In this episode, I sit down with my good friend and colleague, Dr. Carl Levin, to talk about his views on the current state of the world and the future of the Christian empire. We talk about the role of religion in the modern world, and the potential for a Christian empire on the world's most powerful continent. We also talk about what it means to be a liberal in the 21st century, and why we should be worried about the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church and its influence in the world. And we talk about why the Christian Empire is the best option for the world at this point in history and why it should be the most important thing the world has ever seen. If you're interested in learning more about Carl's work, check out his excellent book, How to Build a Christian Empire, which is out now on Amazon Prime and Vimeo. You can also get a copy of the book for free by clicking here. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast and supporting the podcast. I really appreciate it. -Jon Sorrentino Timestamps: 3:00 - What is a liberal empire? 4:15 - What does it mean to me? 5:30 - Why is it important to me that the world is Christian? 6:20 - How can we create one? 7:40 - Why does the West need to be more like Christianity? 8:00 9:00 | What does the world? 11:30 | What would you like to see in the future? 12:30 14: What is the future look like? 15:40 | What do you want? 16: What are we looking for? 17:20 | How can I want the world of Christendom? 18:40 19:10 | What are you looking for from the world in the West? 21:20 22:10 What do I want from the West in the past? 23:30 Is it possible? 25:30 What do we need to do? 26:30 How do I would like the world to be Christian in the next 20th century? 27:30 Do you want to be an empire of Christianity in the 20th Century? ? 28:00 Is there a Christian Christian empire in the Middle East? 29:30 Can we have a Christian state?
Transcript
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00:00:20.000Side, you know, just viewing some content.
00:00:23.000There, you know, there has been praise for China in the past, whereas some of these things I view as, like, absolutely contradictory to the United States.
00:00:34.000And by that, I mean, like, just look at the way that they're managing COVID.
00:00:37.000They're literally, like, basically locking down people into a tiny city.
00:00:40.000They're killing their animals in order to have zero COVID.
00:00:43.000You know, they're basically, they have, like, what do you call it?
00:01:14.000And that's kind of the real contestation.
00:01:19.000Yeah, so then I guess the question, the problem is this, the problem is I am ultimately a realist, and I think that we can talk about
00:01:35.000We can compare the systems and say, you know, liberal democracy versus whatever the Chinese have, if you want to call that a mixed economy, a market socialist or state capitalist or something.
00:02:11.000I want a Christian empire, is what I want.
00:02:16.000I would like to see the United States continue.
00:02:19.000I would like to see American primacy, but I would like to see, you talk about moral, I would like to see real morality which proceeds from God and which proceeds from Christianity.
00:02:32.000So I would like to see something like U.S.
00:02:34.000primacy, an alliance with Europe, an alliance with Russia.
00:02:39.000That's Richard Haass coined that term in Watchful Sheriff, I believe.
00:02:46.000A posse between, yeah, Christendom, the Russian, and Sam Huntington, when he broke down Clash of Civilizations.
00:02:53.000He said, you have the Orthodox civilization, you have the so-called Western civilization.
00:02:58.000I think the natural alliance would be between the Orthodox and the Western civilization against Sinaic and Muslim civilization, or you could use the Richard Haass lingo and say that's a posse, France,
00:03:28.000So, I would basically say that there's a lot of things going for it, which is Central America, South America, and North America are Christian-descended colonial states that all have a history of Christendom, so they all have that history.
00:03:45.000Europe as a whole has that history, and Russia as a whole has that history, if you're talking about an alliance between the Orthodox and the Catholic, and God help me, Protestants, right?
00:03:54.000The problem is that at the core of this imperium is the story of Christ, and it seems like with every passing decade we're getting more secular, more hedonistic, more nihilistic, moving away from the message, and it seems that with technology and mass culture and internationalism or globalism, whatever you want to call it,
00:04:21.000It seems like the opportunity for this kind of national or identifiable revival, for it to be literally like an L-shaped empire on top of the world, is... I don't know how you would achieve a Christian revival in the United States, a Christian revival in Europe, get people to see this as a cooperative opportunity, and recreate the Christendom empire.
00:05:39.000But when you look at Vladimir Putin, who is, you could say, the new emperor, I mean, just like they had a czar and then they had a general secretary, now they've got their president.
00:05:47.000We all know functionally what that is.
00:06:11.000Orthodox Christianity and sort of Russian Empire is the new mythology of the federal Russian state.
00:06:18.000And so I actually don't think it's so outlandish to say that there would be a Christian revival in America and that that would not form the basis.
00:06:27.000I think that the liberal premise of America is really the thing that's falling apart in the wake of multiracialism, in the wake of technology and wealth inequality.
00:06:39.000I think it's actually liberalism which is the ideology that's failing.
00:06:43.000If I were to look at the systems, if we were to look at it morally between China and the United States and Russia,
00:06:50.000Which system would have the most longevity?
00:06:53.000When I look at the BLM, Tranny, you know, nightmare country run by Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, compared to China, which has Confucianism and has this idea of like Chinese Han ethnic supremacy, and again the Russian Orthodox Church, I would definitely put it on the latter two things, as opposed to our fledgling system.
00:07:34.000Part of the structural problem with liberalism is that it doesn't have a lot of like moral prescriptions, right?
00:07:41.000It's like a syncretist worldview in which you can incorporate anybody under their belief structure as long as they adhere to liberalism, as long as they pay their taxes, as long as they agree to like the little charter of human rights that we have.
00:07:54.000But I do agree, not only do I agree with this charter of human rights, but I actually think it's quite powerful.
00:07:59.000If you look at the cultural narrative of, I think you could just as easily say Germany.
00:08:08.000They had Christianity co-opted by the state.
00:08:11.000They had political corporatism and a narrative that allowed them to reach out into their world and create their imperial state.
00:08:21.000We can get into like the historical whatever, but basically what happened is a bunch of disparate, disunified, broken, culturally bankrupt, whatever the fuck you want to call them, countries didn't want to get pushed around.
00:08:34.000They came together under a single banner of fuck Germany and they kicked them right in the teeth.
00:08:38.000And that's also what I kind of see in Russia right now, where you have countries that were previously completely anti-NATO that are getting ready.
00:08:48.000Germany is actually funding its military.
00:09:06.000And weapons that poured into Ukraine from Western Europe and from the Western world.
00:09:13.000I think that that really sustained the Ukrainian Armed Forces to fight battles that we didn't expect them to fight.
00:09:18.000I think we expected, I expected them to capitulate.
00:09:21.000I thought that they were going to fall apart in two weeks and they're still fighting right now.
00:09:24.000So that's where I'm saying like the Western Empire, while disunified narratively, and that's something that I want to kind of like challenge and fix, the actual
00:09:36.000Material wealth is there, and then it seems like when there's a crisis, we come together.
00:09:43.000And so that's where, for me, the cultural unity doesn't mean much if it's a dogshit culture.
00:09:49.000I would say that I would disagree about your characterization of World War II, that everybody got together to kick the shit nuggets out of the Nazis.
00:10:03.000I don't think that's actually how it happened, because you had Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy, and you had, was it Austria-Hungary was with them?
00:10:14.000They actually had a lot going for them, I think.
00:10:17.000Germany took over the entire continent.
00:10:29.000And they got their nightmare coalition of Russia, France, the UK, America.
00:10:36.000But, if Japan... Well, because remember, the United States declares war on Japan, and Nazi Germany declares war on the United States.
00:10:44.000If the United States was kept out of the war, and if the Soviet Union were kept out of the war, we would have had a German, fascist Europe.
00:10:53.000We would have had an imperial, Japanese Asia.
00:10:57.000It would have been a totally different world, but there were a couple of key things that happened there.
00:11:01.000And not that that would be a good thing, that would be a horrible thing.
00:11:21.000Alright, so let me ask you a real question, because this is something that's been, like, fucking crawled in the back of my head for a really long time.
00:11:30.000Orthodox, Western, Christian, Imperium, across the Western world, etc, etc.
00:11:36.000We follow our own cultural narrative, maybe because race isn't nothing but it's not everything.
00:11:43.000There's a bunch of parallel European colonialist societies in the Americas that all have their distinct cultures and parallel moves going forward, but they're all unified into this broader Christian and Imperium or whatever.
00:11:58.000Then, so I think, okay, whatever, Christian monarchism or Christian, not even really like theocracy, because, I mean, obviously you could achieve these things within, like, a republic that was just heavily Christian that had Christian values.
00:12:12.000So you wouldn't have to completely overturn the system.
00:12:17.000But there is a, what I would say, if I was to boil fascism down, which we all know is bad, you know, disavow, disavow, blah, blah, blah.
00:12:27.000Yeah, so political, so I view fascism as two key tenets, which is political corporatism and flexible authoritarianism.
00:12:35.000What I mean by political corporatism is just treating the nation as a body, identifying the parts that are hurting, identify the parts that feel good, basically using the parts that feel good in order to heal the parts that are weak, and to try to create a healthy, happy, regenerative society over time.
00:12:52.000I actually have no problem with political corporatism.
00:12:54.000I think that it's how most nation states operated throughout history.
00:12:57.000And I think it's a useful tool to evaluate the health of a society and try to fix social ills.
00:13:05.000So I'm completely cool with political corporatism.
00:13:08.000Where I get lost is the flexible authoritarianism basically saying, like, the rules that we create for ourselves, republicanism, principles, maybe what you see as a myth of liberalism, all that kind of stuff, these things don't matter.
00:13:25.000And whatever rules or organizations or institutions that stand in our way, we need to push past because our broader goals are more important than the laws that our forefathers kind of enshrined for us or the institutions that came before us.
00:13:47.000But how do you view yourself on that spectrum as far as like respect for the Constitution or respect for Republicanism or the liberal enlightenment project and what you would be willing to do to transform it to achieve this broader ideological goal?
00:14:03.000Well, I would say that maybe what would differentiate a so-called reactionary from a liberal, I'm a believer in the Constitution, I'm a believer in the Bill of Rights and these things, but I guess maybe the departure is that we believe that the
00:14:21.000The government should not be cultivating things that will undo itself.
00:14:26.000And so I think that's a key distinction, is where somebody like myself would depart from a regular conservative, where I would say that if we're doing something that is in principle the liberal thing to do, but yet it's going to give us what we know to be a bad outcome, I would not want the bad outcome.
00:14:47.000And I understand this idea that we need to be a nation of laws and there needs to be norms and things like that.
00:14:55.000But Schmidt writes about this, that the government has to protect the established order, even if that means compromising the principles under which the established order is founded.
00:15:07.000So yeah, I don't call myself a fascist.
00:15:10.000I honestly think that fascism is a little bit of a spook.
00:15:15.000Because you look at the kinds of fascism, and it's all sort of, you've got National Socialism, you've got Falangism, you've got what Mussolini had, and those are really the three fascist countries, and National Socialism and Falangism are sort of exceptional.
00:15:32.000There's really only one general fascism that you've ever had, so I don't really think it's
00:15:56.000Um, I think that fascism is just so, it's sort of like this flavor of authoritarianism that, like, leftists don't like.
00:16:04.000Yeah, okay, so would you and people who follow you or whatever, like if I was talking about Nick Fuentes with somebody else, and I just say Christian Nationalist, is there any objection or do you feel like that word doesn't encompass any particular part of your worldview?
00:16:21.000Or do you think it's sufficiently summarizing your view?
00:16:28.000I would say, though, that I'm a reactionary, too, because Christian nationalism could be somewhat vague, and nationalism could even be vague.
00:16:50.000I'm reactionary, meaning as the antithesis of revolutionary, meaning I'm sort of against the outcome of the Enlightenment.
00:16:57.000I'm against the triumph of liberalism, which is a little bit deeper, because Christian nationalism, you could take that to mean a lot of things.
00:17:05.000You could have a very liberal definition of what that would look like.
00:17:07.000You could kind of call what we had in America ten years ago Christian nationalism, if you were being sort of charitable.
00:17:15.000Yeah, so that's kind of where I think we're historically opposed.
00:17:21.000So if I was in Rome at the time of Rome, I would want to defend Rome and the Republic and the system of laws and all that kind of stuff because I would see the fruits of Rome as
00:17:33.000It was amazing, like Imperium, syncretic cultures working together for common ends, the material wealth that was distributed by them, the rule of law, the professional military, all of these things I would view as the fruits of Roman Imperium.
00:17:49.000In the same way I view American liberalism, I view our fruits, which is like out of an $84 trillion global economy, we're $65 trillion of it if you consider like America and American aligned governments.
00:18:37.000And I think it's pretty easily modifiable into what I want, because what I want is... the thing that's preventing what I want is a spiritual decay.
00:18:47.000It's a crushing of what we used to be, but that's because liberalism doesn't in and of itself have any moral prescriptions about the spiritual lives of its adherents.
00:18:57.000Like, I don't care if you're a nihilist or a hedonist or a Christian or a Muslim, just pay your fucking taxes and allow the empire to continue, but when you have an entire generation that's demoralized and basically on the verge of killing themselves and they're addicted to so many things and they can't have kids, that's a fucking problem, because basically you're destroying the empire from within from rot.
00:19:16.000I feel like Christian nationalism or Christendom is jumping back too far back.
00:19:21.000And the reason why is because I don't believe in the resurrection.
00:19:24.000I don't think that's a core through which you could build out the Western Imperium.
00:19:30.000Whereas, I think that liberalism through syncretism, material power, all that kind of stuff, you could come up with a unifying narrative of multiple peoples, languages, ethnicities, and all that kind of stuff that could be sustainable
00:20:00.000The problem you're talking about has been around for a long time.
00:20:07.000Which is, you get rid of God, and you get rid of the moral law, and you get rid of the supernatural and the idea of the spirit, and you're left with this sort of, well, why?
00:20:31.000You know, without those other things, you have a real, it's a real problem of dread and a crisis of why, a crisis of meaning.
00:20:41.000And I think that the fruits of what you see here is not the result of a liberal system, it's the result of Christendom.
00:20:47.000It's the result of, ultimately, everything that we have here is a product of two things.
00:20:51.000It's a product of the European race and of Christendom.
00:20:55.000Not really so much from democracy, because of course,
00:21:00.000You know, the technology, all these kinds of things.
00:21:04.000That's a consequence of human ingenuity.
00:21:06.000You could say that there's a certain kind of, like, political culture that allows people to get together in university and thrive and so on, but it rests on the foundations of truth and rationality.
00:21:18.000And it's really, when you look at, like, where do the universities come from?
00:22:00.000That's, yeah, like, so maybe, maybe, maybe I haven't,
00:22:04.000It's framed sufficient of a narrative, but if you're asking for the carrot, it's like I might have a couple of baby carrots to, you know, throw your way.
00:22:13.000But if you're asking about the stick, I feel like the stick is pretty fucking huge, which is basically like the, I don't know, material and physical and political collapse of the Western world.
00:22:22.000I think that should be a big enough stick to beat people into cooperation.
00:22:38.000No, I do love this, because I do think that there's a logical nihilism that people can work themselves into, and I think that we've worked ourselves into in the culture.
00:22:51.000I think that that logical nihilism doesn't stand up to actual suffering.
00:22:57.000Uh, so for instance, if somebody's like, well, why should I care?
00:22:59.000Uh, you know, you should, you could just kill me now and I wouldn't give a shit because in a cosmic sense, you know, who gives a fuck?
00:23:05.000If you pull out a knife and start chasing that person around the room, they're still going to run.
00:23:09.000And so that's kind of my thing is like, we can start making observations about human behavior in the natural world.
00:23:16.000And one of the things that you said that, uh, you're like, what is the foundation?
00:23:20.000I think the way that you saw the foundation as Logos, you know, truth, like undeniable truth, that is the foundation.
00:23:28.000And what I think is interesting, I don't racialize it.
00:23:33.000Because I think these ideas could be universal.
00:23:36.000I mean, you can see Japanese and Chinese Christians and all that kind of stuff.
00:23:40.000For me, I think culture is memeable and transferable.
00:23:43.000So I don't think that these things are set in stone, basically.
00:23:48.000But the idea, at least as far as I understand it for Logos, is that the truth is the truth whether you like it or not.
00:23:55.000So, Christians, Christian nationalists or whatever will say like, okay, well that means the Bible is true regardless of whether or not you like it or not, therefore you have to follow our worldview.
00:24:04.000For me, it's a little bit crueler than that, which is the truth is the truth regardless of whether or not you like it or not, meaning that if God isn't real, if Christianity isn't real,
00:24:15.000Then there's still a foundation there, because the truth is the truth, regardless of whether you like it or not.
00:25:01.000Most creatures don't want to die, with a few exceptions.
00:25:05.000You can create suffering by hurting and harming other living creatures.
00:25:09.000Therefore, you should minimize that as much as possible.
00:25:12.000Therefore, if you should minimize that as much as possible, you should refrain from things like rape or murder or things that are deemed to be emotionally traumatic.
00:25:21.000The extrapolation is still there, and rebuilding it on Christianity is actually, I know that you're not going to concede that it's shaky ground, but for me, it's shaky ground on which to rest the world, because not everybody is going to believe in Christ, but everybody could believe in the truth.
00:25:40.000And so that's where I have a problem with your foundation.
00:25:54.000This sort of vapid idea and truth itself without the flesh, without a real Savior and a real doctrine and a real church and all those things.
00:26:09.000I don't know that anybody, I don't know that a civilizational revival is going to be animated by this sort of ambiguous attachment to the truth or something.
00:26:20.000My project is harder than yours, for sure.
00:26:25.000I think it's impossible, and I think that what you'll get instead is the triumph of something far more cruel.
00:26:32.000I think that society is looking back, and it's looking back to its ancient ways, and its sort of wicked nature.
00:26:40.000And so where you don't find Christianity, you'll find people wearing rocks around their neck, you know, they're wearing crystals, and they're looking into astrology and witchcraft.
00:26:50.000And they're looking back into these sort of primitive things and my fear is that even in an ideological sense you look at like the Russian Empire is a good example of this because you know the original debate was about Russia but it's also a good example.
00:27:05.000You had the autocracy, which was brutal.
00:27:09.000You know, the autocracy had a secret police, and the autocracy was sort of trying to cleanse the ethnicities on the periphery of the empire.
00:27:16.000And then what came next was far worse.
00:27:20.000You know, the communists that came next were absolute butchers.
00:27:25.000And that's the kind of thing that I fear, is that
00:27:43.000And I think that what you're going to get in the absence of Christianity, what you could call liberalism, if you call it the Chinese system, whatever it's going to be, it's going to be brutal.
00:28:57.000Yeah, but if I was to boil down, so for instance, like if you were to take the story, or if you were to take logos like, truth is the truth no matter what, or if you were to take the, you know, the message of Christ, like you could take, pick, I'm not trying to pick one, I'm trying to pick many of them, okay?
00:29:13.000So, if you were trying to pick the message of Christ, like, you know, love thy neighbor as thyself, or whatever, or, for instance, like, I'm trying to think of another one that's not all soft and pussified, because I know the soft and pussified ones more than the hardcore ones.
00:29:28.000But basically, I'm saying that there is a certain amount of, oh, like a strikos.
00:29:35.000Meek doesn't mean somebody who's weak, it means somebody who has discipline, strength, and restraint, and the ability to control strength.
00:29:41.000So, for instance, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of moral lessons that are baked into Christianity.
00:29:49.000That I think are worthy, not only worthy of learning, but necessary to create a healthy and happy society.
00:29:56.000But I think what happens is a lot of secular people, because it comes through religion, and a lot of them are traumatized by religion, they don't believe in the mythology, this, that, the other, you know, they're gay, or they were persecuted as kids, or somebody threw rock at them or called them a fabot.
00:30:13.000You know, these kinds of things basically turn people off from religion, and as a result, when they turn away from it completely, they got nothing.
00:30:21.000And for me, you know, they're kind of trying to rebuild the wheel where they create their own morality, but they do it by themselves.
00:30:29.000Because our society has nothing to tell young people except for, like, liberal tolerance.
00:30:36.000They make almost no moral prescriptions through the system itself.
00:30:41.000So, for instance, there's no reason why education can't include some level of moral education.
00:30:47.000There's no reason why we can't talk about why truth or not cheating or anything like that is important.
00:30:54.000And if anything, what we're viewing here through the corruption of our institutions like public school, for instance, is a lack of spine
00:31:03.000When it comes to the liberal establishment to make moral prescriptions, but there are moral prescriptions that most people believe in like telling the truth, not stealing, not lying, you know, not being a dick, not fighting, not killing, not murdering, not raping.
00:31:17.000These are relatively universal and could be promoted and educated.
00:31:22.000I know that we're in contrary projects.
00:31:27.000You're saying that it needs to be rooted in Christianity, and as a result, that would strengthen your position.
00:31:31.000And I'm saying it doesn't need to be rooted in Christianity, so that strengthens my position.
00:31:35.000But that's my point, is you're going to catch more people into the moral system if you're not saying it has to be nested within Christianity.
00:31:44.000Yeah, I just, again... Run different projects?
00:31:48.000No, it's this idea of like, don't be an asshole.
00:31:52.000It's like, you cannot build a civilization on saying, don't be an asshole!
00:31:57.000It's like, because the necessary answer to that is like, okay, why not?
00:32:27.000We have to attach significance to our existence here, and this idea that we're like on this blue rock, and like, don't take anything too seriously, bro, like, it's like, yeah, I mean, why would anyone take anything?
00:33:04.000We've got to resist the sort of natural tendency
00:33:08.000of the flesh and like why would anyone do that if there wasn't a clear directive from a higher power with a judgment with the consequence for anybody to do that?
00:33:20.000I just don't think that it's reasonable to ask out of people without that.
00:33:27.000I understand, and if anything, you perfectly articulated why I hate nihilist anti-theists, why I hate people who are anti-religion, because they will be like, oh, well, we can just obliterate it all and it won't fucking matter.
00:33:40.000And it's like, nah, people are going to suffer seriously as a result of your worldview.
00:33:48.000I only live once, and on top of that, I might as well just ride this, you know, ride this toilet bowl down into the fucking existential drain.
00:33:58.000I used to be in law enforcement, I saw that all the time.
00:34:00.000People literally, you'd be like, hey bro, you're doing fucking meth, you're doing heroin, you're fucking up, you're stealing from your family, everybody hates you, you know, society hates you, you're a fucking piece of shit, you need to get your shit together.
00:34:12.000And they'd be like, well that's too hard, and on top of that, why should I care?
00:34:16.000Plenty of people actually, literally, will tell you that while they're circling the drain.
00:34:21.000Dealing with people, though, who are in more left-wing spaces, who are more sympathetic to those people, this, that, the other, they will say that they don't need the meta-narrative of Christ or God in order to save themselves, this, that, the other.
00:34:33.000I do think that you need something bigger than yourself, and maybe international, global humanism isn't enough to save humanity from itself.
00:34:50.000Raised religious, went to church every single Sunday, basically was raised both in the Protestant church and the Catholic church, went to Europe, this, that, the other.
00:35:01.000When I was 17, I was like, oh, this is all myths and bullshit.
00:35:05.000I'm gonna go do drugs and, you know, try to finger fuck women and all this bullshit, right?
00:35:10.000So I went and did that for five years, and I was in the military and did some violent shit as well.
00:35:15.000And when I got back out, I was fucking miserable.
00:36:25.000The reason why I'm bringing this up is these lessons were rooted in religion, and they were communicated to me in religion, and I rejected them because they came to me in religion.
00:36:35.000But just through trial and error, I found these things to be true.
00:36:40.000And so that's where for me, telling suffering people, listless people, depressed people, that basically what you want and what makes you happy are two separate things, and don't mistake the two, and also telling people that responsibility and purpose are correlated, that's like a fucking cheat sheet for human life.
00:37:00.000And so like I'm saying, boil it down to a cheat sheet.
00:37:22.000It's neither true nor is it sufficient.
00:37:24.000You cannot build a civilization on a spark notes of biblical lessons because I think that inherent in maybe
00:37:36.000This disposition is, and it's sort of interesting because you're a police officer, a former cop, former soldier, so you've seen violence, and so you've seen what people are capable of.
00:37:50.000At least I imagine you've seen violence.
00:37:52.000And so, when there are these sort of edge cases, you know, why does anybody kill anybody?
00:37:59.000Do you think anybody kills somebody because they think they don't have a good reason?
00:38:03.000People kill people because they think they have a really good reason and they feel, sometimes it's emotional, sometimes they feel justified.
00:38:09.000People go to war because they think they feel justified.
00:38:12.000People rape or, you know, do adultery or other terrible things.
00:38:20.000And they'll think it's the right thing or they'll justify it to themselves.
00:38:24.000And so this is like nice for like, you know, most of the time if you're just kind of like,
00:38:30.000Riding the bus and going to work, it's like, hey, I'm gonna pay my fare on the bus.
00:38:36.000But it's like, what is the true foundations and roots of the civilization?
00:38:43.000And there has to be something about the moral law that it's absolute and it's specific.
00:38:50.000And it has to have consequences for it to matter, because otherwise, if everything you're saying is true, like, let's create a cheat sheet of biblical lessons, it's like, okay, but what if I really, really want to break the moral law, and I have, like, a really good reason?
00:40:35.000Don't get me wrong, this is good stuff, but we're sort of, like, we started... Okay, next time.
00:40:41.000It has completely I mean you hey you guys are talking for like an hour.
00:40:44.000I look I agree You know what I thought it was about now you put out a tweet I thought this was what it was originally about you know saying Russia was basically committing war crimes, and it was a barbaric regime If you want to if you want to get autistic and fight about specific shit we can like you can't Well that's what I mean a debate is!
00:41:28.000I salute our boys in the white, blue, and red or whatever the fuck.
00:41:32.000Dude, if I, if I didn't, if you didn't have things that were shitposty that I know pissed off people way more, I would have fucking come in here like autistic screeching about that shit.
00:42:07.000You're playing a deeper game, and I know you're playing a deeper game.
00:42:11.000I would rather talk about the deeper game, because there's obviously something that you think is achievable, or even if it's not achievable, you think it's worthy of pursuing, and I think it's not achievable, and I'm worried about the factionalism that it creates, but you're not worried about that, because my...
00:42:33.000Civilizational foundation is probably too broad for you to give a shit about, and you nest your civilizational foundation within religion, and you know it to be correct.
00:42:43.000So how the fuck am I supposed to fight that?
00:42:45.000Well, I mean, yeah, I am, of course, I do have an agenda, and I do have a deeper worldview, but the reason why I cheerlead Putin is because I like Putin.
00:42:54.000I mean, it is provocative, but I do support Putin.
00:42:59.000I think that Putin is brilliant and my hero.
00:43:02.000Okay, if this war was achievable, specifically with like throwing artillery shells into civilian areas, if all of the things that could be or needed to be achieved were able to be achieved without artillery shells going into fucking civilian areas, would you prefer that artillery fucking strikes don't happen in civilian areas?
00:43:23.000Like you want me to call you a bad person for the next 45 minutes?
00:43:26.000No, I don't want you to call me a bad... No, it's clearly... There is a real... Because you could also call me a bad person because I'm basically cheerleading American hegemony and look at how many people it's killed over the past 30 years.
00:43:41.000If I see that the Rigel Report says that we provided the weapons of mass destruction to Iraq in the 70s and 80s, that we then impugned him for 20 years later, I'm not going to deny that.
00:43:51.000I'm just acknowledging the bigger game.
00:43:55.000Okay, but I think there is a real debate to be had about the war in Ukraine and who's at fault here.
00:44:01.000I think that's part of the bigger conversation about American hegemony.
00:44:06.000Because there's one story, and you seem to be at sort of a difference, you have this sort of liberalist, this liberalist vent, where you say we need a liberalist American global empire for the purpose, which is a very unique position.
00:44:21.000There's not a lot of people that defend that.
00:44:24.000But there is a position out there where people are saying democracy is under attack by autocrats like Putin, and this represents aggression by the so-called dictators and the enemies of democracy.
00:44:37.000And then, of course, there's the Russian side, which is that it's the democratic globalist empire, which is the true pariah.
00:44:51.000I side with liberals, but I think liberals are fucking children.
00:44:56.000And what I mean by that is like, so for instance, if we were going to morally impugn Russia for being autocratic, then we just as equally have to impugn 30% of our global coalition for similar crimes.
00:45:08.000So when you hear, like we can say like, okay,
00:45:11.000Well, these people allied with us materially, and we're pushing them culturally through trade ties and cultural ties.
00:45:18.000I think that can be a real argument, defending, like, the liberal establishment.
00:45:21.000It's like, we don't want to go to war with everybody.
00:45:22.000We want to, you know, so for instance, like, McDonald's, God help me, is part of the American empire, and now in fucking Kuwait, the fucking, you know, they're basically getting fat as shit, because instead of drinking alcohol, they go to McDonald's instead.
00:45:36.000So, you know, I don't know if that's based in Red Pill or not.
00:45:40.000But the point being, you can go to war with everybody, but you're going to fucking lose.
00:45:45.000Or you can go to war with your opponents when it suits you, and then have cultural and economic warfare.
00:45:51.000And if anything, I view Russia's actions in this event a moral failure, because I think that they could have achieved the same goals through economic and diplomatic aggression.
00:46:06.000I think they could have kept the Black Sea.
00:46:08.000I think they could have kept Donbass, Luhansk, Donetsk.
00:46:15.000See, and that's I think where, that's I think where the argument lies, is this idea that it was, do you think it's out of malice and cruelty that Russia invaded?
00:46:25.000No, it's desperation, but it's also a misalignment of priority.
00:46:29.000So, for instance, I think they could have kept the Black Sea, I think they could have kept Donetsk, Luhansk, I think they could have kept these things, or at least kept those populations protected, and they probably could have kept their right to travel to these areas.
00:46:41.000I don't think that they needed violence in order to achieve the same goal.
00:46:44.000Just because Ukraine goes into the EU, or even got, well, I guess NATO really would be
00:47:30.000No, but, but I mean, like, just to concede if people are like, oh, you just gave up the point.
00:47:35.000Um, there's only, there's only like three.
00:47:39.000I think there might only be two, uh, Russian warm water ports.
00:47:43.000One of them is in Crimea, one of them is in Syria, and I want to say the only other one is like a coal- oh, it might be on like the far east coast or some shit like that.
00:47:51.000It might be on like a... I don't fucking remember the names.
00:47:54.000But it literally might be over by Japan.
00:47:57.000I got frustrated with Sitchin, Adam, and Sargon, and you, and Destiny, because I think you can concede the geopolitical reality while still impugning the morality.
00:48:10.000I think that the fact that this wasn't worked at as a diplomatic solution of, Russia's going to want to keep the eastern part of Ukraine, and they're going to want to keep access to the Black Sea.
00:48:19.000If we're going to get Ukraine and NATO, we have to figure out how to get the Russians what they want, or they're going to attack.
00:48:25.000If that wasn't a conversation in the room, that's a complete and utter fucking failure.
00:48:33.000The Russians, like, for example, Trump pulled the United States out of the INF Treaty, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and put the theater support missiles back in the U.S.
00:48:51.000This is a problem because in the event of a hypothetical war between NATO and Russia, NATO is going to be sending missiles into Russia that may be conventional missiles, but they also may be nuclear missiles, and they call that warhead ambiguity.
00:49:05.000That if a missile is flying at Russia, if a short or medium-range missile is flying at Russia from an Eastern European country, the Russians really can't assume that that's not a missile carrying a nuclear warhead.
00:49:18.000It creates this great escalation, and so the Russians write about this.
00:49:21.000How is this not already true with Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania?
00:49:25.000And also, how is this not already true for the fact that we can basically glass each other no matter what?
00:49:32.000Well, the point is that this has nothing to do with Ukraine in particular.
00:49:38.000This is a provocative action, because this is about the entire European theater, and redeploying missiles to Europe.
00:49:46.000Okay, I don't know, maybe this is because I actually was born at the end of the Cold War.
00:49:50.000I'm pretty sure everybody between 1945 and 1990 just accepted the fact that if there was a war between Russia and the United States, entire cities would be glassed, and as a result, we probably shouldn't fuck with that shit.
00:50:02.000And I don't understand how that perspective isn't prevailing right now.
00:50:06.000We're literally like, what's the flight time?
00:50:09.000For a short-range or medium-range missile launched from France, versus the flight time from a missile launched from Alaska, versus the flight time from a missile launched in fucking Ethiopia.
00:50:38.000Now what do we want and how do we get it?
00:50:41.000Well, the problem is that these are not necessarily nuclear missiles.
00:50:44.000These are conventional missiles that are being deployed to Europe, but that's the thing.
00:50:48.000When a missile is sent over, and a short or medium-range missile is sent over from Europe into Russia in a hypothetical conflict, that is where a conventional conflict between NATO and Russia then escalates into a nuclear conflict.
00:51:01.000The point is... Who would start a conventional conflict?
00:51:22.000My contention would be it would be an escalation between the two powers that you're right that it would be like ambiguous who started it or whatever but the chances of like NATO intentionally invading Russia without some kind of Russian propagation first is like fucking zero.
00:51:36.000Well, let me finish my point, because it's really not important here.
00:51:42.000The point is, this is a very provocative action.
00:51:45.000Trump pulling out of the INF was very provocative, and the Russians said so.
00:51:49.000And even if you look at the neocons, even the DC foreign policy establishment wrote that this was extremely provocative to pull out of the INF.
00:51:58.000And if you read NPR, NPR said in the build-up to this, because this was one of the Russians' demands back in January, was
00:52:06.000Put a moratorium on the missiles in the European theater.
00:52:11.000And NPR, the mainstream liberal media, the foreign policy establishment, they all said that is one of the more reasonable things that, yeah, probably the United States should do.
00:52:40.000Putin comes back the next year with an even more thorough proposal and says, let's do a moratorium on missiles and let's even have inspections.
00:53:02.000Once again, this was part of the diplomacy in January.
00:53:05.000There were three days of diplomacy, if you remember, in Geneva at the beginning of this year, and that was on the table, and there's no give from the American side.
00:53:15.000And so the question is, you know, if Russia is unnecessarily
00:53:20.000Using force and violence and military means when you look at something like that what what really could they have done in that situation and that that's just like a taste but that goes it goes well beyond that because you could go back to 2008 when the Americans at the NATO conference said
00:53:37.000They recognized the aspirations of Ukraine to join NATO.
00:53:40.000And Putin said, that's not going to happen.
00:53:44.000And the National Endowment for Democracy was giving them money.
00:53:47.000And they continued to support the resistance there.
00:53:51.000And that all culminated ultimately in the Maidan, which the United States had a hand in.
00:53:56.000And so, there's just like this persistent inability for the United States to concede the fact that Russia should have some right and some legitimate security interest in the future of Ukraine, and then Russia's back into a corner.
00:54:11.000And you can see the precipitating factors leading up to the conflict this year.
00:55:24.000Fuck, there's so many Russian failures.
00:55:27.000Yes, I think that this probably could have been diplomatically.
00:55:30.000If you want to point out examples of the Western hegemony throwing its weight around and not really knowing what it's getting itself into and risking other people's lives rather than their own, I don't think you have to look at Ukraine.
00:55:39.000I think you could just look at, like, I don't know, history and see similar patterns.
00:55:44.000But then the question kind of becomes, like, from a Russian perspective, was this necessary?
00:55:50.000It's not necessary to bomb Lviv in Western Ukraine in order to achieve a victory in Eastern Ukraine.
00:55:57.000It's not necessary to artillery strike Kiev in order to take Eastern Ukraine.
00:56:02.000It's not necessary to fucking take Odessa.
00:56:05.000The like one last port that's left for the fucking Ukrainians in order to gain access to the Black Sea along their own historical territory.
00:56:12.000It's not necessary for them to artillery strike civilian areas when basically we've all been developing counterinsurgency tactics and techniques for the better part of 30 fucking years that the United States is stupid enough to basically post online for free
00:56:26.000Our special forces literally go onto YouTube and say, hey, this is how you do counterinsurgency warfare, and this is how you clear rooms.
00:56:35.000And somehow, Russians, being the dumb fucks they are, are literally doing unsupported fucking air raids on goddamn airports and getting fucking slaughtered, artillery striking fucking civilian areas as negotiating ships within a war,
00:56:48.000And fucking doing unsupported fucking goddamn mechanized columns in the middle of Ukraine that then get attacked by counterinsurgents armed with Western weapons that get slaughtered.
00:56:59.000So no, while the geopolitical concessions are there and Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea, yeah, these are all realistically Russian territories that should have been negotiated by the Western world, you can't pretend to me that this is fucking 4D chess that the Russians are playing when they're literally sticking their dicks in a blender and
00:57:42.000I'm missing the... You were literally saying how despite him being the God Emperor who has fucking foresight and he's basically the leader of the Imperium of Man.
00:57:59.000I think that was a mistake for him to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, because that's what he did.
00:58:03.000And what he ran on in 2016 was a rapprochement with Russia, famously.
00:58:07.000He said, wouldn't it be great if we got along with Russia?
00:58:10.000And that's why a lot of people supported him, because he was out there saying the Iraq War was a mistake, and Russia should be our friend, and we don't hate China, but we're going to compete with China.
00:58:22.000Foreign policy that everybody voted for and instead what we got was, and you can, we can quibble about who's ultimately responsible for that.
00:58:33.000I'm willing to be, I'm willing to concede for the sake of the debate it was Trump himself.
00:58:37.000I think that Trump doesn't want war and I think that Trump, his instinct was rapprochement with Russia and it was people behind the scenes that wanted this war and it's the,
00:58:46.000It's a persistent influence of the deep state and military-industrial complex, that whole constellation of institutions.
00:58:55.000So I will agree with you that the Trump, it was not Fort H.S., I think the Trump foreign policy was not what it should have been.
01:00:43.000We're not, just as easily, while we're not in the battle, we're not in the war or whatever, we're not in these diplomatic negotiating rooms.
01:00:49.000Why do I have to assume good faith on your end and bad faith on mine?
01:00:58.000And, you know, so to say that Ukraine would not join NATO is not unreasonable.
01:01:04.000And, by the way, and the reason why we know that is because the United States essentially recommitted to this in, I want to say it was October.
01:01:14.000I have it in my notes, and I don't want to get autistic here, but you'll have to take my word for it.
01:01:18.000I could pull it up on my notes, but in October, somewhere in the fall of 2021, they recommitted to
01:01:26.000Essentially a security guarantee without NATO membership.
01:01:29.000They said we continue to acknowledge Ukraine's aspirations for NATO and they re-upped this like 10 year old security guarantee that they gave a long time ago.
01:01:37.000So like and that's really the crux of it is NATO membership for Ukraine.
01:01:44.000I don't know that Putin necessarily thought he was going to get all the troops out of Eastern Europe.
01:01:49.000I don't know that he necessarily thought there'd be a change in government in Kiev with diplomacy.
01:01:54.000But I think the crux of it was, is Ukraine going to be used as a forward operating base for NATO?
01:02:00.000Is it going to be used to deploy hypersonic missiles in Ukraine?
01:02:04.000Is there going to be a Black Sea fleet in Ukraine for NATO?
01:02:08.000That was really the issue at hand, and the United States was completely unwilling to negotiate on this, and the Russians were backed into a corner.
01:02:16.000And this is something that's happened over 14 years, and now people want to say, oh, well, I don't like the way the war's being conducted.
01:02:22.000Oh, well, that bombing they did was cruel.
01:03:39.000Are we, do we have to accept tripolarity or multipolarity?
01:03:42.000Do we have to reframe the Western project into Christian nationalism or a liberal hegemonic project?
01:03:48.000Is there enough of a spine within liberalism to reconstitute whatever we created?
01:03:55.000And so, and so that's kind of like really the, this is actually the difference, it's not just the difference in this conflict, it's the difference between me and you.
01:04:41.000I only have the logical appeal of you will suffer and you will experience suffering, but I already know that's not enough of information for most people.
01:04:57.000Ideally, I would want to see it culturally.
01:05:00.000I would want to see it, like, pushed through education, like, hey, you fuck up this way, your life's gonna be fucked.
01:05:05.000And we actually have the balls to assert that there are good and bad things, and we don't have this, like, liberal spinelessness that we see in our current social establishments.
01:05:20.000Well, I would say to counter all of that, I think that
01:05:24.000This entire conflict has laid the seeds for the American demise.
01:05:28.000I think this is the high watermark for the liberal hegemony because, you know, in spite of the fact that, you know, we talk this talk about how the whole world came together to stand up to Putin.
01:05:39.000I was going to get to this earlier when you made the analogy about everybody coming together to kick the Nazis' teeth in.
01:05:44.000I was going to make this, I was going to get into this, but I got sidetracked bashing, you know, the allies in World War II.
01:05:53.000It's actually not true that the whole world... Although they were based, right?
01:05:56.000They were based, they were good, they were cool.
01:07:24.000So you could call it material conditions, whatever.
01:07:29.000I don't have a fucking problem descriptively what you're saying.
01:07:33.000I'm talking about it like prescriptively because basically I already... If it seems like I'm not objecting a lot or calling you a piece of shit or this that the other, it's because I understand what you're trying to do.
01:07:44.000You described the project, what you're looking for out of the world.
01:07:48.000And I understand how my project is contrary to your project because I do want
01:07:53.000A liberalist hegemonic imperium that is capable of integrating humanity because I think that that's what's possible to propel us into like, I don't know, conquering the entire planet, but also potentially like space exploration as well.
01:08:10.000But the problem, I don't even have a fucking
01:08:15.000My problem with your worldview is I think it necessarily breeds conflict that will have to be resolved.
01:08:20.000So let's say that we created Christian nationalism.
01:08:23.000Nick Fuentes is, or his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson is the fucking emperor of the Western Christendom world, okay?
01:08:32.000He rules from someplace that isn't degenerate, the L-shape of the Americas and Europe, okay?
01:08:40.000And most people are Christian or they concede to Christian, like, cultural hegemony.
01:08:47.000I think, naturally, you will have, like you said, cultures that are based in Islam, cultures that are based in China, cultures that are based, well, I guess Russia's part of the Christendom, right?
01:09:00.000So, basically, Islam, West Africa, and China would all be your competitors, and as a result, that conflict also has to come to an end.
01:09:08.000Liberalism says we can incorporate all,
01:09:12.000Yours says, we're going to be in conflict, or at least competition, in perpetuity.
01:09:21.000What's Emperor Nicholas the fucking 15th going to do?
01:11:32.000I've got a ton of people watching right now, 7,000 people total watching this debate.
01:11:37.000Yeah, I think it was the beginning of October, so we're entering, it would be what, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, so we're entering our eighth month, I guess.
01:12:18.000That's one reason I kind of brought up the abortion thing, because that seemed like a real difference there, too.
01:12:23.000Listen, if y'all want to rip some of the shreds, we can fucking do it on something.
01:12:28.000But at the same time, my whole goal was to understand Nick, because I think it's actually super easy to snipe behind tweets and snipe behind fucking, oh, I'm going to do a two-hour video essay on what Nick believes without talking to him, and now I'm pretty sure I fucking understand it.
01:12:47.000I don't think you're a fascist, but I think that you see the value in right-wing dissident thought that can be useful.
01:12:54.000I think you're a Christian in the strictest sense, meaning you believe it to be the foundational cornerstone of the future of Western society.
01:13:02.000And even if it isn't, you would rather die implementing that vision, or trying to implement that vision, than basically implement a different vision of the world.
01:13:28.000Hey, we have cultural memes that are descended from certain narratives.
01:13:32.000I'm trying to propagate a narrative that I believe is important, and I want to solidify the culture and the society that will allow my narrative to continue to survive.
01:13:39.000I think that's a little bit more nuanced, and it's not... Even if there was like some 5,000 IQ fucking genocidal game that you're playing in your own fucking head, that doesn't mean that the...
01:13:51.000The philosophy itself necessarily has to be that way.
01:13:56.000So there could be like, I don't know what you call it, like integration or incorporation of the American value set as long as it paid deference to your vision of the future.
01:14:20.000Yeah, I mean, you say you don't like it, so what is the... Actually, I was thinking about this while I was getting water.
01:14:25.000So, what happens to your... So, let's say that we're in... Tsar Nicholas XV is in intercontinental conflict with, you know, the Muslims and... or the UMA.
01:15:25.000If Rick and Morty came out of a spaceship and said,
01:15:43.000Well, you know, if that happened, I would say the aliens are demons.
01:15:47.000I would say that's probably going to happen.
01:15:49.000I think they're setting up to do exactly that.
01:15:51.000It's called Project Bluebeam, or some other kind of simulated alien encounter, and I think it will be demonic.
01:15:58.000The thing is, though, is that... So you're going down with the ship?
01:16:02.000Well, it's not about going down with the ship, it's about the basis of our religion is metaphysical.
01:16:09.000It's metaphysical and it's based on philosophy.
01:16:13.000Based on philosophy that I don't understand perfectly, I'll add.
01:16:17.000And it's also based on the truth of the resurrection, which I think there's...
01:16:22.000The trick is this, I think that the resurrection is a historical fact and I think it's provable historically, but I also think that if you're not religious, I also think that if you don't believe in the
01:16:33.000The metaphysical idea of Christianity.
01:16:36.000I think that you can come up with any reason why you would disbelieve that.
01:17:29.000Christianity is true, and I think that in terms of how the world is supposed to end, you know, probably it's not, you know, if you read any Catholic eschatology, it's going to be a pretty ugly affair.
01:17:41.000It's not going to be like everyone becomes Christian, and then we all just float up, and you know, it's going to be actually pretty horrible.
01:17:48.000So that we may be living in the end times, and this all may be very futile in terms of
01:18:08.000And actually, it's interesting, the reason I became religious actually in the first place, I was baptized Catholic, I was confirmed Catholic, but my parents were always very religious.
01:18:17.000They believed in God, but they weren't really good Catholics.
01:18:21.000Like, we went to church on Christmas and Easter.
01:18:24.000There was a period where we went to church every Sunday, and I did get confirmed and everything, but...
01:18:28.000Like a lot of Catholics, they were sort of lapsed.
01:18:31.000And so I went into college basically being a Christian, believing in God, but not really practicing it and not really fully understanding it even.
01:18:41.000And what I began to think a lot about is about this problem of authority, and this problem of meaning, and the problem of morality, which are all distinct problems.
01:18:52.000You know, in terms of meaning, I thought, what gives my life meaning outside of the material?
01:18:58.000It's like, it's very difficult to persist in this life, suffering and going through the trials of life, if you're not suffering for a reason, if there's not a reason that actually matters.
01:19:08.000When I say actually matters, I mean, you could say, like, well, I'm suffering so that my kids could live a good life.
01:19:13.000That's actually just kind of like a secondary material interest, you know?
01:19:56.000Is a sufficient idea and I don't think it's an explainer and I don't know that I would like die for my race or something in a certain sense because race is material.
01:20:07.000You could say that race is a character that your soul may have a certain character because of your race.
01:20:12.000But you also might say that race is still something that's sort of an artifact of your flesh, and it's an artifact of the material self.
01:20:20.000And still, it's, you know, I'm not going to go out there and die for, you know, for something.
01:20:25.000Because ultimately, all the races will perish one day.
01:20:32.000And that's really what I'm getting at, is in the absence, without this grounding in something metaphysically real,
01:20:39.000We're all just LARPing, and it all doesn't matter, and there are no souls, and there is no judgment, and there is no moral law, and whenever we say, oh, America, or white, or any of these ideas, we're all really just role-playing, without that grounding in the supernatural reality.
01:20:56.000We're also sort of self-consciously, and that's really what post-modernism is, is the self-conscious sort of performance.
01:21:04.000Of what the human experience used to be, even though we know it kind of like doesn't matter.
01:21:08.000And that's why Christianity is the only answer to it, because Christianity is the only thing that says it matters.
01:21:46.000My frustration, so there's a certain amount of logic.
01:21:49.000That I follow down when we have these conversations about, like, Christianity, that being the meme that we're going to send our society around, and kind of, like, what the future of reality is, and whether or not, like, not-my-gnostic logos is sufficient.
01:22:03.000The problem that I have with Christianity is there's a certain illogic to it for me.
01:22:08.000And I know I'm not supposed to question the nature of God and this, that, the other, but I'm going to anyways, because otherwise, what's the fucking point of having this conversation if I'm not going to show you my logic?
01:22:16.000My, my logic is that human beings have been around for, okay, allegedly, okay, allegedly.
01:22:22.000I know we have some, I'll tell you how dinosaurs fucked this up.
01:22:29.000So, allegedly, our universe is 13.6 billion years old.
01:22:33.000Allegedly, humanity has been around for a few hundred thousand years.
01:22:36.000Allegedly, humanity has evolved and it's really only been like the past like, I don't know, 5,000, 10,000 that I've seen the material increases in humanity's capacity of understanding each other.
01:22:46.000We're kind of at the precipice of looking back
01:22:48.000through our history, whereas before people were probably so focused on surviving that they didn't even have the ability to understand the past because they just had to survive in the present.
01:22:57.000So, looking back, if we're to trust the lab coats, which I know is cringe, but if we're to trust the lab coats, basically the, sorry let me discard this,
01:23:08.000If we're to trust lab codes, basically humanity has been around for a really long time, and some of our moral nature pre-existed Christ, and pre-existed the Torah, and pre-existed Jewish people, and all that kind of stuff.
01:23:20.000And we can see the codification and moving of, like, morality.
01:23:25.000Like, so for instance, we're not gonna start observing, like, rabbinic, uh, rabbinic law when it comes to, like, the fucking temple or some shit when it comes to our ceremonies, because it was set for a different time in a different place, but for them that was like a morality.
01:23:38.000Same thing with, like, the consumption of pork or shellfish or something like that.
01:23:41.000If you want my real answer on why people don't consume pork and shellfish,
01:23:45.000It's probably because they saw a bunch of pigs who were fucking rolling around and shit, and then Tom, their neighbor, ate pig, and then he died because he had a bug bacteria, and they're like, oh, God doesn't want you to eat pig because Tom, the pig eater, fucking died last week.
01:23:59.000They probably saw some dickhead with a fucking allergic reaction to shellfish, and they're like, oh, fucking Ted died from shellfish.
01:24:05.000God doesn't want you to eat shellfish.
01:24:07.000So, from there, if I was to extrapolate that logic in codification morality, like, over time, I think there's, like, social observations that we made as a species, like, telling the truth is better than lying, killing should only be done in justified circumstances, fucking your neighbor's wife is a really good way to get yourself killed, if you want to know who your kids are, you should probably be faithful to your partner,
01:24:29.000If you don't want your dick to rot off because of diseases, then you should probably be faithful to your partner.
01:24:34.000If you want your kids to be happy and healthy and productive human beings, then you should be around for them and raise them and teach them to be moral in the ways that you believe morality are important.
01:24:45.000Nihilist antitheists I get so frustrated with because they don't even concede that this morality is evolutionarily advantageous.
01:24:52.000They just say, oh, even to have social prescriptions is bigoted.
01:24:56.000Even to have social prescriptions is fucked up.
01:24:59.000Whereas for me, it's obvious that a lot of these social prescriptions actually do lead to better human life on average.
01:25:05.000And you can come to me with a thousand exceptions, but the reality is that these rules were put in place for a reason.
01:25:11.000So for me, I'm appealing to Christianity.
01:25:13.000You were saying that you weren't appealing from a utilitarian standpoint.
01:25:17.000I am appealing from a utilitarian standpoint.
01:25:19.000I don't literally believe in the resurrection of Christ because I have 10,000 logical lab coat fucking reasons to not, but I do believe in the moral utility of Christian beliefs because I see their impact on human beings.
01:25:35.000Yeah, and that's what I'm saying, is that's where I think we diverge, is I'm not pushing it for you.
01:25:40.000And here's my issue though with the utilitarian is, and this is really the crux of it, I think that you cannot get the fruits of the religion
01:25:53.000I think that that's really the fundamental misstep of the Nietzscheans and the New Pagans and even people who say they're cultural Christians.
01:26:11.000There is something that changes when something is done self-consciously.
01:26:16.000There is, and I think maybe you would agree with this, that if I really believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, if I really believe that I'm going to burn in hell if I sin and I'll be rewarded if I don't, I really believe that will be my destiny.
01:26:33.000Maybe not as my body, but my soul, my eternal soul.
01:26:40.000Earnest, sincere faith, and a sort of self-conscious performance of faith for the sake of these kinds of benefits, essentially.
01:26:49.000And that, I think that's the real problem, which has been unresolved, is there isn't anything else, there's no alternative to believe in, and I think that trying to simulate that belief, I also think that you don't get the benefits.
01:27:02.000Because, again, it really only works if people believe that there's
01:27:13.000It's not because people are not eating pork or whatever that they're doing great.
01:27:18.000They're doing good because they're doing the right thing.
01:27:21.000And I also think that it's no coincidence that
01:27:24.000Things that God prescribes are good for you.
01:27:27.000I think that, you know, when you look at the Bible, one way to look at it is like, this is just this collected tradition, and there's a so-called Burkean way to look at it.
01:27:35.000There's like a Burkean heuristic, where you say, like you said, oh, people aren't eating shellfish, so they put it in the religious text, and, you know, something like this.
01:27:45.000But I think that it's no coincidence that
01:27:48.000It's not even just about STDs and how to build a functioning society.
01:27:53.000I also think it's about how to live a fulfilling life.
01:27:59.000In other words, it's not just good in purely material terms.
01:28:03.000In things that ancient people would understand, it's good in terms of... When you read the wisdom books, it's not just about
01:28:10.000Like solving your little problems, it's about how are you going to live a life that's really consistent with what you were kind of created to get.
01:28:18.000And it's written, in other words, like an author's manual, not like a field manual, if that makes sense.
01:28:25.000It's written like the owner wrote the manual, rather than we're sort of like figuring these things out.
01:28:32.000Because there's a lot of stuff in the Bible that is, in my opinion, maybe counterintuitive,
01:28:37.000But it's true, and there's a lot of things in the canon of Catholicism where you might say, well, there's not actually a really simple evolutionary psychology explanation for it, but yet it works, and it's true.
01:28:48.000And so to me, that shows, and then you've got, of course, the prophecies.
01:28:52.000The prophecies are an unignorable part of this.
01:28:55.000How could the prophecies predict the crucifixion?
01:28:58.000You know, how could the prophecies predict the time and the manner and the nature of the coming of the Messiah, if it was just supposed to be this field manual of collected wisdom?
01:29:06.000And why would there be this sort of arcane, esoteric things in there?
01:29:12.000I think it's clear that it's a transcendental, otherworldly owner's manual, essentially, as opposed to this... I think that the evolutionary psychology thing just...
01:29:23.000I think it's sense of rationalization.
01:29:33.000I joke about it with plenty of people.
01:29:36.000But I think that there's... I think, you're gonna hate this, but I'm gonna tell you anyways.
01:29:43.000I think contemplating the nature of existence and marijuana or mushrooms or any of that kind of stuff, it fucks with you on a level that's ultimately undeniable.
01:29:58.000And the thoughts and revelations that you'll achieve when you kind of get into these spaces are undeniable because they alter your pattern of behavior.
01:30:06.000And so that's where for me, I think that contemplation, meditation, seeking, you know, God, like I said, I'm a gnostic, you know, not a specific religious person, I just believe in a fundamental creative force and an order to the universe.
01:30:21.000The, and I think that you can know that universe through revelation that's both like personal and also cultural and over time and all that kind of stuff.
01:30:29.000So I do think that the Bible is revelation, but I also think that it's revelation through a flawed filter.
01:30:43.000And so for me, everything that we're scratching at, whether it's, you know, Taoism or Confucianism or Christianity or Islam or something like that, we're all scratching at the same thing, which is God and existence and morality and meaning and all that kind of stuff.
01:32:52.000Okay, my, my running theory was that dinosaurs were, uh, they were created to sell children's toys, okay?
01:32:59.000They were like, let's make cool-looking, weird animals.
01:33:02.000Source Lucas came up with dinosaurs, yeah.
01:33:04.000And then, and then we'll fucking, and then we'll sell them to kids, and then when fucking ultra-giga-chad fucking Christian nationalist geniuses figure out that we're lying, we'll just fucking browbeat them into shutting their mouths about, uh, the, the existence of dinosaurs.
01:33:31.000I'm not really up to date on that one.
01:33:33.000But why does everyone care that I believe in... That's... I have a problem with the snarky... No, I was saying that I had similar doubts, and then I saw birds fuck, and I was like, okay, maybe dinosaurs are real.
01:33:53.000I think historical descriptions of dragons and sea monsters and all that kind of shit were probably, like, Leviathan creatures in human prehistory that were absolutely fucking monstrous to deal with.
01:34:27.000And then walking away and being like, Frank got eaten by a Komodo dragon.
01:34:29.000And it's like, go write a story about that shit.
01:34:31.000Tell me that, uh, dinosaurs or, uh, dragons don't pop up in your lore, in your literature.
01:34:36.000But anyways, I listen I'm okay, so I'm not gonna lie.
01:34:40.000I'm gonna tell you exactly where I'm at I don't give a fuck about Ukraine because I understand like I give a fuck on a personal level I'm still gonna send money to my friends in Ukraine.
01:34:48.000I'm still gonna I'm still gonna support them and What about the Azov battalion?
01:34:52.000We didn't even talk about the Azov battalion tonight!
01:34:59.000He asked me for dating advice that he followed well before the war and he actually took me up on it and he actually had a successful taste date with a girl that he was into.
01:36:09.000And for what it's worth, it is fucked up what they're doing.
01:36:11.000The Galician far right and the Kiev government
01:36:14.000Going after the Russian language and all of that, I think it's messed up, but I also don't really care about the conflict.
01:36:21.000The Azov thing is also, I mean, people bring up the way they are treated by the Western media and Western governments previous to this conflict.
01:36:30.000Where they're called out before and now they're just virtually ignored because as long as they're fighting Russia, who gives a fuck?
01:37:06.000I can be here as long as you want to if you want to answer superchats or continue on to a different conversation or whatever.
01:37:11.000I'm just telling you, I'm old as shit.
01:37:14.000I'm still in the wage cage, so I have to pay my bills.
01:37:17.000So I sat in a chair for eight hours before doing this debate, and my neck and my back is fucking screaming at me because I can't do this shit full time, unlike you neat fucks.
01:37:27.000And basically, you know, I want to get there eventually.
01:38:27.000We're literally talking about, like, Christian Imperium and conquering the world and what elements of fucking fascism are integratable and which ones of them are fucking cringe.
01:38:36.000And you're complaining about the word, like, fuck?
01:39:57.000Do you think I just as easily could have gone back to Nick and bored the fuck out of y'all by saying, Ukraine tried to negotiate too back in 2014.
01:40:04.000There was this meeting between Zelensky and Russia and they asked for these three things and they didn't get them.
01:40:38.000I just think where people would argue about that is they'd say, like,
01:40:41.000Well, it doesn't matter because liberal democracy is what's right, so it's almost like this.
01:40:47.000What do you think about the idea that Putin was actually doing this also for the future, not just for this Ukrainian dispute, that this is also to show the West that he will do something like that, that Russia will go to war, and it's not just all saber-rattling that, yeah, we will go into country, yeah, we will drop some missiles if needed.
01:41:09.000The dude that is like 60s or something like that, he's trying to make sure that Russia is stronger than when he first got it.
01:41:15.000I don't know if that's true or not, considering how economically fucked and militarily fucked it's been, but that was his goal.
01:41:23.000Whether or not he achieved it is debatable.
01:41:25.000Well yeah, well maybe he thinks if they don't ever act, if they just keep getting bullied by the West over and over and over again, then they never step up, basically, in a serious way, militarily.
01:41:35.000Yeah, but there's just, while we can extrapolate it down to these broad moral philosophies and all that kind of stuff, there's just, there's young people who are dead now that didn't need to be.
01:42:53.000If you shoot an artillery shell into a civilian area, there's a chance it's going to hit a civilian?
01:42:57.000Well, there will be civilian casualties, but this, you know, what we're hearing from the media is hysterical, where they say, they're bombing maternity wards deliberately.
01:43:06.000It's like, they're bombing a puppy mill.
01:43:09.000They just blew up a puppy mill and a pet store and a daycare.
01:44:04.000Like, if you're gonna go to McDonald's or something like that, I'm not saying you gotta fucking kill your own cows and shit, but recognize that you're killing a fucking cow, and if it came down to it and you're like, yeah, I want my fucking Big Mac, then just be willing to shoot the cow in the fucking head yourself.
01:44:31.000I think that war should be avoided at any cost and I don't think there's any, and I don't think it's going to be glib about violence.
01:44:38.000That being said, I think that it's foundational to the worldview that
01:44:43.000The violence is unnecessary and the violence is being caused.
01:44:46.000I mean, it's true that Russia, in a strict sense, initiated it, but the real cause was the West.
01:44:53.000And it is tragic and it's unfortunate.
01:44:55.000I'm not trying to be funny when I say that, but I do support Russia and I do support it and, like, you know, the meta-political consequences.
01:45:30.000Traveling to a country that's being invaded, publicly supporting the invaders, and then posting that to social media, and then getting detained for a few weeks.
01:45:42.000I don't know the details of it or whatever, but the fucking, like the Rip Bozo shit on fucking Twitter, I'm not gonna lie.
01:45:49.000It's fu- like if he was actually executed in like a, you know, Ukrainian fucking jail cell or whatever, it'd be a little fucked up.
01:47:00.000He's a Christian Democrat, and he basically, like, he's not as built into this universe as, you know, I am, I guess.
01:47:10.000But he basically, he goes, deals with degenerate Twitch trash, and then freaks the fuck out and autistically spurgs at him without getting banned.
01:47:31.000So, I can concede descriptive reality.
01:47:33.000There's no harm in conceding descriptive reality, but I also think that we can... Nick would probably concede my descriptive reality, which is the United States is representative of a 65 trillion global hegemon that's trying to rule the world, either through diplomacy or economics, in that there is a argument for Russia being forced into the fold.
01:47:59.000And you could say it was like an overreach or some shit, but it's not Europeans.
01:48:05.000Europeans are experiencing high gas prices.
01:48:07.000They're not getting artillery shelled.
01:48:09.000And Americans, there's global economic earthquakes because of what's going on, but it's not Europeans or the Western hegemony that's paying the price.
01:48:21.000So while I think Nick could be right that this is an overreach by the global American empire, I think the reason why they were willing to overreach is because they knew they weren't going to be the ones who primarily paid the price.
01:48:31.000So you can morally indict my side while still descriptively understanding their project.
01:48:37.000So just because I concede to descriptive reality doesn't mean I'm like, oh yeah, Russia's based for fucking artillery shelling fucking cities.
01:48:45.000I would go a step further, and I would even say that the United States is driving the policy, and the United States isn't even bearing the brunt of the economic pain, too.
01:48:53.000It's like, we're not dying, and also, we're not reliant on the Russian natural gas, but we're the driver.
01:49:00.000This policy is not good for Ukraine, or for Germany, or France, or Eastern Europe.
01:49:07.000But maybe Joe Biden is playing 4-D chess, because Trump
01:49:10.000Was trying to get the German military to carry its own weight, and because of the war in Ukraine, you know, the Bundeswehr is now rearming and becoming, you know, better funded.
01:49:20.000So maybe Biden is actually, despite his melting brain, a 4D genius.
01:50:15.000Yeah, and that's why I have fucking arthritis and neck problems and shit.
01:50:19.000So, yeah, wasn't Evola the fucking autist who was like walking around in artillery strikes during World War I and got paralyzed as a result?
01:50:26.000Or was I thinking of some other philosopher?
01:50:31.000I don't believe he was in World War I, no.
01:50:34.000There was some dissident right-wing philosopher or somebody people like to appeal to, who literally was like, the axe of God and the axe of man are ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, and they align this way mystically, this, that, the other, and he used to go out for walks in artillery strikes in a civilian area, and he literally got paralyzed because he was such an autist.
01:52:24.000Um, because I'm not religious, because I don't root my world in foundational Christianity, I do have different takes on gay folk, trans folk, you know, whatever, minorities, all this kind of shit.
01:52:38.000And I'm trying to think of the future of the world in which we build a civic nationalist, liberalist,
01:52:44.000Structure that actually is strong enough to survive the trials and tribulations of the future without it being like a desiccated morally bankrupt spiritually collapsing falling apart Because we're at the peak of Rome But what happens now does it perpetuate or does it collapse?
01:53:03.000And if it's going to perpetuate, we're going to need a spiritual, not like religious necessarily, but we're going to need a spiritual narrative that actually propagates the project forward.
01:53:13.000Without that narrative, we're doomed to collapse because people don't even know what they're fighting and dying for.
01:53:21.000The global hegemonic project is powerful.
01:53:24.000Just because it experienced a temporary setback, I want people in Nick's audience to soberly reflect on what the geopolitical goals of Russia are and what the geopolitical goals of the American hegemonic project are, and who's succeeding in their goals more at this time.
01:53:41.000And if anything, my argument against Nick's view, like this prescription that it's all going to fall apart, Cato, again, like the Roman historian philosopher or whatever, he predicted the fall of Rome 350, like 400 years before it happened.
01:53:55.000So you can see the writing on the wall, but it could take longer to happen than you give it time for.
01:54:01.000And on top of that, who do you want to be?
01:54:04.000So, do you want to be the, you know, the Christian aesthetic who ignores the fall of the Imperium and eventually wants to reconstitute something greater within Christendom?
01:54:14.000Because there were people who existed 2,000 years ago who did exactly that.
01:54:18.000There were Bulgarian Central Europeans who became more Roman than some of the Romans themselves and fought for the Imperium and perpetuated the Empire for longer than most people thought it was going to survive.
01:54:31.000And then there was stuck-up, snobby, shitty Italian Romans who basically doomed the Empire through their own hubris and through their own discrimination of what they had created, but they basically rushed the fall of the Empire because they were snobby and shitty towards their own creation.
01:54:51.000I'm hoping that through these conversations, through these ideas, we could kind of come along like a civic nationalist, liberal social structure that's capable of perpetuating.
01:55:02.000And when Nick says, do you think it's strong enough to survive?
01:55:27.000Yes, well, what started out as a debate about Russia and Ukraine has really taken some wild twists and some winding twists and turns, but that's okay.
01:55:38.000I thought it was a good conversation, and I think you hit the nail on the head.
01:55:42.000The crux of the real divergence is on religion, and I think that is true about you and I and Destiny and I. I don't even think it's so much about
01:55:54.000Right or left or, you know, anything really specific about ideology.
01:55:59.000It's about whether or not we're religious.
01:56:24.000The Ukraine war is not the beginning of it, it's sort of the end of that transition.
01:56:28.000And so whether we pass good policy or bad policy really doesn't matter.
01:56:33.000China is coming back, Russia is coming back, Europe will probably break away in more meaningful ways as time goes on.
01:56:40.000This is reality we have to deal with and so we can't have a foreign policy predicated on this
01:56:46.000Infallibility, the self-righteousness, and also this idea that we can achieve any goal, and we don't have to select which goals we want to have.
01:56:56.000We've got to make choices and be economical, as opposed to this idea that we can fight two wars at once and do whatever we want, and we're never wrong.
01:57:07.000As for our competing and separate projects,
01:57:10.000I think that you are with everyone else.
01:57:14.000In a certain sense, you are with the Nietzscheans and the Baptists and with everybody else that is trying to create some kind of new religion or something like a religion in the wake of modernism.
01:57:27.000And I think that it's just not going to work.
01:57:29.000And it's not going to work because religion is true.
01:57:31.000If religion were not true, it would be possible.
01:57:33.000But it just so happens that because religion is true, this project is impossible.
01:57:39.000And it's been tried in communism, it's been tried in liberalism, I mean, and how many times do we have to see these kind of violent revolutions and butchery in France, or in Russia, or in Iran, or in other places, or in Germany, even, before we realize that there are no idea systems, there are no systems that are going to solve the problem, which is that man has fallen.
01:58:06.000And that we live in a hierarchical, supernatural, metaphysical universe where there are angels and demons or rather there are angelic beings and where there's a God.
01:58:17.000I think that all these systems failings is a testament to the fact that it's not getting at the true nature of the universe and of man.