00:00:35.000So, of course, we're talking about the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court, as well as the decision on the unions.
00:00:44.000We were going to have Classical Theist on the show.
00:01:13.000It actually almost works out a little bit because now we get to spend a proper amount of time on the Supreme Court, which of course everybody is talking about, everybody's interested in.
00:01:55.000He decided after this month's rulings, of which there were several major victories from the Trump administration, he decided he was going to call the quits and he is retiring.
00:02:04.000And of course, everybody's upset about this or excited about this because now President Trump will be able to.
00:02:11.000Fill in a second vacancy on the court, which is very, very exciting.
00:02:16.000If we fill in another vacancy on the court, we now have a solid, strong conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
00:02:24.000And just to give you a little bit of background so the Supreme Court has had a 5 4 conservative majority for some time.
00:02:34.000It had it prior to President Trump getting into office.
00:02:38.000We had Antonin Scalia die, and then it was 4 4 4 liberals, 4 conservatives.
00:02:44.000On the liberal side, you had Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
00:02:50.000On the conservative side, you had Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Scalia, and then Kennedy was marginally conservative.
00:02:57.000They described him as a conservative that sometimes voted liberal.
00:03:01.000He voted with the liberals, for example, on the gay marriage issue.
00:03:04.000And so he's been a pretty inconsistent guy.
00:03:06.000Out of the conservative block, he's been the least conservative out of all of them.
00:03:11.000So we had a majority conservative court for a while.
00:03:15.000But it was inconsistent because of Kennedy.
00:03:17.000After Scalia died, Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, if you remember.
00:03:22.000And Democrats are eternally salty about this because, of course, Scalia died a long time before the 2016 election.
00:03:30.000I believe something like eight or 10 months before the 2016 election, Barack Obama had Merrick Garland ready to go, nominated for the court.
00:03:40.000And the Republicans were in control of both the Senate and the House.
00:03:43.000The Senate's the only one that matters because the Senate has to confirm a presidential appointment.
00:03:48.000So the Republicans obstructed it for 10 months.
00:03:53.000He puts up Neil Gorsuch, a very strong conservative and a young guy.
00:03:57.000He's 50 years old, so he could be on the court for 30, 40 years.
00:04:02.000Not crazy to say that he'll be on there for four decades.
00:04:06.000So we were able to have a young guy, another conservative, a strong constitutionalist, and this gave us a number of big rulings this month.
00:04:14.000For example, we saw the travel ban, which was upheld as constitutional yesterday.
00:04:19.000We also saw a California abortion, pro abortion law that was overturned by the courts yesterday.
00:04:53.000Now we're going to get a conservative who is much younger.
00:04:56.000Donald Trump said he might want to have a justice in his 40s, maybe even his 30s.
00:05:00.000Somebody who's much more conservative, a much stronger constitutionalist.
00:05:05.000And so, with this new balance on the court, if we get somebody in there, get somebody through the Senate, you know, of course, the process is that the president selects an appointee, it goes to the Senate.
00:05:15.000Normally, it requires a supermajority to approve a president's judicial appointment, but because of the filibuster rule, which was done away with last April by Mitch McConnell, now we'll be able to get a pick through with a simple majority of 51 votes.
00:05:31.000So, it's really going to be A big deal.
00:05:33.000That's why everybody's so excited or upset.
00:05:39.000Because we've seen a lot of major decisions made in the last 50 years.
00:05:44.000Roe v. Wade is one of them, which made abortion legal in all 50 states.
00:05:48.000The gay marriage ruling, which made gay marriage legal in all 50 states.
00:05:52.000Several Obamacare rulings, for example, one of them, which declared that the individual mandate under Obamacare was part of Congress's taxing power.
00:06:02.000That was Roberts, who was the swing vote on that one, one of the conservative people.
00:06:06.000So, I don't know if that one will get overturned, but you have to understand the sheer scope of power that the Supreme Court has been able to accrue over the course of the last 50 years.
00:06:18.000The reason being is because Congress, because they don't want to be accountable, because they don't want to be responsible for making laws that upset people or laws that might not work out, they have ceded a tremendous amount of authority either to the executive department with the bureaucracies and other tools of the administration or to the courts where a law or A regulation will end up going through the federal court system, end up at the Supreme Court, and they'll have to legislate effectively from the bench.
00:06:48.000And so, in a big way, the Supreme Court is more consequential than the House of Representatives, more consequential than the Senate in certain ways.
00:06:56.000Because we look at some of these cultural issues where now we're given an opportunity to go back in time, essentially.
00:07:01.000You know, people have often told me on the show or in Twitter or friends and family, we're never going back.
00:07:11.000This counter revolution, these counter reformation forces in the country will ever succeed because we know that the country is now ruled by people who are liberal, people that are for the Globo Homo complex, the Globo Homo establishment.
00:07:27.000And so, if that's the case, then there's simply no going back.
00:07:30.000This is our new country, and we might as well just get used to it as opposed to trying to fight it, which is a futile effort.
00:07:37.000But what we have an opportunity here with the courts is to overturn Roe v. Wade, make it so that abortion is illegal again.
00:07:45.000Make it so that gay marriage is illegal again.
00:07:47.000Make it so that we could have many victories we haven't even heard about that aren't even talked about issues, for example, like the union ruling that went down earlier this morning, which can strip away the power of the Democrats, strip away the power of the courts.
00:08:01.000A really great example of this yesterday was with Clarence Thomas.
00:08:05.000He wrote in his concurring statement on the ruling made about the travel ban.
00:08:10.000We know yesterday that the third iteration of the travel ban, which was launched in September of 2017, In the form of an executive order by the president, it was obstructed by circuit judges, the Hawaii circuit judge, and people in San Francisco, and people in Washington, and New York.
00:08:27.000And Clarence Thomas, in his ruling the other day, said, Look, if these lower courts keep acting essentially as a veto power over the president or over the Congress, shutting down laws and regulations for totally arbitrary reasons, he says we might have to look at the power of those courts to do that and maybe strip them of that power.
00:08:45.000And so the courts that they are so conservative now, or they have the opportunity to become so conservative.
00:08:52.000And for such a long time, the next oldest justice, I believe, is Alito, who's 68, so he could be on the court for another 12 or 20 years.
00:09:02.000That has the real power to really transform the country and redefine the country in a way that might actually be easier than winning the House, in a way that might be easier than winning the Senate.
00:09:12.000And so this is why you have to trust the process.
00:09:15.000You know, I went on when I started the show, and really I got more of a woke, red pilled audience over the summer when I started my own channel, but.
00:09:25.000My whole deal, my whole concept on this show has been the idea that we can change the system from within the system.
00:09:32.000That's in very stark difference to a lot of other, maybe parallel people who say we have to have change from outside the system, either through a change of government or a change of the system, some kind of radical reformation.
00:09:45.000But I was always a big believer that a slow march through the institutions or some kind of subversion of the institutions is highly possible and the most probable way that we could change.
00:10:40.000Imagine you have people who are on the same page as Trump or in some proximity to him ideologically, and they're in the IRS, they're in the post office, they're in local government, they're in the state house, they're in the House of Representatives or the Senate.
00:10:55.000They're clerking for some of these justices, they're in the federal judiciary.
00:11:00.000Imagine the potential if one guy can make that great of a change from within the system.
00:11:05.000Staying for the most part within the Overton window of what's acceptable, imagine what we could amass with 100 people, 1,000 people, 5,000 people, 10,000 people.
00:11:24.000If that's the ceiling, and that's a pretty ambitious project, if that's a liberal estimate, imagine how much damage 100,000 people could do working their way up through the system or aiding and abetting this counter reformation in some capacity.
00:11:38.000What we saw today, I think more than anything, you know, we could look at the issues, we could look at some of the court decisions that could come down, but what we're seeing more than anything is a tremendous white pill for people that still believe in the process, people who still trust the system.
00:11:54.000You get control of the courts, you get control of the executive, we get the media delegitimized.
00:11:59.000We are now poised, maybe in a better position than even the left, than the globalists, to make serious reforms.
00:12:06.000And so this is something I think that should tell people.
00:12:15.000And one of the big reasons why we look at elections as mattering, even though the House and the Senate have given up a tremendous amount of authority, and the reason that they do this really briefly is because if the House of Representatives, for example, passes a bill on immigration and it's not totally popular or it's not, you know, it doesn't work out very well, it's not a big success, well, the people that voted for that are going to get either primaried or they're going to lose their jobs.
00:12:44.000In the House of Representatives in particular, it's a very fragile balance because people are up for election every two years.
00:12:51.000You don't have the same kind of cushion that a senator has, that a president has, where you can make a decision early on in your term and maybe fix things up towards the end.
00:12:59.000You know, if you're a senator, you're in for six years.
00:13:01.000If you're a president, you're in for four years.
00:13:03.000If you're a congressman, you're going to face the consequences of a decision within two years.
00:13:09.000And it looks like we've got a note from our producer.
00:13:13.000Who says that our guest has not gotten the proper link to the call?
00:13:18.000So I'm going to try and get that over to him once I finish this point here.
00:13:45.000So, gradually, they give more and more jurisdiction where the House should act or where the Senate should act to the courts or to the bureaucracy.
00:13:52.000But let me see really quickly if I can get another invitation out here.
00:13:57.000You're going to see it live on the air.
00:13:59.000I'll give him a link on Twitter and then I'll give him another email, perhaps.
00:14:58.000Okay, so let me adjust my settings here and we'll abruptly transition over to our.
00:15:04.000Well, actually, I think classical theists can lend some pretty good insights on the issue of the courts because a lot of them are cultural.
00:15:11.000So just give me a moment here to get the window back on the screen.
00:16:22.000I first started making some YouTube videos.
00:16:27.000I just thought that there wasn't a whole lot of content out there, at least in these kind of online circles, particularly concerning Catholic theology and philosophy.
00:16:45.000Particularly from the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas.
00:16:48.000And I think that that kind of intellectual tradition, that scholastic tradition that emerged in the high Middle Ages, I think that actually is a, you know, provides almost an infinite source of, you know, treasures to help bring to the current debate surrounding all sorts of issues, whether it be religion, politics, you know, political theory, et cetera.
00:17:13.000And I've, I used to be an atheist, so.
00:17:17.000I kind of came from that thought world.
00:17:19.000And once I crossed over, seeing that lack of, you know, Thomistic philosophy in the current debate, I just thought I should step up and kind of offer that myself.
00:17:36.000And so that's kind of what I try to do.
00:17:38.000Well, yes, I've been to your channel before.
00:17:40.000Lots of great content on the scholastic tradition on Thomas Aquinas.
00:17:45.000And it's been really a helpful resource for me, your Twitter and your YouTube, because.
00:17:50.000You're right about medieval philosophy, particularly Thomas Aquinas, and how this is virtually absent from the conversation on both the Christian and the atheist side.
00:18:00.000You know, how many people have watched a Christopher Hitchens video or a Richard Dawkins video, or maybe they even watched their favorite Protestant pastor on YouTube and they've never heard of Thomas Aquinas?
00:18:13.000They've never heard the cosmological arguments, they've never heard the teleological argument.
00:18:17.000It was astounding to me when I discovered them that you have this rich tradition, this rich intellectual tradition.
00:18:23.000Tome and nobody knows about it, or very few people know about it.
00:18:27.000So, yeah, there are all sorts of like watered down cosmological arguments that you find from certain Protestant apologists like William Lane Craig, etc.
00:18:37.000I just don't find them very convincing and they don't get at the heart of what's most fundamental and compelling about you know the god of classical theism.
00:18:46.000And once you truly look into the god of you know classical theism and particularly scholastic theology in general, you really discover that this.
00:18:59.000Intellectual tradition going all the way back from Aristotle up through Plato and Plotinus, and then picked up by the Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, that inoculates you against practically every argument that a Christopher Hitchens will throw against you because their arguments simply don't apply to the same God at all.
00:19:20.000And that's one of the big subjects I wanted to get into you with in a moment, into with you in a moment, and just identifying what is God, who is God, because of course that is the central concept that is at stake in a debate about theology or in a debate about religion is the nature of God.
00:19:40.000And one of the big mistakes I see is the Sky Daddy argument.
00:19:43.000This is what Ryan Dawson brought up with me this, oh, you need a man in the clouds to tell you what to do.
00:19:48.000So, you know, that's a very important thing, which I want to get to with you in a moment.
00:19:52.000For starters, what I really wanted to talk to you about is, first of all, the Supreme Court.
00:19:57.000I mean, this is obviously very topical, but I just want to get.
00:20:09.000And I want to get your take as a Catholic because, you know, some of the big things that this court will see will be abortion, gay marriage.
00:20:25.000I think it's a good concrete evidence that it's simply unacceptable for a Catholic to sit themselves outside of political participation.
00:20:39.000I kind of see among certain Catholic friends that the society is too drenched in, you know, post Enlightenment sonic principles that we should just step outside of the system altogether and to try to engage in voting or.
00:20:57.000Or, what have you, is just voting for the lesser of two evils, and you're just cooperating in evil, and you should just not even engage.
00:21:03.000I think this really shows that that's not an acceptable route to take.
00:21:08.000We have to, as Catholics, understand that we're not going to change the culture overnight.
00:21:51.000And, you know, of course, it's a major win.
00:21:55.000I mean, it's potentially very plausible that we could get Roe v. Wade and such overturned and maybe even overturned the.
00:22:03.000Decision regarding same sex marriage, depending on who Trump appoints to the federal bench or to the Supreme Court.
00:22:11.000I think one potential Supreme Court nominee on this list in particular said some very promising things about same sex marriage.
00:22:21.000I think it was William Pryor or something like that.
00:22:23.000So there are all sorts of people on this list that are really promising for someone who's interested in Catholic integralism and trying to overturn the culture and such.
00:23:06.000We need people to be active in their doing their part.
00:23:09.000So that's a great point that you make about participation and incrementalism.
00:23:13.000And the trick will be with the courts on gay marriage and abortion.
00:23:18.000It's somewhat worrisome simply because you look at some of the more liberal conservative senators, like Susan Collins from Maine, for example.
00:23:27.000We've got a 51 vote majority in the Senate with John McCain.
00:23:31.000John McCain's out of play because of cancer.
00:23:33.000So we have a 50 vote majority with the tiebreaker from Mike Pence.
00:23:38.000So we need all Republicans to be on board.
00:23:41.000And if we don't get Collins, if we don't get the senator from Alaska, who I have heard might be dicey on this, Could be a difficult process.
00:23:51.000I think maybe a potential white pill about that is the fact that Trump promised that he was going to pick someone from his list, all of whom are, I think, pretty good.
00:24:02.000I can't think of one off the top of my head that would be a negative.
00:24:06.000And for that reason, if they didn't go along, if some of these more liberal Republicans didn't go along with it, I think it would be very, very, very troublesome for their future ambitions.
00:24:21.000Back to the point of incrementalism, I wanted to mention it's also worth noting that how things got to this level of depravity in the culture, that started incrementally.
00:24:35.000That started with incrementalism on the other side.
00:24:37.000So that should give us that's kind of a mirror image of what we should be emulating.
00:24:42.000That if they can get society to where it is now, we can have a really good shot with incrementalism in the opposite direction.
00:24:53.000You know, I mean, people witness the success of the left and the success of certain groups or categories of people who, with small numbers, were able to achieve great things.
00:25:02.000And instead of wanting to emulate their success, like you said, emulate their strategy, they say, well, we have to march forward into the open, into essentially like Normandy Beach, getting shot from all sides, declaring our intentions.
00:25:18.000And it would make a lot more sense to go slow and steady.
00:25:20.000Hey, Mitch McConnell, they don't call him the turtle for nothing.
00:25:47.000And I think a lot of people have seen it at this point.
00:25:50.000And Jordan Peterson, to me, represents something that can be a very big threat to Christianity.
00:25:55.000At once, he's a big opportunity because I think he turns people on to the.
00:26:00.000The utility of religion shows people that, wow, you know, religion can actually be backed up by science and psychology.
00:26:06.000Even if you're a scientist, even if you're an empiricist, you can look at what religion provides and say, well, there's a pretty rational explanation for why these things are good for you.
00:26:15.000But he takes out the divinity, the supernatural elements, which are the reality of it.
00:26:24.000I have mixed feelings about Jordan Peterson.
00:26:26.000On the one hand, I appreciate the fact that, you know, going back to the incrementalism point, I realized that.
00:26:33.000We're in such a deep hole that on some level you have to tolerate the fact that he has his irreparable limitations.
00:26:47.000On the other hand, if you want to read the tweet out, or I could read the tweet out and we can kind of get into what that is, because that's kind of relevant to my point.
00:26:57.000It says, and he tweeted this the other day he said, quote, As demonstrated or manifested in your presumption, perception, and action.
00:27:09.000So, you know, tackle that word salad, right?
00:27:13.000On the one hand, like maybe you can interpret him as saying that, you know, oh, he's just saying that what you value the most is ultimately kind of what you worship, and what you worship is going to, you know, permeate through your entire being, through all of your operations and activities, et cetera.
00:27:30.000You can kind of see maybe where he's going with that.
00:27:33.000But I think on the other hand, he's really trying to, I think, reduce God to that level, to the level of simply one particular mode of being.
00:27:44.000And that's, I think, what is ultimately completely inadmissible to the divine.
00:27:53.000It takes away from God what is most fundamental to what we mean by God, which is God is not one, he can't be restricted to one particular mode of being among other mode of beings.
00:28:07.000He is the unconditioned, pure act of being itself.
00:28:13.000I mean, I could conceive of all kinds of Particular modes of being.
00:28:16.000I can conceive of like a cat, I can conceive of a triangle, trees, or what have you.
00:28:22.000But in so doing, I'm always presupposing being itself.
00:28:27.000When I conceive of any particular mode or manner of being, I'm always presupposing being itself as prior to all those things.
00:28:36.000On the other hand, when I conceive of being in itself, just considered in its unqualified sense, that doesn't imply necessarily any of these particular modes of being.
00:28:49.000If I'm just conceiving of being as such, I don't necessarily have to conceive the existence of the cat or the tree or the triangle.
00:28:58.000So I think from that we can conclude that being unqualified and its unqualified, unconditioned sense is more fundamental.
00:29:06.000It's prior to, it precedes any particular manner of being.
00:29:10.000And that's why we identify God with this, because God is most fundamental to all things.
00:29:19.000We can't conceive of any particular manner of being without.
00:29:22.000First, acknowledging that ultimate plenitude and source of existence that encompasses everything, insofar as they're real.
00:29:29.000And I think that's something that we really have to bring to the forefront when we talk about God, that we're not talking about just one being among many.
00:29:38.000He's not just, again, I think even a lot of Protestants and some other Christians, they fall into that trap where they'll talk about God as.
00:30:41.000And it's with all these people who try and make it into Christianity is actually about the mythology or Christianity is actually a cultural thing.
00:31:00.000If all you're looking for is a system that's going to bring you material benefits or cultural prosperity, I wouldn't necessarily, and if that's your ultimate end, I actually think Christianity might inhibit that in a way, in the sense that Christianity requires us to put aside the material.
00:31:21.000It requires us to put aside these transient realities.
00:31:27.000And so if you don't give reality, or if you don't give Christianity, Its ontological status, its reality on the level of the very being of things, then I think you should just grab it if you're not going to see it as ultimately real.
00:31:46.000You know, and I get that a lot on my show.
00:31:49.000I think that was a point that Ryan Dawson brought up, or maybe it was some other atheist who came on the show and said, well, you know, you could look at Christian countries in Africa or Christian countries in the Caribbean, which aren't successful.
00:31:59.000And this kind of misses the whole point, right?
00:32:03.000I mean, in order for Christianity to become powerful and potent, Your values have to be the divine.
00:32:10.000Your value has to be the spiritual as opposed to the temporal and the material.
00:32:14.000And that's what gives Christians, I think, the material well being that we have.
00:32:19.000But in order to achieve that, and it's almost paradoxical in that sense, you have to at first suspend your valuation of those things.
00:32:27.000So for people who say it's a magic trick, well, if we just become Christian, then we'll be able to get stuff and we'll be able to get this and that.
00:32:34.000Well, then you're not really a Christian.
00:32:36.000Therefore, you won't have those things.
00:32:39.000So I think that is, like you said in the.
00:32:42.000In the first part, denying the reality of Christianity, denying that God is real and realism itself, I think defeats the whole purpose.
00:32:52.000And so maybe you could say, and I do think that incrementally, Jordan Peterson is somebody who gets people to second guess what they know about faith and second guess what they know.
00:33:04.000Yeah, it gets people to, I think, question the presuppositions that have been enshrined.
00:33:27.000We have to, I guess, in a way, bow to his practical usefulness in these areas, but ultimately we have to go beyond him and keep moving forward toward.
00:33:42.000Toward authentic realism and toward authentic principles that actually allow us to see these things as actually real and not simply reducible to, you know, Jungian archetypes in our head.
00:33:56.000Because ultimately, what does that do for us?
00:33:59.000I mean, sure, it might be able to help us achieve certain proximate goals for psychological fulfillment, but it's ultimately dead in its tracks if it's not going to have that yearning for the infinite beyond the infinite.
00:34:15.000It'd be beyond that, the psychological limitation.
00:34:19.000Well, I mean, that's the biggest problem you can think Jungian archetypes are intelligent or good or beneficial, but there's nothing that differentiates Christianity as some mythological kind of something to lean on, you know, crutch, than Harry Potter or Star Wars.
00:34:35.000Or, you know, for people that say, well, Christianity is useful for these reasons.
00:34:39.000Yeah, well, what about this mythological story?
00:34:43.000There's no, like you said, there's no reality to it, it's not real.
00:34:47.000But so, if Jordan Peterson defines God as the mode of being you value most and by you know this kind of psychological gobbledygook, you know, this jargon, let's sort of answer that with scholastic.
00:35:02.000It's almost kind of hypocritical for me to say that's jargon because then I open up Aquinas and I'm like, whoa, you know, it's talking about essence and all these.
00:35:25.000The first qualifier I should put on that is that in a certain way, God is truly, ultimately indefinable from the standpoint of our finite limitations.
00:35:37.000The finite cannot conceive of the infinite by ourselves.
00:35:42.000So that qualifier, I think, should be set out.
00:35:45.000But on the other hand, we could still know all sorts of things about God from.
00:35:51.000And when we say that God is pure actuality, or when we say he is the unconditioned act of being itself, what we're really getting at is that God is most fundamentally not any particular limited mode of existence that you could encounter directly.
00:36:22.000When we encounter material reality in front of us, we discover certain things about it that make it incapable of being self sufficient for its existence.
00:36:40.000For example, you know, the tree outside of my house, it's conditioned, it exists in a derivative sense.
00:36:49.000It's It exists, yes, but it exists only due to the fact that it receives its existence from certain extrinsic causes, such as its own material composition or even the past, how the tree came into existence from the acorn and such.
00:37:12.000Even now, it depends for its existence on certain extrinsic causes.
00:37:17.000So, this is not just talking about stretching back in time.
00:37:20.000Even now, it depends for its existence on the fact that it is.
00:37:30.000Any reality that is composed of parts is causally dependent upon the whole.
00:37:35.000And the whole is also dependent upon its parts to exist as a unified reality.
00:37:46.000But once you get at that, the fact that material reality, the existence of material things, is derivative, in other words, it It is received from without.
00:38:01.000The existence of the tree is received.
00:38:03.000It doesn't have existence from its own nature.
00:38:10.000Again, we can conceive of existence, we can conceive of being without implying that the tree exists or the cat exists or the stone exists.
00:38:20.000And for that reason, if the tree or if the stone or if the cat is going to receive existence, That means that those things that receive it are contingent, meaning they're dependent upon other things to exist.
00:38:37.000Now, once you get there, you would ask well, could everything be such that its existence is derivative?
00:38:45.000Could there just be an infinite regress of derivative existence?
00:38:51.000Well, that's not going to work because if existence is derived infinitely, then nothing could ever actually receive that existence in the first place.
00:39:02.000Because being derived implies that it's, you know, if the tree's existence is derived, then the tree doesn't actually possess existence in and of itself.
00:39:13.000So you would almost say that the tree considered in and of itself.
00:39:18.000Doesn't actually possess existence because it's derived, it comes from without.
00:39:21.000So, you would then ask, Well, if existence cannot be infinitely derivative, if it can't be just received, um, wouldn't there have to be a reality then whose existence is fundamentally not received, whose existence is not derivative in any sense of the word?
00:39:45.000And it's that reality that we call God, that unqualified source.
00:39:51.000Of existence itself, in whom everything that actually receives existence can participate and share in, but Himself is not any one particular mode of limited existence, but simply is that act of existence simply in itself.
00:40:13.000And so that's one of the ways you can kind of get at the existence of God.
00:40:21.000Succinctly, as perhaps I should have worded it, but if you can kind of follow, yeah, well, I mean, that's sort of the trick of Aquinas and of classical theism itself is that these are not concepts which can be as easily understood as a basic analogy by, you know, some shit lib skeptic where they say, well, there's talking animals in the Bible, so, you know, debunk that.
00:40:44.000Anybody could say, oh, well, that's objectionable, but to really lay out a case from a metaphysical perspective about contingency, about existence, about These kinds of things.
00:41:31.000But to really wrap your head around those kinds of things is a difficult thing.
00:41:35.000It's not a sound bite, you know, where you get Christopher Hitchens who says, you know, yeah, go ahead.
00:41:41.000I think it does take a lot of patience and willingness and effort to actually allow yourself to be open to it and therefore to allow yourself to digest it with humility.
00:41:54.000On the other hand, I think ordinary people can encounter this in more subtle and less.
00:42:02.000I think everybody has that experience of the fact that everything in the world is passing, and yet they're all united in the fact that they all have being.
00:42:17.000I think it's embedded in our very language when we use the word is, right?
00:42:23.000If I say this is such and such, or this is this other thing, we can unite all that together.
00:42:32.000At the word is, we can reflect upon that and realize the primacy of being in that way.
00:42:38.000And I think that can lead more contemplative people down that route to be open to it.
00:42:44.000I think most people simply don't understand that that's actually what we mean by God.
00:42:48.000I certainly didn't when I was an atheist.
00:42:50.000I thought what we meant by God was just some super reality, you know, up in, not necessarily, I didn't think he was actually up in the sky, but I considered him just like the highest point, right?
00:43:12.000And once you allow yourself to kind of reflect on that and contemplate that, I think it's digestible to people who don't have any kind of, you know, preconceived antagonism toward it, which is hard to find.
00:43:29.000Well, and I think it expands your mind when you realize that God is that as opposed to one particular individual or one particular organism.
00:43:39.000I think it really expands your concept.
00:43:41.000And once you start to think of it in those terms, You start to realize that the language surrounding theology and surrounding the Bible or scripture is the prism.
00:43:52.000It's mostly, I hesitate to say symbolic, but it's allegorical, effectively.
00:44:00.000It's summarized in ways that a human mind can understand.
00:44:04.000It describes processes and premises and concepts that we can understand.
00:44:10.000So it's not literally like God is walking around, except for in the case of Jesus Christ, but it's not like he's literally a person.
00:44:18.000Doing things, and he made these rules, and if you don't follow them, he's going to beat the hell out of you.
00:44:23.000But these are things that are used to describe.
00:44:26.000There's a principle in scholastic philosophy that I think is very helpful when we're trying to conceive of, well, you say all these abstract things about God, but then it says that he's angry and he gets jealous, et cetera.
00:44:39.000There's a principle, it's referred to as the principle of analogy, meaning that when we say that God has certain attributes, like that he's wise or that he has intelligence or something like that, We're not using the term in the same sense in which I'd say you have intelligence or anyone else has intelligence or you have wisdom or anyone else has wisdom.
00:45:03.000But on the other hand, it's not completely different.
00:45:27.000God, we get those terms and we can apply them to God precisely by reflecting upon Him as being pure actuality.
00:45:37.000So, just like one example, like goodness, for example, when we say that God is good, you know, I can use the word goodness to describe all kinds of things.
00:45:49.000I'd say, you know, this pizza is good or someone is a morally good human being.
00:45:57.000But what do we ultimately mean when we use the word good when we apply it to God?
00:46:01.000Well, if I can conceive of goodness in our own finite mode of being, we would say that we can't conceive of goodness without perfection.
00:46:17.000Goodness is always going to be tied to perfection in some way, it's better or worse.
00:46:23.000But once you think of that, you think, well, okay, if.
00:46:28.000If something is good or bad, then it's more or less perfect.
00:46:35.000Well, ultimately, we have to get to the fact that it's more or less actual, right?
00:46:39.000I mean, a triangle, for example, it has its geometrical definitions, and it's better or worse the extent to which it conforms to its geometrical definitions, right?
00:46:50.000And we're really ultimately saying that it's more or less actual.
00:46:53.000So, goodness, even in our direct experience, is sourced in actuality.
00:46:57.000So, we would just say that God is that pure source of what's finite and limited in this world, that attribute that we call goodness, but exists supremely and ultimately.
00:47:08.000And you can apply that to all sorts of the divine attributes that we use.
00:47:16.000I think that's a great example because when people think of a triangle, this is the one that I'll often use because I think that kind of thing comes from Platonic thought to an extent the idea of forms, the idea that we know what a triangle is in this abstract and totally non real, non material realm.
00:47:43.000It's perfect straight lines and all the rest.
00:47:45.000But we also know that every attempt by us to create a triangle is an approximation of a perfect form that exists not in this realm.
00:47:54.000So if I cobble together a couple of sticks and say, oh, this is a triangle, well, you could say this angle isn't quite right or these lines aren't quite straight.
00:48:06.000And I think this goes to Aquinas' argument of degrees.
00:48:10.000Once you introduce people to this premise of, You know, there is this perfection, there is this other kind of idea, not just of material, but of form.
00:48:20.000I think then people start to get an idea of the divine.
00:48:24.000I think it's also relevant politically, if you think about it, because if we conceive of everything having a nature as given to it, as the source of its perfection, well, we inevitably have to apply that to us as human beings.
00:48:37.000So then we can conceive of the fact that our perfection is not going to be achieved by.
00:48:44.000Trying to weave utopia out of a hat or to reinvent the wheel.
00:48:48.000It's going to be by fulfilling those ends and inclinations of our own nature that's already given to us, that's already received.
00:48:58.000We can't invent a new nature out of ourselves.
00:49:00.000We are given a nature, and it's our end in life to fulfill what our nature is apt to be as ordained by the mind of God who created it.
00:49:15.000And A big part of that is securing the expressions of humanity as male and female.
00:49:22.000That's belonging to the very nature of humanity as such.
00:50:30.000And it's a good point that you make about the political movements because, you know, this is when we start to think of it in terms of the social consequences of religion.
00:50:38.000That it's not just, you know, this is the biggest mistake I think people make is they say, well, my faith is over here, my belief in God and the eternal.
00:50:47.000It's like this little compartment, but then I could leave there and, you know, walk down the street and I can be for abortion and gay marriage and I don't care what happens to this world, you know.
00:50:57.000But of course, these things do have implications, particularly if you understand that.
00:51:02.000Man has a nature that is directed towards particular ends, then you understand that things go against that nature.
00:51:08.000And also, those things are bad for people, bad for their souls, bad for their bodies.
00:51:12.000And so, it's no wonder that all these people who are not in harmony with their nature, not in harmony with what is intended for us, it's no wonder that these people are killing themselves, that they're sick, they're miserable, and all the rest.
00:51:29.000And it's something that I think a lot of people in the right wing who aren't necessarily.
00:51:36.000Sympathetic to Christianity would do well to consider because otherwise, how can they possibly justify their desire to advocate for what's truly natural and authentic to human nature in the face of people who want to reinvent human nature and to reinvent the wheel of human nature?
00:51:54.000What can they say to them with intellectual justification and intellectual honesty?
00:52:03.000I don't think they can ultimately have an argument against those people if we don't return to realism, if we don't return to theism ultimately.
00:52:11.000And if we don't return to Christianity.
00:52:15.000And I also think, you know, there's a way to get to Christianity.
00:52:19.000Now, a lot of people ask me that question.
00:52:21.000Yeah, you believe in, you have all these arguments for the existence of God and you have this realist metaphysics and such, but how do you possibly get to Christianity from that?
00:52:30.000And I mean, I'm not going to get to that whole argument, that would take way too long, but there is definitely a way.
00:52:35.000I have an argument for that on my channel.
00:52:37.000You can take the principles of classical theism and use them to craft an argument for the incarnation.
00:52:45.000That God would, given his nature, unite with mankind.
00:52:50.000And that can be expected, I think, from rational principles.
00:52:54.000And so I don't think there's any excuse, you know, ultimately.
00:53:01.000And so I want to now move into a different topic.
00:53:03.000This has been pretty good stuff on God, on actuality.
00:53:07.000You know, I've been dying to get somebody on my channel to explain it because every time people ask me, it's like, you know, half remembered from Ed Fieser's book or, you know, this or that.
00:53:16.000So it's a great introduction, by the way.
00:54:09.000And it's important to recognize that while the Pope can say certain off color things, certain, frankly, dumb things, I mean, for example, I think on Twitter at one point he said, well, if we just abolish all weapons, there would be no peace.
00:54:27.000But we don't have to take every single thing he says as magisterium.
00:54:32.000Magisterium being the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.
00:54:35.000We get what we have to believe as Catholics from the magisterium, which is communicated through whether it be church councils, papal encyclicals, isolated statements of papal infallibility, etc.
00:54:50.000The church doesn't really have a dogmatic statement on immigration.
00:54:56.000It does have magisterial statements, but they aren't necessarily infallible.
00:54:59.000However, What we do have is this, and I'll kind of like break down some of it if we have time to do that.
00:55:17.000It says, the more prosperous nations are obliged to the extent that they are able to welcome the foreigner in search of security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.
00:55:29.000Public authority should see to it that.
00:55:31.000The natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who would receive him.
00:55:43.000Anyway, political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various judicial conditions, especially with regard to immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption.
00:56:03.000Immigrants are obliged to respect with Gratitude to the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them to obey its laws and to assist in carrying the civic burdens.
00:56:12.000Now, if you take that second paragraph and you combine it with the first, and we read here it says, The more prosperous nations are obliged to the extent that they are able.
00:56:24.000Well, what are the conditions under which they would be able to do that?
00:56:28.000I think it would be the maintenance of their spiritual and material heritage, right?
00:56:34.000That's something that we as Catholics can debate about.
00:56:36.000And I think we should really take seriously the argument that.
00:56:41.000A cohesive ethnic identity, a cohesive cultural heritage, a cohesive spiritual heritage sourced in Christianity.
00:56:52.000These are things that are part and parcel, really essential to that material and spiritual heritage of the country.
00:57:01.000And maintaining that thing is a part of its prosperity.
00:57:04.000It's a part of its ability to take in foreigners.
00:57:08.000So if you have a situation where Taking in certain kinds of immigrants would be either by definition or just incidentally deleterious to the country maintaining those essential attributes,
00:57:23.000then the country should prudently say no and maybe help them in other ways, but not in taking in hordes of immigrants who will do damage to that maintenance of its.
00:57:42.000Ethnic heritage, it's spiritual heritage, and it's even material and economic prosperity.
00:57:50.000I mean, these are things that enable the country in the first place to take in immigrants prudently.
00:57:55.000So, nowhere in this document does it say you have to have open borders.
00:58:00.000It actually, you could read it as advising against having open borders.
00:58:05.000And it's kind of funny when people will say that Pope Francis says various things that are actually not harmonious with what you read in the catechism, and they act as if that puts us in a bad spot.
00:58:15.000If anything, it's the non Catholics who are in a worse position than us because they don't actually have that official magisterial document to guard what we're saying, whereas we do.
00:58:28.000They have to battle against other Christians in their own denomination to interpret the Bible in different ways.
00:58:34.000You couldn't potentially interpret the Bible as saying that, you know, when it says that you do not molest a stranger and it reminds the Israelites that they were once foreigners, etc.
00:58:46.000Some Christians can interpret that as supporting open borders, but we actually have an official magisterial document to guard against those sensibilities.
00:58:58.000And even that passage from, I think it's Galatians, where it's neither Jew nor Greek, that one as well.
00:59:04.000They could definitely use that to try to.
00:59:07.000The point is, we actually have that magisterial document, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and you've heard me interpret it, I think, in a very sensible way that we can guard against what we believe.
00:59:38.000I know, even St. Thomas Aquinas, he has this other quick passage where he says that.
00:59:50.000The reasons why countries might not, nations might not want to admit immigrants is that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of the nation as soon as they settle down in its midst, many dangers might occur since the foreigners might not yet have the common good firmly at their heart and might attempt something hurtful to the people.
01:00:09.000So there are even St. Thomas Aquinas guards against open borders thinking.
01:00:13.000So it's simply not a good argument to try to use certain off color remarks that the Pope said as a way to bludgeon us against the head.
01:00:36.000Well, but I mean, that's the big trick the catechism because once you read the official and the only official word on this in the church, you get a clear idea that it is subject to many restrictions, many qualifications once you interpret the language.
01:00:51.000And so once you realize that and you look at the vast history of Of the Catholic Church, which was not an open borders church until, you know, very, very recently, you understand that this has, this is not a part of the religion at all.
01:01:04.000And there's actually a great amount of debate that can occur about the subject.
01:01:08.000And also, I would also add there's a great passage in the Catechism as well on the topic of social justice.
01:01:14.000And I forget the chapter and verse, but it effectively says on human equality that the only human equality that is affirmed is in dignity before God, which is such a great thing because.
01:01:25.000You get so many people who will say, Well, there's that one passage where it says we're all equal, and exactly, and therefore we have to throw out IQ science and we have to throw out epigenetics and all the rest, which is not true, which is not true at all.
01:01:40.000The only sense of, in which we are all perfectly the same, is in our fundamental human nature that we all have a rational soul.
01:01:48.000And that does afford everybody a dignity, don't get me wrong.
01:01:53.000Everybody is equal in that sense before God and is.
01:01:59.000And they are all ordered toward heavenly beatitude, and we should hope for all of that.
01:02:03.000And we should be charitable to everybody.
01:02:04.000However, it's also important to recognize that charity does begin at home.
01:02:10.000St. Thomas Aquinas, when he talks about one of the fruits of charity, beneficence specifically, he says that beneficence begins with those who are most proximate to you.
01:02:26.000Whether it be trying to attain your own natural and supernatural end first, and also putting your own immediate family first.
01:02:40.000Before your own needs and having charity toward them, before you have to extend beneficence to people outside of the country.
01:02:49.000That's also an important principle, and it's affirmed by St. Thomas himself that beneficence does begin with those who are most proximate to you.
01:02:57.000Well, yeah, and there you have it, folks.
01:02:58.000I mean, I think for people that are interested in the subject, there's a lot of shilling that goes on, there's a lot of attacks unwarranted by demons or by pagans and atheists, the like.
01:03:12.000But if you are interested in the subject and you're interested in the truth more than that, you'll find, I think, that Catholicism is number one, it's the truth, but number two, it is not a senseless, liberal, polemical, like people like to say it is, because of Pope Francis.
01:03:30.000So I really appreciate you coming on to explain these issues from a classical theistic point of view.
01:03:36.000And tell us where we can find your channel.
01:03:38.000I know you're going to start making some more content this summer.
01:04:36.000The headphones, they make my ears and my head hurt.
01:04:39.000But a great guest appearance by my good friend, the Classical Theist, talking to us about none other than Classical Theism.
01:04:47.000And it's always great to get an insight from somebody who. knows what they're talking about on those details theologically, philosophically.
01:04:56.000And you have to be very careful on a subject like metaphysics because the language carries a lot of weight.
01:05:02.000So when you hear us talking about and using terms like actuality, the infinite regress, these kinds of things, the language means more than, you know, we're not just speaking in the vernacular.
01:05:15.000We're not using very loosely, very imperfectly these words.
01:05:18.000They are precise words used to describe very specific things.
01:05:23.000And so it's always good to get somebody who Wields the language, I think, masterfully and in the way that it ought to be.
01:05:30.000So it was good to have him on the show, but don't go anywhere.
01:05:33.000We're going to get to our Streamlabs and Super Chats and see what the mass is saying about the Catholic faith or about SCOTUS or anything else.
01:05:43.000We're going to start with our Streamlabs donations, which you can still get one up on the screen if you donate using that link.
01:05:52.000And then after we do that, we'll be taking our Super Chats.
01:07:14.000There are a lot of things that need to be resolved, whether that's immigration, and there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty regarding the election.
01:07:22.000So, Trump may say, Well, we might get a stronger majority after the election in the Senate, certainly a possibility, maybe even a likelihood.
01:07:31.000So, maybe I'll give a more moderate judge in exchange for XYZ because you have no guarantee you'll keep the Senate.
01:07:37.000And so, maybe we can appoint the most extremist person we can find if we get 53.
01:07:43.000Senators, or 55 or 57, some say is possible.
01:07:48.000It could be used on the electorate to say, pick the good senators, go out and vote so I can confirm somebody who's right on these issues.
01:07:56.000There's a lot of ways he could play this.
01:07:58.000So, this is actually a gift because the way to look at it more fundamentally is the appointment is something that only Trump can do.
01:08:08.000So, once again, he regains the initiative on the deal making process.
01:08:12.000With other things, it's in the hands of the Speaker of the House.
01:08:16.000To carry a bill to the floor to whip the votes, or it's up to the Senate majority leader, or it's up to the judges.
01:08:22.000With Trump, this appointment puts the ball back in his court where he can make the appointment when and if he's ready and give his blessing to whoever it's going to be.
01:08:31.000That gives him the initiative on whatever deal he could try and make with that, whether that's a rhetorical push for people to get out the vote in November, or whether that's for immigration, or whether that's for anything else.
01:08:43.000So it's a good thing, if not for anything else, but that this puts the ball squarely back in Trump's court.
01:08:49.000He gets to decide the direction from here.
01:09:21.000The only thing people say is iffy is, of course, Roy Moore, who I eternally hold in contempt.
01:09:29.000No, he's a good man, but I hold him in contempt for challenging my record.
01:09:34.000It's not technically a challenge because I said very clearly barring an act of God, barring a miracle, in other words, outside of tremendously extenuating circumstances, he should be the favorite.
01:10:12.000Philip Fry says, or I missed the second part of that one, which is lift weights and eating veggies and cold showers.
01:10:18.000I get my vegetable intake when I go to IHOP and I get the hamburger because you've got lettuce, tomato.
01:10:25.000Onion, if you get an onion rings, it's a bonus.
01:10:28.000You get your dairy because there's cheese on it.
01:10:31.000You get meat because you've got protein, grain because of the bun.
01:10:35.000So, really, if you have a hamburger, you're getting your food groups.
01:10:38.000If you go to Pizza Hut, if you get, I don't know, maybe you get green pepper on there, there's your vegetable content.
01:10:47.000Lifting weights, you know, I haven't been doing so much of that lately, but, you know, it's a tremendous effort to sit here and do this show because I'm waving my arms around.
01:10:58.000And it's a respiratory exercise because I'm talking to you.
01:11:02.000I have to sit up straight, so I'm working out my back.
01:11:05.000So I think this is a pretty workout five nights a week.
01:11:08.000So, you know, some people they work out two days a week and they go really hard.
01:11:12.000I kind of, it's a more laid back exercise five days a week, you know, lifting weights.
01:11:17.000And the cold showers, I just got to rule that one out.
01:11:41.000Or it gets kind of, it just doesn't feel quite right until maybe like a day afterwards.
01:11:45.000But to prevent that, to keep your face from getting kind of goofy after you shave, you rinse with the hot water and then you rinse with cold water and it keeps it 300.
01:11:55.000So that's the only time I do the cold.
01:11:57.000I just, look, you know, my life is hard enough.
01:12:01.000The content creator always in the kitchen.
01:12:03.000So, the warm shower and the hamburgers.
01:12:40.000Philip Fry says, Quit the big brain talk and get back to owning the progs.
01:12:46.000You know, look, I like to have a variety on the show.
01:12:49.000You know, it can't be every day the low hanging fruit kind of stuff.
01:12:55.000You know, it's fun when we go after immigrants, it's fun when we go after Muslims, as we did earlier this week, but we've got to have some high brow 250 IQ stuff every once in a while.
01:13:06.000And it's funny because I always get people in the comments.
01:13:10.000Or in the chat saying, Nick is afraid to talk about Jews.
01:13:14.000He's always afraid to talk about it because he sold out and blah, blah, blah.
01:13:18.000And I said this the other day to my buddies in Discord if you're not talking about the Israel lobby or the Jewish lobby, if you're not talking about that every second of every day, if you're not talking about that in the exact moment, people will tell you you're afraid or you're cucking or you're dishonest or you're bought.
01:13:39.000It's like if you're spending a single moment on camera not talking about that subject, people say he never.
01:15:01.000He is changing a lot of people's minds, opening people up to the fact that Christianity may have a significance even if you're not a believer, which may get people on board with it.
01:15:13.000And we can acknowledge that, but at the same time, as me and classical theists talked about, also understand that to deny the divinity and the realism of God may be beyond the pale in the sense that there's a ceiling as to how productive that is.
01:15:29.000That message is in getting people over to the faith.
01:16:46.000Mike Litoris, interesting name, says What are your thoughts on the infiltration of the big water lobby by the Coca Cola company via the smart water product?
01:18:19.000I go to the little truck, and they have like Coke, blood orange, Coke, raspberry, like all these cool flavors in those little Dixie cups, just like little samples.
01:18:27.000And I see this one guy who gets up and there's like six flavors.
01:19:24.000We got one from yesterday we didn't get to from Knicker Nationalist, which says, Do you think our guys should go to leftist protests like the Families Belong Together one going on this Saturday?
01:19:34.000If so, what is the most optical way to deliver our anti immigration message?
01:19:39.000You know, I would steer clear of these things.
01:19:41.000I may go to one because I'm a streamer and it'll, you know, maybe it'll turn into something.
01:19:46.000But for the most part, people should stay away only because there's really nothing to gain there.
01:19:51.000I mean, it's going to sometimes it could get ugly, it could get violent.
01:20:03.000It's usually the lowest common denominator type people.
01:20:06.000If I wouldn't go there to like periscope these things, I wouldn't go at all.
01:20:11.000So, but if you do go, remember to just be a normal person, dress like a normal person, and present arguments that are not ambitious.
01:20:18.000You know, people try and do this thing where they show up to a rally or they talk to people and locked and loaded, they have arguments that take a long explanation or that are really outside.
01:20:33.000And it's sort of like a wrestling match.
01:20:36.000Like, if you're not very good at wrestling, you don't go in there and try and be a showman and throw them off the ropes and suplex them off the turnbuckle.
01:20:44.000You're just going to go for the basics.
01:20:46.000You're going to go for a flying clothesline.
01:20:51.000I'm talking about professional wrestling too, not the gay wrestling.
01:20:54.000And when people show up to these kinds of things, they try and convince people about IQ.
01:21:00.000Or they try and convince people about why all these crazy things, not crazy, but.
01:21:07.000Very ambitious arguments to get over on liberal people, you should start with the arguments that are the quickest, that are the easiest, the simplest knockout shots.
01:21:16.000Only one in the chamber kills, these kinds of things.
01:21:19.000So instead of saying, well, what is race?
01:21:21.000Race is real, it's important, you know, and that kind of thing, which might be useful in a debate for someone who really knows what they're doing, you know, go up and say, well, you know, why should we bring in any more people?
01:21:43.000Why should we bring people in if we still have unemployed kids?
01:21:45.000If the youth unemployment for black people is this high, why do we need low skilled labor from another country?
01:21:50.000You could bring up one of these statistics that says that for every increase in immigration, you get a decrease in black wages and an increase in black unemployment.
01:21:59.000Why would you support something like that?
01:22:01.000You know, these are the kinds of arguments that will challenge their premises as opposed to introducing them to ours that I think are the most effective in these kinds of settings.
01:22:13.000Hula Man says, Thanks for the great red hot.
01:22:21.000I've watched a few excerpts from that show and appreciate you.
01:22:26.000Al Sabadi says, Perfection has four parts, according to Aquinas, but classical theist ignores this in his understanding of God.
01:22:33.000It would behoove him to explore this because it certainly can illuminate one to the human purpose, which is one of the parts of perfection.
01:23:20.000And yeah, I mean, pagans will either convert or they'll be ignored, basically, right?
01:23:25.000You know, I'll be debating Greg Johnson tomorrow about paganism and Christianity, and we'll see how it goes.
01:23:32.000You know, he's an educated guy, but I've read his two contentions against Christianity.
01:23:37.000He argued in an article not too long ago that Christianity has led to the destruction of the West because it puts Jews in very high esteem and also it celebrates weakness.
01:23:50.000And this is the Nietzschean argument it's slave morality.
01:23:52.000And if that's what he's going to show up with tomorrow, It's not going to go well for him, but we'll see what happens.
01:23:59.000Eternal German says HH White Brother, Nick, what do you say to people who suggest that the only true corrective response to things being shifted so far left and egalitarian is fascism?
01:24:11.000You know, it's not a totally wrong argument.
01:24:15.000It's simply, well, here's my perspective on it.
01:24:19.000You need a vanguard to transition from one order to another order.
01:24:26.000In the sense that you look at Vladimir Putin, Erdogan, Xi Jinping.
01:24:30.000This is the argument I made in my podcast yesterday.
01:24:33.000You need a vanguard, a strong leader, a strong central government, consistent, and delivering a country from one phase in their history to another for real transitions to happen.
01:24:44.000You know, you can have a revolution, but a revolution does not succeed unless its reforms are institutionalized.
01:24:51.000And so you could see many great revolutions have happened, where you had a revolution in Russia.
01:24:56.000In 1917, you had a revolution in Germany in 1933.
01:25:00.000You had a revolution in France in 1789.
01:25:02.000You had a revolution in America in 1776.
01:25:11.000But in each of these cases, we can discern where they are a success or a failure by how they were institutionalized.
01:25:17.000And to be institutionalized, you have to have a vanguard, you have to have a ruling party which is pragmatic as opposed to principled and which is able to hold the reins of power long enough that they can see these changes take root.
01:25:28.000It happened in some cases, not in all.
01:25:30.000It happened in Iran, where their revolutionary government took charge.
01:25:34.000And in contrast with the very fundamentalist, extremist sentiments and feelings of the revolution, they elected a government or put in place a government, installed the government more properly, that was extremely pragmatic and understood the different factions, understood the military and the judicial system and the religious leaders and all the rest.
01:25:57.000And they put together a government that had longevity.
01:26:03.000Hominee, who led from 79, I think, to 89, was it, that Khamenei came into power?
01:26:10.000And he was able to transfer the government from a Shah's government to an Ayatollah's government.
01:26:15.000Very different in the Soviet Union, very different in Nazi Germany, very different in revolutionary France, where these governments didn't last very long.
01:26:25.000And so you could say that a fascist system would be effective or expeditious in getting a vanguard into power and leading a transition.
01:26:33.000But I just think it's supremely unlikely.
01:26:35.000That's when I get all these revolutionaries who don't really understand this about history.
01:26:40.000You know, there's very excited people, very, you know, there's a lot of fervor and all that.
01:26:48.000But that often leads to this kind of fantasy thinking where it'll be different this time.
01:26:54.000We don't have to think about practical considerations because we're right and what we believe is true.
01:26:59.000You know, and that way these people are no different than the Marxists you met in college who thought my strain of Maoist Leninism is going to make everything perfect.
01:27:08.000We just have to get people to read enough, you know, whoever, whatever their pet author is.
01:27:16.000And to understand that, or to be pragmatic, we have to understand that the best way to achieve our reforms, to put in place a vanguard, is through the party system.
01:27:27.000It's much simpler to work within the existing structure than to invent a new one.
01:27:40.000To wield existing levers of power, which are open for anybody to get into and start moving things around.
01:27:47.000Trump, in a very similar vein to Turkey and to China and to Russia, has taken the same steps they have to institutionalize their power.
01:27:54.000Erdogan went after the press, the courts, and he shut down a coup in the military.
01:27:59.000This is how he beat back any kind of coup attempt by liberals or reformers or anything like that.
01:28:05.000Vladimir Putin did effectively the same thing.
01:28:07.000He didn't have to worry about a coup from the military so much, but he brought the oligarchs to heel, he crushed the media.
01:28:13.000And he reformed the Constitution so that it was centered around the president.
01:28:17.000Xi Jinping made his country basically a dictatorship as opposed to it was kind of that way before, but maybe you could say there was some more debate and maybe an oligarchy with the Standing Committee and that kind of thing.
01:28:30.000Trump, in a very similar way to these three leaders, has gone after the press by delegitimizing them.
01:28:36.000He has controlled the courts by getting the federal judiciary conservative, the Supreme Court conservative, the military, he's gotten their loyalty by putting in generals, respected people in his cabinet.
01:28:49.000And in terms of the oligarchs, he is showing that the bully pulpit is very powerful against companies like the NFL, among others, businesses through trade.
01:28:57.000So I think if you look at the way other modern vanguard leaders are leading their countries in this transition away from ideology, away from liberalism and globalism towards ethnicity, towards national identity, towards tradition and religion, Trump is taking advantage of the same things.
01:29:17.000There's structural weaknesses in our system that those systems don't have, but he's doing it very well.
01:29:59.000The superiority of Catholic doctrine, of Catholic dogma.
01:30:03.000But Protestants, you know, you shouldn't go out of your way to attack people and then attack people, by the way, who can demolish your arguments about the Bible, about the faith.
01:30:14.000I don't go out of my way to attack Protestants, but if you're going to try and pull out this sola scriptura kind of stuff, I will point out that remember in the scripture that you are such a fan of, that you think can stand alone and all the rest.
01:30:29.000It says that Christ builds his church on the rock of Peter.
01:30:33.000I don't understand how you escape that.
01:30:35.000I don't understand how you escape the premise that Jesus Christ in your Bible says that he is building a church on the rock of Peter.
01:30:44.000He gives Peter the keys to loose and bind and the keys to the kingdom and all the rest.
01:30:49.000I don't understand how you can reject those parts of Scripture but say that you're, oh, it's just about Scripture and not about the church.
01:30:56.000And by the way, all the early church fathers recognized That the church was legitimate, the church in Rome was legitimate, so you've got none of the early church fathers.
01:31:06.000You have 500 years of tradition as opposed to 2,000 years of tradition.
01:31:11.000So, to me, it just makes no sense where the Protestant kind of stuff comes from.
01:31:15.000And you say, oh, well, on a couple of political things I disagree with, you're not all the way there.
01:32:51.000Gee, wouldn't it be great if Jesus Christ established some authority through succession that would be the sole authority on matters of doctrine?
01:33:00.000Wouldn't it be great if there was some, I don't know, vicar of Christ on earth who could mediate these kinds of disputes and make an ultimate decision to prevent eternal and perpetual wars of religion?
01:33:12.000Or no, maybe your one Protestant sect out of hundreds is the correct one.
01:33:16.000You know, we're all going to hell, but the Anabaptists in this particular strain, they're the ones that have got it right.
01:33:24.000Or you could be like the Protestants who say, we're all equally a little bit wrong, and in which case you have no respect for the Word of God or God Himself.
01:33:32.000So, this kind of stuff, I'm no expert, but I mean, you look at these principles, it's like it's incoherent.
01:33:39.000It's built on sand, it's built on a pile of sand.
01:33:54.000Your religious text, without a church to uphold it, without a church protected from error to interpret it, it's not going to last very long.
01:34:02.000I know in scripture it says, my words will never expire, or they'll carry on until the kingdom of God and all the rest, but he also set up a church to ensure that that happens.
01:34:14.000Bill Baggs says, as someone who is enlightened on the topic of Jewish people and their impact, if Muslims deserve to be banned, why don't they buy the same token?
01:34:28.000We just want everybody to come and live in harmony, of course.
01:34:31.000We're a country built on Judeo Christian values, of which include tolerance for people who either don't believe in the divinity of Christ like Muslims do, which isn't so bad, or Jewish people who, according to the Talmud, say that Christ is burning in excrement and semen.
01:34:50.000So it's just kind of weird because Protestants, or I'm sorry, not Protestants, but like white evangelicals, And a lot of conservatives will say we have to ban Muslims because Islam contradicts Christianity.
01:35:02.000But I mean, even Muslims say that Christ was a holy figure.
01:35:07.000They don't say he's the son of God, but I mean, even they afford him a lot of respect.
01:35:11.000Some might describe Islam as a Christian heresy, but you know, Jewish people say in the Talmud that Christ is not only not a holy figure, but is a well, they say some nasty things in the Talmud.
01:35:22.000They say first he's in hell, they also say all his followers are going to hell.
01:35:26.000They say that they look forward to his followers going to hell.
01:35:29.000They say that Jesus is not only in hell, but he's boiling in excrement and urine and semen.
01:36:26.000I mean, that's just simply a falsehood.
01:36:28.000The magisterium has never reversed anything on doctrine, they've made minor adjustments, but there has never been a reversal.
01:36:35.000There's never been one instance that you can point to in the history of the Catholic Church where they made an interpretation of doctrine where they said this is the way it is and then reversed it.
01:36:47.000And of course, it's not subjective because Christ said he prays for Peter's faith.
01:36:51.000Christ himself protects the papacy, protects the church from error when they are contributing to the magisterium.
01:36:58.000So the idea that a Protestant whose interpretation of the Bible is entirely his own, is entirely an individual, versus the interpretation of the vicar of Christ on earth protected from error.
01:37:10.000Descended from Peter, which Christ said was the leader and the rock on which the church is built, is just simply disingenuous, not true.
01:38:58.000Go to my website, NicholasJFuentes.comslash membership, and sign up for America First Premium, five bucks a month.
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01:40:31.000Maybe early forms throughout time, but fascism and communism, as we know them now, are pretty recent, pretty modern.
01:40:41.000But anyway, so I wouldn't agree that they're mortal enemies.
01:40:46.000I believe that the forces they represent, order and chaos or egalitarianism and hierarchy, I believe the forces underpinning them are cosmological, or maybe they're much greater than more superficial political forces.
01:41:01.000They have always existed, always had expressions.
01:41:03.000In history, but fascism and communism are very new, modern political ideologies, haven't existed forever, but the forces they represent are forever.