Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 431 ｜ Dissecting the Dangers of Critical Theory ｜ Guest： James Lindsay

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.

00:00:11.340 Hope everyone is having a great day.

00:00:12.820 Today I am talking to James Lindsay.

00:00:16.140 He is an author, a scholar, an amazing thinker, and you can already tell as you've started

00:00:23.160 this podcast, this is a long episode.

00:00:24.900 I told my team after I finished this conversation that I actually need to book four hours when

00:00:31.700 I talk to James Lindsay because you'll be able to tell.

00:00:34.880 I just can't stop talking to him.

00:00:37.560 My brain just keeps going because he says so much that needs to be dissected and analyzed

00:00:44.900 and questioned, and you are going to love this conversation.

00:00:48.780 You're going to feel so smart after it because he is so smart and gives such great insight,

00:00:52.660 and I'm really excited for you to listen to it.

00:00:55.080 If you haven't listened to our first conversation from a few months ago from January, I'll link

00:00:59.920 it in the description so you can go back and listen to that.

00:01:04.200 It gives a little bit more context about what we're talking about today, but nevertheless,

00:01:08.440 you will love the dialogue that we have.

00:01:11.660 So without further ado, here is James Lindsay.

00:01:13.820 James, thank you so much for joining me again.

00:01:22.860 Last time we talked all about your book, Cynical Theories.

00:01:25.700 We talked about critical race theory.

00:01:27.680 We're going to continue that conversation today.

00:01:31.140 I want to first talk to you.

00:01:32.580 We're recording this in January.

00:01:34.180 This will come out sometime in May, and so who knows?

00:01:37.280 Who the heck knows what's going to happen over the next few months?

00:01:40.080 But as we're talking, we've seen a flurry of executive orders from the Biden administration

00:01:45.340 in regards to sex discrimination, racial discrimination that maybe all sound good in the name of equity.

00:01:54.520 But it seems to me that those people who voted for him thinking that it was going to end wokeness

00:02:00.000 and a lot of the stuff that you've talked about are wrong.

00:02:03.740 Can you break that down for us?

00:02:05.120 Yeah, I did think and still think that those people are wrong.

00:02:12.120 We'll see where that is when this comes out, I suppose.

00:02:15.320 But I want to be as generous to their argument as possible.

00:02:19.040 So their argument is that Trump was radicalizing and galvanizing the left

00:02:26.180 so that it was impossible to make the argument against wokeness to normal people

00:02:33.180 because to try to argue against wokeness to normal people would result in them saying something like,

00:02:38.980 but Trump, you know, so Trump is a bigger problem or Trump is the problem.

00:02:44.740 And we wouldn't have to do this if Trump wasn't in office.

00:02:47.360 So their belief was that if we remove that irritant from the White House,

00:02:54.520 then we can start to make headway on the cultural argument against wokeness.

00:02:59.280 We can start to show normal people just how bad wokeness is.

00:03:03.840 My counter to that, I do sympathize and I do think they are actually right 0.82

00:03:08.500 that certainly much of the left was galvanizing around anti-Trumpism

00:03:14.840 to the point where they were unable to, I mean, it became very tribal and partisan.

00:03:20.860 They were unable to give an inch on almost anything because Trump.

00:03:28.000 So I understand their argument and I sympathize with their argument

00:03:30.680 and I think it's actually largely correct.

00:03:33.280 The thing that I disagree with them on is that I believe that they are operating under the assumption

00:03:39.340 that politics as usual and culture as usual are still in operation.

00:03:46.060 And I think that that assumption has failed.

00:03:49.100 I do not think we are operating in politics as usual.

00:03:52.320 I think we are now operating in a very different circumstance

00:03:54.800 and that there is now no check on a movement that Biden is either controlled by

00:04:03.520 or is bought into or both to some degree that wants nothing but more power

00:04:08.240 and is going to put the pedal to the metal to get as much, not just power,

00:04:14.600 but unassailable power as it can take while it has the opportunity.

00:04:18.340 And we see literally his first hour in the White House,

00:04:22.980 Biden signed something like 17 executive orders, at least a handful of which are brutally woke.

00:04:30.500 We're sending the critical race theory ban that Trump had put in in October or September.

00:04:36.260 We're doing whatever it is with gender identity.

00:04:42.540 And so basically women's sports and probably lots of women's safety is now compromised 0.99

00:04:48.280 at the level of executive order.

00:04:50.700 And this was, I mean, we're talking first hour in office.

00:04:54.420 So these were extremely high priorities and are just the tip of a very large iceberg.

00:04:59.660 Right.

00:05:00.380 That I'm very worried about.

00:05:01.760 So I think those people have a compelling argument and I've always maintained since I've started

00:05:08.500 making it that they have an argument that is the correct argument if things are normal.

00:05:13.440 And I disagree with the assumption that things remain normal.

00:05:17.900 Yeah.

00:05:18.160 I think that there is something to, like you said, the argument that Trump was galvanizing

00:05:21.960 people, but the assumption that after after he was out of office, that that galvanization

00:05:29.700 or that feeling of anger, anti-Trump anger, anti-right anger would just go away and dissipate

00:05:36.560 because now they have the salve for their wounds and Joe Biden is wrong.

00:05:40.660 They are still feeling that galvanization.

00:05:43.420 They are still feeling that resistance.

00:05:46.600 They almost still see themselves as the resistance in some strange way.

00:05:52.080 And I think that misunderstanding of their attitudes and why they're going to linger also

00:05:57.860 goes back to a misunderstanding of when this all began.

00:06:01.500 Wokeness.

00:06:02.480 I can't even say began, but really started to ignite.

00:06:05.440 It wasn't under Trump.

00:06:07.260 We started to see things really shift.

00:06:09.400 It felt like to a lot of people around like 2015, it seemed like, okay, things, things

00:06:16.240 are, things are getting weird.

00:06:17.560 Things are getting weird with gender.

00:06:18.760 Things are getting weird with race.

00:06:20.780 It seems like we're in this, we have a lot of class tension.

00:06:24.500 We have a lot of tension between these groups that it didn't seem like we had before Obama

00:06:29.640 took office.

00:06:30.500 Do you think that feeling is correct?

00:06:33.880 Or am I laying blame at Obama's feet that doesn't deserve to be laid there?

00:06:38.680 Or what do you think?

00:06:40.720 Some of all of that.

00:06:42.020 But I want to nuance a bit of it.

00:06:44.240 So first of all, they will not calm down.

00:06:48.080 They, the galvanization against Trump will be permanent so long as they are able to maintain

00:06:54.180 it.

00:06:55.240 For example, Amy Siskind tweeted following the inauguration that it can't be overstated that

00:07:03.000 they have toppled a dictator.

00:07:04.260 They, they genuinely believe that Trump was a dictator, um, and that they toppled a dictator

00:07:10.220 and everybody who supported him supported a dictator.

00:07:13.040 And they genuinely, if you get not terribly far left, believe they have defeated the rise

00:07:19.040 of the Nazis.

00:07:19.600 And everybody who, I mean, this is still a thing people are writing about in Germany, you know,

00:07:26.260 80 years later that people, normal Germans were, were complicit in the rise of the Nazis. 0.90

00:07:32.860 And so this attitude is not going to diminish.

00:07:36.560 This is what they genuinely believe.

00:07:38.140 So just to put that out first, um, as for where wokeness arose and ignited, uh, I go back

00:07:46.320 a little further.

00:07:47.000 I don't just go back to 2015.

00:07:48.400 I actually want to go back to 2008 when Obama was elected and I live in the Southeast and

00:07:57.600 I had eyes that were fairly open at the time.

00:08:01.660 And I did witness, and I know the media jumped on it and probably, uh, I don't know, poured

00:08:08.640 a lot of gas on that fire, but there were certainly very, um, ugly reactions to the fact that we

00:08:15.100 had elected a black Democrat to the office. 0.81

00:08:19.120 Um, I think that most of the rage was Democrat and not black, but nevertheless, I saw the bumper 0.97

00:08:23.980 stickers.

00:08:24.600 I can't deny having seen t-shirts and bumper stickers that said things like it's called the

00:08:29.200 white house for a reason.

00:08:30.380 I mean, they were blatantly racist and critical race theory started.

00:08:33.920 This wasn't Obama's fault.

00:08:36.000 So critical race theory and critical race theorists had been forwarding for decades already.

00:08:41.580 The, the claim that America is systemically racist and has just been hiding how racist

00:08:47.480 it is.

00:08:48.240 And so they were able to play off of that reaction, that genuine, genuinely racist.

00:08:53.140 And also then other people who are just kind of swept along with it.

00:08:57.680 They were able to play into that reaction and say, see.

00:09:00.380 We, we knew what we were talking about.

00:09:02.220 There's way more hidden racism in this country.

00:09:04.080 So it started to mainline then.

00:09:05.720 And a lot of people blame Obama and maybe he has some, maybe he does deserve some blame.

00:09:12.260 But I think that it's more that we saw a reaction that the critical race theorists were offering

00:09:18.200 an explanation for that many people found persuasive.

00:09:20.960 So by the time we've had two terms of this and we're getting close to 2015, we have this

00:09:26.520 event at the end of 2014.

00:09:28.300 As a matter of fact, I think where Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri by a police

00:09:34.000 officer.

00:09:34.400 And obviously the story that was told does not match reality whatsoever.

00:09:39.740 The true story is now known that Michael Brown was, as the juries found, justifiably shot

00:09:47.300 by police because of his aggressive behavior.

00:09:50.360 But that's not what happened in 2015.

00:09:53.480 And again, you had this mainlining of a narrative that the cops now were the target and the cops

00:10:00.400 must have all these major racism problems.

00:10:02.680 So here again, now we have an institution that's filled with hidden racism.

00:10:06.600 And so the football moves a little further down the field in terms of getting people to

00:10:10.780 believe that a systemic racism explanation for what the phenomena of society is the correct

00:10:16.580 one.

00:10:17.080 And they could point back and say, see, remember how people reacted when we elected our first

00:10:20.540 black president, hidden racism, and now you can see it's all in the police forces, etc. 0.99

00:10:26.060 Then Trump ran and it was just racist, racist, racist, racist. 1.00

00:10:29.120 He's a racist. 1.00

00:10:29.720 Only racists would vote for him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 0.98

00:10:31.640 And they were very, very successful at mainlining that narrative, which set the stage so that

00:10:38.260 when Trump won and you saw massive vulnerability on the left, I mean, literally people crying on

00:10:44.180 the floor, going to therapy, not able to go to work for days, like can't can't process what

00:10:48.240 just happened.

00:10:48.720 They're still acting like they're trying to process what happened in 2016.

00:10:53.400 They still are.

00:10:54.140 They have no idea because they don't actually because they've adopted the frame of critical

00:10:58.480 race theory and because they are stuck.

00:11:01.140 And I hate to say it, but just a frankly elitist, like the woke would call it respectability

00:11:08.300 politics orbit.

00:11:10.900 They don't have the necessary tools to understand.

00:11:13.440 We call gaining the necessary tools to understand taking the red pill and they have not taken the

00:11:18.040 red pill.

00:11:18.660 So they don't understand that.

00:11:19.840 They don't even have the tools to understand what happened.

00:11:22.640 And that vulnerability, again, with only racists would vote for Trump was just a absolute

00:11:30.480 perfect storm for mainlining the critical theory view, in particular, the critical race theory

00:11:36.880 view.

00:11:37.140 But you see it also with the critical, the queer theory.

00:11:39.980 You know, apparently Trump hated gays, even though there's like the opposite of evidence

00:11:44.360 for that, etc. 0.77

00:11:45.500 And so they mainlined it very successfully into that vulnerability, which, you know, as

00:11:52.000 you would know, my research before I got involved in studying wokeness was in terms largely of

00:11:57.800 cults, but also religious conversions was a huge thing.

00:12:00.620 I was studying psychologically and vulnerability is the place where that tends to happen.

00:12:05.580 And so if you can manufacture vulnerability, you can induce somebody into a cult in particular.

00:12:10.120 And that's how cultists tend to do it.

00:12:12.260 They tend to find and prey upon vulnerabilities.

00:12:15.480 Trump's election was a wellspring of vulnerability for people on the left.

00:12:20.540 And that's really how this thing took off.

00:12:22.120 So I don't want to lay it at Obama's feet.

00:12:23.960 But I will say that that was really the first place where critical race theory was able to

00:12:28.240 get its claws into normal people's heads. 0.91

00:12:31.160 Yeah, and I do think that, you know, I obviously don't think that Trump, I think there are a lot

00:12:40.520 of reasons to criticize Trump from his rhetoric to some of his actions.

00:12:43.800 And so I as much as I lay responsibility at Trump's feet for some of his failures, I also

00:12:49.720 lay things at Obama's feet for his failures.

00:12:52.380 I think that he totally played in to the false narratives at Ferguson that helped fan the flames,

00:12:58.420 literally, of the riots that were going on there.

00:13:02.080 I think that he did play class politics when he said, you know, eventually you have enough

00:13:07.680 money, never mind the fact that he is now a multimillionaire.

00:13:10.900 When he said when he was campaigning that the people who didn't vote for him are either racist

00:13:15.600 or they're just clinging to, you know, their God, their guns, their religion, whatever he said,

00:13:21.380 he made it very clear that he looks with disdain upon the average working person, especially

00:13:29.960 the average white working person.

00:13:32.640 And so I think that became very normalized that you are allowed to talk about the working class

00:13:38.380 like that.

00:13:38.840 You are allowed to start talking about people in racialized terms and class terms.

00:13:44.380 You are allowed to start looking at especially Christians in a way as if they were oppressive

00:13:49.920 and part of the problem, you're allowed to.

00:13:53.040 And this probably didn't start with Obama, but, you know, calling everyone who disagrees

00:13:56.960 with you racist. 0.82

00:13:58.260 Obama certainly wasn't necessarily leading the charge in all of those things all the time, 0.59

00:14:03.720 but he made it posh.

00:14:05.660 He made it OK because the president, with all of this decorum and respectability, was saying

00:14:11.580 those things in a way that was persuasive.

00:14:14.380 So it must be OK for us to do it as well.

00:14:17.660 And then you get the wrecking ball of Trump doing the exact opposite and saying whatever

00:14:21.940 he wants to say.

00:14:24.120 And I just think that it caused a lot of fragile people to lose their minds.

00:14:31.160 I think so.

00:14:31.700 And you have to acknowledge the fact is that Obama said that one of his more influential

00:14:36.120 professors that he had worked with and was friends with was Derrick Bell.

00:14:40.760 Derrick Bell is the creator of critical race theory, and he propped up Derrick Bell on a few

00:14:45.460 occasions.

00:14:47.900 So certainly, certainly Obama would have been familiar with what's going on with critical

00:14:53.460 race theory, where the vast majority of people in the country would not have had the slightest

00:14:57.440 idea what it is.

00:14:58.560 Nobody until like the last maybe six months, except for a few people, have known what it

00:15:03.120 is or had the slightest idea about it.

00:15:05.660 And so for him, when you say that, you know, they defam the flames of these things, certainly

00:15:09.460 the activists would know who Derrick Bell was.

00:15:12.280 And certainly they would have felt extremely encouraged and would have seen that as a signal

00:15:16.900 that he was taking their side.

00:15:19.260 And certainly that would indicate that he would be sympathetic to many of those arguments,

00:15:24.480 even if he's sympathetic to them in a more nuanced or more responsible way, because I think

00:15:28.940 there are responsible ways to talk about the issues that critical race theory raises.

00:15:33.160 So you do have the issue that you had a president who not only behaved in the ways that you were

00:15:40.220 seeing, but he also did act in ways that directly supported the narratives that we now understand

00:15:50.460 to have been as divisive as they really are.

00:15:53.500 Whereas at the time, I don't think most people, a few people, certainly conservatives understood

00:15:58.040 or at least intuited what was going on, but most other people didn't know what was going

00:16:01.500 on and, as you said, kind of fell in and felt like it kind of normalized that approach to

00:16:07.420 analysis of what's happening.

00:16:10.580 And that's actually pretty serious looking back on it.

00:16:15.680 Yeah, it does seem if you if you look, there's a tool that you can use on Google that tells

00:16:21.120 you when a word started to be used more and more pervasively.

00:16:26.080 And so these words, these woke words like intersectionality, probably not critical theory.

00:16:31.100 I feel like that's not often used blatantly in the media, but intersectionality, systemic

00:16:36.900 racism, white supremacy, all of those words really started to be used in a pervasive way

00:16:44.000 around 2015.

00:16:46.360 So what happens?

00:16:48.360 Like, I know that you said that this, you know, started much longer ago.

00:16:52.300 You could even say that it has roots more in the 1960s.

00:16:55.280 But what happened that all of a sudden these words and these terms and critical race theory

00:16:59.900 came on the scene just a few years ago?

00:17:03.200 And gosh, it's gone so fast to where now this is the subject of executive orders and

00:17:07.920 some of our legislation.

00:17:09.880 It's funny because we're in the middle of a pandemic.

00:17:12.200 And so in the beginning of the pandemic, we all got kind of a crash course in exponential

00:17:17.080 growth, where you have something that grows very slowly and then suddenly it grows very

00:17:22.420 fast and gets very out of control.

00:17:25.540 And there's sort of this point where it takes off in appearance.

00:17:30.760 If you look at those graphs, that's actually kind of what you see.

00:17:33.800 You see this slow growth of these terms.

00:17:37.040 Certainly, there's a first time the phrase, say, systemic racism or intersectionality got

00:17:41.140 used.

00:17:41.520 And then there's this kind of slow growth.

00:17:44.000 And then all of a sudden, there's this point of inflection where it just takes off.

00:17:47.940 And the obvious thing that happened in 2014, 15-ish, where that fire kind of caught was the

00:17:56.600 emergence of Black Lives Matter and thus a very polarizing event, but more importantly, 0.93

00:18:01.920 very polarizing movement where the argument about whether or not things in this country

00:18:07.380 are systemically racist and whether or not intersectionality is the right way to analyze

00:18:11.660 these things really grabbed hold.

00:18:15.520 We could talk about lots of different factors that maybe went into that about the degree to

00:18:20.820 which it became standard in college course material, therefore priming journalists to use phrases

00:18:27.380 like that and getting those people into positions where they're starting to write.

00:18:32.200 We could talk about the influence of social media, which is now going to allow people to

00:18:35.860 mainline words that maybe editors wouldn't have done earlier.

00:18:41.580 Lots of different factors kind of all kind of come into it.

00:18:44.220 But I really think that if we just had to boil it down to a single thing, it's that Black Lives

00:18:49.040 Matter polarized the country in 2015, partly for reasons that at the time, I think, were

00:18:55.360 justifiable and also for reasons that were pretty bad.

00:18:57.920 Um, so I, I really think that the, which we, we saw and we had a huge kind of thing about

00:19:04.480 them in 2015, the Black Lives Matter eruption at the time really was the thing that started 0.68

00:19:11.300 to mainline those ideas.

00:19:12.580 And then of course the media was just making money hand over fist fanning those flames.

00:19:18.280 And so they continued to fan those flames.

00:19:20.560 We saw that the same with Trump.

00:19:21.920 The more that they talked about Trump, the more money they made.

00:19:24.000 We were, if, you know, I'm old enough to remember 2016 CBS, the CEO of CBS admitting that he

00:19:31.280 shouldn't be covering Trump the way he is, but he just couldn't stop because he was making

00:19:34.820 crazy money off of it.

00:19:36.140 Of course.

00:19:36.420 And so, um, yeah, the media got into the business a long time before that of selling hysteria

00:19:42.780 and paranoia and critical race theory is like the mother load of hysteria and paranoia.

00:19:50.520 So it's like they found a gold mine full of what they sell, um, and they were off to

00:19:56.040 the races.

00:19:56.580 And I think actually, as people become convinced, you have to understand that critical race theory

00:20:02.580 or all of these critical theories present a worldview.

00:20:06.560 They are not theories.

00:20:08.060 In fact, if you read the book, critical race theory in introduction, which is a standard

00:20:12.680 undergraduate textbook in the subject, the first sentence says that it's a critical race

00:20:18.380 theory as a movement, well, a theory is not a movement theories and movements are different

00:20:24.620 things.

00:20:25.080 So the thing is never set up to have been an academic theory in the real sense.

00:20:29.680 It was always set up to be a movement.

00:20:31.400 And that's, that's a requirement of a critical theory.

00:20:34.120 So it's not surprising.

00:20:35.700 All critical theories have to be able to be used as social movements or they're not critical

00:20:39.560 theories by definition all the way back to the 1930s.

00:20:42.160 So it's no surprise that that's what, what would be going on with critical race theory,

00:20:47.600 but they see themselves as, as, as operating in a movement space, not in a theoretical space,

00:20:52.420 not in an explanatory space.

00:20:53.900 And so when it found a place to take off, it took off.

00:20:59.020 And it, once you start to get into that, what they call a critical consciousness, or in

00:21:03.060 this case, a critical race consciousness, it becomes a self-affirming worldview.

00:21:07.020 You start to see the world that way.

00:21:08.740 Um, it's very much, you know, for, for religious people will understand that when, when they

00:21:13.640 are saved, they often begin to recognize, uh, the, the fingerprint of God or of Christ

00:21:20.660 on the world, everywhere they look and how amazing providence is or all of these things

00:21:25.580 that they hadn't noticed before.

00:21:26.800 It's like that, but perverted.

00:21:28.460 And you start to see racial problematics everywhere you look, because that's what having a race 0.99

00:21:33.740 critical consciousness means.

00:21:36.360 Right.

00:21:37.160 Right.

00:21:37.420 I think that one of the things that makes it so effective and what has helped it gain

00:21:42.740 ground over the past few years is that so many people didn't know what it was.

00:21:46.520 So many people, I, you know, I didn't know what critical race theory was until, I don't

00:21:50.680 know, a couple, a couple of years ago when people who I talk to today, most people do

00:21:55.720 not know.

00:21:56.240 Hopefully everyone listening to this podcast now knows, cause we've talked about it so

00:21:59.260 much.

00:21:59.580 If you don't, we'll link some previous, uh, previous episodes where we talked to James and

00:22:04.320 some other people about what it is, but I think that it is so effective because it just

00:22:09.760 comes in under the guise of compassion.

00:22:13.220 If first it was, if you want equality, this is what you should want.

00:22:16.580 Well, then it's not enough to want equality.

00:22:18.400 You have to want equity, which of course has some convoluted definitions of it.

00:22:22.880 And I hear a lot of people in the church today in particular say, um, uh, social justice types

00:22:29.680 in the church say, well, I don't even know what critical race theory is.

00:22:33.420 So I can't be a critical race theorist or, um, I, you know, I affirm some parts of critical

00:22:39.180 race theory, but I don't affirm other parts of critical race theory.

00:22:43.060 I also hear an excuse of, um, that, well, if there wasn't such pervasive racism, then

00:22:51.920 we wouldn't need critical race theory.

00:22:53.820 And people like me, they would accuse of caring more about critical race theory than I do about

00:23:00.340 racism.

00:23:00.780 And of course I'm part of the problem because of that.

00:23:04.400 And these are all like axioms.

00:23:07.200 They're not arguments.

00:23:08.100 Like you can't argue against them because they're all self-certified.

00:23:11.220 And so, cause if I say anything, then again, it's because I am part of the problem.

00:23:17.020 And if I have to ask, then that just indicates that I am, I'm the reason why critical race 0.98

00:23:23.140 theory exists because of ignorant people like me. 0.64

00:23:25.740 Can you speak to any of that confusion? 0.98

00:23:28.780 Yeah, I mean, it does.

00:23:29.740 It's a very wolf in sheep's clothing kind of situation.

00:23:32.260 You know, I've also, I guess, fairly famously in Christian circles referred to it as a Trojan

00:23:36.340 horse.

00:23:36.920 And in fact, I say it's a Trojan horse full of bureaucrats.

00:23:39.180 Um, so it's usually busy bodies who want to set administrative policy and set up your

00:23:44.420 training programs for new recruits.

00:23:46.680 Um, but anyway, uh, it comes in with under two guises, one of which is that it's sophisticated

00:23:53.300 academic theory and therefore you don't really understand it.

00:23:56.560 You don't understand how sophisticated or nuanced it is.

00:23:59.140 You don't know what the detail, you know, the definitions details.

00:24:01.620 And so since you don't know just how sophisticated it is, you must misunderstand it.

00:24:06.000 But they, they explain quite clearly.

00:24:08.460 If you read enough of the theory, you start to see, they explain quite clearly that to

00:24:13.080 have engaged with critical race theory means to have engaged with a critical race consciousness.

00:24:17.860 In other words, you have to believe it before you can understand it properly.

00:24:21.680 So everybody who doesn't believe it doesn't understand it properly.

00:24:24.020 Then you get that self-affirmation there, but because it looks like a scholarly academic

00:24:28.780 theory, critical race theory itself sounds scholarly and academic.

00:24:32.880 It gives off this, this impression that it's smarter than it is rather than just complaining

00:24:38.800 about race and racism all the time in ways that are often, um, either exaggerated or wholly

00:24:45.280 fabricated.

00:24:45.960 Secondly, as you said, it plays off of compassion and it is extremely good at making the case

00:24:55.020 that people who disagree with it must not care, or in fact, care about the wrong things or

00:24:59.540 care about evil things, whether it's, you know, this kind of callous, not caring about

00:25:05.120 the harms of racism or active, actively wanting to participate in racism.

00:25:10.000 And so it's a very, um, seductive worldview when you don't understand it, when you haven't

00:25:16.940 taken the time to read it and then process what it says and then read it again, you kind

00:25:22.040 of have to do that to get that. 0.94

00:25:24.200 It's actually academically very shallow.

00:25:25.880 It's, and it's compassion is, I don't want to say that it's necessarily cruel.

00:25:33.400 I want to say, in fact, something much more specific is that what it has is it has way too

00:25:38.220 narrow of compassion with the compassion then turned way too high on that very narrow band.

00:25:44.240 So what it's very good at is caring way too much about one very specific type of harm while

00:25:51.820 being extremely good at ignoring all the other types of harm.

00:25:55.300 And that's an extremely important situation because that's where you land in what C.S.

00:25:59.300 Lewis is talking about, where he warns that, that, you know, the tyrant who believes they're

00:26:05.000 doing it for your own good is the worst kind of tyrant.

00:26:07.620 Right.

00:26:08.260 He's, that's where you land in that, where you have a very narrow set, a sense of empathy

00:26:14.680 turned up to, you know, volume level 11.

00:26:18.000 Right.

00:26:18.520 And then the, that, that then overshadows and silences the ability to care about anything

00:26:23.540 else.

00:26:23.960 So if you care, oh, we have to care about racism and we have to care about black people

00:26:28.280 or whatever they say, turn that up so loud that they can no longer hear the damage that

00:26:33.920 they're doing to other people or other circumstances or letting institutions fall apart, tearing

00:26:38.380 churches apart, driving people crazy, accusing people falsely of racism and destroying their

00:26:43.840 lives.

00:26:44.140 No longer is any of that relevant to them because their, their empathy or their compassion has

00:26:49.440 been narrowed to a very, very, very small band that they then make so loud.

00:26:54.460 They can't hear any problem outside of that band.

00:26:56.760 And I've argued, and I know it's very controversial, but I'm quite confident that this is correct, 0.82

00:27:01.320 that that particular pattern.

00:27:03.280 And I don't say that that's going to bear fruit, but that particular pattern is the

00:27:07.780 seed from which a genocide grows.

00:27:10.540 Because if you can only care about a very small band of problems and you care way too

00:27:15.080 much about them and you can't hear the harm you're causing somewhere else, that's a necessary

00:27:19.700 precondition.

00:27:20.660 It's not a guaranteed conclusion, but it's a necessary precondition to be able, being able

00:27:26.360 to start to perpetrate something as horrible as a genocide.

00:27:29.480 You have to not care about the harm that you're creating to be able to do that.

00:27:33.520 And the easiest way to get there is by caring way too much about one specific harm to where

00:27:38.940 you've now lost the ability to care about any other harm.

00:27:41.660 And critical race theory, I hate to say it, but it's true, is designed to make people continually 0.98

00:27:47.300 drive into a smaller and smaller range of empathy.

00:27:50.760 And we can talk about that.

00:27:51.680 For example, you say, oh, it's about, you got the idea of like white fragility and white 0.97

00:27:55.880 complicity and white privilege.

00:27:57.320 And then what do they do?

00:27:58.600 As soon as that's taken off and it's gotten to the point where it's mainstreamed, now it's

00:28:04.000 like, oh, there's brown fragility and brown privilege and brown complicity and brown people 0.95

00:28:08.800 are also inherently anti-black. 0.85

00:28:10.500 So again, it goes from being all non-white races to, no, we're going to narrow the range 0.99

00:28:18.480 even further and implicate everybody else.

00:28:20.520 So you can see that the theory is designed to continually narrow the range.

00:28:25.140 And where critical race theory comes from, I know I said Derek Bell, who certainly was

00:28:29.380 not this, but it got co-opted by a student, Kimberly Crenshaw, who was informed deeply by

00:28:36.240 the Combahee River Collective, which was this, is it is queer black feminism, which is a very, 0.94

00:28:42.500 very narrow, very, very specific ideology or kind of combination of ideologies.

00:28:48.860 And that's what it will narrow to is queer black feminists will be the only people who you are 1.00

00:28:54.920 allowed to care about at the bottom of that game. 0.97

00:28:57.800 And it will continue to narrow to that.

00:28:59.420 And those people are the only thing that have a legitimate claim on suffering.

00:29:02.900 Yeah, which is which is who the the founders of Black Lives Matter are, by the way, like

00:29:09.220 that is the philosophy and the worldview that they have, that queer black feminism that's 1.00

00:29:13.980 been written about blatantly, that that's what they represent.

00:29:17.060 And I think also people need to understand, because to those of us who are still in the

00:29:23.260 world of sanity, we're just like, well, this just sounds like a whole bunch of hypocrisy.

00:29:27.140 And how do they not see the duplicitousness of their of their thinking?

00:29:32.900 But I think you have to also understand that critical theory, and you can explain this better

00:29:38.220 than I can.

00:29:39.080 So please correct me if I'm wrong.

00:29:41.000 They also subvert this idea of objective truth.

00:29:44.480 They say, well, objective truth is this Western construct that.

00:29:49.160 So that's why, you know, if you try to get a critical theorist or critical race theorist to

00:29:53.140 define their terms objectively or to point to historical events to be able to support their

00:30:01.400 narrative or talk about facts and data and things like that, they will kind of brush that

00:30:07.060 off and say, we don't need to talk about that.

00:30:09.420 This is not a debate.

00:30:10.840 I don't want to argue about those things.

00:30:13.220 But it really goes back to this kind of standpoint epistemology that says that truth comes from

00:30:19.640 my standpoint, in particular, if I am a non-white person and that they it's almost a form of 0.52

00:30:26.120 Gnosticism where they believe that special knowledge has been revealed to non-white people 0.98

00:30:31.920 and therefore a white person with all the data and objective truth in the world can't

00:30:37.200 argue against them because they even argue what truth is and where truth comes from and how

00:30:42.440 to find truth.

00:30:43.380 And they argue that someone like me or you doesn't actually have access to that truth

00:30:48.540 without them and without them telling us what that truth is.

00:30:52.660 It comes from their own standpoint.

00:30:55.680 And so that is also why I guess this has taken off so much and why it's so hard to rein in

00:31:02.220 with debate, because debate is moot, especially with people who either are white or who they

00:31:08.800 would say black people have internalized whiteness or white supremacy to the point to where they

00:31:14.120 don't need to be debated with either.

00:31:15.560 Is that a correct assessment?

00:31:18.680 Yeah, I mean, I know that we're recording this ahead of time in January and so people

00:31:22.520 have forgotten, but it did just come out a week ago or so in January or in the past week

00:31:27.020 that they're now going after this idea of multiracial whiteness.

00:31:31.140 And so you certainly are right that people who are not white by any usual definition are 0.80

00:31:38.320 being classified as white by the theory when they disagree or when they raise problems with

00:31:43.500 it. 0.74

00:31:44.660 This is exactly right, and this is why they don't see what they're doing as hypocritical 0.64

00:31:50.540 at all.

00:31:51.080 Whether you want to talk about it from the perspective of historical critical theory or

00:31:54.700 you want to talk about it from the influence that they imported from postmodernism, both of

00:32:00.680 these traditions have lent them the tools to deny the idea that objective truth exists

00:32:07.040 and in particular to claim that the attempt to say, well, let's look at this objectively

00:32:13.940 or let's gather the evidence or let's see if you say this church or this university or

00:32:19.580 this police force or whatever is racist, let's go gather the evidence.

00:32:24.260 Let's go see what, you know, let's see how arrest numbers have really worked out.

00:32:28.080 Let's see use of force numbers, see how they really worked out for police, for example.

00:32:30.920 Or, you know, let's look at grades and see what happened and let's find out why.

00:32:34.880 Let's, at a school, you know, whatever it happens to be.

00:32:37.080 Well, let's look at the incidents between, you know, pastoral this or that or whatever

00:32:40.460 in a church.

00:32:42.060 By you saying, let's look at this objectively, what they are saying is, no, now what you are

00:32:47.320 doing is forcing us to participate in what they would refer to as a white racial frame.

00:32:52.400 White people prefer the idea of evidence. 0.64

00:32:55.040 And the reason they prefer the idea of evidence is because it allows them to deny the lived

00:33:00.880 experience that people outside of that frame have experienced.

00:33:05.460 What the heck does that mean for a justice system then?

00:33:08.480 Like, I mean, how does that, how, how does that affect how we see justice and how people

00:33:15.840 are actually proving guilty of evidence is just a construct of whiteness that needs to

00:33:22.740 be deconstructed and defeated?

00:33:26.520 I mean, that's really scary.

00:33:28.980 Well, what it does to justice is exactly what you think it would do to justice is it sets

00:33:34.160 up these people who will refer to as critical race theorists who have the ability to read

00:33:39.680 the tea leaves of justice and then to determine what is and is not just in that moment.

00:33:44.520 So evidence, the preponderance of evidence beyond reasonable doubt, these kinds of standards,

00:33:49.800 a reasonable person standard in court, which is necessary for dealing with things that

00:33:54.340 are not just cut and dry, what would a reasonable person think about this?

00:33:57.680 Those are thrown out the window because those standards are held up as supporting a racial

00:34:04.800 frame that is by in the in the terms of critical race theory explicitly created and maintained

00:34:10.520 to exclude other approaches or other ways of knowing or much more explicitly black people

00:34:15.940 often and their their claims.

00:34:19.780 And so what you will then have is you will have a collection of people who we will rightly

00:34:24.280 name as critical race theorists who become the genuine judges who are able to actually

00:34:29.580 adjudicate what is and is not just according to their subjective understanding of this racial

00:34:36.580 politics.

00:34:37.380 If we stick just in race, of course, with the queer black feminism, we're going to have 1.00

00:34:41.160 other dimensions of identity going to weigh in on this, which is exactly what you would

00:34:45.780 see under, say, a kind of kangaroo court or a communist court where it is the will of the

00:34:52.840 party that determines everything.

00:34:54.700 And if you start to think of the critical race theorists as the party who get to determine

00:34:58.520 what is the right way to think and what is the wrong way to think, what is the right evidence,

00:35:02.400 what is the wrong evidence, then you start to really understand how this thing operates.

00:35:07.280 So what it does to justice is that it certainly takes a blindfold off of justice, as they say,

00:35:13.100 um, and it makes justice not very just because it becomes extremely biased in the favor of a group

00:35:21.720 of people who claim to have special knowledge, as you said, based in standpoint. Um, so that's

00:35:27.080 what it does to justice. That's, that is how this, this is all organized that, that they literally

00:35:33.600 believe. And again, we can talk about it in terms of the critical theory aspect or the postmodern

00:35:38.120 aspect, which they've combined, um, into one kind of monstrosity. Uh, but they have arrived at the

00:35:47.140 belief that all approaches to understanding the world are just applications of the politics of

00:35:53.080 the people that that approach to the world benefits. So they think that white people cooked up our

00:35:59.720 justice system, our evidence-based courts, for example, so that they could buy us a system for

00:36:06.860 themselves and maintain white supremacist politics. And therefore that has to be held, uh, as suspect.

00:36:14.140 And so that's where, for example, at the Evergreen State College, where Brett Weinstein famously

00:36:19.920 got, you know, protested and eventually chased off of campus and it was his life in threat, uh, where

00:36:28.660 he at one point said, look, if this campus is racist to this angry mob of students, he said that if

00:36:33.360 this campus is racist, let's see the evidence and let's fix it. And they said, asking for evidence

00:36:38.420 of racism is, is racism because it denies the lived experience of people who have experienced racism.

00:36:46.400 And therefore, if you had experienced it, you would already know there there's your Gnosticism.

00:36:52.320 Yeah. Um, and so what it does is it creates a party of people who have the right politics,

00:36:59.060 or if you want to say theory, I suppose we can say that, but the right political view

00:37:03.040 who get to become the arbiters of what is just, what is real, what is true. And everybody else has

00:37:11.300 to, uh, be subject to that. It's really kind of interesting because, you know, I think we're

00:37:15.400 probably about to talk about postmodernism and maybe we should, but the postmodernists actually,

00:37:20.320 this is what they were warning about. And so these, the woke have picked up postmodern tools to do

00:37:25.080 exactly the thing that the postmodernists were like, this is going to be, this is a problem.

00:37:29.760 We shouldn't do this. We should avoid this at all costs. And they basically figured out how to

00:37:35.200 engineer the most poisonous movement in the universe by picking up the postmodernist warning

00:37:40.280 about truth and socially mediated truth and truth by consensus, uh, that you could possibly imagine.

00:37:48.400 Yeah. It seems like, uh, progressivism has a problem with overcorrection. We talked about at the

00:37:54.120 beginning of this very real problems. Like when Obama was elected, there were some racists out

00:37:59.940 there who said, you know, I don't want a black president. Obviously America has had at one point, 0.94

00:38:06.160 a history of racism. You could even argue at some points it was systemic racism. Um, and so it seems

00:38:12.020 that the correction that progressives are now proposing is not just, you know, what Martin Luther

00:38:17.220 King proposed that, Hey, we just want to be treated like men. We want to be treated as human beings,

00:38:22.400 as Christians would say, made in the image of God, like Frederick Douglass. He believed that the

00:38:26.380 constitution was a glorious Liberty document. He didn't, he didn't believe in getting rid of it.

00:38:31.560 He actually believed, okay, let us live up to these ideals. We talked about in our last interview,

00:38:36.920 you talked about Liberty and justice for all the, the founding ideals that we have were seeds and

00:38:42.520 they were supposed to take root and grow. They weren't, they weren't going to be perfect at that

00:38:46.700 time. And they, and they weren't. And so we can accept and acknowledge the fact that we have very

00:38:51.760 serious past mistakes and injustices that have needed to be rectified. But this seems like a

00:38:57.980 case of overcorrection and almost vengeance. Thomas Sowell calls it cosmic justice, deciding that, okay,

00:39:04.080 we've got to hold back these groups, not looking at their individual experiences, but just all white 1.00

00:39:10.000 people, we've got to hold them back. So we can push these, at least in our perception, oppressed 0.81

00:39:16.100 people forward. And you do that through punishment of the oppressors or the privileged people and

00:39:24.140 through given privileges to the other group, disregarding individuals' experiences, what they've

00:39:31.980 actually gone through, whether they've actually dealt with some sort of oppression or not. And I think

00:39:39.520 the hard thing that I have is understanding how people don't see that that is an entire world view,

00:39:46.220 that there aren't parts of that to pick and choose and to say, you know, part of this critical race

00:39:51.940 theory, cosmic justice idea is okay. And part of it is not. It seems to me like just throw that all out

00:39:58.480 and let's agree that, okay, maybe there needs to be some work done, but our goal should be true

00:40:03.920 liberty and justice for all. Our goal should be equality and viewing all people the same in value

00:40:10.780 and having the same rights. But, you know, when you talk about that, when you talk about any form

00:40:16.740 of neutrality, you're also called a white supremacist. And so I don't even know what my

00:40:21.680 question is. I just don't know what to do. I don't know what to do in those conversations.

00:40:24.960 No. That's the thing is, so what you have to do actually with, when you're in the conversation

00:40:31.880 with somebody who's woke, it's, I know it's a really weird thing to say to you, but it's like

00:40:36.980 dealing with somebody who's super, super religious. I mentioned earlier conversion experiences and

00:40:41.100 everybody knows, I know that many of my Christian friends will appreciate this, just how annoying 1.00

00:40:45.820 a new convert is. We have lots of new converts to woke right now. Yeah. So it's very important to

00:40:52.500 realize the zeal of the new convert, but you probably won't make a lot of headway with a

00:40:57.260 newly woke person. But you will talk to a lot of other people. And the first thing to do is every

00:41:02.940 time is to just start naming the dynamic and in particular, naming the asymmetry that you're trying

00:41:07.540 to point at here that, and even naming the fact that there's a level of vengeance. Like, yeah,

00:41:12.380 I agree with you that there was a problem. And yeah, I agree with you that that problem should 0.86

00:41:16.500 be undone. And I'm even willing perhaps to have a reasonable conversation about a little bit of

00:41:21.680 makeup for this. However, this isn't what's going on. And there's a blatant asymmetry in how things

00:41:28.260 are being treated. And then like you just said, if we're going to call for neutrality, and then we're

00:41:32.160 going to say, wait, neutrality itself is racist. If you want to understand why that is, they believe

00:41:37.020 it's because the playing field itself is tilted. That's what systemic racism could be boiled down

00:41:42.300 to. It's tilted in the favor of white people. And therefore, if you act neutrally, if you try not

00:41:47.520 to rebalance that thing, you know, what, yeah, water will always roll downhill, uh, and, and head 0.98

00:41:53.960 toward, you know, the benefit will roll to the, to the white people or whatever. Yeah. And so, or

00:41:59.540 punishment will roll away from them or, you know, disenfranchisement will roll away from however

00:42:03.460 you want to picture the tilt. So they are arguing that we must artificially tilt the playing field back

00:42:08.860 the other way. And there's not a lot of reason to believe that that's going to work out very well.

00:42:14.920 Uh, in fact, it seems not to be working at all. Um, I will, however, say that it's very useful to

00:42:20.700 point out to help people understand like, okay, there are at least two big things we could talk

00:42:25.600 about, about systemic racism, for example, to make it clear what's going on. And at least one of these,

00:42:31.160 I want to bring up for sure, which is you said, you know, perhaps we were systemically racist in the

00:42:35.600 past. No, we, we were, there's no perhaps. And so here's what systemic racism looks like.

00:42:41.060 This is what actual systemic racism looks like. Systemic racism looks like a person of a particular

00:42:47.840 race coming up and saying, you know, this is what I experienced and this is a big problem and I need 0.85

00:42:55.100 to be heard. And the response being shut up racial epithet. You are an ignorant racial, racial epithet.

00:43:02.520 You don't know what you're talking about. That's what systemic racism looks like. That's the 1.00

00:43:07.540 system. Well, the word systemic racism means, I think that it doesn't, it kind of depend on what

00:43:13.560 you mean by systemic racism. The word systemic means everywhere, which I would argue, I would

00:43:17.780 say, yes, there are times in history where that has absolutely been true. But I also know people

00:43:22.400 who would say, well, there were, there were times in history where maybe that seemed to be true,

00:43:27.920 but it wasn't actually everywhere. I have heard people argue that no, racism hasn't been systemic,

00:43:33.940 absolutely everywhere, like a malignant, you know, tumor in society, but you're kind of describing it

00:43:40.820 a little bit differently, I think. So it depends.

00:43:43.880 What, yeah, what they usually are referring to is that the way that we interact with the world,

00:43:49.060 every bit of the system, whether it's what we claim to, who we, who we're willing to believe,

00:43:52.920 who we're not willing to believe, who we think knows things, what constitutes knowledge,

00:43:58.040 plus the laws, the institutions, all of those things combined form a system of society, how

00:44:05.840 society operates. And if that thing is, is severely tilted, then you have a problem. But of course,

00:44:11.200 when you take, you don't specify which race it is, it's pretty clear that we have, we were in an

00:44:16.940 unambiguously systemically racist situation. Now, then we were in a much less, but not perfect,

00:44:22.920 situation. And now we're putting systemic racism back in, in the opposite direction. So the vengeance

00:44:28.200 aspect becomes a lot more clear, or at least the overcorrection aspect. Another thing that you can

00:44:33.580 say about systemic racism is just how, when you say everything and everywhere, just how preposterous

00:44:38.520 this idea is. I gave this example when I went on Joe Rogan last summer, and I talked about,

00:44:44.260 I realized this when I was out on a walk with my wife around our block, and we were walking down

00:44:49.960 this hill by the road. And I noticed, you know, a car went by really fast. And it, you know,

00:44:54.280 as your brain sometimes does weird things, I was like, you know, what if I got hit by that car?

00:44:58.980 And I don't know, you know, why does it do this? And then all of a sudden, I had this whole

00:45:02.440 understanding of systemic things much more clearly, which I thought, imagine that I like tripped,

00:45:08.240 right? And actually, instead of me getting hit by the car, I tripped over a bottle that was laying on

00:45:13.540 the sidewalk. And I knocked my wife into the road right at the wrong time. And she got hit by the car.

00:45:17.540 Who's at fault? And what the systemic explanation would be is, well, we have a system that involves

00:45:23.760 people buying and driving cars. If our system didn't have cars, then we wouldn't have that.

00:45:29.280 If our economy didn't depend on cars, that bottle, assuming maybe it's a beer bottle or something,

00:45:34.420 if we didn't have a culture that drank alcohol, if we didn't support the idea that anybody drinks

00:45:38.540 alcohol, then that beer bottle wouldn't have been there for me to trip over. You know, you can start

00:45:43.900 getting into any number of things. But the idea is that now we have this whole economic system where

00:45:48.300 the very existence of beer and the very existence of cars and thus the people who purchase and indulge

00:45:56.700 in cars or beer become, and if you don't want it to be beer, it can be Coca-Cola, but beer makes it a

00:46:03.400 little bit, you know, a little bit more punchy. That we have a society, a capitalist consumer society

00:46:12.120 that would rely on those things and name those things as good and name those things as indicative

00:46:19.420 of freedom. Everybody who's involved in those industries, everybody who's involved in propping

00:46:23.800 up those industries, which means everybody bears some moral complicity or moral responsibility for the

00:46:29.180 fact that my wife died by me tripping over the bottle and knocking her in front of a car.

00:46:32.920 That's what systemic thinking, that's actually how it works. That's if you read this book,

00:46:39.520 being good, being white or being white, being good. It's one or the other. I always do these 0.97

00:46:43.380 things backwards by Barbara Alpabom from 2010, which is about white moral complicity and racism.

00:46:50.460 That's her argument is that you have to just keep expanding until you get to the point where all

00:46:55.240 white people and all people who benefit from whiteness are complicit in whiteness and are 0.90

00:47:00.360 therefore complicit in racism and white supremacy and must therefore be able to be identified as such 0.97

00:47:05.460 as people who are complicit in racism and white supremacy. In other words, that they're racist and 0.91

00:47:10.940 white supremacists. And this is a terrible way to think. And so using that kind of example has also 0.99

00:47:17.860 helped me show people that the systemic approach to understanding racism is not a particularly good

00:47:25.700 one. People who literally had absolutely nothing to do with racism in their entire lives, who have

00:47:31.540 been, in the real sense of the word, anti-racist their entire lives, are still implicated in racism.

00:47:37.620 And you read that in their work too, everywhere. They're blaming white progressive liberals as the

00:47:42.680 worst kind of racist because they're the kind that think they get it. They're the kind that don't 0.97

00:47:46.580 don't think of themselves as being racist and therefore aren't doing more. They're willing

00:47:52.040 to sit on their laurels and not do more work, according to what the critical race theorists say.

00:47:58.280 This is a preposterous way to think about the problem. And then if you think about, again,

00:48:02.380 like I said, I think it's very important to realize what real systemic racism looks like. It looks like

00:48:06.360 shut up N-word. That's what it looks like. That's not what's happening today. That's not anywhere close

00:48:11.280 to what's happening today. In fact, it's so far to the opposite of what's happening today that

00:48:16.240 it's almost laughable that somebody would think that that's what's going on today. It's like if

00:48:21.880 a black person at this point in society complains, everybody in the whole world like gathers around

00:48:26.460 them and tries to fix the problem. It's the opposite of shut up N-word. But instead, now we 0.92

00:48:33.020 have shut up white man, your story has been told. So you can see the reinstallation. You talk about an 0.98

00:48:37.700 overcorrection. You can see the reinstallation of systemic, in this case racism, in the opposite

00:48:44.140 direction. And they say we can't call it racism. So some folks are calling it neo-racism now. And I

00:48:49.700 really like that. So yeah, it's neo-racism. Fine. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's an awful way to think

00:48:58.920 because it's also, it's confusing because in your metaphor, they would also say if that is like a

00:49:06.120 metaphor for like some kind of systemic problem where everyone associated with even the manufacturing

00:49:10.980 of the beer can and the car is morally implicated, they would say you can't like, if this is a

00:49:18.620 metaphor for systemic racism, they would say you can't point to people who are successful who are

00:49:25.260 black to say that that's not systemic racism. So even if you're, if you didn't trip over the beer can

00:49:30.460 and you didn't push your wife in front of the car and she didn't die, they would still say the fact

00:49:37.380 that those impediments existed, the fact that those risks existed, even if you didn't trip and

00:49:43.860 nothing bad happened, that is still evidence of a systemic problem. And still everyone is morally

00:49:51.960 implicated. So that's why you can't talk about, well, hey, non-white people in America are, you know,

00:49:58.920 if you're looking at a variety of standards and categories are more successful than non-white people 1.00

00:50:03.440 anywhere else on earth, well, that doesn't matter. If the problem is that the beer can't exist,

00:50:08.080 if the problem is that the car is speeding by, then it doesn't matter whether or not you trip over

00:50:13.180 it. And I hope people are following our metaphor. No, that's correct. But, and so that's another

00:50:20.040 reason why it's like, okay, but so then by what standard are we looking at improvement? Like by what

00:50:26.660 standard can we say, okay, things are better now, things are good now, because it's almost like anything

00:50:31.600 that you point to, to say, look, things are good. The gaps are closing or whatever it is. I mean,

00:50:37.180 that's another fallacy though, saying that every disparity equals discrimination, but whatever

00:50:42.000 standards you want to point to, to say, things are a lot better than they were in the 1960s.

00:50:46.240 We keep hearing over and over. No, they're not. They're not better than they were in the 1960s.

00:50:50.840 And again, it comes down to the whole theory, the whole worldview is self-certifying.

00:50:56.020 And you do wonder these people who say, okay, we've got to fight systemic racism. I had a

00:51:01.060 conversation with someone the other day who said, you know, Christians, white evangelicals need to

00:51:05.100 do a better job of fighting racial justice. And I said, okay, what? Tell me, I'm ready. I'm ready.

00:51:10.560 I want to do this with you for, you know, I want to, I want to come alongside you and do this. You say

00:51:15.660 that I'm failing or white evangelicals are failing in this area. What? And it always goes back to,

00:51:20.980 well, just think about, or look at this disparity, or let's consider, or let's talk about, or read

00:51:28.140 this book. Okay. I'm all for thinking and reading and talking. That's pretty much all I like to do,

00:51:33.140 but that doesn't solve the problem. Does it? Like that doesn't come to any solutions. If you really

00:51:39.160 want to close these gaps and look at these, you know, actual inequalities, it just makes me wonder,

00:51:45.640 is there, like, is there an actual end goal? Do they want it to, do they want actual so-called

00:51:52.140 racial justice? It, it makes me feel like, no, they don't.

00:51:56.880 No. So what you hear with that, and they say it very frequently, in fact, now, uh, is that they are

00:52:02.920 calling to inner work that, that literally they call it doing inner work. So you, you have to think

00:52:08.800 about it. You have to read this thing and then think about it. And the goal is to induce that

00:52:14.160 critical race consciousness. It's to get you to think about the problem the way they think about

00:52:18.880 the problem so that you now agree with one another. And then you are on this kind of,

00:52:23.960 according to the way they think about it, magic path that when everybody is on the same page,

00:52:28.880 then they will be able to liberate people from racism. And so it is a goal of changing mindsets

00:52:36.260 rather than changing almost any material condition. And when they do try to change material conditions,

00:52:41.500 as we've often seen, they do in a clumsy kind of post hoc way where they just try to change the

00:52:46.980 outcomes or, or take away the test. You see it with the SAT. Oh, there's different scores on the

00:52:52.220 SAT between different racial groups on average. Therefore the test itself must be racist. Let's

00:52:56.800 get rid of it. Let's just not have that assessment anymore. Um, so what it's really calling to is,

00:53:02.420 is a form of, of spiritual work to get you to have a critical race consciousness, which is to say,

00:53:07.560 to convert to their religion. That's the plainest way to put it is what they're asking you to do is

00:53:13.420 to convert to their cult. But you can't ever really get there. Like in Christianity, we're told the same

00:53:18.340 thing. You work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That is, uh, that's a directive that

00:53:23.980 we're given, but also it is under, um, it's under this cloud of grace, this knowledge that, okay,

00:53:31.680 we're going to keep sending, like the apostle Paul talks about in the book of Romans, like the things

00:53:36.400 that I don't want to do the sins that I don't want to commit. I keep on doing and thank the Lord that

00:53:40.600 there's grace, there's mercy, there's forgiveness. And one day I'll be in heaven and I won't have to

00:53:45.740 worry about sin anymore. And that's the hope that we cling to. That's the grace that we have.

00:53:50.160 But within this religion of critical race theory, who calls you to the same, what we would call

00:53:54.300 sanctification within Christianity, this inner work, there's like, there's almost no carrot at the,

00:54:01.320 at the end of it. There's no, like, you know, it's okay. If you mess up, um, you know, you have

00:54:06.740 a hope of redemption and a hope of having, you have a hope of future glory to where you won't have to

00:54:11.280 worry about this struggle. There's no, there's, there's no hope and there's no grace and there's

00:54:16.020 no forgiveness. There is, you'll always be racist. You have to continue doing the work and like,

00:54:24.340 and, and we don't even know what it's going to look like in the end. They talk about liberation.

00:54:29.340 I don't even know. I don't even know what they mean by that. I don't even know what their picture

00:54:33.720 of society looks like. So it's amazing to me that people engage in this stuff without ever asking

00:54:40.220 those questions. So like, what does society get out of your self-hatred and your inner work? I like,

00:54:46.440 who is benefiting from it except for you and getting cultural capital?

00:54:51.300 Right. So this is actually, you could very easily put this as being like Christianity in a sense,

00:54:56.960 but with grace removed. And so the fear and the trembling, if you look at the Puritan tradition,

00:55:01.960 the humiliation is kind of constant. Hey, don't hate all Puritans on this show.

00:55:06.140 We like Puritans on this show. I'm just saying, woke, woke is the Puritanism of this very Hegelian

00:55:12.380 religion. So it is, it is, I'm not hating on Puritans. I'm saying that the Puritanical impulse 0.92

00:55:19.300 has re-arisen in another faith, and it has a different God. It does not have grace at all.

00:55:26.660 And so where Christians can hearken back to grace, as you very clearly explained and very eloquently

00:55:33.920 put, that doesn't exist here. So what happens in a faith system where you don't have that? Well,

00:55:41.680 you only have one option. You have to buy indulgences from the church. And so that's what you see.

00:55:47.480 You see another extortion coming down the pipe every single time. I know that's Catholics, 1.00

00:55:53.540 but that's why I wanted to say it to my Protestant friends here, because they'll get it. The critical

00:55:57.900 race theory church is going to force you to buy indulgences because there is no grace to rest in.

00:56:02.860 You can't go and say, no, by God, I have grace, or by God, there is grace that I'm not worthy of and

00:56:11.440 whatever else. You can't say that. There is only the institution which is going to be set up by the

00:56:17.180 critical race theorists. And because there is no grace, the I at the end of history, in history with

00:56:22.960 a capital H in the way that Hegel and Marx would have used it, is the moral judge for them in their

00:56:28.520 faith. There's no appealing to that. There's either being on the right side or the wrong side of it.

00:56:33.600 So in the meantime, the cathedral that's set up around it, if you want to call it Catholic style,

00:56:38.260 that's fine for me. I don't have a problem. We'll sell indulgences. And that's what you see.

00:56:43.760 Take up this diversity training and pay us a million dollars. And all of a sudden,

00:56:47.660 you know, you're good until we say, whoops, you're not good anymore. Take up this diversity 1.00

00:56:52.280 training and pay us another million dollars. Why don't you give up your pastorship? Or why don't

00:56:55.700 you give up your CEO position to somebody who's one of us? And we'll give you another indulgence.

00:57:01.920 And that's the process that we're actually seeing. So this is a church,

00:57:06.180 in a sense, that's being built out of the sale of indulgences forever. It's exactly the thing

00:57:10.840 Luther protested against, except now it's using race instead of, you know, maybe mafia bosses wanting

00:57:17.300 to whack a guy and going to the pope ahead of time or a cardinal and asking for, you know,

00:57:22.340 pre-forgiveness in exchange for plenty of gold for the Vatican. It's a very corrupt system. 0.80

00:57:29.680 And by the way, you can pay lots and lots and lots of indulgences and it can be all taken away

00:57:35.940 from you. If it's found out that at one point you said something, you know, that you regret or

00:57:42.420 doesn't fit into today's definitions of what it means to be anti-racist, it can be all taken away

00:57:47.880 if you don't do the proper work, if you are not following the proper rules. And by the way,

00:57:52.520 the rules are also arbitrarily applied depending on your politics. Like you can be a rich white man,

00:57:59.780 Joe Biden, who signed one of the most draconian crime bills that disproportionately affected

00:58:05.540 black Americans and who has said lots of things that could be arguably actually described as

00:58:11.260 as racist. And somehow it's all it's all OK. So that's also another confusing part about it is

00:58:20.440 that critical race theory is not really just about race. It's also just about believing in

00:58:25.760 the right politics. That's also a way that you can get some kind of social credit, right?

00:58:31.040 Yeah. So we've talked about we can talk about with politics. You've brought up

00:58:34.640 class issues repeatedly and critical race theory uses race as a proxy for those things. And so it's

00:58:44.240 not really about race at all. It's about having the right politics. And if you are useful to the

00:58:49.200 critical race theorists as Joe Biden is, obviously, with his equity proposals and so on and getting

00:58:55.820 rid of Trump as another one who is resisting them, then you get all kinds of indulgences for however

00:59:02.520 long that lasts. You you you're off the hook because your politics suit their agenda. And

00:59:07.140 the second your politics don't suit your agenda, they're going to start twisting it the other way

00:59:11.420 and you're going to have to buy indulgences from them again. It's a very important thing to

00:59:15.260 understand that this is how this works. It's when your politics align with theirs, you're good to

00:59:19.580 go until they want something from you. And then they'll find a reason to twist you. When your

00:59:24.820 politics don't align with theirs, they're going to twist you all the time. It is wholly corrupt.

00:59:32.640 And again, I think that's because to put it in a in a different frame than usual, because it's very 0.93

00:59:38.960 easy for people to say, oh, because it's godless and maybe it's communist and all of this.

00:59:42.600 It is that it's ultimately Hegelian and in its structure. And it's very important for people

00:59:47.400 to understand. Hegel forwarded the idea that ideas perfect themselves through dialectic throughout

00:59:54.320 history. And when the ideas become perfect, the dialectic, sorry. Yeah. So dialectic, the dialectic

01:00:01.060 process really, I think, derives from Kant before Hegel. But Hegel took it very seriously. And he wrote

01:00:07.240 in 1807, a book called Phenomenology of Spirit that's virtually impossible to read. And so the

01:00:13.260 phenomenology of how spirit evolves, the phenomenon of the development of spirit is what he's about.

01:00:18.520 And he's got a dialectical process. It's actually Kant's expression to say that what most people

01:00:23.020 talk about, which is that there is a thesis, an idea, and then it confronts its antithesis,

01:00:28.720 something that negates it, or Alfhaben in German. And then you take those two pieces and find some

01:00:35.700 greater whole by synthesizing them. So you have thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and a three-stage

01:00:41.120 process. So you put out an idea, you look for the contradiction in the idea, and then you try to

01:00:46.140 find some grander whole. So the best example I've encountered of this is thesis, the sky is blue,

01:00:53.680 antithesis, not at night. Synthesis, the sky changes colors and is blue during daytime.

01:01:00.540 And so it seems like this creates a greater understanding and a greater picture of the

01:01:05.520 whole. But it's in fact a form of alchemy. By working through contradictions, you're working

01:01:11.060 through a process of negating things to get something more, and that doesn't actually work.

01:01:15.980 It can expand horizons when you're being too narrow. So there is a positive use to this. But it's also

01:01:22.400 not possible to get a greater understanding. But Hegel believed that the spirit of the world,

01:01:26.780 the Weltgeist, as he put it, evolves according to this, and that there's actually behind the scenes

01:01:32.200 a – and so it's people doing this process that allow the spirit of the world, which is kind of

01:01:37.260 how the world believes about things. It's not the same as Zeitgeist, which is kind of more narrow.

01:01:43.160 He wasn't a big fan of the idea of Zeitgeist. He had this Weltgeist. So the ideas of the world evolve

01:01:49.860 as people go through this process of negating bad ideas and then finding a higher synthesis.

01:01:56.620 And he had this idea of an absolute spirit that he talks about, or an absolute that is the equivalent

01:02:04.520 for him of deity. It is, in fact, often treated as though it's the same God as the Christians talk

01:02:10.280 about, but it's not. And the idea for him is that this God becomes aware of itself when enough

01:02:17.280 dialectic has happened, when the Weltgeist gets to the right place and has merged fully. He was a

01:02:22.800 big, big statist. So when it merges fully with the state. And at that point, the eschaton occurs

01:02:30.300 because the absolute becomes aware of itself and understands that it is the absolute. And in other

01:02:36.000 words, you now have a utopia that has been built on earth and is enshrined in the state. And for Marx,

01:02:41.180 that's when socialism falls apart and becomes communism because the state becomes redundant.

01:02:46.780 That's the material, the dialectical materialist version of that same thing, of the Hegelian

01:02:53.700 eschaton being the awareness of the final awareness of the absolute spirit.

01:03:00.840 And so what you have here in Christianity, you have a God that is. I am the I am, I am the Alpha and

01:03:07.400 the Omega, that which is before everything and after everything. I am eternal, I am unchanging,

01:03:12.340 I am. Yahweh, I am. And so you have this idea of a God that's eternal and outside of the circles of

01:03:20.040 the world. In fact, he's sovereign over the circles of the world. Whereas in Hegel, you have

01:03:26.540 an absolute that becomes. It's not a God that is, it's a God that becomes. And it becomes through the

01:03:32.220 process of constantly criticizing and poking at the world and our ideas about the world and changing

01:03:37.260 them. And Hegel saw this as being kind of perfected by being entrusted to a increasingly

01:03:44.020 perfect and increasingly powerful state. And like I said, Marx translated that into the material realm

01:03:50.460 by saying that capitalism will give way to socialism and then eventually the state will become redundant

01:03:55.240 when we realize we no longer need a state. And then we'll have a communist utopia, which is

01:04:00.740 the same thing, which will never happen. Utopia means nowhere. And so this is, you have to understand

01:04:08.220 that this is the process behind it. And this is the basis. Their deity is this God that's becoming

01:04:14.480 by our process of picking at the world. And it is not a God that is, it is a God that becomes by

01:04:20.600 picking at things and picking at things and picking at things. And as a judge in the sense that we would

01:04:25.940 see like, you know, God is as merciful judge of the world. We don't have mercy. We have the judge

01:04:32.640 that says, were you on the right side of history or were you not at the very end of this process when

01:04:38.540 it becomes aware. And so though what it is, is like, you know how you can look at, we can look at

01:04:44.540 ourselves and we can look back in time, two generations and think, wow, look how racist everybody

01:04:49.220 was two generations ago. That's bad. And then you can look forward and say, wow, our grandchildren

01:04:55.720 will probably think we're really racist. That's, we're bad. And then now just kick that out to

01:05:01.040 infinity. And that's where you get the idea of this. I've referred to it as the eye at the end

01:05:05.680 of history as the Hegelian judge. So you can see how this becomes the God of progressivism because

01:05:12.320 progressive progress away from these evils is kind of taken as the axiomatic thing that's happening.

01:05:20.700 And so the more time goes by, the more of that will have occurred and the more horrific we'll look

01:05:25.040 back on ourselves and think we were in the past and be ashamed of that. And so it's like trying to

01:05:30.500 circle back around and get ahead of that thing and trying to force the world to change to that

01:05:35.940 perfect Star Trek universe. Yeah. I mean, the Star Trek universe isn't perfect either. You know,

01:05:41.280 they got that whole thing with the Romulans and the Klingons and it's like a thing there too, right? 1.00

01:05:46.000 So, um, but nevertheless, to understand it in that sense, and I know that's heavy,

01:05:52.080 but that this is actually a faith based in a completely different conception of God.

01:05:56.040 And the simplest way to say the difference is...

01:05:57.540 With a different eschatology. You've talked about eschatology.

01:06:00.580 Completely different eschatology.

01:06:01.700 Christians, we've got, you know, we've got disagreements within, you know, we would call

01:06:06.620 each other still, you know, faithful Christians. Our disagreements on eschatology, we see that as,

01:06:11.160 you know, more of like a tertiary issue. That's not something we would call a gospel issue.

01:06:16.000 So, um, but we've got disagreements there, but it's all within the framework of biblical

01:06:19.640 Christianity. Our idea, at least among Orthodox Christianity is that the Bible is inerrant.

01:06:24.620 So we might have different interpretations of it, but we can both agree at the end of the day

01:06:28.340 between, you know, theologically conservative Christians that, okay, the Bible's right. One 0.71

01:06:33.140 of us is probably wrong, but the Bible is right. And so at the end of the day, we agree on these

01:06:36.920 things. We disagree on that. What you're describing is a completely different narrative of what

01:06:42.380 eternity looks like, like of what the human timeline looks like. And I've talked about,

01:06:47.160 there's been a guest on my podcast who wrote a book about that progressivism, progressive

01:06:51.220 Christianity brings another gospel. It brings another form of salvation, another definition

01:06:56.960 of sin and salvation and, um, a savior. It's not the same thing as Orthodox Christianity,

01:07:02.000 but you're actually kind of showing why it's not just a different gospel, but it's an entirely

01:07:08.940 different understanding of the history of the world and the trajectory of the world.

01:07:15.720 And another reason why this, all of these theories are incongruent. And I think probably created to

01:07:21.840 be purposely incongruent and a replacement of the Christian understanding.

01:07:27.320 Oh yeah. Christianity was definitely targeted by these things. Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci,

01:07:33.160 that's for sure. Yeah. Antonio Gramsci explicitly laid out five pillars, which I can probably remember

01:07:39.280 four of them off the top of my head of, of culture that had to be attacked in order to bring 1.00

01:07:44.420 communism to the West. And religion is one of the first ones he mentions. It's religion, education,

01:07:51.480 media. Um, I've got three family is a fourth one and there's a fifth one, but I forgot what it is.

01:07:57.600 And so these are the fundamental pillars of Western culture that he, but religion and faith is, is

01:08:03.140 right at the top of his list of things that have to be targeted and targeted deliberately. The best

01:08:08.320 way I could explain kind of alien eschatology in terms of kind of Christianity, and this is going to be a 0.83

01:08:15.380 bit awkward. I apologize, but it would be as though you had a cult within Christianity arise. And the thing

01:08:23.300 that it believed is that Jesus will come back if, and only if we have a complete Christian theocracy, 0.99

01:08:29.680 so we're talking full theonomists, and at the same time that Jesus will then only come back when that

01:08:35.860 Christian theocracy has total control. That's, so that's your, your, your total control of the 0.98

01:08:41.820 state. And then simultaneously has the exactly perfect interpretation of the Bible.

01:08:47.800 And just so everyone knows, it's not my eschatology. I'm a pre-millennialist,

01:08:51.140 I've had post-millennialist theonomists on this show, but yes, that's-

01:08:56.280 And I don't know the difference.

01:08:57.180 I don't, you don't know the difference. Well, my view is that the world is going to get worse and

01:09:02.660 worse, which I, I think that we are winning that argument right now. Yeah. The world is going to

01:09:09.200 get worse and worse until Christ returns. But anyway, keep going.

01:09:13.680 So that, that's what it would be though. That's as close to within, I mean, it's a bit different

01:09:18.300 because Jesus still represents the, the second figure of the Godhead. And so you still have

01:09:24.760 this idea of a God that is rather than a God that becomes, but it would be actually more like saying

01:09:28.960 Jesus doesn't realize he's Jesus until we get the perfect theology and it becomes the one global

01:09:34.100 state. That would be the idea. And then suddenly by the process of these, these, you know, priests or

01:09:40.880 whoever it is, figuring out the proper Jesus and enforcing it on everybody, Jesus would suddenly

01:09:45.460 realize, Oh, that's me. And then come back down. That would be the kind of picture. And you can

01:09:50.240 see how freaking heretical that is. I mean, I've never heard any Christian ideas that are like that, 0.74

01:09:55.800 that haven't been, then if they do come up that aren't branded as insanely heretical,

01:10:00.580 you can also see how dangerous that is. You can also see how, how different that is to what,

01:10:05.920 you know, for example, Christ preached. We, and no one knows the hour and things like this.

01:10:10.020 Um, so that's, I mean, that's like I said, it's just an analogy. It's not going to be perfect,

01:10:15.560 but that's kind of the shape. And they think of that instead of it being that you're bringing

01:10:21.460 Jesus back, it's that the world will launch itself into utopia, a material world utopia with 0.95

01:10:26.800 a perfect philosophy where everyone will be liberated from all suffering, all unfairness,

01:10:31.020 all oppression, when that realization occurs. And the state will then become perfect and drop

01:10:37.260 away and everyone will get along kumbaya in perfect harmony because we won't have any of 0.87

01:10:42.000 the oppressive power dynamics that need to be contradicted out of existence.

01:10:46.920 And that's, people need to understand the, the Christians that hold to say, they say that

01:10:52.720 they hold to parts of CRT. They're also being influenced by people like James Cone, who basically

01:10:59.620 believed this in his own liberation theology. We talk, I mean, the Bible does talk about Jesus

01:11:05.040 freeing people from oppression. Um, and yes, we believe that Jesus cares about physical oppression

01:11:11.520 and that we should actually care about physical oppression, real physical oppression or earthly

01:11:16.660 oppression that's happening. But we also understand, I guess it mirrors what you were saying,

01:11:22.300 but in the, the Christian sense, we also understand that really he came to liberate us from the

01:11:27.380 oppression of sin and that are the true liberation is in eternity when there won't be any suffering,

01:11:34.260 there won't be any sin, but we believe that's a future state really outside of, of the time in

01:11:40.460 which we exist. Outside of the world. Right. That's crucial. Yes. Whereas this believes they can force

01:11:45.620 it to happen. Right. In, in, in normal material reality. And so did, and you know, I saw this very,

01:11:51.380 very, very woke Christian say, uh, the other day that, um, until we see Christianity, not as a means

01:12:00.000 of salvation, but as a means of liberation from oppression, we will see, uh, we will continue to 0.92

01:12:06.680 see Christian terrorism, which is just crazy. And so they see people like me who see, you know,

01:12:12.760 the future state sans suffering sans sin of Christ reigning in perfect peace in eternity. Um,

01:12:19.600 they see that as a real, or I don't know if they really see it this way, or they just say that they

01:12:24.360 do a real danger and, um, a prospect of harm. They say it's an immediate prospect of harm, but really,

01:12:32.600 I think what I, what they believe is what you're saying that I like people like me and even people

01:12:37.800 like you will stop the, will stop the, the, the utopian state from, from coming. And if that,

01:12:46.740 like, if that is your religion, if that is your goal, if you believe thy kingdom come means Hegel's

01:12:53.060 kingdom, then yeah, you're going to get all of the infidels out of the way. Like you're going to push 1.00

01:12:58.060 people to the side because that is your eternal goal. So your argument is that this is a whole other

01:13:03.360 faith. It's a whole other worldview and its adherents are a lot more merciless than, um,

01:13:10.440 I can't say than any other religion. Um, but then Christianity, that's for sure.

01:13:15.760 Sure. Yeah. It's, it's, how do I phrase this? It's like, um, what you said is that on some level,

01:13:23.500 there's genuinely the belief that we could have a perfect world. If everybody who didn't have the

01:13:29.040 right beliefs somehow got taken care of, whether they're reeducated, whether they're removed,

01:13:34.180 whether they're liquidated, whatever it happens to be. And on some level, that's sort of it is

01:13:38.960 everybody would just get on the same page. Then we'd finally have the right thing. And I, I, you know,

01:13:46.260 try to be as charitable as possible to communism, which is a weird thing to say, you can kind of see

01:13:51.960 that's, that's the line of thought that they have. And that's why you end up with situations where

01:13:56.500 people are going in and like gulag and everything else is that if everybody just got on the same

01:14:01.700 page, you start off there. If everybody just got on the same page, this would work. And I don't

01:14:06.340 think that's true, but we'll take it as a, as an assumption that, okay, fine. We'll pretend it's

01:14:11.180 true. If everybody got on the same page. Well, the problem is people, some people won't be on the

01:14:15.300 same page. So what do you do with them? You try to convince them that you can't convince them. Then

01:14:18.580 you start to kill them. Right. You start to get rid of them. You exile them or start killing them one or 1.00

01:14:23.440 the other to get them out of the situation. And when we're talking about something that's planet 0.99

01:14:27.440 wide, uh, you can't exile them. We can't, Elon hasn't got it together yet. We can't send them to

01:14:33.240 Mars. Yeah. So, um, we do end up in that kind of, that kind of mentality underlies this when you think

01:14:41.180 that it's your job to create the material conditions. So, and again, to put it in a Christian 1.00

01:14:47.480 phrasing that it's your job to build God's kingdom rather than your job to stay faithful and await

01:14:53.440 faithfully Christ's return for him to establish that kingdom. It's that same confusion. Yeah. Um,

01:15:00.020 and that's, again, that's what liberation means. Liberation means a liberation from all of these

01:15:04.660 systemic oppressions and so on. And I do actually agree with the idea that you could focus on a figure

01:15:09.540 like Jesus and use that figure to, um, you know, overcome biases that you may actually have in that

01:15:18.120 sense, you know, Jesus Christ can liberate us or the gospel can liberate us from, from racism. Okay,

01:15:23.420 fine. But that's a really inaccurate understanding of what's meant. We also, yes, but we also do believe

01:15:30.040 that. And we actually, that's really the argument that we have. And I really have to wrap this up.

01:15:34.820 I was just, I was messaging my team and I was like, I can't stop talking. My brain won't let me stop

01:15:39.120 talking even though we're over the time. But, um, uh, and we do believe that like, that's the

01:15:45.180 argument that we have between, uh, people who are theologically conservative and, uh, you know,

01:15:50.880 professing Christians who hold the CRT is that we say, look, the gospel regenerates hearts. That's

01:15:56.220 what we believe turns hearts of stones to hearts of flesh. And the Bible is very clear in first John

01:16:00.660 that you can't love God and hate your brother. And that includes hatred because of race, hatred because

01:16:05.740 of sex, whatever it is. And so, you know, we do believe that it is the gospel. It is Jesus Christ

01:16:11.940 who helps us in these things. But, um, the problem is that we, we, the argument is, is it just the

01:16:18.980 gospel that can do those things? Like for example, William Wilberforce was motivated by the gospel of

01:16:24.360 Jesus Christ to lead the abolition against, uh, slavery. And we see that as a very good thing.

01:16:29.480 So is it, is the gospel enough or is it the gospel and, and what I try to explain,

01:16:35.640 and I think you even try to explain, even though you're not a Christian is that

01:16:38.400 the gospel, it can't be the gospel and CRT because CRT has its own gospel. It's got its own

01:16:45.180 eschatology. It's got its own basically biblical canon. Um, and I really want to keep going and I

01:16:51.280 want to ask you your thoughts on what I just said, but I've, I've got to wrap this up. Um,

01:16:56.100 I would just say that Augustine would have named it a heresy.

01:16:59.200 Yeah, of course, of course. And you can't, all of us, we all know that you can't pick and choose

01:17:03.880 parts of a heresy and say, well, actually I'm going to keep it and apply it to my Christianity

01:17:08.980 and it still be biblical. It's just not, it's like I say, it's a bad tree that bears bad fruit.

01:17:14.340 Jesus said a bad tree can't bear bad fruit. Um, cause it's rotten to the roots and you explain that

01:17:19.400 really well. Thank you so much. Um, I will include all the links to new discourses, your book,

01:17:26.100 and all that good stuff, your social media, so people can follow you. I know people are really

01:17:30.000 going to appreciate this conversation like they did with the last one. Uh, thank you so much for

01:17:34.740 being generous with your time and, uh, and for, uh, talking with us. Cheers. You too. Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 02, 2021

Ep 431 ｜ Dissecting the Dangers of Critical Theory ｜ Guest： James Lindsay

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