NICK FREITAS | Why Modern Men Are Deflated, and What to Do About It
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 10 minutes
Words per minute
197.82243
Harmful content
Misogyny
13
sentences flagged
Toxicity
33
sentences flagged
Hate speech
18
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Summary
In a world that profits from our confusion, real clarity is actually an act of rebellion. Today we re sitting down with a man who has spent his entire life in the arena as a soldier, a statesman, and a straight talker to cut through the noise on masculinity, actual truth with a capital T, and what it means to be free. His name is Nick Freitas.
Transcript
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In a world that profits from our confusion, real clarity is actually an act of rebellion.
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Today we're sitting down with a man who has spent his entire life in the arena as a soldier,
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a statesman, and a straight talker to cut through the noise on masculinity, actual truth
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with a capital T, and what it means to be free.
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We're talking about logical fallacies, the Marxist oppressor, oppressed framework.
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and why so many men today are disgusted and deflated and actually very dangerously close
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to giving up. But this episode isn't a pity party. It's actually a plan of attack. We're
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going to talk about why masculinity is under assault, how to stop painting ourselves as
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victims and why there is no virtue in suffering only in overcoming it. So if you're ready to
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trade your grievances and your frustrations and your animosity for a mission and your excuses for
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a true legacy for your family and this country, then this one's for you.
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly charge
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your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are
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not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are.
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This is who you will become at the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you
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Thank you for tuning in, and if you're listening and watching on YouTube, I want to thank you
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If you would, please make sure that you hit that little subscribe button and you turn
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So that means we need another 110,000 subscribers by the end of 2026.
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Hit the share button, hit the like button, drop a comment, and share this with your friends.
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man, save some money. And hopefully we'll see you on Saturday, April 11th. All right, guys,
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with that said, let me get to my guest today. His name is Nick Freitas. He is a U.S. Army Special
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Forces veteran. He's a Green Beret. He's also a former Virginia State legislator and probably one
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of the most, I think, compelling communicators in the conservative movement today. And there's a lot,
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but he is at the top. He's known for his razor sharp reasoning, his willingness to engage in
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some of the hardest cultural questions head on. And he's built a reputation as a man who doesn't
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just talk about principles. He actually lives them. He's also the author of his newest book,
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The Man Book, a point by point guide to sucking it up and getting the job done, which might just be
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the greatest subtitle ever created. It's also a book that John Lovell, a former guest and friend
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of mine lovingly called the worst coloring book ever. We talk about that today. He's also a
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passionate advocate for sovereignty, for political freedom, for honorable masculinity. So whether
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he's dismantling some of the logical fallacies that we go through today on the floor of the
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Virginia House of Delegates or helping guys like you and me find meaning and purpose and identity
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outside of this common victim narrative, Nick brings the same warrior discipline to every fight.
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He's a husband, he's a father, he's a Christian, and he's a man who believes God blesses faithful,
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even if it's imperfect, attempts at being better. He is not here to diagnose you. We talk about that
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today. He's here to challenge you, and all of us as men need a good, righteous challenge. Enjoy.
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nick what's going on man so great to have you back on the podcast no thanks for having me back
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brother i appreciate it of course it's amazing how um news just travels at the the speed of
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light and you think you know just when we couldn't get any dumber or less masculine or just less
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decent to each other something else happens in the news and we realize well it can only get worse i
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guess yeah yeah never never underestimate the uh the possibility of it getting worse
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yeah what do you what do you think is just going on I know this is a 30,000 foot view question but
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what do you think is just going on with the world in general from politics to culture to family are
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there some underlying themes that you see are happening yeah I well the thing that we've been
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watching happen for some time it's just what what happened is it kind of escaped the academic
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enclaves and you know the the different rooms in Hollywood and made it into kind of broader
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our culture, especially within our school system and everything else, was just kind of this
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questioning. It's kind of this postmodernist questioning of truth, questioning of meta
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narratives and all of that good stuff. And really, it's a rejection of faith, but more specifically,
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it's a rejection of Christianity. And it's this idea that self-actualization, if you look at
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Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, self-actualization was on the top. That's what's
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most important. And so how do you determine whether or not you've achieved self-actualization?
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Well, you get to decide that. You get to decide that. And I think when we look at it within the
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context of a worldview where we respect that there's such a thing as reality, we respect
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there's such a thing as truth. There's not your truth or my truth. There's the truth and you and
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I have different perspectives on it. And maybe by talking and discussing and going through rigorous
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debate or argumentation, we can arrive at the truth. But when you reject all that, as postmodernism
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does and you and you act like whatever you identify as whatever's most important to you
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and how you feel about you that's that's the thing that matters and then you add on top of that
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this kind of marxist framework with respect to oppressor and oppressed now it's this whole idea
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well if you fall into certain categories you're automatically an oppressor you don't you didn't
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have to do anything you didn't have to you know hurt anyone you're automatically an oppressor
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And if you fall into other categories, you're automatically oppressed, which means you're the victim, which means we owe you something.
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And so imagine a world where we're simultaneously saying, yeah, there's no such thing as objective truth.
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It's all just you invent your own reality and you invent your own feelings and identity.
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We can't use any outside facts or evidence about biology or reality in order to constrain you.
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and then create these two conditions where in one condition you're automatically a bad guy
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and another condition you're automatically a good guy and that's that's kind of a recipe for
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disaster uh and that's why i think we see so many people dealing with an identity crisis there's a
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lot of people that thought well if we could just absolve ourselves of this idea that there's
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objective right or wrong or there's objective truth and now you kind of get to do what you want
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and the only real virtue is be tolerant just be tolerant if you're tolerant you're a virtuous
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person. Um, this is what it leads to people have an identity crisis because that's not,
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that's not reality. Reality is there is right and wrong. There is good and evil. There is truth and
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lies. And it doesn't matter how much you wish it wasn't. So, um, you know, that's the way it is.
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And it's not liberating to, to, to attempt to ignore reality. It's not liberating. They think
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it's going to be, but it isn't what's liberating is when you finally realize that, okay, there is
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such a thing as truth or such a thing as right and wrong. And now what my job is, is trying to
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figure out what that is, regardless of what my personal preferences might be. I want to get my
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thinking in line with the truth, not demand that reality bend to my will. And, and that's kind of
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a long explanation, but I think it, I think it explains a lot about, about what's going on in
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society as a whole and why, and why one of the main reasons that masculinity was targeted is
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because it's really hard to pull off that level of nonsense when you have a society of godly,
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confident men that are like, yeah, no, that's not true. And that's not true. And I'm not
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accepted and I'm not playing your game. Right. When, when the men decide the jig is up, the jig
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is up. Um, and that's why there's been such a concerted effort to convince men that they don't
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have a role or that they're bad or that the future is female and their job is just to sit down and
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shut up. It's not because men are not powerful. It's because we are. I actually had a little,
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a little interesting interaction on instagram the other day and i was talking about uh what we would
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refer to currently as traditional gender roles and a guy a therapist a licensed therapist said
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well you know it isn't until the relative ease of modernity that we actually acknowledge
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traditional gender roles i said no no no no no we've we've it isn't until the ease of modernity
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that we've called it that but those gender roles have been on the books for literally thousands of
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years and only because of modern times do we now call it into question and he talked about my
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credentials and why he's better and more credentialed and the guy has credentials well he has his and
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her in his uh pronouns in his bio i'm like part of me if i don't take you seriously regardless of
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your credentials if you can't even acknowledge that there's boys and there's girls there's men
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and there's women and there's nothing in between. Yeah. Well, appeal to credentials is the last
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bastion of a failed argument, right? So you were correct. What he was stating was the inverse of
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reality. From the dawn of human history, we kind of understood these various roles that were played
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predominantly by men and women. That's why we call them masculine traits versus feminine traits,
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right? When they use the word masculinity, they're referring to something and that something
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with respect to why do men behave in certain ways?
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Why do they fulfill certain functions within society?
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And why do women fill other functions within society?
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The only thing that happened with modernity
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We reached such a level of security and prosperity
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that all of a sudden there were entire categories
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of occupations and activities that were suddenly opened up
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because the labor component wasn't as difficult, right?
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Match that with, we have a bunch of ideas going around
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which again, I support equality before the law.
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in the sense that we're all created in the image of God
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But this idea that you pointed out the obvious, right?
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in the ways that we do now, but these were understood.
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That's why we, that's why we have something to reference and for him to then retreat into, well, look at my credentials and I went to school and I went, this is another problem that I have with academia and especially modern academia is that they honestly believe, like I, I, I think the left and Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci talks about this.
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If you, if you want to gain prominence within a culture, what you do is you hijack the culturally shaping institutions within that culture.
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so why do we why do we generally look at academia with a certain degree of respect well for centuries
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what higher education meant was that you had a great deal of access to not only knowledge
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but rigorous debate and it was expected that you were going to use things like the laws of logic
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in order to analyze evidence and come to reasonable conclusions well that's why things like this yes
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yes socratic method the scientific method linear thinking that's why getting that degree mattered
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That's why that credential was supposed to mean that you were capable of putting together an intellectually honest, consistent, and coherent argument.
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But if you take over those institutions and all of a sudden you kick all that crap out, because after all, linear thinking is an attribute of whiteness, and you replace it with nonsense, well, yeah, you still have the credential from Harvard or wherever.
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It's just the credential doesn't mean what it used to because you threw out the valuable things that gave the credential meaning.
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and so now you're referring now you expect me you've now taken academia you're running around
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wearing out like a skin suit spewing nonsense and you want me to give it the same relevance
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and consideration that i did back when it wasn't nonsense well i'm not going to because that's
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absurd well i had i actually had in the same little debate there i had another woman hype up
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and she said well i'm gonna believe this guy because he's a licensed therapist and also here's
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what she said i have two science degrees and i have been in the medicine and public health space
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for 10 years and so i messaged her back i said that's interesting tell me what science degrees
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you have and tell me your scope of work in the public space and medicine for the past 10 years
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and she wrote back well i'm not going to give any identifying information to strangers on the
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internet. I said, okay, I know your science degrees are worthless and your 10 years of public
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health service or whatever is nonsense. You sure didn't have a problem piping up before I called
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you out. Why do you have a problem now? Yeah. Well, and that's just it, right? It was, I want
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to give you some sort of vague, again, what do I want to present? I don't want to present an
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argument. I'm going to present credentials and the credentials are supposed to get you to shut up.
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And when you don't shut up or you require evidence, which is what we used to do in places like higher education is require elaboration and evidence in order to prove that your statement was true.
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Instead, they want to engage in an appeal to authority fallacy.
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And you would think all these highly educated people would have taken an introductory class into logic because they would have instantly realized that that's an appeal to authority fallacy.
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now it's it's not bad to point out hey here's my experience here's what i've done here are my
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credentials and that's what leads me to believe x but once you state x that's what's on the table
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we now get to debate x and if your argument's wrong or it's flawed or your evidence is not
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analyzed properly or it wasn't gathered properly or whatever else all right i don't need your
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credentials in order to demonstrate what's faulty about your argument and the moment you use your
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credentials to try to cover up the flaws in your argument, that's an appeal to authority fallacy.
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So again, it's comical how, and here's what they really don't understand, and this part's
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important. I want to be able to look at that credential and be like, oh, that has meaning.
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I want to be able to look at the opinion from someone that spent a great deal of time within
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a particular field of study, and I want to be able to say, oh, okay, yes, I should be able to
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trust that they both have a sufficient amount of knowledge and a submission of a sufficient
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amount of experience in logically analyzing the information in order to arrive at good
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But when they do stuff like that, it doesn't just cause me to question the study they've
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It causes me to question the very institutions that keep credentialing them.
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how do you how do you reconcile this idea of the appeal to authority fallacy with what i see a lot
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of christians do which is appeal to authority and so they'll have arguments and i'm a christian but
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i think it's important we discuss this is they'll have arguments based on what the bible says or
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what god says or what the commandments are which again i believe but if you're debating that with
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somebody who doesn't believe in that authority or doesn't give it the credit that that it deserves
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that's a, that's a losing battle. It's almost as if they're engaging in the same behavior we're
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talking about now. It's so that's, what's called the epistemological question. So essentially
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epistemology is the study of, you know, how do you know what you know? It's the study of knowledge.
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And the thing that all of us have to recognize is that on some level, whatever your foundational
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worldview is, there's going to be a circular component to that, right? Because you can't
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have an infinite regression of appealing to something. So it's not that appealing to an
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authority figure is bad in and of itself, it becomes a fallacy when it's not a justified appeal
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or what you're doing is you're using the authority figure as opposed to the argument within a
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particular standpoint. Got it. But, but even that, but if you think about it, even that is an appeal
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to what? Isn't it an appeal to logic? Okay. Well, then is logic the final authority? Well, no, it
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can't be right. Because if, if logic's the final authority, what is logic and who, who developed
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with the rules were around logic. So what we try to do is a couple of things. One, we have things
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that are self-attesting. So when we look at things like the law of non-contradiction or the law of
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identity or the law of the excluded middle, these are commonly referred to as the laws of logic.
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We say that insofar as we use these in reality, they generally get us to good results. So that's
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something of an inductive argument, which is to say that the evidence is high, that if we use
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these tools, they tend to work. But when we get into overall questions about what is the source
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of truth, what is the source of meaning, what is the source of purpose, there's going to be some
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element of we can't know in the sense that we can know two plus two is four, or we can't know in
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the sense that I can engage in experiments in the same way that I would like if I turn my key into
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the ignition and I turn it forward, my car is going to go on. Why do I know that? Well, because
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it happened every other time. That's an inductive argument. So, so the real question is, is with any
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religion and I'm going to use Christianity because that's the one I subscribe to. Jesus came down and
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he made certain claims about who he was, right? He made certain claims of what he was, what he was
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there to do. I am the way, the truth and life. No one comes to the father, but by me, he compared
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himself to, he put himself on, on a, on a footing with God. That's where we get the whole concept
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of the Trinity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He told Pontius Pilate, for this reason I was born
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and this reason I came to attest to the truth. All those on the side of truth, listen to me.
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So these are some of the claims that he made. Now you can either believe those claims or you
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can disregard those claims. Now the question would be is like, okay, what did he offer as
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evidence of those claims? Well, he offered a couple of things. One was referencing back to
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prophecy within scripture. So he references back to the Old Testament. That was a reference here,
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here, here, here, and here, right? He talks about that. The other thing that he did is he provided
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miracles. And this is also something I think is interesting. I once had an atheist friend
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tell me that he couldn't believe in the Bible because it referenced miracles. And he believes
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that miracles are basically mumbo jumbo and it can't exist. And I asked him like, okay,
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what would you accept as evidence of God's existence? And he goes, well, God would have
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to come down and tell me right to my face that he's God. And I said, okay, cool. I'm God. And
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he looked at me weird. I said, well, that's what you required, right? I just met, I just met your
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standard for truth. You required God to stand in front of you and say, and tell you he's God. Well,
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I'm standing in front of him, look in the eye, I'm using words you can understand and I'm telling
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you I'm God. So now you believe in me and you're going to worship me, right? And he goes, well,
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no, of course not. I said, well, what would I have to do is we'd have to do something miraculous.
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So, so let me get this straight. Your, your, now your new test for God is he has to do something
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which demonstrates his power over space, time, and the laws of nature, right?
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But the moment that's referenced, you now use it to disregard his existence.
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So my point of saying all of this is it's real simple.
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If you believe, and humans all behave as if there is objective truth and objective morality.
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We all behave that way regardless of what we say.
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Anybody that says there's no such thing as objective truth, punch him in the face and take his wallet.
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And I guarantee you he's going to have some very objective opinions about what just happened, right?
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All you have to do is put the opposing political party in power and let them make rules.
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And all of a sudden their idea of morality changes even though the government is the final say on what is right and what is not in their mind.
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So one of the most important things about Christianity is that you have God interacting with – someone claiming to be God interacting with humans.
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First, you have it with God the Father, with the interactions with Abraham, with Moses,
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And when we reference scripture, there's a couple of ways that we can do this.
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The Christian is not referencing scripture as a final authority without any sort of way
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Now, by definition, God's word has to self-attest.
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It has to actually defend itself because what's the ultimate source of truth and reality?
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Well, like, well, you're using God to prove God.
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That's because that's the only thing that can prove it, right?
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Yeah, I can't point to something else that God made and say, no, no, this is the thing
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So the real question you have to ask yourself is, okay, based off of what I know about logic,
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based off of what I know about the human condition, based off of what I know about
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the desire for meaning, purpose, love, companionship, et cetera, what does Christianity have to
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And this is the part where I think it becomes very obvious, at least to me, is that one, when you look at Scripture, it opens itself up to investigation and to criticism, which is to say that it makes actual statements that you can verify in history about what happened.
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It's not making a bunch of random claims in a different world that you can never check against reality.
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You can check it against reality, and it's the most carefully scrutinized and analyzed book in all of human history.
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Then you look at the truth claims of Jesus Christ.
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Did he claim to be the way, the truth, and life?
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by people like Lee Strobel is there's this idea
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that if the disciples who knew Christ intimately
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So if they knew it was garbage, if they knew it was a lie, why would they dedicate the rest of their lives to actually pushing it, especially when it didn't enrich them in the least bit?
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So when you look at all these truth claims, that's where, again, for me as a thinking person, I say this makes sense to me.
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Here's the last thing I will say from a philosophical position on why I think Christianity makes so much sense.
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if you ask anybody regardless of kind of where they they stand they tend to they tend to hold up
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three things that they value greatly one is their individual sovereignty or what you might call their
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freedom one is the concept of love or a deeply held emotional connection to another person
00:23:27.020
and the third is justice the idea that something correct has been done or something incorrect has
00:23:31.860
been punished now if you look at the way God created human beings let's look at the whole
00:23:37.300
concept of love. You have Adam and Eve in the garden, right? He creates them there and he gives
00:23:42.080
them one rule. Why does he give them one rule? Keep in mind, everything else that they need is
00:23:46.760
actually met, is met right there. They have it. They have companionship with each other. They
00:23:50.760
have companionship with God. They have a perfect environment. Their needs are met. They have
00:23:54.240
creative and productive work to do, but it's not onerous. It's, again, it's creative in nature.
00:23:59.800
It's something they enjoy. And then they get one rule. The reason why the one rule had to exist
00:24:09.220
if somebody doesn't have the option to reject it?
00:24:17.560
in order to experience genuine companionship and love?
00:24:49.580
Well, then it really wasn't a rule in the first place.
00:24:58.160
You'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
00:25:06.020
They wouldn't be perceived in any of those things.
00:25:07.720
It would be perceived as a massive miscarriage of justice.
00:25:12.160
He wants reconciliation, but he also demands justice
00:25:40.660
what is the one way that God can actually demonstrate
00:25:43.040
his love and desire for reconciliation for human beings
00:25:48.540
He has to be the one because he's the only one that can.
00:25:55.960
So as I look at the logical reasons to believe in Christianity,
00:25:59.560
as I look at the philosophical reasons to believe in Christianity,
00:26:01.860
As I look at early attestation of scripture and the scrutiny that it's undergone.
00:26:06.200
And then as I look at it, it addresses the most key fundamental components of human life
00:26:10.720
from meaning, purpose, identity, love, justice.
00:26:16.420
It's all right there in that message of the cross.
00:26:20.100
And so I can't give someone an argument in the sense that here's the scientific proof
00:26:27.380
What I can do is give an incredible amount of evidence and then discuss how it actually
00:26:31.800
addresses all the deepest meanings and needs of humanity combined with the fact, and this is very
00:26:38.240
important, that Jesus made truth claims. So at the end of the day, you're either going to believe
00:26:44.380
them or you're not, but there is no neutral territory. So. Yeah. Interesting. Well, and I
00:26:50.940
wanted to tie this back into something you talked a lot of a little bit about earlier. You were
00:26:54.320
talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you talked about self-actualization. I think
00:26:59.680
it's so it's so subject to interpretation and i think what's happened and you tell me what you
00:27:05.220
what you feel about this is that instead of humanity working towards something greater
00:27:11.680
than themselves and then adapting to that for example you know with your with your military
00:27:17.080
service you didn't go into the military to be an individual you went into the military to learn a
00:27:22.960
system that would help you actualize who you had the potential to become but i think in modern
00:27:28.580
times, it's no longer about finding a system, the best system following God, for example.
00:27:35.500
It's more about my own self-expression, my own identity, my own happiness. And so I just wander
00:27:41.960
around trying to be happy at the expense of the rules and the ideas that will actually make me
00:27:48.800
more fulfilled in life. Oh, I tell people all the time when it comes to the question of freedom,
00:27:54.120
Freedom is a word that gets used a lot, especially in American culture.
00:27:58.320
I absolutely believe in political freedom, right?
00:28:01.280
I don't want to be oppressed by a government system.
00:28:03.600
I'm highly skeptical of the concentration of government power.
00:28:09.380
But that really is kind of a means to an end, right?
00:28:12.680
It's not that, okay, now that I can vote and now I'm not oppressed, so therefore I'm happy.
00:28:17.740
The things that make you happy in life are seldom your freedoms.
00:28:23.140
So when I got married, I didn't become more free.
00:28:26.280
When I had kids, when we had kids, we definitely did not become more free, right?
00:28:30.420
When I got my two dogs, we did not become more free.
00:28:32.980
All of those things actually represented a draw on my time, on my attention, on my resources,
00:28:43.060
Because it's so much more enriching to have that sort of companionship with people that
00:28:48.920
We kind of intuitively understand that those responsibilities actually give a sense of
00:28:54.440
meaning and purpose that just, you know, complete individualism does not.
00:28:59.180
And so when we talk about individualism, sure, from the sense of the origination of rights,
00:29:04.040
right, rights have to start with the individual, not the collective.
00:29:07.240
When we talk about the fact that God made you as an individual human being, like we
00:29:12.220
recognize that you have inherent worth as you, as a person.
00:29:15.360
But then one of the things that we typically go out and do almost immediately is we go look for community with other people, which by necessity comes with some degree of responsibility for the way that we conduct ourselves, the way that we interact.
00:29:30.280
And so, again, I think that tells us something about what human beings were designed or created to do.
00:29:36.960
So when Maslow talks about self-actualization, we can almost look at that as an empty bucket.
00:29:42.940
If you actually have a correct worldview, well, then self-actualization for me as a Christian is to honor God, to be obedient to his will, to obey his commands, to love my neighbor as myself, to do these things.
00:29:55.540
I've achieved, quote, self-actualization, but as a result of getting closer to him.
00:30:00.080
Now, if you're somebody with a very, very different worldview, you know, Jeffrey Domner was also trying to achieve self-actualization by murdering and eating people.
00:30:07.320
But I don't think any of us think, oh, hey, as long as it's self-actualization, you do you, buddy.
00:30:12.400
right like we understand that's wrong but if we understand it's wrong the question is
00:30:16.360
why what's the ultimate source of good and evil again that's where i appeal back to scripture
00:30:20.760
man just stepping away really quickly i promise you i'll get back to it because i know you're
00:30:26.000
enthralled and excited about it um if you've been waiting for a sign to get off the sidelines of
00:30:31.640
life and i know a lot of you guys are just listening hoping you'll pick up that one bit
00:30:35.540
of information you need but you've got to get off the sideline and into the arena and i'm telling
00:30:40.580
you this event that we have coming up this april is it it's called the men's forge it's a live
00:30:46.380
men's event it's taking place later this month and it's exactly what it sounds like it's an
00:30:51.460
experience designed to forge you into a sharper stronger more purposeful man this is not one of
00:30:59.100
those conferences or those seminars that even even the guys in the masculinity space do where they
00:31:04.660
just book a hotel conference center and then they just expect you to sit there for three days and
00:31:09.560
listen to them yap about nothing and everything. I don't want to do that. That doesn't sound fun
00:31:14.740
to me. I don't think it sounds fun to you. This is an immersive event where you're going to be
00:31:18.940
challenged physically, mentally, spiritually. You're going to be surrounded by men who are
00:31:23.880
just as serious about building their lives as you are. It's real brotherhood. It's actual
00:31:29.680
accountability. It's true transformation. So if everything we've talked about today or any other
00:31:35.540
point in this order of man journey resonates with you, uh, the call to stop being a victim
00:31:40.960
to lead with purpose, to build something worth leaving behind, then this forge event is your
00:31:46.520
next step. Don't just listen to this podcast or any other podcast for that matter about becoming
00:31:51.900
a better man. Go do it. If Marcus Aurelius was alive today, he would say, stop wasting time
00:31:57.440
listening to podcasts about being a better man. Just be one. And you guys, if you know, stoicism
00:32:03.000
them might understand the reference so guys you can secure your spot at themensforge.com
00:32:07.860
that's themensforge.com before it fills up it's the forge and you need to be there april 23rd
00:32:14.880
through the 26th again themensforge.com you can get signed up right after this conversation
00:32:22.760
i've always had this idea and people people fight me on this but
00:32:29.020
does a terrorist have an integrity? And the answer to me is yes. If they believe that so firmly in
00:32:38.740
their ideology that they are to sacrifice themselves and kill others and they do it,
00:32:43.980
that's actually being an integrity. It's aligning your words with your actions. And so it's funny
00:32:48.920
that people will buck against that. But I think if you just look at the principle itself, it's
00:32:54.360
really important to understand because you can see how in integrity you are or out of integrity
00:32:59.740
you are if you're not willing to do those things. No, I think you're absolutely right. It's another
00:33:04.300
one of these problems that we have with like deconstructionism, right? It's the idea that
00:33:07.760
words no longer have fixed meanings. They just mean whatever the hearer wants it to mean.
00:33:12.440
And it makes debate and discussion impossible. So we can all understand that we have like words
00:33:19.820
might have two kind of understandings in the sense that there is the actual definition of the word
00:33:25.800
and then there's a colloquial understanding of the word. Fair enough. So when you say,
00:33:31.080
when you say, look, a terrorist that honest to God believes that his job is to blow himself for a law
00:33:36.020
or whatever else it is, when he follows through with that, he has integrity with respect to his
00:33:40.460
beliefs. That's, yes, that is absolutely correct. It doesn't make it moral, but yes. Exactly. It
00:33:45.360
doesn't make it good. It doesn't make it moral. It just means within this context, he has integrity.
00:33:50.500
In fact, we would say that his integrity to this thing was really, really bad, right? He shouldn't
00:33:55.100
have done that. That was a misinterpretation of the correct thing to do. Another thing I like to
00:34:00.560
bring up with this, when we talk about this, this kind of misuse of words is people, they will
00:34:05.160
assign an inherent moral meaning to a word that has no inherent moral meaning. I'll give you a
00:34:10.600
perfect example, tolerance. I love to ask college students, I'm like, how many of you are tolerant
00:34:17.680
people? And they'll all raise their hand. I'm like, okay, so you think, you think it's perfectly
00:34:21.280
fine to beat up an old woman and steal her purse? No, of course not. Oh, so you're intolerant
0.99
00:34:26.740
of assault, battery, and theft. That makes you an intolerant person, right? And we'll, it's like,
00:34:32.180
guys, you need a larger context in order to determine whether a tolerance or equality,
00:34:38.940
right or or discrimination right all these words might have a colloquial understanding in the way
00:34:45.460
that we generally use the terms in the context in which they are generally used but the words
00:34:49.880
themselves do not have a fixed moral meaning it depends on the context and that's important and
00:34:54.560
unfortunately it's not something we i feel like we teach very well these days well i think it's
00:34:59.100
i think it's two things i think on some people's minds it's malicious we're gonna we're gonna
00:35:03.840
hijack this word we're gonna bastardize it we're gonna make it mean something else the big one in
00:35:08.540
colorado right now is um uh oh gosh what's the term uh gender no let's see gender conversion
00:35:17.820
conversion oh conversion therapy conversion definition of conversion yeah to get around
00:35:22.580
because what what most of us think is like a therapist or a doctor zapping homosexuals so
00:35:29.900
that they're straight now right that's what we think of but the way that they're using it is that
00:35:34.580
a, or the way that they're kind of conflating two terms is a therapist talking with a young
00:35:42.580
woman who's confused about her sexuality and that therapist cannot say to her, well, you're not a
00:35:50.160
boy. And it makes sense that you're confused about your sexuality because of your hormones and
00:35:54.540
because the cultural environment, but you're not a boy. And so we're going to tell you the truth.
00:35:59.760
And up until relatively recently, last couple of days, you haven't been able to do that as a
00:36:03.900
therapist in Colorado. Yeah. Well, and you think about how absurd that is. The idea that a therapist
00:36:09.940
would be legally restricted from telling a biological girl that they are in fact a biological
00:36:15.760
girl. Can you imagine someone honestly believing that they can fly? Let's imagine a 12 year old
0.98
00:36:23.280
that honestly believes that they can fly. And so they're on the top of a 12 story building and
00:36:27.660
someone is sitting there going, I promise you, you can't fly, right? It's a biological reality
00:36:32.400
that you can't fly, you're going to die. And then leftists getting pissed that that guy's engaging
00:36:37.220
in, in gravity conversion theory. How dare, how dare they suggest to this, this young flying
00:36:44.320
being that they can't jump off this 12 story. But if they really believe they can, then who are you
00:36:48.900
to tell them that they can't? Someone that doesn't want them to go splat on the ground. That's,
00:36:54.500
that's who I am. But you know, you, you see this in the terms that they use. My wife brought this
00:36:59.020
up once. And I thought it was brilliant because they're talking about gender affirming care,
00:37:02.780
gender affirming care, gender affirming care. And Tina said, it's not gender affirming. It's
00:37:08.260
dysphoria affirming. This child is having a mental break with reality with respect to their biological
1.00
00:37:14.620
identity. And you are affirming the biological or the intellectual break with reality,
00:37:22.200
right? Like who does that? That would be considered malpractice in any other situation,
00:37:47.620
about any worldview that is completely unwilling
00:37:57.460
And any worldview that says, nope, those are not bound by me and anybody who disagrees with me, that is an ideology.
00:38:02.720
That is an ideology that given enough time and the correct circumstances, they can justify just doing just about anything to another person by standing in their way.
00:38:13.040
And you see it by the language they use, by the way.
00:38:15.540
Yeah, and I mean even you can look at all the euphemisms, which is partly what we're talking about here.
00:38:19.960
And any time somebody starts using flowery, soft language to describe very real, potentially dangerous, dangerous phenomenon is somebody who's trying to be deceitful.
00:38:32.520
Well, and it's also the left does this very well where they will create a victim category.
00:38:38.000
And then when they attempt to the first argument they will make is try to to try to intellectually justify why this victim category exists.
00:38:45.640
the moment you start to tear apart their their intellectual justification for their category
00:38:52.020
you'll notice that what they do is they stop arguing facts evidence lines of reasoning what
00:38:57.260
they now do is they put themselves in between you and the victim category they've created
00:39:02.600
and now every time you attack their reasoning they pretend you're attacking the person
00:39:08.100
and then they pull themselves up i'm just trying to protect this person from you
00:39:13.280
So they're automatically putting you in an aggressor position, even though that's not where you're at.
00:39:17.480
You are having a discussion about the boundaries of reality.
00:39:20.040
You are having a discussion about facts and evidence and a logically consistent interpretation thereof.
00:39:25.060
They've now changed the dynamic because they can't win an argument under those grounds.
00:39:30.360
They now have to make it where they're defending a vulnerable party against you.
00:39:34.120
And we need to wake up to that and understand what they're doing because in reality,
00:39:40.140
is they're now insisting that an innocent person
00:39:50.640
And that's pretty nefarious when you think about it.
00:40:02.040
And they talk about the oppressed versus the oppressor
00:40:05.280
it's it is interesting that any potential outcome in their view is a direct result of this power
00:40:14.900
dynamic taking place it could it couldn't be that that person was lazy and that person wasn't
00:40:21.180
it couldn't be that that person's maybe slightly more intelligent naturally than that person it
00:40:26.560
couldn't be that that person had a mom and a dad and this person did not it's all about power when
00:40:32.660
there's so many other factors to consider and we ought to consider the other factors for example
00:40:36.980
being raised in a nuclear family is going to have a higher likelihood of that person having success
00:40:43.560
graduating high school higher likelihood of success not having children out of wedlock
00:40:48.400
higher likelihood of success let's look at those things because we can actually do something about
00:40:53.520
that i can't do anything about the color of your skin yeah but but then i don't get but then i don't
00:40:59.440
get a moral framework by which i can ignore all of your arguments and that's what this affords
00:41:04.700
them that's what this affords them and if because here's what you'll notice in almost every single
00:41:09.540
i got in an argument with a i was doing a tabling event um at virginia uh excuse me university of
00:41:15.420
virginia and and a student we were arguing about critical theory and oppressor oppressed dynamics
00:41:19.960
and systemic racism or power structures and he's like well you don't believe power structures
00:41:23.860
exist i'm like no of course i believe power structures exist i don't think they explain
00:41:27.200
everything you explain. I think it's also important to recognize that every, just about every critical
00:41:31.960
theorist I've ever read, studied, or looked at always has a solution to everything. And the
00:41:36.540
solution always includes rapid expansion of government power in the hands of themselves.
00:41:40.700
So they're going to reorder society. They're going to fix all these problems they've created,
00:41:43.800
but, but there's a catch. You got to give them a whole bunch of political power.
00:41:47.240
And he goes, well, that's, that's not true of all of them. I'm like, I have yet to meet
00:41:50.620
an anarcho-critical theorist, right? They're, they always offer a government solution to the
00:41:56.900
problem. So if, if what they want, and this makes sense, because if you look at the critical
00:42:01.080
theorists, Herbert Marcuse, the Frankfurt school, they were all heavily rooted in Marx. So Marx
00:42:06.040
kind of rejected this idea of Christianity, rejected these, uh, some of these categories
00:42:10.280
of traditional notions of right and wrong and the family structure. And he replaced it with
00:42:15.520
either the state or the collective. And so that's what they're after. They want that there's,
00:42:20.580
there's some sort of Marxian worldview that they're trying to implement. Um, but if, if the
00:42:26.580
logic doesn't work for them, if the evidence doesn't play out, well, now it's about creating
00:42:30.080
moral categories where they can disregard what you say. And, and now it's, it's, it's gone to
00:42:36.160
the next level. It used to be, so for instance, I would get into debates with people in the
00:42:40.140
General Assembly and I would make a debate in favor of the second amendment, or I would make
00:42:44.560
a debate in favor of free market economics. And they didn't respond with, well, Nick, I don't
00:42:50.300
think your stat from the CDC is accurate because of this, or Nick, I don't know that your position
00:42:55.400
on raising minimum wage is accurate because of this.
0.60
00:43:04.640
The same people that think we should have abortion
00:43:10.520
And so I'm going back there and here's what I realized.
00:43:28.480
oh, no, no, we don't have to listen to his arguments
00:43:49.900
was trying to rob you of your moral legitimacy.
0.99
00:43:53.440
Now they've moved on to, you're a threat to non-democracy, you're a fascist, you're a Nazi, right?
0.99
00:43:58.920
You're committing transgenocide if you don't affirm their gender.
0.99
00:44:02.340
Well, okay, think about all those terms, Nazi, fascist, genocide.
00:44:06.200
What do we do to Nazis, fascists, and people that perpetrate genocide?
0.91
00:44:13.200
So it went from, I'm going to rob these people of their moral legitimacy so I don't have to contend with their intellectual arguments.
0.99
00:44:24.360
whereby I can use aggressive violence toward them
00:44:30.600
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't just unprovokely,
00:44:48.060
that's the moral framework they're creating now well you saw this with i can't remember the
00:44:54.160
gentleman's name the health care ceo or exec that was executed you know shot in the back of the head
00:44:59.980
if i remember correctly and people were celebrating that because he was he was a villain right he was
00:45:06.820
taking advantage of the the the downtrodden and the the poor and whoever else they felt like they
00:45:14.520
could use as an excuse to justify public execution. Well, and look, I don't know the
00:45:22.080
details of that guy's life or decisions he made within his company or whatnot. I understand people
00:45:26.360
are frustrated with the American medical system, but if they would actually dig into the American
00:45:31.620
medical system, they would probably find out that the things I'm most mad about are government
00:45:35.320
interventions into the American medical system. But where's the outrage when Spain, when a girl
0.61
00:45:41.460
in Spain is gang raped, right? And, and harmed and becomes a paraplegic and then requests suicide.
0.88
00:45:48.860
And her father intervenes to try to prevent the suicide. And the state comes in, by the way,
00:45:52.580
they don't go after the people that gang raped her. They don't go after the people that harmed
00:45:55.780
her. They didn't go after the people that harmed her for life. No, no, no. What do they do?
00:45:58.820
They're complicit in her death. What about in Canada where the assisted death process up there
00:46:06.280
in their free healthcare system, right, has murdered literally tens of millions of Canadians.
00:46:12.480
And I'm not talking about, oh, these guys were dealing with horrible cancer and they were in the
00:46:16.220
last couple of weeks of their life in horrible pain. No, no, no. We have people where they went
00:46:20.400
in saying, hey, I'm disabled. I'm supposed to get this scooter. And then they get offered
00:46:25.880
assisted suicide instead. Where is all the outrage for the fact that you now have a state
00:46:32.040
healthcare apparatus, which is incentivized to kill its own citizens because it costs less.
00:46:38.920
Where's the humanity in that? And their answer is, is you're never going to see them protest over
00:46:43.240
that because ultimately a state-run healthcare system is what they want. So if you murder a CEO
00:46:48.940
from a private health insurer, right, that's, he's already in the oppressor category and oppressors
00:46:54.280
get shot and they don't have to have any moral qualms about it whatsoever. And due process
00:46:59.620
doesn't need to be a thing. In fact, the only time they will mention things like humanity or
00:47:05.460
due process or respect for the rule of law or respect for the constitution, it's never because
00:47:11.900
they have some sort of inherent love for these things. These are tools that they use to consolidate
00:47:16.940
power, not because they believe in them, but because we do, because we believe in them.
00:47:23.500
And so it's another form of manipulation. And again, I'm not claiming that everyone on the
00:47:29.080
left that's adopted this are just, they're inherently evil people. No, no. What I'm saying
00:47:33.400
is they have adopted an inherently evil ideology because this is the logical instate of it.
00:47:40.020
I think there's a lot of men who are very, uh, disgusted, even probably deflated. Uh, at some
00:47:48.860
point it seems like people are continuing to just throw up their hands and saying, you know,
00:47:53.260
there's nothing I can do about it, but I would love to hear from you, you know, as somebody who
00:47:57.720
served in the military who served in politics you know is very vocal with your social media presence
00:48:03.640
what do other men do other than you know like listen to the some of this stuff talk about some
00:48:11.440
of these things bring some of these things up what is it that we can actually do to start moving the
00:48:15.540
needle in the right direction it's like i just wrote a book yes um and and it's funny because
00:48:21.920
it's not in the context that you would think it's not a here's everything bad going on in society
00:48:25.660
here's what you can do in order to fix society. It's more about, here's what you, here are the
00:48:30.320
things you need to do as a man. And, and those things include things like, how do, how do I find
00:48:35.740
the woman I want to marry? How do I raise sons? How do I raise daughters? What's the difference
00:48:39.440
in raising them? How do I pick a weapon for home defense? How, how do I make an argument? How do I
00:48:43.980
defend my faith? Right? All of these things. And the reason I did it was because it wasn't meant
00:48:49.840
to be like an instruction manual to the sense where it's like, I'm lecturing you on what you
00:48:53.420
need to do. It was more of a, these are things I've learned through 46 years of life, 26 years
00:48:58.980
of marriage, a couple of combat tours, serving in the legislature, being a business owner.
00:49:03.280
These are the things I've learned. These are the things I wish someone would have taught me or
00:49:06.360
told me. But one of the biggest things that I did, I try to get across, especially when I talk to
00:49:12.780
young men is that first and foremost, I acknowledge that this sucks. This sucks. Men, especially
0.99
00:49:20.240
straight white men, but all men in America and really in the West have been just repeatedly
00:49:24.260
denigrated over the last several decades. Um, they, they don't, I mean, it is the, the numbers
00:49:29.380
are in, they don't get into college at the same rates. They don't get into job opportunities at
00:49:33.900
the same rates. They, you know, they, they are actually having access restricted to them either
00:49:40.160
by law or by corporate culture, which is, is terrified of getting sued by, you know, whatever
00:49:49.720
And so you can actively discriminate against straight men
00:50:02.400
a country that hates me and a job I'm never gonna get?
00:50:06.880
And my answer to them is always the same thing.
00:50:29.180
because storming the beaches to fight the Nazis
00:50:31.260
was something that Americans appreciated you for.
00:50:35.920
And right now, these young men are growing up in a time
00:50:43.880
But the thing I always encourage young men to understand
00:50:48.940
That desire to be strong, to be capable, to be powerful.
00:50:51.880
These aren't just things that are good for you to do.
00:50:53.960
They're absolutely necessary for preserving society.
00:50:56.520
And most importantly, they're things God commands you to do.
00:51:00.400
And in that sense, they're not options, they're commands.
00:51:05.120
Is it commands because you're always gonna be rewarded
00:51:08.160
Is it commands because you're always gonna be rewarded
00:51:12.080
those strong character traits and masculine attributes?
00:51:17.620
And the more men that actually choose to do it, that's how you solve the situation.
00:51:21.840
There's a lot of young men right now looking at past generations of men going, you let
00:51:29.980
Weak men created bad times, which you're now having to deal with.
00:51:36.040
And I can't promise you that it's going to correct everything overnight, but I can promise
00:51:41.280
if you are waiting around to be fully appreciated for all the attributes that we need from you in
00:51:46.740
society and and you are waiting for it to be properly appreciated before before you develop
0.98
00:51:52.220
and implement them you will never get the sort of society you want so i acknowledge that it sucks
00:51:58.140
but the good news is is the reason why they have spent so much time trying to convince men
00:52:03.220
that you don't have any power or shouldn't have any say is again not because you don't it's because
00:52:09.180
you do. I promise you right now we're seeing the statistics. 70% of young men are identifying as
00:52:15.040
more conservative and more religious than we've seen in the last 60 years. True. Yeah. Right. Let
00:52:20.800
me, let me go ahead and make a prediction right now. If they stick to it, I don't mean for 40
00:52:26.620
years, right? Like before they see results, if they stick to it, they will start to see a shift
00:52:32.180
from young women in that direction as well. Why? Because as much as people don't want to hear it,
0.98
00:52:37.040
men lead and when men lead well women don't mind actually working with that that's what they want
00:52:46.660
right they want it so what i would tell young men is that i really think you could i think we could
00:52:52.260
turn this whole thing around in one generation godly man marries a godly woman becomes a godly
00:52:58.780
you know husband and father godly mother and wife and then you raise kids to do the same we can fix
00:53:04.620
this in one generation and I'll tell you why, because the people perpetrating this hyper
1.00
00:53:08.340
feminist, atheistic, you know, hedonistic view of the world, they don't have enough
1.00
00:53:16.180
They're either a boredom, they're either a boredom or they wait so long to have them
00:53:23.300
My youngest, I promise you will be married probably by 21 as well.
00:53:28.960
It's not because they don't understand their faith or their own minds or things like that
00:53:32.080
or have ambitions, but they also want to be wives and mothers.
00:53:42.800
To the ladies watching this, don't waste your time with the bad guys.
1.00
00:53:46.960
Find the sort of people that want to be, again, godly men and women to become godly husbands and wives,
00:53:51.000
become godly mothers and fathers, and raise their kids to do the same.
00:53:53.600
And we can win this whole thing in one generation, right?
00:53:57.180
It's a numbers game, people, and we can win it.
00:53:59.360
We can win it by having those relationships and raising those kids in that way.
00:54:03.200
You know what I like about this is that, so the idea of victimhood, victimization, victim, you know, those words get thrown around a lot. And I think that there are actually victims in the world. When you talk about young men and the deck being stacked against them, that is a real thing where somebody could be a victim of discrimination, for example.
00:54:27.260
but what i like about what you're saying is that just because you happen to be a victim of
00:54:33.240
something doesn't mean that you need to fall into victimhood or victimization and i think that's what
00:54:39.720
the modern man space or the manosphere you know we saw this documentary on uh on netflix
00:54:46.880
that's what the modern manosphere teaches is that now we can play victim we can fall into victimhood
00:54:54.480
we can tell everybody why everyone else is wrong that we're the oppressed to go back to what you
00:54:59.640
were saying earlier and that we get to disengage from society or worse we get to exert ourselves
00:55:07.620
on society in dangerous and destructive ways yeah there's there's kind of what they call like almost
00:55:14.420
the red pill and the black pill right moment like the black pill is just what you said it's the
00:55:17.920
complete disengaging it's like i'm a victim i didn't ask for this i didn't do anything wrong
00:55:22.020
And here's the deal. There's a big difference between victimized and then identifying as a victim.
00:55:26.920
Yes. And the problem is, is that we've created an incentive structure around identifying as a victim.
00:55:32.880
You saw that. I don't know if you saw this latest thing with the NDP up in Canada where it's like, I have my equity card and my gender card.
00:55:39.940
You know, trans card. And I'm supposed to speak because I'm a part. And it was it was the victim Olympics. Right.
00:55:45.600
It was it was the hierarchy of intersectional politics. How many different victim statuses could I claim at one time? And that gave me that gave them power in that environment. The problem is it gives you power nowhere else because it's ridiculous.
00:55:59.480
What we used to hold up was we would hold up, we would celebrate somebody overcoming difficult circumstances, which usually included unjust circumstances.
00:56:12.220
So, for instance, when somebody overcomes drug addiction, we think, that's good.
00:56:18.280
But we also recognize that to some degree you put yourself in that situation.
00:56:21.720
But if somebody leaves, like they had an abusive childhood, and instead of feeding into it, they get their lives together and they go out there and they work hard.
00:56:32.180
Like Victor Marks in Colorado is a great example of this.
00:56:34.880
Grew up in a horribly abusive childhood, could have absolutely claimed that victim status his entire life.
00:56:39.440
Instead, he used it as fuel to go out and protect other kids to make sure that what happened to him never happens to them.
00:56:50.760
it's the overcoming difficult circumstances in an unjust world in order to make it more just
00:56:56.240
that's what we're supposed to be elevating and and so go ahead no go ahead no no i was i was
00:57:04.220
going to stop there it's so so anyways we created that victim mentality which is which again is is
00:57:09.280
horrible and and now we have some guys that are embracing it with the black pill which is just
00:57:13.300
like fine i'm going to disengage i'm going to watch porn i'm going to play video games and and
00:57:16.580
take assistance or do whatever jobs and that's it that's that's the sum total of my life now
00:57:20.660
didn't I show you? No, you didn't. You're just going to be miserable.
00:57:24.720
Yeah, you're just going to hurt yourself. The other thing is more of, yeah, this other thing
0.93
00:57:27.800
is this idea that, okay, I'm going to be strong. I'm going to be capable. I'm going to be smart.
00:57:31.980
I'm going to be successful. Why am I going to do these things? So I can sleep with as many women
00:57:35.820
as I want, have fast cars, have nice homes. And that'll prove that I conquered this environment.
0.96
00:57:41.880
That'll prove that I conquered it. And while there's nothing wrong, in fact, there's something
00:57:46.020
very, very necessary about you being strong and capable and certainly working to be successful
00:57:51.220
and be able to provide all these things and build. Yeah. All good things, all good things
00:57:55.680
in service to what? Because if it's just in service to yourself or if it's in service for
00:58:02.340
some sort of revenge or some sort of hedonistic objectives, I can promise you two things. One,
00:58:07.820
you're not going to make the world a better place. In fact, you're becoming the sort of man you would
00:58:12.100
tell the daughter you love to avoid and you never want to be that man. Yeah. The other thing that
00:58:17.460
you're going to do is you're going to find out how miserable you are because the deepest depression
00:58:21.700
you will ever experience is not being denied the things that you think you want. It's getting all
00:58:26.360
the things that you thought you wanted, that you thought would give you meaning and purpose and
00:58:29.820
being, and being left empty at the end of it, because it doesn't, because what you're really
00:58:33.880
looking with in this, I go back to my faith on this. You're looking for meaning, purpose,
00:58:37.180
and your true identity. I can tell you this. I've had good times and I've had bad times,
00:58:42.180
but I've never questioned my identity. Why? Because I know who made me. I know what my
00:58:47.040
meaning is. I know what my purpose is. I may have different jobs. I was proud of being a
00:58:51.020
Green Beret. I was proud of being a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, but those positions
00:58:54.380
never define me. I'm defined by who I serve and I serve God. I serve Christ. And so when things
00:59:01.100
are going great, I'm very thankful. And when things are going bad, I'm also thankful because
00:59:04.840
he told me things would go bad at times and that I should rejoice when I get to suffer something
00:59:08.340
for his name. Because even in the bad times, there's meaning and purpose in it. And so what
00:59:13.700
I would tell young men is like, look, there's a reason why you need to develop yourself spiritually,
00:59:19.260
emotionally, intellectually, physically, and professionally. And start with the spiritual,
00:59:23.500
because that's going to set the foundation of your worldview for everything else. But if you
00:59:27.280
get that right, all of a sudden there's meaning and purpose in all of the other things that you're
00:59:31.180
going to develop. You're going to know why you're doing it, who you're doing it for. And it's,
00:59:35.100
it's amazing. Um, I, I, somebody was talking to me about being a husband and a father and they,
00:59:42.360
they liked what I had to say about it. And I said, you know, I could tell you a whole lot
00:59:46.460
about all the things I got wrong. I can tell you so much about the things, better decisions I wish
00:59:50.880
I would have made, how I screwed it up. But what I am so thankful for is that God blesses faithful
00:59:57.700
yet imperfect attempts. Right. He, he knows, he knows we're not always going to get it. He knows
01:00:03.280
we're going to stumble, but when he sees us get back up and continue to pursue it, because we
01:00:07.680
really are trying to be diligent in our pursuit, we really are trying to be faithful. He rewards
01:00:12.120
it exponentially. I like that. Um, you know, you see a lot of people, I think it's way easier now
01:00:18.980
to see people screw up than it used to be even 20, 30, 40 years ago. It's just so visible and
01:00:23.920
publicly available but it's when you can reference it from 10 years ago yeah but you know it's it is
01:00:31.580
it's a little disheartening to see that how often we'll throw people under the bus for the
01:00:38.360
the most minor infraction or we'll cast stones from the sideline forever and talk about how
01:00:44.660
horrible human a human is and it's like you know yeah i can acknowledge that i messed up or that
01:00:49.760
that person messed up or they shouldn't have done that or behave that way. But I also believe in the
01:00:54.040
power of redemption. And if you can't give that to somebody else, if you can't afford that, if you
01:00:59.920
can't pray or hope that that person can overcome whatever they've done, you're not going to get
01:01:06.260
that for yourself. And you better hope that you get that because you will mess up. Yeah. One,
01:01:14.020
and again, it's another one of those things where I look at scripture, I'm like, wow, this just
01:01:17.740
perfectly explains the human condition, right? We're instructed to forgive because we've been
01:01:21.960
forgiven. Right. And that's not just a command or a mandate in recognition of the sacrifice
01:01:30.100
Christ made for us. It also reflects what actually happens within society and within
01:01:36.520
our own psychology. When you forgive somebody of something, and by the way, I'm not saying
01:01:41.600
forgive and forget. We have this idea that, oh, you cheated on me 12 times, but that's okay. I
01:01:46.460
forgot all of them. No. Yeah. Subject yourself to more hurt. You don't have to do that. Yeah.
01:01:51.260
I don't got, I'm not mandated to do that by scripture. Right. But when, when you forgive
01:01:55.360
something, you're, you're doing a couple of things. One, you're acknowledging that you've
01:01:58.700
been forgiven as much. And now you're reflecting that in return to someone else. You're actually
01:02:02.540
giving that other person, uh, an incredible opportunity to actually feel the injustice of
01:02:08.740
what they did because now they can see light at the end of the tunnel. There is a, there is a path.
01:02:14.040
They've experienced forgiveness in a way that's representative of the way Christ forgave us.
01:02:19.660
It also absolves you of carrying that burden, right?
01:02:22.960
Like when you can truly say, hey, man, I forgive you.
01:02:26.520
Now, again, there may be times where it's like if my business partner embezzles money from me, I'm like, okay, we're not going to be in business together anymore, but I forgive you.
01:02:33.560
I'm not going to—I'm not lording this over you for the rest of your life, and I'm not carrying it for the rest of mine.
01:02:40.820
I forgive you because I also want you to be able to grow and learn and move on as well.
01:02:44.480
There is something so radical in that ability to forgive, which is not only healing for them,
01:02:50.720
it's healing for you. And so I'm not telling people that they've got to continually put
01:02:56.760
themselves into dangerous or abusive situations. Far from it. I'm saying that understand the true
01:03:02.080
nature of forgiveness, as is actually explained in scripture, is to both, again, recognize that
01:03:07.860
you've been forgiven and to provide the best possible path forward for them to recognize
01:03:12.460
the entirety of what they did, but for you to also be absolved of the burden of carrying it.
01:03:17.500
Yeah. There's another perspective I've been thinking about because I went on what I called
01:03:21.940
my apology tour earlier this year, and it wasn't a public apology tour. It was apologizing to about
01:03:28.040
a handful of people privately and individually that I had wronged in some way. And what's
01:03:35.040
interesting as I was doing that, I thought to myself, you know, this is hard to, to apologize
01:03:39.220
and to say, Hey, I screwed up or I mistreated you. And, and, you know, here's me acknowledging
01:03:43.740
that and telling you, I'm sorry. But one thing I realized because everybody that I talked to
01:03:49.440
actually took that very graciously and offered their, their forgiveness. But what I realized is
01:03:56.860
that if we can be humble enough to ask for forgiveness and apologize, we're also gifting
01:04:02.120
people the opportunity to learn what it means to be graceful and afford grace to others,
01:04:08.240
which is a good gift that is, is, is worthy of practicing, I think.
01:04:16.080
And I think it's also something where I obviously, obviously the goal is to, is to never, is
01:04:22.040
to try to not hurt anyone or make any mistakes, but it happens, but there's something magical.
01:04:26.940
There's something truly just uplifting that happens when somebody comes to you.
01:04:30.700
when you've been wronged, and it's clear it is,
01:04:38.980
It's almost like it awakens that desire to forgive
01:04:43.060
in a way that it's very, very hard to do otherwise.
01:04:46.560
And to your point, also having your own maturity to do it.
01:04:52.320
And by the way, this is something I write about as well,
01:04:56.620
It's like, if you hold up a high standard, which you should,
01:05:01.480
When you break it in front of your kids, the question is going to be is what happens?
01:05:08.440
But I've had that instance before where my kids look at me and go, my dad, I don't think
01:05:15.660
And if you could look at them in that moment and say, you're right, and I'm wrong, and
01:05:21.220
I want to thank you for having the courage to bring it to my attention, that reinforces
01:05:28.520
and it reinforces it and the people that you actually do this with that you really do believe
01:05:32.360
that there is a there is a standard of right and wrong that you hold yourself to and that they can
01:05:37.560
hold you to if necessary um there's something that strengthens a relationship with other people when
01:05:43.680
we know that there's a standard outside of ourselves that we can both appeal to
01:05:46.780
and that the desire is not to defeat the other person the desire is for both people to be better
01:05:52.420
yeah um and and when you do that and when you do that in genuine love and sincerity that builds
01:05:58.580
bonds that are just incredibly strong it's powerful it's powerful well i know we didn't
01:06:04.500
talk a whole lot about the book the book is the man book but i liked the i like the the subtitle
01:06:09.700
point by point guide to sucking it up and getting the job done i'm like yeah if there's a good
01:06:15.180
descriptor of what it means to be a man i would say that pretty much sums it up right there
01:06:19.540
yeah tell the guys about it where do we where do we pick up a copy and all that kind of stuff
01:06:24.640
sure sure well it's officially dropping on on april 14th uh you can pre-order pretty much
01:06:30.780
anywhere up up until that point uh but yeah it really is there it's a bunch it's like 52 very
01:06:37.160
short chapters and it goes into anything everything from how to how to effectively argue with your
01:06:44.300
wife how to have that that difficult discussion with your wife uh differences in raising sons
01:06:48.940
and daughters, how to defend your faith. It talks about things within the political realm,
01:06:53.300
second amendment rights, how do you effectively defend them? But then I also had other stuff
01:06:56.640
that I think guys need to know, like how to properly kick a door. So you look cool instead
01:07:00.740
of stupid, because you know, this you get, you kick a door, right. You look awesome. You kick
1.00
01:07:05.440
a door poorly. You look stupid and you potentially get shot. And so I talk about stuff like that.
1.00
01:07:11.240
I talk about how to pit a car because you never know, you never know when you might need to pit
01:07:14.620
a car or hotwire a car. So I talk about a good, a good combination of, of, you know, kind of like
01:07:20.980
deep, meaningful, theological, philosophical stuff, but then all just kind of like practical
01:07:24.960
stuff, right? You know, how to, how to cook a steak. And by the way, it's rare or medium rare.
01:07:29.960
If you go above that, you have sandwich meat or charcoal. No more, no more. I agree. I agree.
01:07:35.160
It's one of the questions I always ask as a litmus test for who's going to be in my friend
01:07:38.960
circle or not. How do you like your steak cooked? It's got to be medium rare or lower.
01:07:44.620
Yeah. Oh man. Well, and you got the best compliment ever on the book. I think John
01:07:49.980
Lovell said it's the worst coloring book ever. So if there's not a better endorsement of the book,
01:07:54.360
I don't know. I don't know what is. No, no. I, I was, I was honored. We had, uh, you know,
01:07:59.880
John, uh, endorsed it, Chad Robichaud, Kevin Roberts, Megan, uh, Megan Basham. We had some
01:08:04.640
great people that were willing to give us endorsement, but yeah, I was, you know, I,
01:08:07.880
that's on me when, when I sent it to John, I didn't even warn him that there would be no
01:08:11.700
coloring for him. And so I understand his frustration. I understand his frustration.
01:08:16.380
Well, in coloring books are about his speed. If you put too many words in it, he may not get it.
01:08:20.200
So that's not true. He's actually one of the smartest people I know. So he really, he's a,
01:08:25.720
so he's a, he's a very smart guy. He's a very funny guy, which I find coincides a lot. Um,
01:08:31.480
but yeah, we've, we've gotten to know John and Rebecca over the last year or so. And we have,
01:08:36.060
we have our, like our friendly rivalry, uh, which has been a, which is, we have a lot of fun with
01:08:40.420
that. I love it. I think it's hilarious. It's, it's, it's, it's perfect. Well, good. Well,
01:08:46.100
Nick, we'll sync everything up. We'll let guys know where to go. Just want to let you know,
01:08:49.600
I appreciate you. Um, with the information you put out, I watch your videos on Instagram and
01:08:53.960
everywhere else. And you know, the fact that we are able to have these conversations and talk
01:08:58.120
about what it means to be a man. Um, it's an honor for me, but just to see what you're putting out
01:09:02.460
more men need to hear it. And I just want to thank you for taking time with me today.
01:09:06.140
Oh, no, it's my pleasure. And thank you for what you do, Ryan. Thank you for having these
01:09:09.160
discussions. Again, I've long before I was in social media, I knew about order of man. So I
01:09:13.900
appreciate the work that you've done and the, uh, the grind to make it happen. No doubt. Thanks
01:09:18.220
brother. All right, you guys, there you go. My conversation with Nick Freitas. I've had him on
01:09:25.520
the podcast in the past. This one was even better. Go pick up a copy of his book that is coming out
01:09:31.200
very soon. The man book, a point by point guide to sucking it up and getting the job done. Follow
01:09:36.460
him on the gram on tiktok on facebook on x on wherever wherever you're doing your social media
01:09:43.040
stuff and again if you're listening to this or watching this on youtube then please make sure
01:09:48.200
that you click that little subscribe button follow along click the notification button share this with
01:09:54.660
somebody half a million subscribers is my goal this year i think we can do it but i need your
01:09:59.280
help to do it and we need to all be engaged in the fight to reclaim and restore masculinity
01:10:05.380
Also, if you're around in Frenchtown, Montana, April 11th, that's this weekend,
01:10:11.800
You can find the details there, and I would love to meet up with you if you get the chance.
01:10:21.400
Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.
01:10:25.700
Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.
01:10:28.680
If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be,
01:10:32.360
we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.