal immigration when it's creating a situation,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: especially in the tech world with H-1B visas, where people
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: who are American citizens, are not able to compete for
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: these really good jobs because the foreigners are coming in
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  Speaker 1: and undercutting them with low wages. So it creates essentially
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: a serf class of American citizens. But Vivek says, well,
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  Speaker 1: it's good because the GDP goes up and it's great
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: for companies. Well, it's what's good for a company in
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: America actually good for America?
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  Speaker 2: What is America? Is it the GDP or is it
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  Speaker 2: the people?
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  Speaker 1: And we're constantly being confronted with this question. And it
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: seems like the people who aren't from here, who haven't
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: been here very long, don't have the same priorities as
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: people who have been here for a long time.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you've noticed that too, John.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. This is how Vivek's whole kind of meltdown
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: started was this debate over Christmas about H-1B visas. Elon
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and other tech moguls were defending
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: the need for massive H-1B visas because these are the
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: immigrants we want. We can be against illegal immigration, but
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: for mass legal immigration and totally skipping over the effect
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  Speaker 3: that this might have on Americans, American families and people
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  Speaker 3: who are our countrymen who might want some of these
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: jobs that are going to H-1B visas or might want
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: a chance to compete for these jobs. And then, of course,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: a bunch of Twitter anons combed through the H-1B databases
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: and revealed that a lot of these visas are just
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: going to complete non-experts. These aren't geniuses that we're importing
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: from India, these people coming in, they're doing jobs that many,
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: many Americans could do.
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  Speaker 2: Entry-level accountant roles.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Like these really basic kind of jobs. And sort
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  Speaker 3: of the ugly truth is that the reason that companies
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: want the H-1B visa program is because they can pay
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: foreigners less. They can just pay them less and they'll
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: do the work for less money. And so it increases
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: these companies' bottom line. And so Someone like Vivek Ramaswamy
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: is put in the awkward position of arguing that that
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  Speaker 3: increasing these companies' bottom line is somehow in the American
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  Speaker 3: interest rather than giving these jobs to Americans and to
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: strengthen American families and American communities. And so it reveals
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: that the priorities are totally out of whack. You were
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: saying a second ago about the homogenization of American culture
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: and really global culture as well. Yeah, mass immigration is
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: part of that. The Internet is a part of that.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: The age of digital technology is part of that. But
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: corporatization is also a big part of that. Uh, and
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: putting the interests of multinational corporations that don't necessarily have
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: any allegiance to the United States ahead of the actual
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: American people. It's a huge problem. And it's actually a
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: huge Fisher on the right for years and years for decades. Uh,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: the right wing in America was, was partially defined by
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: deference to big business, you know, by kind of laissez
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: faire economics and free markets and free trade and, um,
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: And this was kind of over and against left wing
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: communism and Marxism.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: And and central planning in the economy. And now, you know,
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: if you object to to corporate interests at all, people
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: on the establishment right will accuse you of adopting left
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: wing economic policies when really it's a matter of like balancing,
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: you know, how far are we going to let the
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: pendulum swing away from communism before we are creating American policy,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: whether it's immigration policy or trade policy or our visa
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: programs that serve the interests of corporations at the expense
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: of the American people. And that is a conversation on
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: the right that we need to have. It's a debate
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: that needs to be settled. And I think it needs
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: to be settled in favor of the American people. And
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: if corporations don't have any allegiance to the American people,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: but they want to be U.S. corporations, then we need
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: to compel them to have allegiance to the American people.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: which is part of what the Trump administration is doing
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: with these tariffs. You want to do business here, then
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: you will manufacture things here. You will locate your plants
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: here and employ Americans. And I think we need to
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: not be afraid of making the case that that is
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: in the American interest and that is good for the
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: American people. And that's what a nation is and what
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: a nation should do.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Well, that got me thinking about, John, the military-industrial complex.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: And there's kind of this running joke, right, and it's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: actually not a joke, it's real, that there's a certain number,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I forget how many billions of dollars it is, that
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: America is always fueling into some sort of conflict abroad.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So the second we pull out of Afghanistan, those funds
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: immediately were directed to money for Ukraine. And then there's
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: this speculation like, okay, now that we're potentially ending this
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: war in Ukraine, where's.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: The money going to go next? What's the next conference
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: going to?
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Where's the next war? Yeah.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: It has to keep going. And it's obviously not about
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: American interests, right? This is not about what's best for
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the American people or best for who we are as
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a country or.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Even the world.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: It's a machine. It's a money-making machine. It's the military-industrial complex.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And that's definitely part of it. But John, there also
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: seems to be something more something more than just money
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: driving a lot of these conflicts. And we've kind of
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: offline talked about World War II being sort of like
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the moral cornerstone of the modern West. And we just,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: we keep coming back to it to maybe to make
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: sense of the past. I don't know, to justify the present,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: but it almost feels like there is a religious like
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: component to the way we look at World War II,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: where like almost every foreign dictator that America doesn't like.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: It's Saddam Hussein, it's Vladimir Putin. They're all compared to Hitler.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Every potential conflict that we're supposed to go in is
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: a World War II level conflict, which in my view
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: diminishes what a big deal World War II was. Even
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is compared to Hitler, which is absurd. So
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the same people who are saying, yeah, Putin's Hitler are
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: all saying Trump is Hitler and we're supposed to go
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to war with Putin, but then shouldn't we go to
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: war with our own president if this is the standard?
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know, John, I wonder if you
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: have anything to say about the danger of clinging to
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: that framework?
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: It, I think it's a symptom of, uh, uh, of
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: historical amnesia and historical ignorance. Uh, there's a very short
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: cast of characters that we will invoke in our, of
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: historical characters that we'll invoke in our discourse. And there
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: are all these, um, cartoonish renderings of historical figures, you know,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: made to, you know, crudely repurposed for whatever side is arguing.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: So there's Hitler and there's Neville Chamberlain. Anytime Trump says
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: anything about a peace settlement in Ukraine, he's Neville Chamberlain
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: coming back from Munich, capitulating to Hitler. There's Churchill. Or
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: the other touchstone is that if you– If you don't
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: want mobs of left-wing communists to tear down Civil War statues,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: then you're literally Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis. Then
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: you should be hung for treason. These are really simplified,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: ham-fisted historical references that are not about history. They're used
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: as– almost like as incantations to shut down debate, these
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: like totemic references. And all it means is you're bad,
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: like you're a morally bad person. And people invoke these
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: historical figures to set themselves, to make it clear that
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: they are part of the elect. They're the justified ones.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: They're the good ones. And you are part of the
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: condemned and you are part of the oppressor class. And
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: so we don't have to listen to what you say. And,
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm sure you've gotten this a lot. I've
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: gotten this throughout my career, going back to the first
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Confederate debates in 2014. when I had the temerity to
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: say like, Hey, maybe we shouldn't desecrate Confederate graves and
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: rip up, uh, Confederate war memorials. Um, it's a really,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: it's a sign of a, of a sick society, uh, and, and, um,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: and a political discourse that's totally, um, conducted in bad faith. Right.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: I think, uh, you know, the, the issue with world
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: war two and there's, and there's all kinds of rabbit
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: trails we can go down talking about that. And, you know, uh, the, the,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: the revisionist kind of histories of world war two, um,
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: world war two is seen in very broad terms as the,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: as the good war, the, as the war where America
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: stepped in to save Europe and defeat the West. But
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: I think there is, um, there is, you know, a, a,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: And I grew up in the 90s, and this was
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: when Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers came out.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: And there was a reason that there was all these
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: big cultural commemorations of World War II that happened at
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: that time. And that was because the World War II
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: veterans began to die off.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did those honor flights with them. Yeah, of course.
• 24:40
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: And every time, and this is a pattern in history,
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: every time the veterans of a major war begin, sort
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: of enter the last stages of that generation and they
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: begin to die off, the nation honors them in big
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: cultural ways. And now that the very last of them
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: are leaving us, you're beginning to see maybe some reconsiderations,
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: not necessarily of the war itself, but what is the
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: legacy of World War II? how did it change our
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: world and create the world that we live in now
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: in ways that maybe are not as like simplistically victorious
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: or salutary as we were led to believe, you know,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: growing up with this kind of mythology around World War II.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: And I think it's important to separate the war itself
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: and the valor and courage that was shown by ordinary Americans,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: most of the vast majority of them just working class
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: Farmers and factory workers that went to Europe and saved
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: the continent from Nazism, to distinguish that from what our
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: leaders and what the leadership class did after the victory
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: in World War II by erecting these globalist structures like
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. and these
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: other mechanisms of global finance and global governance that we
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: live with today that are an indelible part of our
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: world that actually, in some cases, have taken over U.S.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: policymaking over and against the wishes of the American people.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: Those are things that I think it's fair to talk about.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: It's fair to say maybe the legacy of World War
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: II hasn't actually been all that great, and we need
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: to revisit some of the things that we did in
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: the aftermath of our victory, maybe those things were not
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: good and maybe they weren't even undertaken for good intentions.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: Maybe there were nefarious forces at work there. I think
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: those are fair debates to have without having to say
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: that if you do that, then you're literally Hitler.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: I was just on my computer. I was trying to
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: find a quote that I couldn't find it, but I'll
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: give you the gist of it because there was this
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: man who um, I, well, I think it was, it
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: was Winston Churchill who like famously said, you know, these
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: men are going to be forgotten. Like they've sacrificed everything
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: for their country. And now we're never going to know,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you know, what, what they really thought. It was essentially
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the quote from, from Winston Churchill. And so years later,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: this young man in the UK said, actually, I want
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: to find out what these guys think about their service
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: in World War II, these World War.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: II veterans in the UK.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And so he, for years sent out basically just a,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: just a, a voluntary, uh, call for people to send
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: him letters reflecting on their service, men and women who
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: served in World War II. Then he put all these
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: responses together in a book. These letters were striking, John.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: There were multiple letters where they actually said.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe Hitler should have won.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I definitely don't agree with that, but the point is
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: that these men felt radically disillusioned with their own country.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: They were questioning, what did I fight for? What did
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: my friends die for?
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Because they said, I looked around and I don't recognize
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Britain anymore.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: What was it all for?
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of older people in
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: America who are asking that question, who don't recognize their
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: country as they look around. And it's so backward for
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: me to think about, John, because if you if you're
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: a leader of a country, and this is sort of
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the Christian teaching of what a leader should do, your
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: job is to look out for the best interests of
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: those people. But our leaders, not just in America, but
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: across the West, don't seem to be doing that. For decades,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: they have not been doing that. I mean, why else
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: would you have mass migration, putting massive strains on your economy,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: but not only that, eroding the actual identity of the
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: people that you are supposed to care about John, can
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you help me understand what would be the motivation of
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a leader of a country to do what our leaders
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: have done for the last 50 years?
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question. What you were saying earlier
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: about the British veterans reminded me of there's a clip,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: there's a famous clip of a, I think it's a
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: local newscast, interviewing an American veteran of World War II,
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: a man, you know, he's like 99 years old or something.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: And he gets, you know, he's talking to the camera
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: and this was for a D-Day, you know, anniversary or something, commemoration.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: It's just a local news shop, but he gets choked
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: up and the cameras just keep rolling. And he goes
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: on this sort of soliloquy about, you know, just what
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: you said, like, you know, I don't recognize the country
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: that I fought for. And what was it for? What
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: was all the sacrifice for? all the boys that died
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: over there? If this is what was going to happen
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: to our country and that it happened within his own
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: living memory. And it's this very moving speech by this
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: old veteran lamenting the state of America and lamenting all
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: that was lost, that the things that he thought he
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: was going to Europe to preserve the country that he,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: he was, he was going to Europe to save, that
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: is to say his own country, uh, it has, has
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: been lost in the end. And it's a heartbreaking thing
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: to think about. And I think we have to look
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: at what our leaders have done. Um, yeah, there it is. Uh, it's,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: it's that guy, um, uh, beautiful clip. I encourage everybody
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: to look it up, uh, after this podcast and listen
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: to this man. Um, we have to look at what
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: our leaders have done. And I think, you know, to
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: your question, what would motivate them to do that? I
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: think what motivated them to do that after World War
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: II was this belief that they could control everything, that
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: they could control the production of food, that they could
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: control consumption, that they could control people's behavior. This was
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: you know, we, we were raised with the idea that
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: the 1950s was this traditional time, you know, where like
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: let the white picket fence and leave it to beaver.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: The 1950s was a radical time. It was a radical
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: time on every level of society, major revolutionary changes were
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: being enacted from the top down in everything from like
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: how we produce food to to how we manufacture goods,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: to how we live and where we live, the destruction
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: of small farms, the creation of suburbia. This was a
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: revolution in American life immediately after World War II. And
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: it bore very little resemblance to the way most Americans
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: had lived prior to World War II, such that people
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: who grew up in the 1920s and 30s had more
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: in common with Americans in the 1820s and 1830s than
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: they did with people just 30 years later living in
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: the 1960s and 70s. And we haven't really had a
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: full reckoning about that and what our leadership and our
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: managerial class did. And I mean, that's another thing, the
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: rise of the managerial class as well, the rise of
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: an administrative class. Woodrow Wilson had the idea for the
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: administrative state in the 1880s. FDR began to instantiate that
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: a little bit during the New Deal, but he couldn't
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: complete the project because of World War II. It was
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: with the Great Society programs in the 1960s that we
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: really saw an explosion of this idea that we're going
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: to be ruled by experts. We're going to be ruled
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: by this administrative bureaucracy, this class of bureaucrats that'll be
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: beyond the ken of politics, beyond the you know, the tug,
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: the push and pull, the tug of war between, you know,
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: political factions, totally isolated from voters, you know, and they'll
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: know what's best to do. And that, I think, has
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: been the defining feature of how American society has been
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: led since the end of World War II. And, you know,
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: people are beginning to wake up to that now and say,
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: why didn't we allow this to happen? Why is it
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: that it doesn't matter who you elect? Things stay the same. Well,
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: maybe we have to look to the past to understand
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: why that is and have a reckoning with this mythology,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: I think, that we've been given, which is really just
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: propaganda about how the victors of World War II created
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: a paradise in America in the middle of the 20th century.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: I think those are things that we have to reconsider seriously.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: There was a really interesting interview between Piers Morgan and
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson recently. And Piers basically said, well, you know, this, what,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: World War II, like, I'd be speaking German right now.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Like it was obviously all worth it. And then Tucker
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I mean, maybe you'd be speaking German
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: right now, but what has Britain become? And there's just
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: this constant question that we're confronted with of, you know,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: you won, but it doesn't feel like we won World
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: War II.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: It feels like we're losers. It feels like civilizational suicide.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: And it was, again, completely self-inflicted. Like it wasn't that
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the Nazis came in and destroyed us for it. No,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: it was like, we destroyed ourselves from within. And you
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: were talking about the past and I, there's this historical
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: revisionism that's constantly happening, um, with, no, I'm not even
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: talking about recent memory. Like, even if you look at
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: what was life like during the middle ages, like what was,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: what was, what was Christian life like? And, and the,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: you know, the feudal system, we were told that it
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: was just like, the worst of the worst, like a
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: medieval peasant had the worst life one could possibly live.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Like the cards are completely against them. And the past
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: is just inherently regressive. The future is so progressive and wonderful.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: There was this interesting clip where somebody had basically, he
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: was questioning one of these on-campus preachers about how Christian
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: countries and Christian rulers have killed so many people, murdered
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: so many people. And the guy responds and he says,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: how many people have died in atheist regimes?
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And he was like, well, no one. It's like, really?
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Like Mao Zedong, the Soviet Union? You're going to tell me.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: That these global empires that we've seen, whether it's a
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: liberal empire or a communist one, have been wonderful and
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: flourishing for human society? I just don't think that that's
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: an argument that somebody can make. And at the same time,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: we're confronted with this past that I think nobody really
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: knows the true history of. So what is, I think
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the question is, and this, John, gets to your book
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: a lot, is how do we handle a culture that's
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: increasingly pagan, right?
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: That's not Christian.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: And how do we see, how do we get back
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: some of the ethos that we had in the past
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: that actually wasn't regressive, but had real communities and that
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: were set up to make families thrive And it might
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: not be the same kind of liberalism we're used to today,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: but there's real merit that I don't think people today
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: are willing to recognize.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's a great point. I mean, we've been
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: so propagandized, especially in Protestant America, propagandized about Catholic Europe, right?
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: To your point about the medieval peasants, you know– They
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: had more.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Days off than we do now, on average. I don't
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: know if people know that.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: A lot of the medieval peasants enjoyed more rights than
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: we do under our administrative rule that we have today. Yeah,
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: that's the result of centuries of anti-Catholic propaganda. And then
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: we've continued to be. So I think, you know, to
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: answer your question. one of our big tasks right now
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: is to de-propagandize ourselves and de-propagandize our culture. And that
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: means kind of taking a look back and saying, you know,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: how did we get here? Why do we have these
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: assumptions about the past? On the question of, and I
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: want to get to pay in America and the question
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: of America, but just to revisit the World War II
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: thing real fast, there's a great book that came out
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago by RR Reno. He's the
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: editor of first things called the return of the strong gods.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: And in it, he kind of talks about what happened
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: after world war two. Uh, and, and he explains how, uh,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: a number of political theorists, people like Karl Popper, who
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: wrote the open society and its enemies, I believe in 1947, 1948,
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: this book came out. Um, They posited the idea that
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: we have to ban it in order for World War
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: II not to happen again, in order to prevent the
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: rise of fascist totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany to not
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: rise again. We have to banish the strong gods, which
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: were patriotism, religion, what are derisively referred to as blood
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: and soil loyalties, traditional cultural values. We have to get
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: rid of those in favor of the open society, of multiculturalism,
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: of extreme tolerance. And we can't have a closed society
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: or a society that has strong, unchosen loyalties and obligations,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: what they would call tribalism, because that's going to lead
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: to Nazi fascism and global war, right? And so to
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: prevent World War III, we have to have not only
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: do we have to have a commitment to an open society,
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: we have to enforce the ideology of an open society.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: We have to enforce liberal ideology on everybody. And that
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: represented a radical break, a revolutionary change in how our
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: leaders interacted with us, in how we conceived of our
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: communities and our societies and introduced foreign ideas like multiculturalism
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: as a normative value and tolerance, kind of extreme cultural
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: tolerance for its own sake. Diversity is our strength. These
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: other kinds of slogans that were really alien to American
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: society and to Western civilization prior to that. And you
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: and I, everybody who's not a boomer grew up in
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: this world that they created. And one of the big
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: myths and propaganda narratives that they pushed on us was
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: this idea that America itself is not a Christian nation,
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: that America is an idea. And to circle back to
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: where we started in this conversation, the proposition that America
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: is an idea is meant to replace the reality that
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: America was a Christian nation from the beginning, with the
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: founders understood what they were doing. And this is how
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: I begin my book, Pagan America, is making the case
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: that the founders understood understood that the kind of government
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: that they were creating, the kind of society that we
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: were going to have was only possible with a Christian people,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: with a relatively religiously homogenous Christian population that was able
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: as a luxury good to tolerate religious minorities.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: And so it's one thing to say we're to look
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: back at the religious wars of Europe and say we're
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: not going to have religious wars in this country. So
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: we're going to have a broadly non-sectarian government, but we're
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: going to do this with a Christian people. And we're
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: going at every turn to insist that the public life
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: and official life of this country reinforce the Christian religion,
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: reinforce religion and morality in the people. Because if we
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: have If we can maintain a religious and moral people,
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: we can maintain this form of government. If we lose that,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: we will also lose this form of government. And that's
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: the key to understanding what is America, what is an American,
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: and what have we lost? I think the main thing
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: that we've lost is a proper understanding of what this
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: country is and how it's supposed to work. We think
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: that we can have a constitutional republic. with a society
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: that enshrines as its highest good diversity, equity, inclusion? You can't.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: You can't because there'll be no basis for the things,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: the propositions in the constitution that are supposed to be
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: the bedrock of our society. There's no basis for them
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: outside of a Christian understanding of morality and a civic
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: life that is ordered toward Christian precepts.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: That line, John, America is a Christian nation, that makes
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of people really, really uncomfortable. It makes even
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Christians uncomfortable for whatever reason. We've been so propagandized, we
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: don't know the history. You lay out the history really
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: eloquently in your book. Just this last Friday, there was
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: a black mass. I don't know if you saw this, John,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: at the Kansas Capitol. For the viewers, essentially, these Satanists
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: reserved a time and space in the Dedicate the capital
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: to the devil and they also stole a Eucharist to
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: coast to as part of the ceremony now the this
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the mayor that I'm sorry not the mayor the governor
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: got like the tens of thousands of Catholic complaints about
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: this and she revoked this permit, but.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: There's this there's this This.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Belief in America even among Christians that well We can't
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: give any sort of moral superiority for Christianity that we
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: don't give to the Satanists for instance so in the
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: eyes of the law a Satanist is on the same
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: level as a Christian and the state has no right
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: to give any preferential treatment to one over the other.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: What would be your response to that, your argument against that, John?
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: Well, I think the better question is what would be
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: the response of our founders to that? One of the
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: first things that the first Congress did before they ratified
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: the First Amendment, so it's the same group of people
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: who ratified the First Amendment, Before they did that, they
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: appropriated taxpayer dollars to hire a Christian chaplain for Congress.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: And so they didn't see any contradiction between doing that,
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: hiring a chaplain to open and close sessions of the
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: United States Congress and the establishment of religion. They didn't
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: think that counted as the establishment of religion. They didn't
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: think that violated anybody's free exercise of religion. And so
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: they had an understanding of these things that's radically different
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: than the understanding that we have now. And just as
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: a side note, most people who may and would think
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: that they're terrible despots. And that's a big part of
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: why we have all these problems today is because we've
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: had generations of people trying to undermine the country that
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: the founders created. But to this question of the Satanists
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: and the Black Mass, I'm actually working on a piece
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: about this. My initial reaction to that and to the
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: Catholic heroes that disrupted the Black Mass, and just so
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: your viewers understand what a Black Mass is, it's intended
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: to be a mockery specifically of the Catholic Mass. And
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: that's why they don't steal you know, uh, Protestant communion wafers, they,
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: they can't do a black mass unless they have consecrated, um,
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: consecrated Eucharist from a, from a Catholic priest. Uh, and
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: in fact, the archbishop in, uh, uh, Kansas brought a, uh,
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: a legal action, uh, sued this, this satanic group, uh, for, um,
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: for stealing a consecrated host. And the case didn't go
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: anywhere because it's not really something that a judge can
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: adjudicate because the satanic guy was just like, well, no,
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: we didn't steal that. And so how are they going
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: to verify that? So it's almost like this is a
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: problem that exists outside our legal system. Our legal system
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: wasn't set up to adjudicate these things. But I think
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: that there's no way the founders would have understood what
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: was going on with the satanic group as an exercise,
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: as a legitimate exercise of religious freedoms. And my initial
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: thought about this, which I posted on X, was you
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: don't have to tolerate everything. You know, religious toleration doesn't
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: extend to tolerating the intentional blasphemous desecration of a consecrated Eucharist.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: The whole purpose of which is to offend and denigrate
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: and attack Catholics and their Catholic faith. You don't have
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: to tolerate it. And indeed, some of these young Catholics didn't. They,
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: you know, one guy before the Satanist could throw the
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: Eucharist on the ground and stomp it with his foot.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: A Catholic guy, you know, sort of, you know, dove
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: on it and consumed it. And this was captured on film.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: And then inside when they tried to, Satanist tried to
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: bring another host inside, a young man grabbed it and
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: the Satanist like started punching him in the face. And
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: then the cops jumped on the Satanist and arrested him.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: So.
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: Total victory for the total victory for the Catholics there. Um,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: but yeah, this idea that, that, that, um, that amounts
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: to a valid exercise of religion and that that should be, um,
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: protected by, by the state, you know, as equal to
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: Christianity is, is totally wrong. Uh, and it's a result
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: of some bad, uh, first amendment jurisprudence that we've had
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: come down. Um, and I think Americans and especially Christians
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: have got to be comfortable, making an argument for the
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: fact that we don't have to tolerate everything and that
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: there are things that the First Amendment doesn't protect, that
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: the free exercise of religion does not include. And things
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: like devilry and witchcraft and Satan worship in the United
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: States of America are absolutely not covered and should not
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: be covered by the First Amendment. They should not be protected.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: And the American people shouldn't tolerate it. You know, and indeed,
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: you know, in this case, you had thousands of Catholics
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: show up to pray and to protest this. Massive reparations
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: were being set all over the city at the same
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: time that this rally, this satanic rally was taking place.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: And I think in the end, you know, the Christian
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: forces carried the day and the Satanists were humiliated and
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: their leader was arrested. And a strong message was sent
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: that we're not, you know, even in the face of
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: government inaction, We, the faithful, don't have to tolerate this. Yeah.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Today in America, we have people running our country who
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: were not born here. We have people running the country
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: who are not Christian. And this was something that obviously
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: was not allowed. At least you had to say you
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: were a Christian because you couldn't swear in a Bible
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: in the early days of the Republic. Are there any
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: early Republic laws or norms that you think we have
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: to bring back to, to public, to, to, you know,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: people holding public office? Should we just carry on and
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: let this be a, a cultural change that we are
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: hoping to, to create, um, in America? What do you
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: think needs to be done, uh, for people who serve
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: and represent our country?
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a, uh, I go into this a little
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: bit in the books, some of these, these, these flashpoints
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: of big changes that took place, um, And one of
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: the ones I talk about is a Supreme Court case
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: about a religious establishment clause in the First Amendment. And
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: this was a case that came up in the early
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: 1940s of a Seventh-day Adventist who was going through this Catholicism.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: neighborhood trying to solicit donations and playing these anti-Catholic recordings.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: And he got run out of the neighborhood by some
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: enraged Catholics. And then there was a state office in
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: New Haven who said, if you're going to go around
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: soliciting donations for a religious cause, you have to have
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: a permit to do it. And these Seventh-day, I don't
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: know if they're Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh-day Adventists, I can't remember,
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: but they refused to get a permit. They said, we
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: don't need a permit to do that. And the Supreme
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Court ended up deciding against the state saying no. And
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: what they said was, and this was a big change
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: in how the Supreme Court had understood religious liberty cases
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: up to this point. So prior from our founding all
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: the way through to the 1940s, these kinds of religious
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: liberty cases were kind of settled on a case by
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: case basis, weighing the various facts at play. But in
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: this case, the Supreme Court said, no, a state cannot,
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: the state has no ability to distinguish a religious cause
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: from a non-religious cause. And so you can't require people
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: to get a permit to make solicitations for a religious charity.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: because the state has to be completely blind to the
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: existence of religion and can't require anything of people who
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: are doing things in the name of religion. And this
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: is sort of, you know, you can see how you
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: get from that to the governor of Kansas saying, well,
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: there's nothing I can do to stop the satanic grotto
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: from desecrating a Catholic host on the steps of the Capitol, right?
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: Because we can't, the state has to be completely agnostic
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: and not Not even take into account what is religion
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: and what isn't religion. And this is totally that was
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: totally a break with how we had understood these things
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: up until that point. Certainly the founders and most most
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: leaders and Supreme Court justices throughout our history prior to
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: that would have said, of course, the state can can change.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: you know, put in reasonable regulations for religious donations and
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: can be cognizant of religions. The Northwest Ordinance passed in
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: 1787 appropriated money for schools and churches in the federal territories.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: I think because they understood that schools and churches would
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: be needed to bring American civilization into this vast wilderness.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: And so that was always part of the fabric of
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: American public life. And that began to change in the
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: middle of the last century. And then after that Supreme
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Court case, one after another, every couple of years, there
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: was another Supreme Court case saying, you can't pray in schools.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: You can't read the Bible in schools. You can't recite
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: the Lord's Prayer in schools. And the logic of it
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: just unspooled very quickly. And I don't think most people
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: realize what a revolution that has been in American life
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: and what the effects of that have been on our
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: sort of body politic in the decades since.
• 52:24
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: It's imposed moral relativism on a Christian country. It's completely
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: backward and absurd. And we don't have a ton of
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: time here, John, but I want to get your reaction
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: to this because yes, we are an increasingly secular country.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: This has been something that's underway for decades. It's in
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: the legal framework, but it's also something that you're seeing socially.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I want to get your reaction to some of the
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: new moral questions that we're being faced with. You talk
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: about America being a pagan country, and we're stripping ourselves
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: of the Christian mores that used to really define who
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: we are. And I think we're going to come to
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: a level that I don't think human history has ever experienced.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: So there's this guy, his name is Brian Johnson. You've
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: probably heard of him. If you haven't and you're listening,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: he's a wealthy tech entrepreneur. And he has invested millions
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: of dollars into his, he calls it a blueprint project.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: And it's this life extension system where a team of
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: doctors uses data to control his health decisions, lowers biological age,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: and he was on a pod. So like literally every
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: moment of this guy's life is controlled because he's on
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: this pursuit to live forever, or at least live forever
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: until technology reaches a point where he can then like
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: really do it.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: It's a very bizarre way for this man to live.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: And so he, on a podcast, Barry Weiss asked him
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: this really, I think, interesting question. She asked him, are
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: you missing out on living while chasing immortality? And his
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: answer was fascinating. Let's play that clip if we could, Michael.
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: The levels of ambition I think are possible. Level one
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: of ambition, start a company. Level two, start a country.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: Level three, start a religion. Level four, don't die. Level five,
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: become God. No time in history has someone been able
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: to express an aspiration to become God.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: You now can. And it's not crazy.
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I'd rather go down that path than I
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: would do the debauchery of, some momentary pleasure and miss
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: out on this amazing future.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Your reaction, John?
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know who this guy is. I talk about
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: him in the book. I hadn't seen that clip though.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: So thank you for that. This guy came to my
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: attention because Time Magazine did a kind of puff piece
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: on him a couple of years ago, sort of a
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: bemused puff piece, like look at this oddball. And now
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: he's starting to show up on all these podcasts. as
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: this avatar for transhumanism. And, and I think it's easy
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: to laugh at him because he says these outrageous things like,
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: of course, people have had ambitions to become gods. Like he,
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: like that was the entire ancient pagan world. We revolved
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: around the fact that, that, that the leaders were considered deities,
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: that they were gods. And, you know, the ancient pagan
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: religions were based upon the idea of, of gods, you know,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: of God and man uniting in one person.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: Um, he said in another podcast, you know, like, you know,
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: we have to radically rethink, you know, what even being
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: human is, you know, as though he had never heard
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: anything from the communist regimes of the 20th century who
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: said very similar things. So he's comical on the one hand,
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: but he does represent, despite his sort of, you know, comic,
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: you know, kind of ignorance about the things that he's saying,
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: he represents an ideology that's very common and widespread among
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: you know, the tech oligarchy, right? People like Peter Thiel
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: and Elon Musk are also transhumanists. They also subscribe to
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: major features of this ideology.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Explain that a little bit, John.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Obviously, Neuralink with Elon Musk, but you mentioned Peter Thiel too.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: The idea that technology, that we can merge human biological
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: life and consciousness with technology is and achieve a new
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: kind of version of a human being and extend our life.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: So people like Elon Musk are interested in this partly
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: for space travel. They think life extension is going to
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: be necessary for space travel. And so they want to
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: be able to extend the life of a single human
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: being out to centuries to be able to travel through space.
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: So they all have their different things that they're interested in.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: But the common feature of this is that through our technology,
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: we can become more than just human beings. We can
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: become like gods. Now, what does that remind you of, right?
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: You will not surely die. You will become like gods.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: It's the lie from the serpent in the garden. It's
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: the same thing. It's back in the context of our
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: digital age, in the context of very powerful computer technologies.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: but it's the same. And a lot of people don't
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: get the connection with paganism, but there's a very direct connection.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: The ancient pagan world had the similar kind of ideology,
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: a similar kind of transhumanist ideology that I alluded to earlier.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: The idea that technology and paganism are tied together is
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: a very old idea. The ancient pagans believed that their
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: deities would give them knowledge, would give them divine knowledge. Now,
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: in those days, it was in the form of of
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: agricultural knowledge or metallurgy or knowledge of the heavens and
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: navigational knowledge. But the idea was that this was divine
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: knowledge that could be accessed, that we could get this
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: from divine sources, from the gods. And the twist in
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: our time, in our post-Christian, sort of the emerging neo-pagan world,
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: is that the gods now, according to people like Brian Johnston,
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: And according to people like Elon Musk, who said this
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: almost word for word on Joe Rogan, that we are
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: going to create God through AI. We're going to create God.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: And then this God will give us superhuman powers. Divine
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: knowledge will solve all our problems. And all you have
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: to do to get this is to serve that God.
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: And Brian Johnston is a good example of that. He
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: made his money in AI applications to medical technologies. And
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: his whole life is ruled by these AI algorithms that
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: tell him what to eat, when to sleep, what to do.
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: He's a slave to it. So much so to the
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: point that in pursuit of immortality, in pursuit of a
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: way to cheat death, early on, he experimented with injecting
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: himself with his own 18-year-old son's blood plasma. Now, he
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: abandoned that because... this was a little throwaway line in
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: the Time profile that was published a couple of years ago.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: That is a 21st century version of a very old
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: pagan practice, which is the belief that the blood of
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: young people will somehow confer immortal life on the high
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: priests and priestesses of the pagan deity. And so we're
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: going to, you know, it's hard to wrap our minds
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: around this because we think we live in a secular age,
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: but we actually live in an age that is very
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: rapidly re-enchanting. And as Christianity recedes, it doesn't mean that
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: we're going to live in this this liberal, secular, rationalist utopia.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Secularism and liberalism are dependent on Christian civilization and the
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: Christian religion. And as Christianity declines, those things will decline too.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: And they're going to be replaced with the new forms
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: of pagan ideology that look to technology as our savior
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: in a very strikingly similar way that pagans of the
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: ancient world look to technology. And so you're exactly right
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: to point to people like Brian Johnston and not just
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: him as sort of avatars of this emerging ideology. I
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: think we're going to hear a lot more about it
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: in the future. Yeah.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned Peter Thiel.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to quickly say for the viewers that
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: he is a really interesting guy because he's the founder of,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: of course, Palantir. It's a company that collects vast amounts
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: of Internet data on people. and analyzes it, for instance,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: the purpose of pre-crime. They're a government contractor and they'll say, well,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: we can synthesize all this data on regular Americans. And
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: sometimes I'm not even really sure how it's constitutional for
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: them to collect this data, but they do. And then
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: they say, well, these groups of people, these are people
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: who are dangerous, who are potentially domestic terrorists based off
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: of their internet searches or what they're doing. And it's
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: interesting because the name Palantir is based off of this
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: orb in the Lord of the Rings trilogy that allows Sauron, the, the,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: the evil guy to basically see in all different, see everything.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: He's like, it's like a God, it's like a little
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: God orb. And that's what Palantir is too.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: It's like, we're able to see everything that everyone's doing
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: and know everything about them. And it's interesting because in, in,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: in the Lord of the Rings, the orb actually is,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: is kind of deceptive.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: It's, it's misleading.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: One of the, one of the hobbits actually gets the
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: orb and, He sees half-truths and so does the, what
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: is it, Denethor, Michael? Yeah, Denethor has the orb and
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: he's misled a lot.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: He's tricked by Sauron.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: So it's obviously not perfect. You can't be perfect with
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: these technological tools. You will never actually be God.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: Um, and that.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: Actually deceives Sauron too.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a different thing.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: So it's, it doesn't, it doesn't work. Um, and so that, that,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: that there's something to be said about that too. It's
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: like this, you think you're going to be God and
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: it ends up actually being kind of a horror story
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: in every iteration.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: You're a slave. You end up being a slave. Yes. So, and, and, and, and,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: and this, And the danger for us is that we
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: will willingly enslave ourselves to these forms of technology that
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: promise immortal life, that promise to solve all our problems,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: that promise prosperity and wealth and power. And we will
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: submit to them willingly. And I think we can begin
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: to see the broad outlines of that coming into being
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: And it's incredible. Just one more thing I have to say.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: That in your book, you mentioned another book that I
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: ended up actually reading the series of. It's a CS
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Lewis's science fiction trilogy. One of them is that Hideous Strength.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: And I was just blown away by this book. Everybody listening,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: please go read that Hideous Strength because it was so
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: predictive of everything that we're seeing right now with AI.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: In that Hideous Strength, there's an organization.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: It's called NICE. It's supposed to promote science and progress.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: by controlling and manipulating people essentially via advanced science and tech.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: And they have this thing that is, I guess, helping them,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: this advanced technology. And the big reveal at the end
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: of the book is essentially that it's a decapitated human
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: head that's possessed by a demon. Like it's not technological
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: at all.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: It's not advanced at all. It's actually spiritual and it's
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: actually demonic.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: And I just, I feel like there's an element of
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: that in all of these advancements that we're making, where
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: you think that you're really progressive and technological, and it
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: turns out that it's actually regressive and it breaks things
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: down and opens ourselves up to, I think, the worst
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: of the worst kind of spiritual forces.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the irony is, of course,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: the scientists in that hideous strength They think that this
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: severed head is being animated by their technology and they
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: have all these tubes and wires going into this head.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: And in the end, it's revealed, not to spoil the ending,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: but yeah, it's just a demon that's animating the head.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: And the scientists are totally enthralled to this malevolent spiritual being.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: And I think you're right. I think we lull ourselves
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: into thinking that because we have technology and because we
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: follow the science, that we can dispense with the idea
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: of this mumbo-jumbo about the spiritual world, when in fact–
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: the spiritual world and the scientific world of technology are
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: all mixed up together and they are caught up within it.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: And if you go high enough up in the world
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: of Silicon Valley and big tech and cutting edge technology,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: you don't see a bunch of cold, hard materialist You
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: see people who are willing to talk about and entertain,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: not just entertain, but pursue what they call discarnate intelligences
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: and multidimensional beings who have knowledge that we can download.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: This stuff is real. It sounds crazy, but it's real.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: And people are starting to write about it. And word
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: is starting to get out that this is what is
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: going on at very high levels in these companies and
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: in the U.S. government. And it's something I think that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: we need to start thinking about so that we can
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: be clear about what it is and about where we,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: as Christians, where we stand in relation to these things.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: That's a whole other conversation, John.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: For all of human history, people have documented the spiritual
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: realm having an impact on humanity. And all of a
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: sudden now we're like, it's aliens. It's aliens.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: It's just extraterrestrial life. That's all it is. Are we
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: sure it's aliens? Are we sure it's not.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: What humans have been saying? That's a whole different podcast.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: It's totally a different podcast. But, John, I'm over time.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: I am so glad that you were able to actually
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: have this conversation, that you were able to join me.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: Just so everybody listening knows, John is like the teacher.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: If you like what I have to say, you will
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: like what John has to say. Go read his work. John,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: where can people go to follow you and keep up
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: with everything that you're working on?
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: And also, buy your book.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. The book, you can get anywhere you get books. Amazon,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: if you don't want to support Jeff Bezos, you can
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: get it at Thrift Books or any online bookseller. I'm
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: on Twitter at John D. Davidson, if you do that.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: And then, of course, my main gig is at The Federalist,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: where you used to be with me, and now I'm alone.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: But thank you so much for having me on, Evita.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: This is great to talk about this stuff with you.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: I really enjoyed it.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I've been wanting to do this
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: for a long time.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: So for all of you listening, make sure to drop
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: a comment, hit the like and follow button. If you
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: want to listen to the show and watch the show
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: in its video version, if you're on Apple or Spotify,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: go to rumble.com slash Evita.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: Follow John.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: Keep up with what he's doing. He's an amazing guy,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: somebody who's had a real impact on me, a very intelligent,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: articulate guy who's making a real impact on the culture,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: has smart things to say.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: I will see you all tomorrow.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: The Dan Bongino Show.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 7: I think a lot of people are underestimating the Trump
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 7: effect in this midterm. You've heard it yourself. Act like
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 7: I'm on the ballot. Why is he saying that? You
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 7: think he doesn't know what he's doing? That is the
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 7: X factor. Folks, elections are a math issue.
• 1:07:45
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• 1:07:46
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• 1:07:50
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