Based Camp - Catholic Natalism： Peachy Keenan on Faith, Family, and Fighting Cultural Decay

00:00:00.000 Hello, my name is Simone Collins. I'm here with Malcolm and today a very special guest as well.

00:00:05.980 I'm so excited. This has been months in waiting. We are joined by Peachy Keenan. She is the author

00:00:11.560 of Domestic Extremist, A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War. Her sub stack you can

00:00:16.900 find at peachykeenan.com. And in addition to regularly sharing top drawer hot takes on Twitter

00:00:23.800 and her handles, Keenan Peachy, she's actually working on a new media startup called Lost 0.97

00:00:28.760 Riviera, which maybe we'll hear about at the end. But Peachy, welcome. Thank you so much,

00:00:34.800 you guys. It is so great to finally be here. We were scheduling it for such a long time and to see

00:00:39.740 your smiling, happy faces. Well, you were speaking at the Pronatalist conference and you were the

00:00:45.720 funniest speaker there. So I am thrilled to have you on. Although I have to say some of our fans

00:00:51.400 recently have also said my wife is really funny. And that must be incredibly gender disconfirming 1.00

00:00:57.740 for you because, you know, the stereotype is, is women, women aren't that, that humorous. 0.91

00:01:03.160 That is, except for the women on who are kind of like more right leaning. I feel like they 0.97

00:01:07.600 are actually very funny and that's why they're kind of drawn into this, I think.

00:01:12.320 Okay. Well, I had a specific question that I wanted to focus on with this episode.

00:01:16.740 Okay. So there was a report that came out and looked at the fertility rate of the American

00:01:23.800 native born Catholic population. And, and, and so for, for those who don't know, Peachy

00:01:29.420 Keenan is, is, I think sort of the number one Catholic pronatalist in terms of like anyone

00:01:34.100 I'm seeing. And it came out and said that the average fertility rate was 1.64 in the United

00:01:39.840 States. Now that's pretty bad considering the report was done in 2008. It was called religiosity

00:01:45.840 and fertility in the United States, the role of family fertility intentions. When we look at

00:01:50.160 Europe, the average Catholic majority country has a fertility rate of only 1.3. And in Latin

00:01:55.740 America, we've seen a rapid fertility collapse as well in the, the Catholic majority countries.

00:01:59.940 Now there have been studies and we know what's causing this. Catholics actually have exactly 1.00

00:02:04.320 the same fertility rate once they're married as any other highly religious individual, but

00:02:08.920 they get married much later than all other Christian denominations. And so I wanted to brainstorm

00:02:14.340 with you. Why do you think this phenomenon is happening and how can we fix it?

00:02:18.840 I've got all the answers right here. Hold on.

00:02:23.800 Yeah. You have 30 seconds. Go.

00:02:25.920 Well, I mean, just take a step back a little bit from that. I'm a Catholic convert, but I

00:02:31.080 didn't, you know, I'm not just sort of one of these sort of regular norm, normie American

00:02:35.500 Catholics who kind of goes to mass on Easter and Christmas and like has two, 2.5 kids.

00:02:41.920 Like, that's not me. I'm more, I definitely joined the like more fundamentalist, traditionalist

00:02:47.000 Catholic sect. Okay. Because honestly, like I was coming from a very secular nothingness,

00:02:52.400 you know, like actually like my mother was like a committed atheist. And when I was going

00:02:57.740 to do it, I was like, okay, I'm, I'm in, I wanted to like do it, actually do it, like

00:03:02.700 actually do the real thing. I'm one of the authentic, you know, the authentic Catholic

00:03:07.000 experience. Okay. And so I found this like, you know, group of, you know, our little like

00:03:12.940 Catholic cults. There's these bubbles that are in various cities in America. You can find

00:03:16.540 them. They're very based parishes where it's not watered down. They're not saying, they're

00:03:22.560 not mimicking the Pope. They're not saying, you know, who am I to judge? They're judging

00:03:27.180 people. And they are okay. This is great. In a healthy way. Okay. They are like, if you

00:03:33.520 listen up and you're like, oh, that you, it will lead you to good places. It will lead

00:03:37.800 you. Social pressure towards positive action. Yeah, exactly how it's always been. That's

00:03:44.920 very old. Everyone is supposed to be able to do whatever makes them feel good. Whenever

00:03:50.140 they feel like doing it and be affirmed for believing whatever they want to believe about

00:03:53.500 themselves. There's no way that could lead to any sort of psychological damage.

00:03:57.180 Exactly. All you have to do is like walk down any street where I live and you'll see the

00:04:03.820 consequences of that. Right. Yeah. You're in the, Malcolm, you know, she's in Southern

00:04:08.640 California, right? So like in LA, so one, we're going to have to get to why you're living

00:04:14.500 in LA before this, I want to hear that, but I want to hear about your marriage story and

00:04:19.580 your conversion story. Cause did you convert before you got married after you got married?

00:04:23.500 How did you think about this when you were dating your now husband?

00:04:27.180 I got, I converted 10 years after we got married. I had already had four children.

00:04:33.820 Whoa. We, yeah. So when we got married, both of us were, you know, basically former liberal,

00:04:41.460 former kind of liberal, basic nothings who had kind of found our own way to kind of more conservative,

00:04:47.460 political thinking. Yeah. I think you, cause of nine 11 and cause of all the like failures of

00:04:52.520 Republican presidents and all these things. And we just kind of became like kind of radicalized

00:04:56.900 really for both sides. And, but I was, when I met my husband, I was still, I was sort of

00:05:02.180 politically conservative, but I was still socially liberal. That's how I had grown up.

00:05:06.340 I went to the Ivy league. That was just, what was, you're just absorbing.

00:05:10.100 You weren't a savage.

00:05:11.880 I was a savage. I was, yeah, I was civilized. I was at the, I was at all the cool parties and

00:05:16.080 everyone around me was, um, you know, a card carrying pro-choice feminist. So of course I was

00:05:21.640 also, but it was for all of us, it was very skin deep. You know, we, we, we didn't think much about

00:05:26.480 it in that era. It was politics. Wasn't identity in those days. It was like, you thought about it once a

00:05:32.220 year on election day or if it came up in a class, like you didn't think about like my reproductive

00:05:37.320 rights. Like that was not even a thing really. Although, you know, people were definitely

00:05:41.360 exercising those reproductive rights all around me. And so I met my husband and he had already been

00:05:48.040 red pilled. And so when we first started dating, we were like in the process of, you know, I just

00:05:54.040 moved to New York city and it was very like romantic. And then we were kind of, you know, falling for each

00:05:59.020 other. But in the process I was discovering like very alarming things about him. Like he was a

00:06:05.160 Republican. Oh no. Exactly. My parents were Republicans, but I had never met a Republican

00:06:13.900 like in my peer group ever who was open about it. He, he liked guns. He had a gun. He had been in

00:06:20.780 the military. I was like, all of these things were sort of like red flags to me and my like feminist

00:06:27.120 bubble of like, Oh no. Like what will my girlfriend say? Like, yes, no, totally. Totally. I know this

00:06:33.260 feeling. And it came from that background too, of just actually I had someone who knew me from

00:06:37.360 childhood recently write to me and be like, but you're a Republican that just that kind of shock.

00:06:42.260 Right. Yeah. Trigger. Like it was crazy, but again, it was still not political politics. It was not just

00:06:47.800 identity. He was cool. And my friends were, we were just, it wasn't our thing. We were just having fun

00:06:51.740 going out and doing karaoke and drinking. And then, but you know, the more I hung around him,

00:06:56.900 I was kind of like, well, you're kind of right about all this and yeah, you're kind of right.

00:07:00.020 Like, and he was actually happening to be pro-life and, but we weren't religious. He was just from a 0.81

00:07:04.380 kind of like a logical standpoint and like, yeah, that kind of, wow, maybe you're right. You're onto

00:07:09.260 something here. I hadn't really thought ever about it deeply in any way. And so, you know, he was raised

00:07:15.420 like me kind of secular nothingness because he had been baptized as a baby. His father had been a,

00:07:20.320 you know, altar boy in Kansas city in the old days. And so, but then it had been completely

00:07:23.820 fallen away and had never set foot in a church. So we got married in his parents' backyard with

00:07:29.240 a judge. It was all very civil, you know, zero religion involved. And that was time with me.

00:07:34.660 And we, I became pregnant. Like, I think that first year, you know, we were like, you know,

00:07:39.160 we wanted to get on it just like you guys. We jumped right in and like, very sadly, we were

00:07:46.820 unprepared to find out like at three months went in for the ultrasound. You know, there was no

00:07:52.120 heartbeat that we had. So it was a miscarriage. And we were so, we were like lambs to the slaughter

00:07:56.760 because we hadn't even thought it was a thing. You know, you see the heartbeat, you think,

00:08:00.300 no one had prepared us. We were like, yeah, no, it's not me. It all worked out in the end,

00:08:05.740 but it was, it was such a shock, you know, emotional shock. Like we were just like, no. And he said to me

00:08:12.500 the next day, I'm going to convert. I'm going to become Catholic now because I can't, I can't deal 1.00

00:08:18.740 with this. So really the miscarriage was his kind of inciting incident. And he was like, I need to do

00:08:23.800 this. And honestly, my reaction was like, all right, buddy. Like, sorry, I might be out of line

00:08:32.880 with this question, but don't Catholics think that, that, that a baby like that would go to purgatory

00:08:37.620 because it wasn't baptized. Like that would be comforting. Sorry. I don't know. I do know at the

00:08:46.720 time, I'm not sure. I do know. I mean, at the time we weren't Catholic at that moment and I didn't

00:08:51.680 realize now that I have, I'm around a lot of Catholic people. I can tell you that I've had

00:08:56.460 friends, for example, who have like a tubal pregnancy and they will actually get the tube,

00:09:02.540 the fallopian tube with the like embryo that they have to surgically take out of you. So you will

00:09:07.620 die and they will get that baptized. Oh, so the baptism is important. Yeah. So in terms of what 0.97

00:09:15.880 happened to me, I didn't know anything about it. And I had, I went in for a D&E, which is like

00:09:19.980 basically an abortion, but it's a dead, you know, you're, they put you to sleep and they do it in the 0.96

00:09:23.940 hospital. And I didn't even think about any of that stuff, but later on I thought, oh, wow,

00:09:28.720 they just kind of threw it in the garbage. Wow. I do feel when I think about it, I feel like,

00:09:34.120 sorry and sad that I didn't think about it, but it is what it is. So what happens to those? I have

00:09:39.580 no idea, Malcolm. I really don't. I'm like a very non-educated Catholic to be really frank. I don't

00:09:45.820 know. I'm thinking to, and Malcolm and I spoke with a priest about this because we were speaking

00:09:50.840 about IVF and we're like, well, what about the frozen embryos? And I mean, I think per the current

00:09:57.560 status, like the current stance with the Catholic church, embryos have souls. So like there are,

00:10:03.240 there are souls to save, but like per older stances. I'll edit it post. I'll just ask AI.

00:10:09.080 So when I asked AI, it said that currently this is a question that does not have a hard clarified

00:10:14.520 answer in Catholic doctrine. So then I went to be like, where did I get the idea that this was the

00:10:19.200 case? And it was Dante's divine comedy. That is where I got this idea because this is what Dante

00:10:25.160 believed, that limbo was where all of the unbaptized infants went. And I just remember

00:10:31.840 this image of billions of crying, unbaptized infants looking for their parents and maybe a

00:10:37.520 few thousand noble pagans having to look after them in limbo is this visceral image that I was

00:10:44.200 never able to get out of my head after reading that book.

00:10:47.880 But I actually have a question here. I love that all my theological questions go to AI now.

00:10:52.380 I'm like, what's the correct stance on AI? God is here.

00:10:56.320 I want to ask. So you decided like, you were keen to have kids because as you know, in this

00:11:01.940 lefty cult that you guys started in, right? Like having kids isn't the normal path, but like you

00:11:11.080 were planning to do it soon after getting married.

00:11:14.140 You did it right away. And did you get married young or like right after college or in college?

00:11:18.440 Like 20s. Oh yeah. So young for today. Absolutely.

00:11:22.260 So you were like a child bride or something. 0.99

00:11:24.600 That's right. How did you have babies?

00:11:26.560 Yeah. What was the motivation here? Because it's interesting to me that you likely,

00:11:32.380 like when I'm looking at like Catholics getting married later, unfortunately you almost sort of 0.99

00:11:36.840 are the exception that proves the rule because you got married before you were a Catholic.

00:11:42.320 So it wasn't influencing your decision-making yet. And then I can look at somebody like the Pearl

00:11:48.920 Davis or something, right. Who starts at the Catholic, but isn't married or Nick Fuentes who

00:11:52.680 starts at the Catholic, but isn't married. And I went through a list of like young Catholic

00:11:55.840 influencers and they're almost all unmarried. And, and, and like, maybe if your husband had been

00:12:01.000 Catholic, he wouldn't like, this is really interesting to me. So what motivated you to have a kid 1.00

00:12:05.860 before you had the religious motivation?

00:12:07.640 Yeah. I think it was actually becoming, you know, my parents had not been religious, but they had

00:12:12.320 been conservatives. And when I became a political conservative, that did require me to, you know,

00:12:19.240 let the feminism fall away from my eyes. And so when you do that, suddenly you're like, oh, 0.80

00:12:24.700 my maternal instinct. Oh, I do want kids. Like maybe I don't want to wait until I'm, you know,

00:12:31.900 in my late thirties. And then when you can kind of let yourself be, you kind of have to suppress all

00:12:37.320 that a little bit when you are in the kind of basic feminist mindset, you, you actually do, 1.00

00:12:42.480 because you're going to go right to work and you're going to delay everything. And if you get

00:12:45.840 pregnant, you'll abort it. And then you'll go get your, whatever. So your career comes first when 0.99

00:12:50.300 you can kind of, when you, when you can kind of break out of that mentality, that brainwashing,

00:12:54.500 really that, that, that programming they put into you very young as a teenage girl, you're more in

00:12:58.940 touch with your maternal instinct. So I, I did, I did want to, the minute we like got married,

00:13:02.820 I was like, babies, let's go. I had never been a baby person. I was never one of those,

00:13:07.420 like, let me take the baby. I didn't care. You know, I was, I think it was Simone. Simone had

00:13:12.280 all these fears that she wouldn't love her kids. She's like, I don't comment. That's really common.

00:13:17.800 If you haven't been around them yet, when you're a first timer, we don't live in a baby centric

00:13:22.300 culture. I had, I had two cousins growing up. I didn't live near, I never held a baby from the time

00:13:28.760 my little sister was born. Like until my own baby, like I did whole babies. Like there you go.

00:13:33.760 Yeah. And so you're not having that, like, aren't they so cute when you see babies, it does fill

00:13:39.120 you with these like endorphins. Like, Oh, I never had that. But when I, when I got married, I just

00:13:43.420 knew, okay, I'm old. I got to do it now. I just, I knew I hadn't been like, you know, memed out of

00:13:48.180 my biological clock. I wanted to get going. So now I want to go back to this story. Your husband

00:13:52.820 converts. What are you thinking at this moment? I thought he was a little bit crazy. I was like,

00:13:58.020 that's your journey, bro. But I can't marry you. So I'm kind of like, what are you going to do?

00:14:02.440 What are you going to tell your husband? Like your new husband? Like, fuck you. Like I'm gonna,

00:14:06.100 Oh, sorry, baby. I'm gonna, I'm out. Like, no, you want to support them. And I, you know,

00:14:11.660 you're in mourning. Right. So we went through the whole conversion process. It really was a process

00:14:16.380 of me going along with him, you know, being kind of dragged to mass drag through. And that was my

00:14:22.720 education. So that was when I was like, I'm meeting other people, women like me who were

00:14:27.980 actually Catholics, like cradle Catholics who were so cool, so open, so accepting much more so than

00:14:36.120 my, you know, liberal Ivy league girlfriends who are very judgmental, very critical, very dogmatic, 1.00

00:14:42.120 very conformist with the Catholics. I was kind of like, could let my freak flag fly. And I was like, 0.98

00:14:48.360 kind of, they kind of brought me in as like, here, you know, here's this, here's peachy. And she needs

00:14:53.020 us like to kind of guide her through the way. So it was really like a new peer group who were so

00:14:58.980 much more like cool and awesome than the, than the, than the friends I'd had. And then we went

00:15:05.340 through the whole process. We baptized all of our children because I thought, well, you know,

00:15:09.900 rationally, this is a great way to raise a child much better than what I had, which was like,

00:15:15.660 basically anything goes just, you know, it was wilded. Right. And I didn't want my kids to have,

00:15:21.240 I wanted them to have structure and, you know, have an infrastructure, a moral framework that

00:15:26.800 they could just take and grasp and help them, you know, go through life, which is, I think so great.

00:15:32.520 And then, but finally I had three babies under three. Okay. I had a zero, a one and a two,

00:15:38.560 three and diapers at one point. It was wild times. So finally I found like matching shoes,

00:15:44.240 like 10 years later, I was like, okay, I'm ready. I'm now, I'm going to do it. So I went down to the

00:15:48.000 local parish. I went through the process myself. Explain matching shoes. I don't understand.

00:15:52.940 Oh, because I was pregnant and nursing for like 10 straight years. And then I finally found shoes

00:15:58.220 that I could match and go leave the house. That's my joke. Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm not,

00:16:04.780 it takes a while, Malcolm, but hold on.

00:16:07.440 Nevermind. It sounds like, and this is something that, that I've noted a lot is I think a lot of

00:16:15.660 people when they're in what we call the urban monoculture, like this, this, you know, the old

00:16:19.720 group of friends that you had and you start interacting with the educated religious people,

00:16:25.680 you're like often really surprised by how real they are and, and, and open they are when contrasted

00:16:33.680 with the other communities. Like it's not as much of a status game. One of my favorite lines about

00:16:38.720 this was they were asking is whatever, one of the, the fifth horsemen of the ACS apocalypse or

00:16:43.600 whatever that former Muslim, right. Is whatever. But why, why did she go to Christianity instead 0.99

00:16:49.700 of Islam when she became like theistic and she goes, well, of all the years of attacking 1.00

00:16:55.920 theistic people. And that was my job. She was like, it was attacking Christians. It was attacking

00:17:00.400 Muslims. The Muslims would always say, send me stuff about how they were going to kill me or 1.00

00:17:05.700 great me or whatever. And the Christians would always send me stuff that was like, we're praying 0.94

00:17:10.460 for your soul. We want you to, you know, just try it. Like, well, you come to mass with me

00:17:14.900 one day. Like we really want what's best for you. And she realized that they had never really

00:17:19.900 responded to her with anger, not in a, in a big way. And so she was like, when I started

00:17:24.680 thinking about joining one of the communities, naturally I'm going to go to that one, even

00:17:29.040 though it's not my birth community. And I thought that that was, it's something that I've definitely

00:17:33.460 felt is that these communities are dramatically more accepting than individuals would think.

00:17:39.500 Even with significant theological questioning, which individuals know we do on this channel.

00:17:45.380 Like we do like deep theological questioning on this channel. Like, oh, this part doesn't

00:17:49.500 make sense. This part doesn't make sense. How can I do this better? And I think people

00:17:53.060 would assume that religious Christians would take that negatively when in reality, most of 0.64

00:18:01.780 them are actually quite excited to be having a theological conversation.

00:18:06.480 Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

00:18:07.320 Exactly. And I'm sure it's something that you, you saw as well. So you get in the community,

00:18:11.560 you, you convert. What is, was that process like beginning to go to church, beginning to,

00:18:18.820 yeah.

00:18:19.540 Yeah. But we've been going to mass, you know, every week with the children. It was, it was

00:18:23.120 very much a part of our lives. We were hanging out with all these people. And so I was like

00:18:27.800 fully on board. I think it just, it was just like the chaos of my life at that time was

00:18:32.740 like, I wasn't, it wasn't, I wasn't able to like go and take every afternoon and go do

00:18:36.320 this thing. And then when I finally did it, you know, in a very lame, my, my local parish

00:18:41.900 was very, at the time was very lame. It was very, you know, unorthodox, let's say very

00:18:47.300 liberal.

00:18:47.620 Yeah. And you know, the Catholic school, my, our kids went to that, there was a school

00:18:51.980 attached and you wouldn't, you would see zero of the families at the school in mass on Sunday.

00:18:57.980 Oh, wow.

00:18:59.020 One family who was like, you know, Cungary or something. They, they were just not, they were

00:19:04.100 just doing it because it was a way out of the public school. And so that was part of my driver

00:19:08.720 also. I was like, well, I don't want this like water phoned in, watered down. If I'm going

00:19:14.200 to do this, I believe this now, like I'm on board, I want to do the real thing. So we

00:19:18.600 ended up moving to actually moved our house. We moved the whole family across town to a

00:19:23.300 parish that is actually much more, you know, I guess you would say conservative, much more

00:19:26.980 traditional. And which was where a lot of these families that we had been hanging out

00:19:31.980 with were. And they're, you know, to them, I have five children. I'm something of a lightweight,

00:19:36.580 to be frank with them.

00:19:38.480 In this particular community.

00:19:39.400 Yes. Like our TFR is off the charts. We're like meeting out in Congo and like, you know,

00:19:47.040 Sudan, like we're nice.

00:19:49.100 This is good stuff. Yeah.

00:19:51.300 Yeah. Like I have a friend who has one of my good friends, you know, these women are my 1.00

00:19:55.240 age. She has 10 kids. Another woman, my age, 12 kids. I'm like at five relatively on the

00:20:02.780 low end. But, but the thing is there's friends of ours who have, they have one child, they have

00:20:07.320 two children. It's not, and no one ever would say like, what are you, what's wrong with you?

00:20:12.020 Like, no, like any child is welcomed. You want to have, whatever God gives you is great.

00:20:17.160 There's no, no, you can't go too high as my point.

00:20:19.820 How did you break it to your kids that you were Catholic now? Like, was this like a conversation

00:20:24.300 that you remember having? Were they old enough that they had known that they'd grown up? And yeah.

00:20:27.960 Yeah. They, they fully were. I mean, I think, I think my oldest, when I did the whole,

00:20:32.460 the whole, like I did, you know, they do for adults, they do it on Easter vigil and they,

00:20:36.080 they, they do everything at once. They do all the sacraments at once. They baptize you,

00:20:39.320 confirm you, first communion, all one shebang, right? Like they, you're in the white robe and 0.98

00:20:43.900 they're dumped water on you. And it's just like, you're done. Like you're, and they, they were,

00:20:47.900 they knew they were so excited because they'd been doing, they were, you know, cradle Catholics.

00:20:51.800 So they were very, you know, mommy, when are you going to do it? When are you going to do it,

00:20:54.700 mommy? So they're thrilled. They're thrilled because now.

00:20:57.820 That's amazing. So your kids converted before you did.

00:21:00.560 I know, right?

00:21:01.320 That is, that is, like, that's funny. That's amazing.

00:21:06.380 Well, they were born, yeah, born into it. They were baptized when they were little babies. So

00:21:09.660 it's, it's been, so I'm like, you know, I hear about this, like the birth rates,

00:21:14.740 like the Catholic, what you're talking about in the beginning about the birth rates among

00:21:18.860 Catholics.

00:21:19.520 Yeah, it's like that school where it was all sort of like fake Catholics. The problem is that Catholic 0.99

00:21:23.700 is, I guess you'd argue that Catholic, like maybe Jew is almost a cultural identity

00:21:29.440 instead of a religion for a lot of people. And that's, what's towing down all the fertility 0.95

00:21:34.620 statistics.

00:21:35.600 The Jews are the, I think, having the same schism where the Orthodox Jews, the, the, the sex 0.97

00:21:41.740 that are kind of, you know, keeping the kind of fires burning, like the ways they did it

00:21:45.980 in the old country are having lots of children, you know, even in LA, you'll see, you'll go

00:21:51.460 through the Jewish, the Jewish neighborhoods and they're walking to shul and they have like,

00:21:54.880 you know, bigger families than me. And so, but, but in both of these, you know, I grew

00:22:00.600 up around a lot of secular Jews in the West side of LA. That was like the norm and all 0.96

00:22:04.900 these private schools. And maybe you have two kids, like, you know, maybe max and, and

00:22:10.740 the same for, and the same for like the wishy-washy Catholics, the families at the, at the kind 1.00

00:22:14.900 of liberal Catholic parishes, same exact thing. Maybe they have two kids. In other words, there's

00:22:19.060 like no daylight between them and some like purely secular, non-religious at all public

00:22:25.040 school family, maybe, you know, two kids, maybe. And I was wondering, how do you take

00:22:31.600 back the church? Like, how do you?

00:22:33.240 Well, right. That's the question that you have to wonder. So when you say like Catholic

00:22:37.040 TFR is falling, well, it's, there's just no daylight anymore between kind of mainstream

00:22:42.620 American Catholicism and mainstream American liberalism. It's, it's basically, that's the

00:22:48.040 same group of people. I mean, I saw some statistic that was like 65 or 70% of, you know, self,

00:22:54.360 self-proclaimed Catholics are voting for Kamala Harris. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure

00:23:00.920 that if the Pope could vote, he would vote for Kamala Harris, like 100%. Like that's the

00:23:05.160 world we live in here where Catholic is really like, you're like a Sino, you're like a Catholic 0.99

00:23:09.540 in name only. And the different, there's like a big schism between the conservative Catholics

00:23:15.340 in America and the kind of normie. And so how do you reconcile that? Like, like you

00:23:21.560 said, like, yeah, I'm actually like, psychologically, I really wonder when the Pope, when you feel

00:23:30.160 like the Pope, who's like the head of the church has moved in a direction that the church doesn't

00:23:34.040 like, like how did that work? I guess. It like doesn't, but I think is, you know, me and some

00:23:41.640 of my friends are always like, you know, like, oh, oh, they like this guy, like, who is this guy?

00:23:47.660 He's a Jesuit. The Jesuits have always been very liberal, but he's really, to me, a politician

00:23:52.520 and first, a politician first. Like, why is he meeting with Alex Soros? Why is he meeting with

00:23:59.800 Bill Clinton all the time? Like, what? What? He's doing a good job with the Vatican, you know?

00:24:07.340 Sorry, what? I think he's genuinely doing a good job with the politics and doing a good job with the

00:24:13.240 optics. I think removing a lot of the flair from the Pope ship, like, like going a bit more austere

00:24:18.580 was a really smart move, even if his theological stuff might be. Well, what I feel like is happening,

00:24:24.960 when I look at sort of the analogs of demographic collapse more in general, is that he's trying to

00:24:32.240 essentially do what the United States is doing, is they're like, well, let's just turn to immigration.

00:24:36.800 Immigration will solve the problem. And he's like, well, let's just loosen the rules and let's make 1.00

00:24:40.780 this a big tent religion and everyone can join and you don't have to make any sacrifices and everyone

00:24:46.160 goes to heaven. Kind of like he's just, I'm seeing policies loosen and the borders, the borders

00:24:51.640 soften and become more porous. And I feel like that's kind of the same approach, but that it's

00:24:56.940 not working. Just like how depending on immigration for demographic collapse is not going to save a

00:25:01.820 nation. Opening up to everyone and also relaxing on rules and going softer as a religion is not going 0.97

00:25:07.940 to save Catholicism. It could fudge the numbers for a little bit. But I also don't think that this is

00:25:14.140 necessarily the factor that's at play solely for lower demographic, sorry, I was going to say

00:25:21.260 demographic, lower Catholic birth rates, because it seems that the birth rates are really high with

00:25:27.760 Catholics in general, but that the issue is that they're marrying too late. And I'm curious what you

00:25:33.720 see, even within the small data point of your Catholic community, what's happening with young

00:25:40.260 people? Are they getting married in their twenties or is this a genuine issue? Even among the more

00:25:46.180 hard religious Catholics, are they getting married too late? Yeah. It seems to me that the solution 1.00

00:25:53.180 that some of the families I know have found, which is very effective to creating, to producing early

00:25:59.320 marriages is all about college selection. There is a kind of a smallish list of colleges

00:26:07.680 in the United States that if you go there, you are very likely, if you wish, to find a potential

00:26:14.840 spouse. So they're like the BYUs of Catholicism. The BYUs of Catholicism. And it's like ring by

00:26:20.380 spring is like an actual phenomenon. That was like a 19th century thing. But these are kids who are

00:26:25.540 ring by spring and you'll get the alumni magazine and the back is like all the weddings from the

00:26:29.980 class of 2022. 25 weddings from that class. We have some listeners. His families may have lapsed. Can

00:26:38.640 you give them a few colleges that they should be checking out? Yeah. So actually a great source is

00:26:43.280 something called the Newman's List, Cardinal Newman's List. I don't know the exact website. Go go Google

00:26:48.980 Cardinal Newman List. And they actually have a list of all the colleges they recommend with the usual

00:26:53.560 suspects, but also some smaller ones that people may not, you know, have heard of. Um, I have friends

00:26:58.820 who go to, um, Franciscan University in Steubenville, University of Dallas in Dallas.

00:27:05.200 Thomas Prince College has two colleges. There are a whole host of these sort of smaller schools.

00:27:11.640 I don't even know if Notre Dame is still on the list. They might not be because they've gotten so

00:27:15.280 wishy-washy, but there are these schools where if you go, you are, I've been to now three weddings

00:27:20.720 of kids who met their spouses at a school like Thomas Aquinas College, which is in Ojai,

00:27:26.480 California, which is a very kind of trad calf, great books, classical, you know, those are all

00:27:31.680 the kind of like the dog whistle for finding your wife, great books, classical, like find your wife

00:27:39.200 in one of those places. Not that, not to say you want, you went elsewhere, but I think, yeah,

00:27:43.300 Christian colleges, it really does seem to be that the marriage rates are doing fine. If you're going

00:27:48.360 to an explicitly openly Christian or Catholic college. So colleges to a great extent, at least

00:27:54.860 in the United States are a modern shorthand for marriage markets. If, if we can't, if we're not

00:28:01.300 creating organized marriage markets, like the LDS church has a bunch more like youth conferences

00:28:06.400 and youth wards, but if you don't have those, or even if you do, I mean, they still rely,

00:28:11.020 the religion essentially still relies heavily on BYU. So college is kind of the modern.

00:28:14.920 Um, yeah, I think this is a really powerful, and I hadn't considered how powerful it is

00:28:19.880 sort of social framing is you should be married by, you know, you're not married, but have a spouse

00:28:26.620 partner lined up by your second year of college. And if you don't, you effed up. And I remember

00:28:31.320 shame on you, Malcolm. You didn't do that.

00:28:35.420 I told you when I met you, I was like, I should have found a wife by now I'm going to grad school

00:28:40.420 so I can find a wife there because I didn't, I didn't nail it the first time.

00:28:44.500 Yeah. You're like a 24 year old woman. 1.00

00:28:47.600 Yeah. Yeah. Are your kids doing this? You, you have one, you just sent the first one to college.

00:28:52.160 Yeah. So I've one who is at a school. It's basically a non-denominational Christian school.

00:28:57.080 I'm not going to say the name, but there are many potential prospects there. It is, it is a school

00:29:02.320 where they, you know, there are, is the ring by spring phenomenon does happen by senior year.

00:29:06.020 Okay. And he's the kind of boy who, you know, on him, it all took. Okay. Like, I don't know,

00:29:11.560 like he's just the kind of guy in all, all the religious indoctrination we did for him. It took

00:29:16.700 great guy. He is extremely devout. He's extremely chaste and he is wants to have, you know, not wait

00:29:26.100 too long. I would never tell a boy, you must be married by this age, like 22. You have to be

00:29:31.900 married by this age. Not at all because it depends on what a million things. Yeah. You need to find 1.00

00:29:37.280 the right person. Yeah. But if he did have a serious girlfriend or was thinking about getting

00:29:40.600 engaged in his early twenties, I would just be happy as a clam. So, so I mean, fingers crossed,

00:29:47.780 you know, he's definitely on, we got one, right. Okay. So because I don't understand this,

00:29:53.420 what the hell are you doing living in LA? Yeah, I know really my fault. I didn't choose. I was,

00:30:03.060 I wasn't, I didn't choose it. So my parents are New York immigrants. They immigrated from New York

00:30:07.320 city to Los Angeles, right. When they got married in the seventies in the mid seventies. And so they had

00:30:15.540 us all here. We grew up here. And to this day, you know, my mom is here. My dad is their divorce,

00:30:21.500 but they both live here. My brother and sister, well, at least my brother is still here on my

00:30:26.660 husband's side. He grew up in Santa Monica, right? Five minutes from where I grew up. He was almost

00:30:31.740 the boy next door. His parents are here. He has six siblings. They're all here. Oh, wow.

00:30:36.820 Children are here. So, you know, our Thanksgivings are these like huge family affairs in Santa Monica.

00:30:43.800 And it has always felt like, well, should we get out? Where are we going to go? How are we going to live?

00:30:48.080 Our parents are older. And the other thing is that my husband is sort of like, it's your home.

00:30:52.200 And I, I drive around Malcolm. And I see like on my, just two blocks away, tents, homeless junkies.

00:30:58.180 You see them just like doing drugs right in front of my kids. See this like almost on the way to mass.

00:31:03.560 Oh, there's a guy, you know, ODing on fentanyl. Like we see that every week.

00:31:08.060 And I'm like, we got to get out of here. And my husband's like, you know, I just, to him,

00:31:12.700 California is like his, he's seventh generation. Whoa. Okay. 0.55

00:31:18.240 This is my, this is my home. And also his job. It's not really transferable. So we have this

00:31:24.560 thing called like, you know, his income that we, we would, yeah, there's that nice, you know,

00:31:30.680 kind of nice to get an income from the man of the house. If we could pull it off one day,

00:31:35.720 I will get out. The problem for us is like, where do you go? Because you know, the, the,

00:31:41.400 the shit live blue cities tend to have like the best food, the best culture, 0.99

00:31:46.540 like things we are having. I'm going to push back here. 0.99

00:31:51.900 Simone believed all of this. Simone believed all of this. Simone, do you remember how hard I had to

00:31:56.820 fight to get you to consider to live outside a city? You're in the woods somewhere in Pennsylvania.

00:32:01.180 Yeah. Tell her your experience of moving. Like what, what happened after?

00:32:06.360 It's true. Yeah. We, I was like, I'm never going to live outside a city. The suburbs sounds like the

00:32:11.020 worst thing in the world. Like, why would I ever do that? And now I couldn't imagine doing anything

00:32:16.160 else. The food out here is great. Cost of living is amazing. And also we spend more time socializing

00:32:21.560 in cities than we did when we lived in cities.

00:32:25.520 Right. Cause you're doing it intentionally. Yeah.

00:32:27.120 Yeah. And we have flexibility. Like, well, we most commonly will do New York or DC because we can

00:32:32.440 drive to either. No one, we were 30 minutes outside Philadelphia, but no one's there. So

00:32:37.560 screw that. But it's. You're selling me. I'm open to it.

00:32:42.660 Hold on. I'll do a better. Simone forgot. So she, the thing she complained about, she's like, 0.97

00:32:47.820 what about like getting a haircut or going to a grocery store? And then we get, get out here

00:32:52.760 and she's like, Oh, I can just drive. I feel like we used to walk 20 minutes to the grocery

00:32:58.800 store and then walk back with like bags of groceries. And now we just drive and put it in

00:33:03.260 our trunk. Or she was like, what about the food and what she forgot about. And I think this is what

00:33:08.640 something that a lot of people in cities forget about is different immigrant groups settle in

00:33:13.560 different locations. So for example, if you love Italian food, you're going to get the best Italian

00:33:18.980 food in the center of a city. But if you love Indian food, which is our favorite Indian tie,

00:33:24.420 that sort of stuff, those populations generally settle in the suburbs. And so there is way better,

00:33:31.100 you know, Indian food, sushi, you know, all the types of food that we actually like in our area.

00:33:37.220 And she was a little surprised by this. I will admit, I can't get good rendang out here. Like

00:33:42.240 the Indonesians tend to settle in cities more. But you're telling me, I would be totally open to

00:33:48.880 it. I, it does feel like maybe we're just too old to move. Maybe we'll have to do our,

00:33:53.420 when our kids migrate. Jobs matter. Like cities have jobs. Jobs matter. Yeah. Things that cities

00:34:01.320 have is some jobs you can't leave. Well, and more than that, support networks matter. And when you

00:34:06.540 mentioned the amount of family you both have living close by, when you are raising five kids,

00:34:12.240 having a local family is huge. I'm so jealous. It's been amazing. And all my, and our, and our

00:34:20.240 network of friends, we have a, we had a lot of families leave our school during the, during the

00:34:24.620 pandemic. A lot of people fled to, to Dallas, to Tennessee, to Montana, Idaho. We had a family who

00:34:32.440 moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and actually they just came back. They're returning. They just,

00:34:37.560 they felt like they couldn't replicate the community that they had here, which is, you know,

00:34:42.460 you don't realize that you can't just like pick up a whole set of friends that you've known for 20

00:34:47.420 years and replicate that elsewhere. Although, I mean, a lot of my friends are just like on my

00:34:52.780 computer, you know what I mean? They're just like on the, they're my internet friends. So I don't know

00:34:56.220 how, how, like, I think that would mitigate a lot of that. Like you said, it's okay to go like a couple

00:35:01.640 times a year and go to a party. I don't necessarily need like daily, you know, interactions with like

00:35:06.820 my girlfriends. I'm not that kind of. Do you have like a discord fan group? I have no idea. I'm not

00:35:12.540 on discord. I'm just on, I just basically Twitter is my only social media. Is there a discord? I have

00:35:19.480 no idea. There could be that you don't even know about. My teenager is on discord and he can, maybe he

00:35:24.920 could help me figure that out. I have, I have, I didn't, I know like when we started this channel,

00:35:29.880 I was like discord stupid. I don't like it. I, and then we kept having fans reach out to us and 0.98

00:35:35.420 be like, start a discord, start a discord, start a discord. And finally we started one. And now

00:35:40.780 discord is like my favorite social media platform. Cause it's the only one where there's like no

00:35:45.420 toxicity because it's all our fans. So you're just not going to get much toxicity. And when there is,

00:35:50.000 I can choose to ban them. So, you know, I've, I've actually been surprised by, but it sounds like

00:35:56.180 you don't need it because you've got your local community and stuff like that. I mean,

00:35:59.480 this is another thing I wonder that we've been building up is sort of like a community of like

00:36:04.860 influencer friends that like, I want my kids to hang out with their kids, but like, we don't have

00:36:09.380 anything like a genuinely local community. Yeah. And that's, that's, that's not a thing of value

00:36:14.900 to discount at all, especially when you have young kids. Oh yeah. Especially, you know,

00:36:19.300 you completely made the right calculation. Right. To, to misquote Sard's hell is other people's

00:36:26.740 children. A lot of the time. Okay. Because you can do all the indoctrination of your own kids that

00:36:33.140 you want and tell them all the things, the truths that you believe. And then you drop them off for

00:36:37.360 one play date and they're going to come back and they're going to tell you a lot of things that they

00:36:42.800 learned at the friend's house. Cause you didn't know the mom was some kind of like loony, you know,

00:36:48.280 social justice. I, that happened to my daughter. She came back and she knew all the birds and the bees 0.93

00:36:53.260 and she was like four. And this mom has like, it was like this new age holistic midwife or whatever. 0.95

00:37:01.600 She was a dear, a dear sweet girl, you know, but she had, she had educated my daughter and had never

00:37:07.580 without me having anything to do about it. And I was like, so you know what I'm saying? That,

00:37:13.360 so it's like, it goes both ways, the kids. So you have to be careful who they're.

00:37:18.480 Yeah. That's why I don't let my kids have friends. I, I've been very strict about this as a, as a,

00:37:22.840 as a father and a husband. Yeah. Which is to say people are like, oh, your kids don't have what

00:37:27.720 birthdays. I'm like, no F that like ridiculous. We're going to have a lot of kids. They can celebrate 0.98

00:37:33.380 the birth of their next sibling. It happens every year. You know, they need to, they need to calm

00:37:38.580 down with this indulgent stuff. Right. Our friends, like, I don't know, like do our kids,

00:37:44.000 I know they have formed friendships with other kids at their, their stuff, but like, I haven't

00:37:48.300 really tried to foster that. Well, I think that getting, having get togethers with like-minded

00:37:55.300 families who have children roughly your same age is hugely valuable. It's not something that they need 0.98

00:38:01.240 to be stuck with them six, seven, eight hours a day. But I think that doing it on a, some kind of

00:38:06.920 basis is, is obviously great. And you know, you never know, you can do a little like early

00:38:11.180 matchmaking. I know that's what we're looking at doing. We've been doing that with our little

00:38:15.520 ones with other like, along techno, technophilic types. Well, a question I have for you though,

00:38:23.000 in terms of raising kids, and this is something that came up at natalism conference last year,

00:38:27.400 is that there were some parents we met who had a lot of kids, raised them in their religion,

00:38:32.960 or at least thought they were doing that and had reached a point at which their kids,

00:38:36.920 were adults. And suddenly we're like, you know what? I'm not in this religion anymore. And like

00:38:41.720 had completely gone mainstream culture, no religion left, very unlikely to get married and have kids,

00:38:48.320 sort of everything was lost. You know, they, and it doesn't really matter from an intergenerational

00:38:53.360 standpoint and how many kids any individual has. It really matters how many grandkids they have and

00:38:57.440 how many grandkids they have. Like that's the sign of success. You've created a thriving human

00:39:01.200 who has been able to create a thriving adulthood and pass it on. Are there, are there things that

00:39:07.320 you tried to do with your kids or that you think went well with your kids? Because I mean, you

00:39:11.760 mentioned, for example, that your son actually is leaning in to religion. He's not like leaning out,

00:39:15.940 which is really exciting to hear. Are there things that you'd recommend people do or things that

00:39:22.040 you've observed over time that you think would help with cultural retention?

00:39:25.420 I think, I think the main thing and the main success stories I've seen with like the young

00:39:30.940 couples who have kind of grown up, like within our little bubble and gotten married early and had

00:39:34.660 their gun and actually gone and had kids like in their early twenties. The main thing is keeping a

00:39:39.920 little bit of a moat around them for as long as possible between them and like, whatever,

00:39:45.640 mainstream culture. So like people saying like, well, they grew up, I raised them religious,

00:39:50.420 then they just fell away. But again, there's a big difference between like being raised

00:39:54.860 religious or being raised like with actual deep faith or with an actual infrastructure,

00:40:01.020 whatever it is, whatever form that is. And being raised to actually cherish things like family,

00:40:06.740 things like, you know, your, your, your kin having a big family. I mean, I think the reason we got into

00:40:13.020 it really was one of the reasons was my husband's oldest of seven kids. And so his mother had this,

00:40:17.840 you know, she was kind of like a boomer kind of lib, but she just loved babies, right? 1.00

00:40:22.100 Happened as many as possible. And so just having this like awareness of baby, giving your children

00:40:28.220 awareness of babies are good. Babies won't hold you back. Again, it's countering with,

00:40:32.840 especially with young, young girls that you have messages that they're going to get everywhere else

00:40:37.980 with no babies should not be avoided. Like they're poison. Babies are good things to have one day.

00:40:44.240 You know, you should wait until you are, have a life partner. You should wait, you know, don't do it,

00:40:48.300 but these are a wonderful thing and you should embrace that part of your, your, your biology.

00:40:54.660 This is, it's, it's important to be able to express that in a healthy, good way.

00:40:59.020 And so I think that just countering the culture's messages with your own, like you're a very strong

00:41:03.780 family culture, creating that your own family culture is so important. And again, it comes down

00:41:08.540 to really for kids when they get a little older, they're kind of raising themselves in their peer

00:41:12.560 group, who their peers are, who their peers' parents are. What are they teaching them at the

00:41:16.880 school? Are you homeschooling them? Like where, what are they, what is like the sum total? And I'm

00:41:20.740 going to get a lot of this junk on the internet and my kids are on the internet too. Like they're 0.76

00:41:24.700 looking at the stuff that a lot of other kids are looking at, but they've kind of have already

00:41:29.280 these kind of built-in immunities and filters. Like they're not going to be looking at things that

00:41:34.300 are pornographic or things that are blasphemous or things that kind of, you know, go against like they

00:41:38.200 would, they, they like kind of are kind of conditioned to kind of like, Oh, that's not for me,

00:41:43.200 you know? And so just kind of from an early age, giving them the tools to discern, you

00:41:50.000 know, the like good way to live. And there's a bad way to live. This is what's good about

00:41:53.720 our way. And it seems to, so, you know, it's a numbers game, right? You're not going to win

00:41:58.700 them all. There's always going to be, you know, one that gets away. One of the baby turtles

00:42:02.860 gets, you know, eaten by the crabs. Like they're not going to make it to the ocean. That's why

00:42:07.740 the mommy turtle. I'm imagining crabs with like blue hair and, but so you want to have

00:42:13.700 like, what does the turtle have? Like 50 eggs. So, you know, it's a numbers game. So people

00:42:18.380 with one or two kids, you have a very low chance of grandchildren. You know, one could

00:42:23.040 decide never to get married, never to have children. One could choose something else.

00:42:26.840 One could be infertile. One could get sick and die. You don't know what's going to happen

00:42:29.800 with children. With five kids, I feel like I'm likely to, you know, get 10 plus grandchildren,

00:42:37.860 God willing. Oh, absolutely. Well, and the number of kids that you have influences the number of

00:42:41.060 kids your kids have, which I think about these people have two kids. We were like, oh, I want

00:42:45.320 to have one kid. I want to have two kids. How can you talk me into this? Or how can I'm like,

00:42:49.440 it doesn't matter if you have one kid, like your kid's not going to have kids. So we're like,

00:42:53.160 why we're not there. This conversation doesn't matter to me. I want the person who has five kids to

00:42:58.660 have 10 kids. I don't want the person who, who is thinking about one or two kids to have,

00:43:03.600 you know, one additional kid. That's not relevant. Right. So yeah, you're totally right about this.

00:43:09.280 And I, I wonder, yeah, no, I, and I think about it myself. How do I ward off the crabs better?

00:43:18.800 Ward off the crabs. But I love that, you know, it's. People who are intentional about warding off

00:43:23.400 the crabs actually do okay, Simone, but they need to think about it and see it as a real threat.

00:43:29.000 Everyone I know who has their kids taken doesn't really take it as a serious threat.

00:43:34.360 Yeah. They didn't realize that there were seagulls and crabs out there. Instead of just like,

00:43:37.980 yeah, we'll just, you know, go off to the ocean, little one.

00:43:40.260 They were basically like, if they went to church every week, they'd be fine. And I'm like, no,

00:43:44.120 no, no. Yeah.

00:43:46.600 Yeah. And like watching Fox news, that's not going to do it.

00:43:52.340 Subscribing to the daily wire, like that's not going to do it. Like there's, those are fine to do.

00:43:56.220 You can do those things if you want. It's much deeper than that. And a lot of it is why I just

00:44:01.160 saw today, Justin Lee, you know, at first things they've had a big post about young women are

00:44:06.500 leaving the church, Christianity and Catholicism in droves, but young men's numbers are going through

00:44:12.940 the roof. Huh?

00:44:14.080 And we're seeing this, you know, there's a, you know, the political gender divide, right? Young

00:44:18.840 women are becoming way more liberal than young men. But the church is going like, whoop. Young 0.98

00:44:23.740 men are becoming more conservative, but it's also happening in Christianity. Okay. Young men are 0.93

00:44:28.160 going to, going to services of all kinds. And young women are like, no, not for me. 1.00

00:44:33.920 It's funny. Other religions aren't doing this. So, so in Mormons, it's the men who leave

00:44:39.860 disproportionately in the women who stay in conservative Jewish communities. It's the 0.99

00:44:43.840 same. That's so interesting. Why is, I guess, you know, I feel like something about me, things

00:44:49.660 that Catholicism attracts men for the same reason that like some huge proportion of men on Twitter

00:44:54.780 are always thinking about Rome and that for the same reason why like people, women go to Mormonism 0.98

00:45:01.200 for the same reason why there are so many female Mormon influencers. Like there's just very 1.00

00:45:05.520 different. Hot blondes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It's just a big houses and Stanley 1.00

00:45:12.060 cups. Yeah. Yeah. Like the Mormon pitch, the LDS pitch is like a vibe and a lifestyle. And

00:45:17.200 it's, it's a, and I think the, the, the Catholic pitch is very technical and cerebral and you're

00:45:23.780 just not going to get as many women who are like instantly sold on that, I think, but I'm

00:45:28.600 not sure. I'm hoping, I don't know if you've read about type of sexy, like Twilight, right?

00:45:34.460 No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Mormons have like their, their like vampire novel. 1.00

00:45:41.000 I get J.D. Vance for Catholics recent, you know, 1.00

00:45:45.220 but J.D. Vance is a dude. So there's this, this trend that I read about in the free press where like

00:45:51.360 young Catholic women are starting to wear veils and they're like getting really into it. And it's 0.72

00:45:56.580 because they see some Catholic influencer wearing a veil and they're like, what do I have to do to get

00:46:00.840 one of those? Like, is this for a special status? And I'm hoping that maybe there can be some kind

00:46:06.020 of like social media influencer way to get girls into Catholicism. Yeah. I mean, fake it till you

00:46:12.360 make it like that. That will work on that. It works, man. Start with like, you got to get a good

00:46:17.600 fashion hook, you know, and then you're in. I think the veil, the veil could be the fashion hook.

00:46:22.160 Bring back veils. Yeah. Yeah. Make them like trendy and like sponsored by like, you know,

00:46:27.300 I don't know, Vance. Yeah. I mean, I think for men, there's all these great Catholic icons,

00:46:32.080 these like kind of crusaders and knights and, you know, King Arthur, all these Charlemagne and all

00:46:37.740 these incredibly masculine, heroic, chivalric examples. And Catholicism actually does have

00:46:44.880 wonderful female role models and examples. I mean, starting with like the Virgin Mary, right? 1.00

00:46:50.320 Yeah. A beautiful ideal and this beautiful icon. And then there's a lot of female, 1.00

00:46:54.660 wonderful female saints who are heroic, Joan of Arc and St. Agatha and all these incredible

00:46:58.900 murders. But it is, you know, I think for girls, it feels like, well, okay, well, I'm not a virgin.

00:47:05.300 I don't want to wear like these kind of like robes. Like how do I, where do I fit?

00:47:09.300 Yeah. Less relatable.

00:47:10.860 It's less relatable for kind of a modern contemporary girl. Yeah. So where does she fit in? And I think

00:47:16.680 there are a lot of Catholic influencers who are kind of like, you know, moms, like mommy blogger types

00:47:22.180 who have conferences and huge fan bases and women fly around to hear them talk. And, you know, I hang,

00:47:28.220 I know a lot of them and they are like on these circuits with like huge rabid audiences, but they're

00:47:32.300 definitely preaching to the choir and they're talking to women, their own age and men. And, and really

00:47:37.860 the last nut to crack, no pun intended is like 20 something young women. Yeah. How to crack that nut. 1.00

00:47:45.600 But I swear if you could crack it, you'll, you'll save the world.

00:47:49.740 It was, it was, it was, I think a desirable pool of 20 something young men.

00:47:55.180 Maybe.

00:47:56.040 Maybe, but they've learned to hate men, I guess. They see men as the enemy, right? So, and I think

00:48:02.200 that that's where a lot of the next generations Catholics are going to come from.

00:48:06.940 Okay. Here's the thing. No, no, no, no, no. You give me an idea just there. So when I was a kid,

00:48:11.720 a family friend of ours was a Carmelite nun, also a Catholic convert, but like very cloistered,

00:48:17.020 very, very conservative. Now she's a mother and she had to deal with in her convent, lots of young 0.96

00:48:24.120 women converting to Catholicism and then wanting to become a nun and having to weed a lot of them out 1.00

00:48:29.200 because of anxiety disorders and other sort of mental illness adjacent issues, because they're

00:48:34.520 like, oh, this is my great way to like nope out of society. And she's like, no, this is about faith.

00:48:39.820 This is not about like you're good at, I'm wondering if like it basically reforming people

00:48:47.160 like from, I'm not going to like, I'm not saying legitimate mental illness and I'm not saying that

00:48:52.640 mental illness and anxiety problems are illegitimate, but like, I feel as though modern

00:48:57.160 culture has bestowed many young women with mental illness, depression, anxiety problems that actually

00:49:03.360 are more societally generated and not actually endogenous. A lot of it. Yeah. Like, so like

00:49:09.160 grab them in with like the nun mental health, like reform, but then like, just like slide them out of 0.98

00:49:16.620 the convent, you know, into a more like hardline religious community. Like they get punked. They

00:49:23.200 get brought in. Yeah. It's like, oh no. Yeah. Like, oh, anxiety problems. What you had joined the

00:49:28.180 convent, cool outfit, you know, makeover. And then like, you know what, actually you could also

00:49:33.000 like, it's also really, you know, you don't have to have the habit. You can have the veil,

00:49:36.900 you know, and then just like, but veils look cuter because there's more lace. I don't know. I'm just

00:49:41.900 trying to figure out some kind of pipeline here. This is great to brainstorm ways to influence,

00:49:46.700 get into their brains. And I mean, nun fashion, Malcolm and I were rating religious fashions the 0.98

00:49:51.680 other day. And like Catholic fashion is, is God tier. I mean, just, it's so good.

00:49:58.540 You mean like the clergy wear? Yeah. Yeah. But the problem is it's like rated as the top tier

00:50:04.860 because my complaint was that it was isolated to the clergy and, and that it looks really good.

00:50:10.420 Like classic Catholic priest outfits are really nice looking. Yeah. They're very bold. Yeah. Yeah.

00:50:16.140 They look very authoritative, but still have a degree of austerity to them. They don't look like

00:50:20.800 you're peacocking, like the Orthodox outfit, but they're elegant. They're elegant. Oh, very elegant. 0.62

00:50:26.380 But I was like, but then why can't I, as a regular Catholic guy, wear like that cool collar thing?

00:50:31.060 That looks dope. Oh yeah. Yeah. It looks so badass. It does. I've never heard like a secular person say

00:50:36.820 they want to wear the collar, but I mean, or describe it as dope. Yes. Oh my God. No.

00:50:42.740 Trust that guy. I know. No, it doesn't, it look, you're like, you never heard a secular guy say it.

00:50:48.580 Does any other religion regularly appear in like horror movies with a shotgun?

00:50:53.680 Like there is a reason why when you have a priest fighting vampires, he's always dressed 0.99

00:51:00.680 like a Catholic priest because the Protestant priests would look ridiculous. 1.00

00:51:04.800 Orthodox priests would look ridiculous. 1.00

00:51:07.340 The youth, the Christian youth pastor and his like short jorts, his cargo shorts would look ridiculous. 1.00

00:51:11.760 Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. Right. 0.98

00:51:16.300 His goatee.

00:51:18.060 Oh no.

00:51:20.120 His, his tasteful tattoos.

00:51:22.440 Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

00:51:24.180 But he's good aesthetics, you know, he's really good aesthetics. And I mean, look, one of the reasons

00:51:31.160 I think I first did become Catholic is because I was an art history minor in college because I loved,

00:51:36.320 you know, going to Europe and I was lucky enough to go and like, you know, I went on like the,

00:51:40.620 the pilgrimage route across Northern Spain and I got to see all of it in Paris. And so I spent a lot

00:51:45.580 of time in Gothic, you know, like churches.

00:51:48.380 Oh yeah. Catholicism carries European art history. I mean, it's doing all the work. Yeah.

00:51:53.760 I was like, okay, whatever this is, this is awesome. Like, yeah, I'm down like Notre Dame,

00:51:58.200 like gargoyles, like, right. But then you go to like my, okay, I'm here, I'm going to join the

00:52:06.060 church in the San Fernando Valley in LA. And you look at the church, it's like, it's like puke pink

00:52:11.560 1964 monstrosity. Most hideous, linoleum, you know, and that's where you have to go to mass

00:52:20.240 every day. So like, yeah, no wonder young women who are like into aesthetics. Yeah. No interest. 1.00

00:52:27.520 Yeah. No, there's nothing gross like motel. Yeah. No, that's a big thing is in your local

00:52:35.460 Baptist church. Well, I mean, there's that, but that's a key thing about Catholicism and we with

00:52:41.600 our, you know, weird self-invented religion are really against idolatry and making things pretty,

00:52:48.060 but like Catholicism nails that and has used it for a very long time to, to, to communicate the

00:52:54.120 wonder of God, to really, you know, explain to you sort of like, this is a humbling and amazing

00:52:58.680 thing. And yet like the church has kind of dropped it to a great extent. Like it used to use the

00:53:04.700 aesthetics to communicate. This is a big deal. And to help you get into that mode. Why is it being

00:53:09.800 dropped? It's like now when everyone else has figured out how to use looks. Simone, there's a

00:53:14.700 documentary called the last cathedral about building the DC cathedral.

00:53:18.760 Cathedral is basically impossible to build anymore. Right. That was the last one. Yeah.

00:53:23.020 Well, but like, it doesn't have to be a cathedral. It could just be amazing fashion. It could just be

00:53:28.860 whatever. It's going to be one more. Antonio Gaudi. Cathedral. It's in the process of being built.

00:53:34.200 Not a fan. The one in Barcelona? What do you mean? Yeah. It's not finished yet.

00:53:38.660 Right. It's been going on for 80, 100 years. Well, maybe someone will accidentally burn it to

00:53:45.700 the ground. I hate it. I like it. I've been there. I like it. I actually like it. Yeah. I thought it

00:53:51.880 was pretty cool. That man could be eaten alive by a duck. I'll just bring him back to life. I don't 0.93

00:53:57.900 care. I'm not down with him, really. Before we leave, we got to talk about your next media empire.

00:54:06.220 What is it? Okay. So I haven't really sort of officially announced it, but I posted a little

00:54:12.360 bit about this on X earlier this year. One of the things I'd love to do after I save the culture and

00:54:19.140 like, you know, destroy femininity and smash, smash femininity. Yeah. I mean, feminism, sorry. 1.00

00:54:24.880 Women. Don't say femininity. I meant, I meant feminism. Okay. Smash the matriarch. You know, 1.00

00:54:30.480 they already did that. So what I want to do is I want to retake the culture on the, not the other 1.00

00:54:36.120 form of culture, which is, you know, entertainment, media, movies, shows, all this stuff, which as you

00:54:42.600 know, like people like me, like really, you know, we don't see ourselves represented on TV and I'm not

00:54:48.320 talking about a, this is not a Christian. So I started a media company. We're going to be 1.00

00:54:51.520 developing creative development for ideas that appeal to like people like me, but also kind of

00:54:57.900 a larger general audience. There's half the country that like, isn't into a lot of the slop on Netflix

00:55:04.080 or Amazon prime. They're not into, they're sick of, you know, the, the, the intro doc indoctrination.

00:55:09.780 Right. But also I don't want more Christian and Catholic content. That's like being handled. 0.99

00:55:16.800 A lot of it's being handled kind of badly. There's a couple interesting things. We want

00:55:22.760 to just do like good, fun, engaging stuff, whatever that, whatever form that is. And it's

00:55:29.220 like political and it's only, it's only really political because it is a political. So that

00:55:33.360 in itself now is a big political statement. If you're not having race quotas or Bechtel tests

00:55:38.780 or no woke messaging, you know, you're not celebrating any kind of like liberal tropes.

00:55:44.180 That's very kind of radical, but we haven't, we're not that far from that. That's what it

00:55:48.500 used to be. It's like old fashioned masculinity, old fashioned romance. Like, is that okay?

00:55:54.200 Like, I don't know. Like this sounds really good to me.

00:55:57.020 The nuclear family. Okay. Is that allowed anymore? Like, I don't know. Let's see.

00:56:00.840 So, but also just like fun stuff, maybe some experimental stuff that's edgy too,

00:56:04.560 for like all the weirdos that I'm friends with. So yeah, there'll be more announcements about

00:56:09.920 that in the, in the new year. I am excited for this idea. Let us know where we can help.

00:56:15.360 You know, we have a documentary that we've been meaning to make that keeps getting canceled

00:56:18.360 by the mainstream. You know, we get approval from the, the creatives like HBO. We got approvals

00:56:23.040 from the creatives at Netflix, but it got killed by the, their legal teams.

00:56:29.140 They said we're too controversial. So we'll see.

00:56:33.560 Right. I think that makes it all the more juicy and profitable, frankly.

00:56:41.220 Controversy sells. That's actually the last like speed run question I wanted to ask you

00:56:45.660 because you have a lot of hot takes, you know, on X. What, what would you say is either the most

00:56:54.820 surprising or most distinct and notable thing that you just got dogpiled for on X?

00:57:00.960 Wow. I blocked a lot of people. So if I'd be a dogpiled, I probably don't know. I got a lot of

00:57:07.020 heat for coming out a while early this year and saying that actually, no, Taylor Swift and Travis

00:57:13.980 Kelsey probably are in a real relationship. So a lot of the guys on the right were like,

00:57:18.160 how could you? No, they're not. It's all a sigh up. You're foolish.

00:57:21.940 Oh, I saw that take. I watched you make that take on an episode. I was like, oh, she's, 1.00

00:57:25.940 she's getting spicy here. 0.99

00:57:26.960 Well, I think they are, they were actually in, I don't know what they are now, but I mean,

00:57:31.900 they're, they were doing stuff together with each other. That was, that seemed certain to me.

00:57:36.760 Maybe it was all fake. I don't know, but I got a heat from the right from guys on the right. We're

00:57:40.940 like, you bought into that sigh off. I was like, I did. I, I don't know. We'll see.

00:57:46.180 Your argument, as I remember was that, well, Taylor Swift songs are all about, you know,

00:57:51.740 being like a cis straight woman pining after a man and hoping to find a good man. Is it insane 0.96

00:57:58.560 that she would find one? It's not like she really was able to boost her own image from any sort of

00:58:03.380 relationship. So even if they were paying her a lot, she already has enough money. It seems

00:58:08.380 right. What other reason would she, she doesn't need the money. 1.00

00:58:10.860 Like, and people would be like, oh, well, she might still do it for the money, but it's like, 1.00

00:58:14.500 yeah, but it would have delayed her possibility of finding a real man to marry. And she's kind of

00:58:20.360 old at this point. I mean, look, it could be that he has a sort of beard for her. Not that she's a

00:58:25.780 lesbian, but that she's kind of like, just, she's so married to herself, to her brand.

00:58:31.320 Kind of like no man can ever be in a normal relationship with her, but they needed to have,

00:58:37.040 give her a boyfriend just to make her seem like, you know, a normal romantic girl. Maybe that I 1.00

00:58:43.140 could buy a little bit, but I don't buy that. It was like a Pfizer branded, you know, like people

00:58:49.160 were saying that to me and I was like, I don't think so. You guys what's in panic mode. Now she

00:58:54.120 needs to find a husband. She, she's, you know, she is, she's not going to, this, this brand is not

00:59:00.380 going to look good if she gets much older and is still single. Yeah. It's hard to pull off the like 1.00

00:59:05.320 spangly body suits when you're, you know, in 10 years, like, believe me, I'm not walking around

00:59:11.740 in that stuff. I don't know, man. You just, you have to do a Hillary Clinton and you switch to the

00:59:16.960 like Kim Jong Il pantsuit. That is, that is the transition. I also watch she goes out on stage and

00:59:23.380 she's like, attention, I will now sing my song about conformity and cats. Yeah. Enjoy. It will be fine.

00:59:32.580 There will be a large enough demographic for her. I have faith, but yeah, the most heat I get is when

00:59:39.040 I like step outside the like received wisdom of like, you know, the dissident, right? That's what

00:59:43.520 I really, yeah. That's so interesting. I mean, you know, there that's, that's actually something we

00:59:48.780 really like about the dissident, right? Those that there are so many heterodox takes that you get that

00:59:54.120 a lot. And even though a lot of people have a ton of butt hurt when people deviate from, you know,

00:59:59.520 the, the typical accepted wisdom, it still happens a ton and it doesn't feel like the same,

01:00:05.080 like towing a party line thing that you get from Fox news or they're not going to, they're not going

01:00:09.760 to cancel you. They're not going to do exactly. Yeah. They might give you some shit and a group

01:00:13.800 chat, but that's it. Exactly. I love it. It's, it's great. Well, and I think that's, that's what 1.00

01:00:17.980 builds resilience and good, good takes from people is when they get pushed back. When you don't get

01:00:24.140 pushed back, it just gets so boring. And that's why I think so many, like white blue sky, for example,

01:00:28.200 people in Mastodon just kind of suck because it's not fun when people don't get pushed back.

01:00:33.980 I love that the left keeps thinking that like, they're going to take off. 0.95

01:00:36.540 Like, they try, they try, never work.

01:00:44.900 Peachy, thank you so much for joining base camp. This was amazing. I'm really looking forward to,

01:00:50.320 I think you're launching a media empire at exactly the right time with AI on the rise. Cause you have

01:00:54.920 like, you can do it in a lean way and you're also, you know, this is maybe the one reason why it's

01:00:59.660 okay that you're in Southern California, right? You need to be in that. Right. I hear I might as

01:01:04.000 well take over Hollywood. Yeah. Do it. Yes. We need it. Cool. Well, thank you again. And everyone

01:01:10.800 don't forget to check out peachy keenan.com and keenan peachy on X. Definitely. Thank you guys so

01:01:16.980 much. Have a good one. Okay. And recording. Oh, that was so fun. Uh, do be snappy with the intro

01:01:23.900 because we want to be tighter about those. And then I am going to, uh, well, we've been really

01:01:29.040 growing quickly recently and I want to keep it up. Like, all right. Yeah. Peachy, you're actually

01:01:32.660 joining us at a really good time. Like you're not wasting your time now. Now you're not wasting your

01:01:37.840 time now. Had you come before? Well, I was never thinking I would be wasting my time, but that's

01:01:42.120 awesome. I'm happy you guys are doing great. When we first scheduled, uh, we were probably at

01:01:46.560 maybe a third of you count of an average video that we are today. Wow. Um, so yeah, anyway,

01:01:52.440 Simone, I will let you go. Remember to start with a big hello. Okay. Okay. Yes. This is the signature

01:01:57.900 thing.

Based Camp - September 25, 2024

Catholic Natalism： Peachy Keenan on Faith, Family, and Fighting Cultural Decay

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript