Latest / V / Robe Rule: Evita + Wade Stotts (Ep.190)

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Robe Rule: Evita + Wade Stotts (Ep.190) · V

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  Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome to Bongino Report Early Edition. Today
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  Speaker 1: I am joined by Wade Stotz, host of the Wade
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  Speaker 1: Show with Wade over at Canon Press.
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  Speaker 2: Wade, thank you so much for being here.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
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  Speaker 1: Well, Wade, I told you before the show that I've
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  Speaker 1: been watching your videos for a while now. They are
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  Speaker 1: so excellent, so in-depth. I hope that everybody goes and
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  Speaker 1: checks out the work that you've been doing, your podcast,
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  Speaker 1: on your ex as well. If you look him up
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  Speaker 1: on X, he posts them all there too. These are
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  Speaker 1: these clips.
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  Speaker 2: They're informative. They're kind of funny.
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  Speaker 1: And you did an excellent video about the judiciary branch
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  Speaker 1: a while back, back in 2024. And we actually played
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  Speaker 1: it on the show because it was just that good.
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  Speaker 1: And even though it was from a little bit ago,
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  Speaker 1: it's so relevant to today. You have the Supreme Court
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  Speaker 1: overstepping its constitutional role at this time, halting Trump's lawful
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  Speaker 1: deportation efforts under the Alien Enemies Act. And this, of course,
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  Speaker 1: violates Article II by interfering with the president's exclusive power
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  Speaker 1: to enforce immigration laws.
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  Speaker 2: It's just more judiciary overreach.
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  Speaker 1: You have just the courts blocking executive action, reinterpreting laws
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  Speaker 1: beyond the text, positioning themselves as sort of the supreme overlords.
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  Speaker 2: I think you refer to them as the sovereigns.
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  Speaker 1: And this is not what the founders had in mind.
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  Speaker 1: And Wade, you're somebody who has a really deep, really,
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  Speaker 1: really thoughtful take on what did the founders have in mind.
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  Speaker 1: And I want to just get your overview here of
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  Speaker 1: What has changed from the beginning of our republic to
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  Speaker 1: now with the judiciary branch?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, the judiciary branch was intended not to exert any
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  Speaker 3: kind of legal– they're not intended to legislate. They're intended
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  Speaker 3: to essentially just say what the law says. And we
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  Speaker 3: need that. We need somebody to be able to interpret it.
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  Speaker 3: But they're not there to enforce anything. And that's a
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  Speaker 3: key piece of this. And they're also not there to
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  Speaker 3: legislate anything. And what happens is what's happened now is
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  Speaker 3: that leftist judges come in and they think of themselves,
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  Speaker 3: even if they wouldn't say so, as activists. So they're
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  Speaker 3: here to get across. They have a progressive end. And
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  Speaker 3: whatever the law says, their job is to interpret it
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  Speaker 3: in such a way that it comes across and is
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  Speaker 3: consistent with their opinion. worldview. So the judiciary is, is
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  Speaker 3: something that can, can function well, uh, but hasn't functioned
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  Speaker 3: well for a very long time. And they'll interpret things
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  Speaker 3: not in light of the original constitution or what founders
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  Speaker 3: would have liked, uh, but what their new constitution, their
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  Speaker 3: progressive constitution says. And then on the other side, you
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  Speaker 3: have the conservatives who think of themselves as originalists. And
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  Speaker 3: so the originalists, the tough part about that is that
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  Speaker 3: originalists can be, uh, bullied very easily. So, uh, originalists, if,
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  Speaker 3: if you go back into, uh, If somebody says, well,
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  Speaker 3: I'm here to interpret the text, I'm here to bring
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  Speaker 3: that text to the modern world, that also is a
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  Speaker 3: pretty slippery place to be. Because if people are committed
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  Speaker 3: to the original interpretation, they're also in a social group
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  Speaker 3: full of people who are trying to press the other direction.
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  Speaker 3: And the worst thing emotionally that you can call a
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  Speaker 3: conservative judge, the thing that a conservative judge doesn't want
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  Speaker 3: to hear is that you are a Trump loyalist. that
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  Speaker 3: you are a conservative activist. They want to get as
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  Speaker 3: far away from that as possible. And so the bullying
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  Speaker 3: tactic is to grab those people by their fears. I'm
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  Speaker 3: afraid of being called an activist, and so I will
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  Speaker 3: just go along with the other side activists and try
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  Speaker 3: to call myself an originalist at the same time. So
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  Speaker 3: you've got both of those dynamics going, and that's where
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  Speaker 3: the leftward drift of courts ends up happening. So even
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  Speaker 3: if somebody is appointed by a conservative president, That person
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  Speaker 3: still has the social group pressure to go along with
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  Speaker 3: whatever the conservatives, whatever the progressives want. And it's kind
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  Speaker 3: of inevitable, honestly, that there's not something in the Constitution
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  Speaker 3: that tells us what to do when a president brings
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  Speaker 3: in 20 million illegals. There's just not a clear example
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  Speaker 3: of that. We have the Alien Enemies Act, and I'm
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  Speaker 3: thankful for that. But a lot of the time, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: you're having to pick between a bunch of things that
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  Speaker 3: were not intended to address this specific moment. And so
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  Speaker 3: really what we're having now is a conflict between who's
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  Speaker 3: in charge. So when you get to these exceptions, when
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  Speaker 3: you get to these times where, well, there's no clear
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  Speaker 3: rule one way or the other, then somebody has to
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  Speaker 3: pick and then somebody has to enforce. And so whoever
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  Speaker 3: picks and is able to enforce that is the person
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  Speaker 3: who's left with the sovereignty. So right now, it looks
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  Speaker 3: like we've been able to we've been going along with
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  Speaker 3: the judges for a long time. So they've functioned like
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  Speaker 3: the sovereigns. What I would hope is that Trump can
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  Speaker 3: reassert himself as the sovereign in this situation, as the
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  Speaker 3: person who is able to, again, pick what to do
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  Speaker 3: and then also enforce it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think you make a great point about
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  Speaker 1: the dynamics of the court right now, because I think
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  Speaker 1: for decades, you're right, conservatives have believed that just simply
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  Speaker 1: appointing constitutionalists or originalists, the bench would preserve the rule
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  Speaker 1: of law and would restrain judicial activism. And the idea was,
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  Speaker 1: like you said, pick judges, who respect the tax of
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  Speaker 1: the Constitution, and they'll naturally uphold limited government, executive authority,
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  Speaker 1: national sovereignty. That has not happened. It has not worked
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  Speaker 1: out that way. What should the new strategy be when
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  Speaker 1: we're picking judges? Because it becomes very uncomfortable for a
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  Speaker 1: lot of conservatives to say, well, we have to meet
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  Speaker 1: the left-wing activism with something stronger than just originalists.
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  Speaker 2: But clearly what we're doing right now is not working.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 3: And I agree something stronger than originalism. Originalism is great
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  Speaker 3: because it shows some amount of affection for the work
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  Speaker 3: of the founders. So what we all want is judges
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  Speaker 3: who love America and want to preserve it. And so
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  Speaker 3: going beyond originalism would be just a stronger version of originalism,
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  Speaker 3: not necessarily just looking for just kind of haggling over
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  Speaker 3: words in court rulings, but in fact going, okay, what
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  Speaker 3: is the best way to preserve the country? When I
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  Speaker 3: don't have a clear ruling, when I don't have a
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  Speaker 3: clear directive, what should I, what should I, what I
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  Speaker 3: should do is then look for what's the best outcome, what, what,
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  Speaker 3: what preserves the country. And so if, if at some level, if,
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  Speaker 3: if the, if your ruling ends up saying something that
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  Speaker 3: would be entirely foreign to the founders, which would be,
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  Speaker 3: it's okay if 20 million people are here. And if
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  Speaker 3: 20 million people come within four or five years, and
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  Speaker 3: we have to treat each one of them exactly the
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  Speaker 3: same way we would treat an American citizen who was
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  Speaker 3: pulled over for speeding over 15 miles an hour over
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  Speaker 3: the speed limit. It's a different sort of thing. And
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  Speaker 3: the judges, they should have some amount of affection for
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  Speaker 3: the country and also clarity on, again, this is not
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  Speaker 3: just a minor infraction. These are people who have expressly
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  Speaker 3: disobeyed the laws to come here. And we can't act
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  Speaker 3: as if there are only 10 or 15 of them.
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  Speaker 3: Having 10 or 15 illegals and then having 20 million
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  Speaker 3: of them The process has to look different and having
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  Speaker 3: some amount of not pragmatism, but pragmatic understanding of this.
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  Speaker 3: This is a different sort of thing. And I don't
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  Speaker 3: know how you test for that. I think that's that's
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  Speaker 3: the struggle here. So you can you can have somebody
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  Speaker 3: who comes in and says, I am an originalist. I
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  Speaker 3: love the Constitution. I can recite pieces of it back
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  Speaker 3: and say what it means, all that sort of stuff.
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  Speaker 3: But it's really hard to test for loyalty. And it's
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  Speaker 3: hard to loyalty. I mean, to America, it's hard to
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  Speaker 3: test for loyalty and wisdom. in being able to, again,
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  Speaker 3: discern what the right thing to do is. Again, I'm
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  Speaker 3: a Christian, and so when I see, there are occasions
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  Speaker 3: where Solomon asked for wisdom, and the wisdom that he
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  Speaker 3: got was being able to tell the difference between the
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  Speaker 3: right and the wrong thing when there wasn't a clear law.
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  Speaker 3: So the key example of the women bringing a baby
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  Speaker 3: and arguing over which baby it is Solomon didn't look
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  Speaker 3: up a passage from Deuteronomy to figure out what the
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  Speaker 3: right thing to do was. What he did was he
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  Speaker 3: exercised wisdom that was consistent with the biblical and the
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  Speaker 3: things that he had received directly from God. And so
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  Speaker 3: I think that that's a pattern is how do you
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  Speaker 3: test for wisdom? I don't know the answer to that question,
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  Speaker 3: but that is the thing that we have to look
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  Speaker 3: for and have to have.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And part of what I
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  Speaker 1: think burns so much about the decisions that the court
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  Speaker 1: has been making as of late is there doesn't seem
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  Speaker 1: to be a concern for the actual citizens of this country.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you have this overnight ruling halting deportation efforts
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  Speaker 1: under the Alien Enemies Act. And others have pointed out,
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  Speaker 1: especially on X, there was nobody stepping in when you
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  Speaker 1: had churches forcibly shuttered during the COVID lockdowns. There was
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  Speaker 1: no one stepping in for the January Sixers who were
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  Speaker 1: held in solitary confinement, evidence hidden from their lawyers. Why
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  Speaker 1: do you think we are seeing these these originalist judges
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  Speaker 1: who allegedly are just looking out for the Constitution, seemingly
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  Speaker 1: abandoning the American people. We're really preoccupied with due process
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  Speaker 1: for illegal migrants. But when it comes to actual constitutional
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  Speaker 1: rights of American citizens, there doesn't seem to be a
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  Speaker 1: care in the world.
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: And I think that's why the I don't really care,
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  Speaker 3: Margaret moment from J.D. Vance was so refreshing for people.
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  Speaker 3: So she said she had a bunch of concerns about Well,
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  Speaker 3: maybe he was properly vetted. They were talking about one
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  Speaker 3: particular guy. He was properly vetted, but he hadn't committed
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  Speaker 3: a crime before. And she got into the weeds about
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  Speaker 3: this particular guy. And he said, I don't really care.
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  Speaker 3: I don't want that guy in my country. I want
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  Speaker 3: other people in my country. And so I'd like to
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  Speaker 3: think about things in terms of my priorities and what
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  Speaker 3: I want and what I don't want. And that's something
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  Speaker 3: that is entirely foreign, I think, to most people who
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  Speaker 3: call themselves conservatives. I think the conservatives tend to think
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  Speaker 3: of themselves as, well, I'm here to– I don't have
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  Speaker 3: any things I want. What I technically want or don't
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  Speaker 3: want doesn't matter. I'm committed to the text of a
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  Speaker 3: document and not necessarily what that document was meant to preserve.
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  Speaker 3: The document itself, the document of the Constitution and all
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  Speaker 3: these legal rulings that we want to appeal to had
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  Speaker 3: certain priorities in mind. Knowing what those priorities are and
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  Speaker 3: carrying those priorities forward is as important as interpreting, again,
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  Speaker 3: the words that are on the page. Again, J.D. Vance
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  Speaker 3: is not a person who you couldn't accuse him of
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  Speaker 3: being somebody who doesn't care about the right thing to do.
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  Speaker 3: But what he didn't care about was somebody trying to
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  Speaker 3: haggle over words when the priorities are clear. I don't
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  Speaker 3: want a violent criminal in my country. And what I
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  Speaker 3: want is American citizens to feel safe. And if we
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  Speaker 3: can't make that kind of distinction, then I don't know
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  Speaker 3: why we would call ourselves conservatives. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And I love the point.
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  Speaker 1: I think it was Stephen Miller who was in the
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  Speaker 1: Oval Office talking to, to, to the CNN reporters saying,
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  Speaker 1: would you.
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  Speaker 2: Want this guy as your neighbor? Like I, I wouldn't.
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  Speaker 1: And you have to keep reality checking everyone because there's
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  Speaker 1: so many lies being spewed by, by the media right
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  Speaker 1: now about what are the circumstances of these deportations? Oh,
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  Speaker 1: he's a Maryland man. Well, he's not a Maryland man.
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  Speaker 1: He's actually an illegal migrant. So he's, he can't be
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  Speaker 1: a Maryland man. And he's a, he's, he's, he's an,
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  Speaker 1: he's an illegal migrant who is a potential MS-13 gang
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  Speaker 1: member who also beat up his wife.
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  Speaker 2: Like, do you want this guy as your neighbor?
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  Speaker 1: And we are constantly having to, I think, reality check
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  Speaker 1: everyone because there's just so many lies being spewed about
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  Speaker 1: this issue. And the priorities seem to be so whack
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  Speaker 1: from judges, from members of Congress, from the media apparatus.
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  Speaker 1: And there's just no care in the world for actual
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  Speaker 1: citizens of this country. And there's a question about morality, right?
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  Speaker 1: Like what What is the role of government? Is it
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  Speaker 1: to protect the due process of an illegal MS-13 gang member?
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  Speaker 2: Or is it to protect the people of this nation?
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  Speaker 1: And you'll see people like, I don't know what flavor
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  Speaker 1: of Christianity you are, Wade.
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  Speaker 2: I'm a Catholic.
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  Speaker 1: And it's been very frustrating to have seen the late
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  Speaker 1: Pope Francis weigh in on immigration issues and seem to
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  Speaker 1: suggest that we have a moral obligation to let in
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  Speaker 1: anybody into this country because we have to protect the
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  Speaker 1: refugees and we have to be, I don't know, it
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  Speaker 1: seems like we should just have open borders from his
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  Speaker 1: interpretation of the way our government should deal with immigrants.
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  Speaker 1: And I think ancient Christianity has, Thomas Aquinas and St.
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  Speaker 1: Augustine have said over and over, actually the role of
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  Speaker 1: leaders is to protect the people, to actually preserve not
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  Speaker 1: just the welfare, the economic stability, But even the cultural
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  Speaker 1: identity of a people, which seems to be really lost
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  Speaker 1: in the globalist, morally relative world that.
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  Speaker 2: We live in now.
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: I think that a lot of the conflict is what
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  Speaker 3: happens when people try to move from particulars. So you
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  Speaker 3: talked about there's this particular guy who did these particular things.
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  Speaker 3: He beat up his wife. He's an MS-13 guy. And
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  Speaker 3: then everybody wants to move from that into immigrants in theory.
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  Speaker 3: So what is– refugees in theory. And then Stephen Miller
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  Speaker 3: comes along or J.D. Vance comes along and says, well,
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  Speaker 3: this guy did this. How do you feel about this?
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  Speaker 3: And so anytime you have a general theory that can
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  Speaker 3: be entirely disrupted by a specific example, then your theory
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  Speaker 3: either doesn't hold water or you're generalizing wrong. So you're
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  Speaker 3: picking– they're just picking the sob stories and then going, oh,
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  Speaker 3: that's what I would like to– to be representative of
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  Speaker 3: the entire conversation around immigration. But it's not entire, you
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  Speaker 3: have to be able to, again, make the distinction between
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  Speaker 3: this kind of person and this kind of person. And
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  Speaker 3: however you feel about the differences between the illegal who
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  Speaker 3: has especially, again, like done horrible things like MS-13 or
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  Speaker 3: the person who came here hoping for a better life
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  Speaker 3: for her child or whatever. Both of those people have
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  Speaker 3: broken our laws and we have to treat them Yes,
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  Speaker 3: there are differences between them, but they have in common
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  Speaker 3: that they're okay with breaking U.S.
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  Speaker 1: Law.
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  Speaker 3: And that's not something, again, something that I would like
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  Speaker 3: to have in my country. But it's foreign, I think,
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  Speaker 3: for some people to think of America as having any
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  Speaker 3: kind of interests, thinking of America as having something that
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  Speaker 3: it wants and something that it doesn't want, rather than
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  Speaker 3: thinking of it as being a sort of open opportunity
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  Speaker 3: playing field for anybody who happens to want to come here.
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  Speaker 3: America is a particular place that has a history and values,
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  Speaker 3: and those values are not entirely universal. Again, being a Christian,
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  Speaker 3: I believe that certain things are universal. I think that
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  Speaker 3: there are universal truths. I think there are universal standards
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  Speaker 3: that we have for people. But we shouldn't read those
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  Speaker 3: on to people and assume, well, these are just people
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  Speaker 3: who have the same values as I want and as
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  Speaker 3: I do. And how do I know that? Well, because
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: they came over near me. So transporting someone from one
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  Speaker 3: place to another doesn't instill those values, and it doesn't
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  Speaker 3: mean that they want the same things that you want
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  Speaker 3: for your country. Our country is something, again, that developed organically.
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  Speaker 3: It's a human thing, and it's extremely complicated. And if
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  Speaker 3: you try to reduce that to just geography, or if
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: you try to reduce that, again, to just ideology, or
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  Speaker 3: even being able to have an oath to the Constitution
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  Speaker 3: or say that you love America, All of those things are, again,
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  Speaker 3: not what makes America America. And many of these people
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  Speaker 3: who come over and we ask them to take an oath,
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  Speaker 3: even then, oaths don't mean the same thing to some
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  Speaker 3: cultures as they do to ours. And we have to, again,
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  Speaker 3: budget for that, that there are differences and cultural things
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  Speaker 3: that we think of as universal, but are really actually
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  Speaker 3: pretty American and in some ways pretty Christian culture. that
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  Speaker 3: we want to preserve those things. And we don't, again,
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  Speaker 3: we don't want to relativize them or try to zoom
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  Speaker 3: out and go, well, in theory, immigration should be X, Y,
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  Speaker 3: and Z and build this utopia in our heads. We're
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: not utopians. What we are is if we want to
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: be conservatives, then we have to think about what the
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  Speaker 3: thing is that we want to conserve. And that thing
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  Speaker 3: is America.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it seems like the fundamental question that you're grappling with,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: that we grapple with on this show is what is America?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: What does it mean to be an American? You've done
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  Speaker 1: some great videos trying to tackle this. Are we a
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  Speaker 1: nation of immigrants or are we a nation of settlers
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  Speaker 1: is something that you talked about. Also tackling Vivek Ramaswamy,
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  Speaker 1: who has been, he's running for governor and he's been saying, well,
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  Speaker 1: you know, if you just pass a civics test or
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: you'd make an oath, then you're an American citizen. And
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  Speaker 1: America is defined by educational excellence. And it sort of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: feels very meaningless. What is America? Who are we as
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  Speaker 1: a people? Can you try to tackle that for us
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  Speaker 1: a little bit, Wade? Because this is a problem that
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: we're seeing not just on the left who says, like,
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  Speaker 1: we're nothing. Like, we're a salad bowl and America is
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: just basically meaningless. It's a hodgepodge of everything in the world.
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  Speaker 1: But then also people on the political right who will say, well,
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  Speaker 1: America is just an idea and nothing more.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that Vivek will highlight the idea piece
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: and maybe a gesture to and say, yeah, yeah, it's
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: a people and yeah, it's a place. Um, but what
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: really is important and the thing that unites us is
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: the ideas. Uh, the problem is that people can have
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: ideas anywhere in the world. Uh, and that doesn't mean
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: that those, that they came, that they became Americans. Um,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: but America itself and what I don't want to do is, um, have, okay,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: the left says it's nothing. And then Vivek comes along
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: with a sort of rationalistic, uh, definition of it. I
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: don't want to answer either one of those with a
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: different rationalistic definition. So that would be a mistake of
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: category and would actually rob us of quite a bit
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: of the conversation. Because America itself is something, again, that
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: develops over time and we have an organic relationship to it.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: And so in the same way that if I tried
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: to define my mom, that would be really difficult. So
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: I say this in one of my videos. And if
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: somebody else tried to define my mom, again, somebody I
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: have an organic relationship with, and then I could recognize
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: maybe they got something wrong or if they left something
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: important out. But I may not have a ready definition
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: that would satisfy some kind of dictionary definition of her.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: But I know her, and I come from her. And
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: that's much more like the relationship that the average American
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: has to the country of its birth. And so what
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: we have to include, and at least, again, I want
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: to do a rationalistic definition. What we have to include, though, is, yes,
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: the ideas, of course, the ideas. And a lot of
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: those ideas are religious ideas. But also we have to
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: include our particular history. So religious ideas, those, again, I
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: believe that Christianity is true universally and the church is
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: a universal thing. But what I believe about our particular
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: place is that it has a history. It has expressed
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: itself in a particular way. And so you have to
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: have room for stuff like an affection for the history
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: of the American Revolution, an affection for the statues that
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: we see, All of those things are things that you
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: can't really rationalize and you can't put on a PowerPoint presentation,
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: but are real. And acknowledging that all of those things
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: are more real or as real as the ideas are,
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: things that you can write down, is an important piece
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: of this. So I hope that it's not a tidy definition,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: but what I want to do is just say it's
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: much more complicated and that's a good thing.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I'll say this too, Wade. There's this idea
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that I think that there's a cultural memory that's been
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: lost in both of these sort of competing views of
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: what is America.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And I think it's good to say, you know what?
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: A family that's been.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Here for generations, my former boss, Sean Davis at The Federalist,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: we found out we're cousins, distant cousins, because we're both
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: descended from the same guy who came over in the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: 1600s and landed in Connecticut. And there is a cultural
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: memory that I think other countries are able to have
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: because they have a deeper understanding of who they are
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: than we have now in America. We should be able
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: to look to people who have been here for generations
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and say, okay, what does it mean to be an American?
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: What has your family experienced over the years? What does
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: that look like? And we don't seem to ask that
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: question anymore because a lot of people on the left
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and the right seem to think that it doesn't matter because, again,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: we're just an economic zone or we're a salad bowl
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: or whatever the definition is. And that seems to have
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: failed us, I think, ultimately. I think it's made us
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: a lot more divisive as a country. We don't understand
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: who we are. We kind of seem almost purposeless. And
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: feeding into that is something else that you've said that
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: was kind of stark, went viral a while ago. You
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: said the Constitution is dead and that the republic that
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: we used to have is no longer there anymore. What
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: do you mean by that, Wade? What is this country
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: that we're living in and how has it so dramatically
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: changed from the nation that we were originally born with?
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think that we're still
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: living in the same America that the founding fathers instituted.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Clearly, that's not the case.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: Right. I think there are two key pieces of my
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: argument there. One of them is the question of what
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: is a constitution? Written constitutions usually come after quite a
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: bit of life has been lived and quite a bit
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: of standards have already been set. And so the unwritten constitution,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: the thing that united the people of the colonies as
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: much as they were united, was something that, again, developed
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: and wasn't ever, nobody figured that they needed to codify it.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: And then afterward, this written constitution came to try to
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: write down, these are the things that we want to preserve.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: This is the particular kind of government that we'd like
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: to build to preserve this thing that we've already built,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: this life, this culture, these ways of being. And so
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: at some level, we can look back and go, okay,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: all of the priorities, all the things that built the
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: reasons that people came here, the cultural mainstream that built
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: the Constitution is something that we are at least very,
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: very far away from. And it's very different from our
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: current cultural mainstream. And so I think that's one key
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: piece of it. But the other part of it is, yes,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: the governmental aspect of it. In France, at least they're
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: honest about talking about they have different republics. But we
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: tend to think that, oh, there's one continual thing because
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: we've never named a new republic. But really, in actuality,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: there are huge key moments in the sense that the
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Articles of Confederation, that's a huge key moment where a
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: certain written law was there. And the Constitution Declaration, that's
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: another key, the Constitution being another key moment there. But
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: also things like the Civil War, that's places where a
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: huge amount of our, the way we thought about states,
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: the way we thought about how the states related to
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: federal government, that's a huge shift and something that would be, again,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: a different way of answering that than quite a few
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: of the founders would have. And then after that, we
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: have stuff that goes all the way up into FDR.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: So FDR being somebody who essentially recreated the executive branch
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: and operated it in the way that we now recognize
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: as the presidency. So the presidency itself, nobody has had
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: the level of power of FDR in their presidency. Essentially,
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: FDR created this entire wing around him that then really
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: runs the government and then everything else just kind of
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: follows in line. And then also we have the civil
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: rights regime, which is its own sort of part of
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: the story. where everything is, and Christopher Caldwell, who wrote
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: a great book called The Age of Entitlement, talked about
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: how the civil rights regime basically functioned as a second constitution,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: to which a lot of these, again, we're talking about justices,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: so which a lot of these justices now feel more
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: loyalty to than the original constitution. And so you've got
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: basically these two parallel constitutions, one of which is the
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: de facto constitution, the one that everybody's actually abiding by.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: And then you've got the de jure constitution, the one
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: that everybody says, oh, that's, the Constitution of the United States.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: So there are plenty of legal transformations that have happened.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: And so what I was trying to do in that
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: video is not say, oh, there's no hope. What I
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: wanted to say in that video is that we've had
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: a huge number of transformations. And we can say we
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: have affection for the founding. We can say we have
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: affection for the Constitution. We just have to know that
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: in order to have something even resembling the Constitution, we
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: have to have a different we have to build something
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: that's much more like the culture of the people who
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: created the original Constitution, and we would have to leapfrog,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: peel back, and do quite a bit of work. John Adams,
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: and I'll end on this, sorry about my long rant,
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: but John Adams said that the Constitution was written for
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: a moral and religious people, and it is incapable, I'm
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: probably messing the wording up here, incapable of governing any other.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: And so if we are not a moral and religious people,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: the logical argument, the logical deduction from that is that
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: the Constitution is not designed to govern the kind of
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: people that we've become. And my heart breaks for that.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: But we have to recognize we're in a different time now.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: And that originalism, why that could be dangerous is that
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: we're looking at a document that was designed to govern
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: people who were way better than we were. And what
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: I want is I want us to become those better people.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: But until then, it's going to be a major struggle
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: between people who think that we can just slap a
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: constitution onto a people that it wasn't designed to govern.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Well, I think you brought up a great point in
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: that video where you said, you know, a healthy society
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't need a law against trancing kids. But we need
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: that now because you're right, we're not a moral and
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: religious people. And the Constitution isn't working for us because
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: our Constitution wasn't meant for us. We're a completely different
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: people than we were back then, just.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Even with our values.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: And I wonder, Wade, I think we're descending into a
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: very post-Christian era. I think I would call it a
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: pagan era. At the same time, I am noticing a
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: resurgence in, or maybe more a desire for tradition among
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: young people, especially people turning to traditional Catholicism, to orthodoxy,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: just being more faithful in general, because I think young
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: people are just reacting to the despair of modern times.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, they've had their friends be trans. They can't
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: have a normal sexual relationship. The whole internet sphere is
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: saturated with pornography and disorder, and everything feels very bleak.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: And so they are naturally, I think, turning a subset
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: of young people, turning toward tradition. Do you see this
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: as something to be hopeful about? Is there something there?
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Or are we still, I think, heading for very dark
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: times in a post-Christian pagan world?
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: I think you're exactly right that there is a huge shift.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: And what makes me see that there is that is
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: because a lot of the world that young people have
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: grown up in is fake and everything that they see
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: is recent. So they recognize that everything that they've been
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: fed over the course of their entire lives, is really
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: easy to tear down. So the fact that people are
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: able to manipulate markets, like the GameStop thing that happened
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, like the fact that people
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: can entirely mess up those things, and the fact that
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: you can build meme coins that make you much more
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: money much more fast than any real asset, anything that
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: adds real value to the world, they're recognizing, okay, this
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: is all fake. And all the systems that everybody told
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: me were fake, real and permanent, not just real, but permanent,
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: are actually really easy to push through. It's all paper.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: And so when they push to the other side of that,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: they hope that there's something on the other side, that
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: there's something that's a little bit more permanent. And so
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: what I see in this is people knowing, hey, everything
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: that's recent, everything, this kind of phony world that has
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: been built up around me that I've been told is
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: the real world. I see the fakeness of it. And
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: then wanting to seek something that's been around for a
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: lot longer. Surely there's something that's been that is older
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: and more sturdy than a TikTok video. Surely there's there's
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: some kind of more moving aspect of humanity than the
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: thing that just got thrown to me in my newsfeed.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: And so I think that that's the hunger that people
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: have is something that at some level is like created
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: by living online for a long time. And I think
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: that that's it's a healthy response. The trouble is one
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: one bump I see. is that the psychology of these
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: people is built around recency bias and built around short
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: attention spans. So my hope is that as they... So
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: if somebody is used to a pure entertainment diet of
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: something that's one minute or less, and then they go
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: in and they try to read Shakespeare or try to
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: read the Bible and open those things, their brains have
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: not been trained to really drink deep from something. It's
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: like the first time somebody tries whiskey It's just, what
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: is this? What am I doing? And if you're used
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: to drinking milk and soda and all those kinds of things,
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: then whiskey is going to hit you really funny. It's
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: going to hit you really weird. And you're going to go,
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: I have no categories for this. So my hope is
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: that people can recognize, oh, this is an acquired taste
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: and it's good for me. And it actually may help
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: me personally in the long run. But also, I'm not
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: just thinking about me. I'm not just thinking about my
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: entertainment habits or what strikes me as funny or interesting
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: right away, but something that can save the world, something
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: that can actually rebuild the thing that I want to exist.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: And I think that's different from most people in the past.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: So I think that in the 20th century, there was
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: this kind of– that's when I think the paper world
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: was built. So a lot of the fake phony stuff
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: came about and everybody was told it was permanent. But then, yeah,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: as you get to the end of that, people want
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: something older. And I think that's really promising. And my
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: hope is that those people find good leaders who love
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: them and who want to give them something, again, that
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: they may not be used to, but that actually, again,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: could save them and save their country and save the world.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the attention span thing is a huge problem.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: And I have, I've talked about this, but at length
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: a little, at length that I worry that Because a
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: lot of this is happening online, just the fact that
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of the new right, the young, new populist
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: right is an online movement, that that also can play
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: into it shifting dramatically. Maybe we're going to get populist
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: leftism really soon. And whenever that happens, a lot of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: people die. So it's a little bit scary. But the
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: vibe shift is real. You are seeing young people turn
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to the political right. Every demo of four Gen Z, black, white, male, woman, brown,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter. They are more conservative than their millennial counterparts.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: They're anti-foreign war, anti-globalist, anti-corporate, I think like corporate monopolies specifically, anti-establishment.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: They're leaning into nationalism. They're leaning into tradition, into masculinity.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: There's this embrace of, like I said, traditional Catholicism or orthodoxy.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: But it's also mixed in with meme warfare and irony
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: and post-liberal realism and And there's a lot of people
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: who are concerned about this. Not that they can't go
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: deep because of the attention spans. The concern is just
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: at its face with this type of right wing that
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: is emerging among young people. And so you're seeing them
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: kind of smeared as woke white is a term that
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: people will use to describe them. And they're deeply, more
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: establishment right wingers are deeply concerned by the way that
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: young people seem to be rejecting liberalism.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Do you share that concern? What do you.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: See with the way young people are viewing the world
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and expressing themselves in the political right that's so different
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: from conservatives of the past?
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm at some level heartened by it because I'm
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: not a liberal. I don't love liberalism and I don't
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: want to preserve it forever. But I also understand that
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: no matter what, you're getting a bunch of people who
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: have a lot of energy and are very passionate, and
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: that's a good thing. That passion does have to be
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: channeled at some level. And the channeling that it comes from,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: one piece of trouble that I see with this is
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: that the anti-authority aspect of this whole thing is key
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: and big. But then when somebody shifts from trusting one
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: particular authority, even if it was a conservative authority, to
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: trusting somebody else within that, the, you, you bring yourself
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: wherever you go. So like wherever, wherever you go, there
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: you are. Um, and so when, when you get to
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: this new place, you are still the same person who
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: didn't trust authority. And so at some level you, you
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: have all the same instincts that at some point you
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: might turn on this person as well. I think that,
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: and I may be over-psychologizing this, but I think it
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: has to do with the weakness of fatherhood in the world.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: So nobody has had, very few people have had a
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: relationship with their father that where they can, uh, benefit
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: from him and maybe be able to disagree with him
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: or be able to grow in a somewhat different direction,
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: but value the movement, everything that they gave to you.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: And so having a healthy relationship with a father teaches
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: you how to have a healthy relationship with any kind
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: of authority. And so when you shift from authority figure
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: to authority figure, I think that what people are wanting
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: is somebody who has all the answers. And so there
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: are plenty of people who loved Jordan Peterson, and then
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: turned on jordan peterson uh as soon as again like
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: i and i i was not somebody who kept up
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: with him i haven't read his books or anything but
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: people love jordan peterson and then they turned totally against
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: him and hate the guy which i mean again i
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: disagree i agree with most of their criticisms of him
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: uh but i think that at some level there's there's
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: the psychology piece of the guy who um I don't know.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: If somebody were to come to me and say, hey,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: I've got this– I met this great girl. She's amazing.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: I'm buying her a ring. It's going to be amazing.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: And then I come and talk to him a couple
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: months later and I say, hey, man, how's it going
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: with so-and-so? And he says, oh, yeah, she was terrible.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: Turns out she was insane. And I found this new girl.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: She's actually amazing. You know, I was buying– I was
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: shopping for rings. Now I bought the ring and I'm
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: actually going to give it to her. I would go
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: like– maybe I would have a couple of questions, right?
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: So I would go, okay, like you may be right.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: it may actually be true that this first girl was crazy,
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: but I would ask the question. I would say, what happened?
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: What went on there? And then, okay, what's different? Is
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: there something different or is it just a guy who
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: can't commit? And I think that that's something that we
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: have to be able to acknowledge. It's okay to shift.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: It's okay to shift quickly. And I may prefer the
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: second shift. I may prefer the shift that people are
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: on now. What I want to acknowledge though is that
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: The psychological sturdiness and the emotional stability that it takes
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: to stick with authority is tough. That's actually something that
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: if to have a healthy relationship with a church or
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: any kind of authority figure or with a job, you
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: don't want to be the kind of person who just
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: finds has bad service at every restaurant they go to. Oh,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: it just so happens that every restaurant I go to,
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: the waiter, the waiters are all terrible and nothing actually
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: is my fault. Um, that's, that's a really poisonous kind
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: of psychology. So, and, and by in saying that it's not,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: I'm not against these people. What I would hope is that, um,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: they would just recognize it's going to take a while
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: for me to be, uh, at home here. And for
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: me being at home in the Christian tradition is going
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: to be me assuming I'm wrong about most things in
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: my life rather than assuming, oh, here I am. I'm
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: here to bring my, uh, you know, I'm, I'm now
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: going to revolutionize, uh, If somebody becomes a Catholic and says, well,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: the church really now has a real warrior now that
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: I've joined, that's not a great place to be.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll say I think you're touching on something so
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: accurate about the new right. It's that we have been
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: lied to, especially if you're a young person.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: If you're somebody who.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Missed your prom, missed your senior year of sports, And
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: then you go off and you realize, oh, the lockdowns
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: were pointless and the masks didn't work and the vaccines
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: didn't work. And you feel so lied to because literally
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: everyone in your life, your teachers, the government, the health bureaucrats,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: maybe your parents were saying, oh, this is real. You
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: got to mask up. You can't go to school. And
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: then you realize, oh my goodness, I was lied to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: when I missed out on these key years of my life.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And what does that make you feel? Well, it just
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: It makes you feel like you can't trust anybody. And
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: it makes you hate authority. And understandably so. I mean,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: we've been lied to so many times on so many issues,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: not just COVID, but the Russia hoax, the Hunter Biden
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: laptop story, the Covington Catholic school boys and Brett Kavanaugh.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: You can just go on and on forever. Every single
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: scandal that.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: They've ginned up oftentimes has turned out to be just
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: a lie. And what that does psychologically, again, it makes
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: you not trust anything. It makes you hate authority.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: But ultimately, if.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: You're an authentic conservative or if you're a Christian, you
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: want to have a civilization. You want to have institutions.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: You just want them to be healthy ones. And so
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: there's going to be, I think, a struggle, especially with
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: young people who have felt so deeply lied to for
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: so long that nothing is real, like you said, to
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: want to embrace real institutions, to want to actually rebuild
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: instead of just tear down. We're in a tear down
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: phase right now, it seems like. I mean, what Doge
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: is doing, just like taking a hatchet to the administrative
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: state it's great, we need to do it. But then
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: what comes after? And can we trust what comes after?
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: I think even George Washington struggled with this, right? You
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: had the colonies, now the states, after American independence, he
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: had to put down some uprisings because they had this inherent, like, well,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: we're just going to rise up again because we don't
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: like what the federal government is doing right now. And
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: that was under the Articles of Confederation, I believe. Maybe
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I'm getting my history wrong.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: You can check me on this, Wade.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: But I think that this is something that is going
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: to be a problem, um, potentially.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: And I hope that Gen.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Z leans into tradition and religion to sort of find
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: that moral grounding and authority that they can lean on
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: instead of just wanting to tear things down.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I'm not in the habit of, uh, getting
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: my moral lessons from Christopher Nolan movies, but there's, so
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Inception though, uh, there's, there's this time where, um, Leonardo
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: DiCaprio and he has his, this wife, he's trying to
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: convince his wife that the world that they're in right
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: now is a dream world, it's not real. And so
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: what he does is he implants that idea into her head.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: And then what he recognizes is that I've now implanted
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: this idea in her head and she can't get past it.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: That's the only, it comes to define her. So when
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: she wakes up and gets out of the dream world
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: and gets into the real world, she can't believe that
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: she's in the real world. And so she ends up,
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: I'm spoiling inception. It came out 15 years ago, but
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: she ends up killing herself because she thinks, oh, well,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: this isn't real because there's no real, and I'll just
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: continue to kill myself and then I'll rise up. But if,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: if there's nothing past it, if there's no real world,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: and if you can't get to the point where that, um,
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: doubting of everything, uh, if you can't get past that
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: defining you, uh, then yeah, that leaves you without a sale.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: It leaves you without any kind of direction. But there
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: is a real world. That's the encouraging thing. I don't
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: just have to do that as a psychological salve to
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: make myself feel better. There is a real world and
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: there's a real God. There are real things that we
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: want to preserve and we can do it, but we
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: have to believe in it. We have to think differently
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: about it than we thought about the fake world.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Yes. I want to talk about this real or fake
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: dynamic a little more deeply, but we're going to use
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: a hook that you did a video on recently. you
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: covered the Minecraft movie with Jack Black. Apparently it's a
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: horrible movie. Like everyone says it's terrible. It's dumb.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: It's got plot holes. It's completely meaningless. And yet it's
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: doing amazing in the box office.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: And it's become kind of this meme that people are
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: celebrating now. I want to, I'm going to just play
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: this video for you guys. It's a, it's a rundown
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of that you did, Wade, of all the reactions in
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: theater to this movie. So you guys can just get
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: an idea of what exactly has been this overwhelmingly positive
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: reaction to this very bad movie.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Take a listen.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: The memes came to life. In screenings, every time they
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: said a line from the trailer, this would happen.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: I'm Steve. Hi.
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: I'm Steve.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: These guys got kicked out for doing this.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: She's hot!
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: This person caught it from outside the theater. And this
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: screening got the cops called on them. Again, notice that
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: it's driven by high school and college age guys. Now
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: theaters are posting warnings and some aren't allowing minors in
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: by themselves. We've seen behavior like this in movie theaters before.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: The Star Wars prequels, the Harry Potter movies. But that
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: was all tinged with millennial sincerity. Millennials loved crappy movies earnestly.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: It's also different from something like The Room, because The
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: Room was a bad low-budget movie that you had to
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: hear about years afterward from your hip friend. This was
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: a multi-million dollar slopbuster, and it was a meme when
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: it was released.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: So a fascinating reaction to this movie, and it sort
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: of seems like the epitome of meta-modernism. Meta-modernism is this
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: cultural movement that seems to be replacing post-modernism, this sensibility
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that swings between sincerity and irony, hope and doubt, earnestness
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and skepticism. So where postmodernism is about deconstruction and irony
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: and cynicism, postmetamodernism does not reject that entirely.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: It kind of reacts to it.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: And instead of mocking everything, Gen Z tends to be
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: sort of earnestly engaging, but in a self-aware, tongue-in-cheek way.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: So the Minecraft movie reaction kind of seems to be
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: pure metamodern energy.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Your thoughts, Wade?
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that a lot of folks who went
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: to this movie have never, I don't know, I think
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: that when they go to movies, they're not expecting narrative depth.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: So they're not going to a movie expecting to be
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: challenged or expecting to actually have something that they could
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: react emotionally to. And so essentially what you do is
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: you just drum up the emotional response and go, okay,
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: I'm going to pretend I might as well have fun
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: with this, in other words. I might as well pretend
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: that I'm having a great time. I mean, you saw
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: this with people like getting in, wearing tuxedos to go
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: see the rise of Gru, Minions, the rise of Gru.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: And the thing is like, it's a natural response when again,
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: we were talking about this earlier, everything you've been given
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: is fake and you're supposed to react in a certain
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: way to it. People think that, like studios think that
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: if you give somebody something they recognize that you are
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: supposed to just like melt into a puddle because of
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: how excited you are. to see, oh, I played this
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: video game and now Jack Black's saying it on the screen.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: And so essentially what they're doing is just giving people
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: what they want. It's just, it's everybody going to, but
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: the difference, I could say this in the video, but
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: the difference between that and like The Room is that
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: The Room is something that you had to go find.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: That it was, the mainstream movies were pretty good when
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: everybody was making fun of The Room. But then you
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: had to go in this kind of dingy theater that
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: was showing The Room and then like, act like it
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: was the best thing in the world. This is a,
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: like it's happening. This is the $ 150 million movie that's
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: in every theater right now. Uh, and everybody, yeah, again,
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: just responds in this, uh, again, blend of irony with like,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: I like Minecraft and I'm ha I'm having a good
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: time right now. Um, the problem though, what I see
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: is that the studios have no way of interpreting that
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: they it's whatever they get, whatever the information they get
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: from this is just numbers. All they know is I
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: got a bunch of money. And maybe they got complaints
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: from the theaters. But how can the studio adjust to that?
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: And so what I assume is going to happen is
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: everybody's going to try to recreate the magic, to try
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: to go, hey, I'll just manufacture a meme ahead of time.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: And the question, I mean, I'm curious if this movie
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: was just doing that already. If this movie just knew, okay,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: it's going to be bad, and it doesn't have to
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: have any narrative depth to it. So we're just going
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: to lean into this is really bad. Have fun. But yeah,
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: I'm curious, again, like where the where the irony kicked in.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: Did it kick in just at the audience response or whatever?
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, imagine you're a guy who a
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: young guy, which was this is driven by. You're a
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: young guy who was in high school during COVID or
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: your graduation got canceled because of COVID. And then your
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: athletic scholarships to your university got canceled because of COVID.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: And then right after that, in comes Joe Biden, who
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: is supposed to be the leader of the free world.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: And he's a corpse that everybody has to wheel out
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: once in a while to tell a story. And that's
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: your vision of everything. It's your vision of who's in charge.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: And you recognize, again, everything's fake. Everything is paper. And so,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: all right, well, I don't know. I might as well
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: give everybody the reaction. I talk in the video a
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: little bit about growing up in school where in order
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: to stay sane, what you do is you just pretend
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: everything's amazing. Like that's at least one response. I was
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: a guy who would just sit in the back and complain.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: But some people, again, would like embrace and go like,
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: you know what, this standardized test pep rally, I'm going
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: to be the guy out in front. I'm going to
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: paint my body because I'm so excited about the like
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: 10th grade standardized test. And so like, again, it's just
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: a defense mechanism. It's like, well, I'm not I could
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: be miserable. I could sit over here and mope about
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: it like I did. Or you could embrace it. Have fun.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: It's going to be fine. Um, and so I, I
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: see it as some level as a healthy response. Again,
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: my hope is like that those people, Hey, if you're
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: dressed up in a tuxedo to go see minions, the
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: rise of grew, why not go to a symphony while
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: you're at it? You know, you're already dressed up really nice.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: Why not go to a really nice restaurant? Why not
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: take out a girl and, you know, meet her family,
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: you know, that kind of thing. Um, so the, the,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: at some level they're trying to find something that's You
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: might as well find something that's worth dressing up for.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: You might as well find something that's worth cheering for.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: My hope is that we can make things and that
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: we can have enough cultural touchstones that are like that,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: that are worth that kind of response.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: You brought up in that video you did about boys
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: at school joking about how hot a teacher was who
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: might be really old. There was a boy in my
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: school who did that and I loved him because he
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: was just the ultimate jokester. He made every boring situation
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: so fun. And he would joke about like the oldest,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: ugliest teachers being really.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: Hot all the time.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: And I do, I see there's something that's really endearing
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: about this that we live in.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Just like a very depressive world. Like modernity kind of sucks.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: And that's what postmodernism kind of just symbolized for everybody that.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: We There's no joy to be had. God is dead.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: It's a bleak world.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And suddenly you're seeing people ironically make joy out of
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the stupidity and these things that would usually make us
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: feel depressed, like a really bad movie about Minecraft. And
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: I think psychologically you can tell yourself, oh, well, I'm faking.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: But then if you do it enough times, it becomes real.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: And so I think a lot of times that you're
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: going into something like a Minecraft movie and it's joking
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: that it's a really bad movie, but you're joking and
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: saying it's great. And suddenly you start to kind of
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: get back a zest for life. There's an idealism that
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: comes back. There's a joy that comes back in metamodernism,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: in this sort of Gen Z meme culture that I
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: think is really beautiful because you might be joking and
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: it's kind of ironic at first and then suddenly it
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: actually becomes real.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: And that is what we need in modern life. That's
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: what we want to go back to.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: And so you see online there's a lot of jokes
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and memes about even Christianity and God. And sometimes that
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: might feel kind of sacrilegious. But there is something real
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: also happening. There is a real return to the truth
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: and to Christianity that is authentic and might start out
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: as irony and joking, but it becomes something much deeper
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: and more authentic.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: And I think that one, from the other end, it's
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: interesting to me to think about the challenges that this
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: gives to priests and pastors. So there are a bunch
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: of people who are coming in and they're refugees from
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: the fake world. So you have then these people who
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: are like their brains have been fried, but they're earnestly
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: excited about being a church. And so at some level,
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: it's almost like a mission, like these priests and pastors
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: who were raised in a different era and are used
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: to ministering to people who have a different kind of psychology.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: They're getting this rush people and then they have to
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: basically be yes excited about having them there and then
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: know how to minister to these people who recognize hey
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: sorry my brains been fried I don't really know what's
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: real what's not real but most of my life has
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: been been making fun of the fake stuff can you
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: and disciple these these young people and I see that
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: as like I think that there are priests and pastors
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: out there who know who love these people and want
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: to know want to uh minister to them uh but
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: it will be a challenge it's it's um imagine like
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: you can picture a time where a bunch of it's
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: i don't know maybe this is too stark of an
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: analogy but the imagine a bunch of like detransitioned people
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: if you're in a like metroplex and suddenly a bunch
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: of people become detransitioned and then they're having to come
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: to your they're coming to your church going hey i
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: need something i need give me some clarity Um, that
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: presents particular pastoral problems and you have to be ready
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: for those and you have to know, Hey, I might
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: have to be, uh, I have a pastor friend of
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: mine who said we should have D like churches should
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: start D transition funds, expecting that kind of thing to happen.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: But I think that no matter what, everybody who comes in,
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: people who come into a church, uh, after being in
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: an outside hostile culture, um, they hate modernism and they
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: are Comforted at some level by the critiques of postmodernism,
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: but they need something and and like you said, I
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: think that I think they're recognizing it They know what's
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: real and being the trustworthy teacher and being somebody who
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: knows hey There's gonna be some bumps here and they're good,
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: but they're all good and and that's part of the
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: ministering thing So I'll be really interested to see what
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: I'm a Protestant you're a Catholic and I think that
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: there are huge wings within that and geographically and denominationally
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: on my part. But I think that it'll be interesting
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: to see what parts of the church are ready for that,
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: are ready for those people who come in and what
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: those people turn out to be. I think that it
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: could be a really strong revival that, again, creates the
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: kind of country that I want to preserve.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you've made a video about this and I
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: want to touch on it because you said that actually
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: it's this idea of like a centrist approach to Christianity
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: is a really bad way of going about preaching or
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: being a pastor in the modern era.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: How does that.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Relate to these swarm of people coming and turning to
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Christianity and having this background of everything's fake and I
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: don't know what's real and maybe they have past trauma
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: like transgenderism or they've lived a life that's just completely broken.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: How should pastors be reacting in this time period when
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: there's so many of them who seem to be saying that,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Jesus is actually a model of centrism himself.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: And also I want to ask, does the sort of
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: mega church model sort of inherently incentivize this inoffensive conviction
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: that we're seeing from the Christianity? And I don't want
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: to hit on mega churches or anything and be controversial here,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: but I just, I wonder if there is a strain
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: of Christianity that's really failing to meet this moment?
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: It's a great question. I think that there have been
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: times in history where there have been big churches. So
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: fast growth of churches is something that's happened for a
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: long time and having to maintain large amounts of congregation,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: large congregation. The interesting thing about what happened in the
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: 20th century is that the church became one more kind
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: of managerial task And so the churches themselves kind of franchised,
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: which that's new. That's new in history where you can
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: be a part of, your church can be a sub
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: church of this one. Then they have the brand and
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: they have the video piped in from a different place.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: That is a relatively recent thing. And again, I think
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: there are faithful people. I think there are faithful people
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: at these churches. But the model there is something that
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: inherently at some level is going to force you to
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: shave off something. Um, so if, if, um, if, if
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: it is a franchise model and I recognize that may
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: be a controversial way of putting it, then the McDonald's
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: hamburger that that's here, then it needs to taste the
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: same as over here. And so the sermon needs to
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: be the same here as it is over here. And
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: so you don't get ministers talking to their people. What
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: you get is sort of, uh, pep talks or something
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: that can be, uh, mass produced. And I think that that's,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: that's harmful, but it also, um, turns, it makes sure
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: that everybody If you, uh, there's a reason that people
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: like McDonald's hamburgers is that they're pretty easy to eat
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: and they're, they're pretty easy to reproduce and they're easy
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: to eat. They're inoffensive. Um, and, uh, I mean, and
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: I like a McDonald's hamburger. This is not a, I'm
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: not ragging on McDonald's, but the, um, as you do that,
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: it recognizing that the franchise model does at some level
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: start to dilute what the product is. Um, I think
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: that that's, um, what happens with the centrism thing. So
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: if a pastor is trying to be inoffensive, then what
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: he'll say is, yes, there are sins that are on
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: both sides and try to both sides everything and say, well,
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: I disagree with the Democrats about abortion. And I also
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: but I and I disagree with the Republicans about cruelty
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: to immigrants or something. And it's like, well, abortion is
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: a real thing. And that's something. But every caricature of
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: the Republican side is some kind of insane thing. or
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: of the conservative side or the right-wing side, is some
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: kind of insane caricature of the left. So the left
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: has created these things and the pastors have to believe it.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: And so, yes, they're ill-equipped. These people are ill-equipped because
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: they've been trying to act as if the Bible and
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: act as if the church has nothing to say to
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: particular people in particular circumstances. And whatever modern churches would say,
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: whatever message that they would concoct cannot be an offense
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: to the regime, number one, and also to American culture
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: more broadly, because they're trying to appeal to that culture
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: to grow the model. Um, and so, uh, yes, I
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: think that that is a problem. Uh, but I, I
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: do think that a lot of those churches, uh, conveniently
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: showed their colors during COVID. So it was a real
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: mask off moment. Hey, uh, for a lot of these churches, um,
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: that were, again, the length of time they closed down,
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: the reasons they closed down. I think I understand why
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: some people closed down, but sometimes it was shaming people
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: for having different convictions about this. I think that, again,
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: you mentioned it earlier about something that a part of
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: why people don't trust the people in authority. And so
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: if there are, and there are, there are faithful pastors,
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: there are faithful congregations everywhere, not everywhere, but across the country.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: And I think that if they're ready to meet this moment,
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: it's just a matter of finding them. And that's tough.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: I sympathize with people who are in places where there
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: isn't a solid church for miles and they have to
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: drive their family or move their family in order to
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: be a part of a community that they can exist in.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: I think that as we're so atomized, we're used to
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: church and we're used to all of these things as
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: being kind of one of our interests. And that's not
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: something that I think is relevant. the way we're supposed
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: to exist. We're supposed to exist in community, real communities.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: And if a church is able to offer real community,
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: then these people who are atomized, these people who are, again,
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: used to being raised by screens, then they're going to
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: have something to land, some kind of soft spot to
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: fall into. And if that robust community exists before they
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: get there, that's great. I moved my family to North
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: Idaho to be a part of a church up here
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: called Christ Church And there's a community here that we
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: were able to move into. But the reason that it
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: was here is because people for decades have been trying
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: to build this. And there are places like that across
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: the country. But they're not the people who have given
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: in to the incentive structures of the past hundred years.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Yes. And we are called to be in the world,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: but not of the world.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: And I think if you're a pastor or you're a
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: priest listening, I mean, I that shouldn't be the motivation,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: but you should know that I think a lot of
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: young people are really attracted to tradition, to something completely
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: different than just what's the cultural norm of the time.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: And so you might think that you're fitting in by
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: trying to, I think that you're attracting people by trying
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: to fit in. And the reality is that actually what
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: people want is something deeper and more truthful and honest
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and different from what we're being served in modern culture.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: So Wade, I thought that was excellent. I'm so glad
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I had you on. You are So articulate, wonderful to
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: listen to. I hope people go and check out your podcast. Also,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: where can people go to follow you? and keep up
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: with anything else that you're doing?
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm on X at Wade Stotts. That's probably the
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: best place to go because I have links to everything
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: else that I'm doing there. I'm also at canonplus.com is
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: a streaming service and I do a weekly podcast there.
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: It's a huge streaming platform with entertainment and devotional content
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: and audiobooks and things like that. But I'm just one
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: wing of this. So if you want to subscribe there
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: and get my podcast, there's also a huge number of
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: things there. And you can use promo code Wade99 to
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: get your first month for 99 cents. I've also done
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: a bunch of audiobooks as well, narrated a bunch too.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: I love it. Wade, thank you so much for being here.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: For all of you guys listening, make sure to like
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: and follow this podcast. If you want to follow me,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: my user is avitadeffy1 on X and Instagram.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: And I will see you all next week.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: The Dan Bongino Show.
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of people are underestimating the Trump
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: effect in this midterm. You've heard it yourself. Act like
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: I'm on the ballot. Why is he saying that? You
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: think he doesn't know what he's doing? That is the
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: X factor. Folks, elections are a math issue. That is it.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: This is not a football game. If you vote, we
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: will win. It is not complicated.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: The Dan Bongino Show. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.