Can the Anti-Woke Coalition Hold? | Guest: Seamus Coughlin | 5⧸26⧸23
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 29 minutes
Words per Minute
187.60593
Summary
In this episode, I chat with the creator of Freedom Tunes, Seamus Coughlin, about his journey to becoming a cartoonist, how he got started in the world of cartoons, and what it takes to be a good stand-up comedian.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
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So I wanted to go ahead and bring on Seamus Coughlin.
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He is, of course, the creator of Freedom Tunes and a regular over at TimCast.
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And I remember I met Aaron on TimCast about a year ago at this point.
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Yeah, and a lot of what you were saying really resonated with me because I think that on TimCast, we do have a wide variety of guests, which is great.
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But a lot of the more conservative guests tend to be more in the mainstream.
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And that's not so much by design as it is the fact that there are more public figures available with those political leanings.
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Part of what's great about TimCast is we do bring so many people on who have views outside of the status quo.
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And I remember when I was having a conversation with you on the show and then after the show, I thought, OK, I love what this guy is doing.
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And we've been talking about doing each other's podcast since then.
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And so I'm glad that I'm finally getting a chance to do yours.
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And I was surprised as anyone when I got that first invite over to TimCast.
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But it was great meeting you at that first episode.
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So I think it's going to be a great conversation.
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But before we get started, actually, you know, I don't think I've ever really heard your story.
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Could you tell everybody a little bit kind of were you always interested in animation?
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Was that a passion? Were you a comedian growing up or is these things you kind of grew into?
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I always wanted to be a cartoonist and an animator, but I was always strongly interested in politics.
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And as a kid, I very much wondered which path am I going to pick?
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I also knew that I wanted to change the culture or at least try to do what I could to change the culture
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because basically everything that I saw on television was completely antithetical to my values,
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I thought someone needs to make things that are funny, that are entertaining, that are engaging,
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but that instead of always taking cheap shots at the right, will either A, just tell a story
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or B, when it doesn't want to take cheap shots, take some of them at the left every now and again.
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And so when I was about 12, I started teaching myself to animate.
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And I started freelancing probably at 13, 14 on the side.
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And then when I graduated high school, I started a small business in animation production.
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When I was 20 on the side, what I began doing was just uploading these short little political
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cartoons that I made to a YouTube channel that I'd created when I was in high school that had
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This was not the thing I intended to make any kind of a living off of.
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It was just sort of like a receptacle for my angry rants in animated form when I felt a need
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to vent or when there was something I needed to make fun of.
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And after doing this a few times, I changed the name of the channel to Freedom Tunes.
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And I've just been hacking away at that ever since.
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I've been very blessed to have many different opportunities come up.
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So the business has grown along with Freedom Tunes.
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And now we're in the direction of just creating educational political cartoons and political
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satire for different Catholic, Christian, or conservative organizations.
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And then the main heart of the business is still this YouTube channel uploading edgy, engaging
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content that I hope the audience finds funny to lampoon the left.
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And I would say probably about two years ago, Tim and I crossed each other's paths.
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He did a voice for me in a cartoon maybe back in 2018, 2019.
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And he invited me out to work on a project with him in, I want to say, early to mid-2020.
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Before I ever even did his podcast, he and I were just collaborating on different funny ideas.
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And I think last year I did about a six-month stint as a co-host.
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And I'm probably on my second month out here as a co-host now.
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And so one important thing to mention, just to me a culpa here, when I first started Freedom
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Tunes, I was heavily in my libertarian phase, which of course I was because it was 2014.
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We were all in our libertarian phase at that point in time.
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And I don't mean that in a condescending way to denigrate all libertarians, because some
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I think the writings of Hans-Hermann Hoppe are absolutely wonderful, and I would say
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even indispensable to conservatives in trying to understand how societies build and maintain
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And so I'm not one of these, I'm no longer part of that club, so I have to bash it all
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But I certainly think there are many issues with the libertarian prescriptions for how we
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I do bash libertarians, probably a little too much on the timeline, but I do it out of
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You know, these are the people that are kind of close to, you know, like I was telling
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Dave Smith when I was talking to him on his podcast, you know, like you said, Hans-Hermann
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These are the kind of people that lead you to, I think, kind of more based understandings of
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They are a key part of kind of your journey, and you don't need to be ashamed about that.
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You know, those are stepping stones that get you to a place you need to be.
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But if you get stuck there forever, that is a problem, you know, so.
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And so the kinds of libertarians who I really will bash are the very milk toast out to lunch
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libertarians who will say absurd things that don't even line up with libertarian philosophy.
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Like two people are doing this in the free market.
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So it's beyond criticism or reproach, which is complete insanity.
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That's not part of libertarianism, but that's something I hear libertarians say all the
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time, and it drives me crazy as if like the only matrix for moral analysis is did two adults
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Like two adults do need to consent to something.
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But that doesn't mean once that requirement has been fulfilled, nothing that that action
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produces or even is intrinsically can't be criticized.
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This is why Hoppe works, you know, physical removal into the plan, right?
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And this, so this is the thing there, there people talk about the libertarian moment and
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how the mainstream Republican party is very libertarian and what they get wrong about this.
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And this is not me like trying to defend libertarianism because ultimately I don't, I just don't think
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it works and I don't believe in it, but in their defense, what libertarianism says is not, we are
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socially liberal and fiscally conservative. That's an unbelievably absurd oversimplification of their
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values. That doesn't actually map onto anything that they're really saying, at least not the ones
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with any level of like intellectual prowess who are analyzing the issues and know their philosophy.
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Well, what libertarianism teaches, depending on the formulation is either like non-aggression
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principle or propertarianism, the idea that all rights are rooted in property rights, which again,
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are not things I agree with, but those don't get you to a position of I'm socially liberal and
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fiscally conservative because social liberalism doesn't actually work in the long run without a
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Yeah. I think that the problem for libertarians who, you know, kind of the more of the Mises type
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libertarians is that that term is kind of entirely gotten away from them. Libertarianism for better
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or for worse. I know they hate this when I say it, but it's just true.
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Libertarianism is that guy dancing naked in his underwear at the, at the Libertarian National
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But that is how people are going to understand, right?
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This is the thing is both the left and the right see it that way. The left. And when the
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left sees that, they don't think there's anything wrong, of course, with the man at a political
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rally doing that, but they say like, all right, well, that's the wrong way to promote men being
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Exactly. And what the right says is like, we don't want men dancing naked in public. And
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of course, you're correct that, you know, Dave Smith isn't in love with that. Hoppe isn't
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in love with that. But that is how the average person conceives of the ideology.
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Yeah. And the problem is that in the dialectic, the, what, what, the, the role that's kind
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of liberal or libertarianism serves is that it always gets the, the parts of it that get
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advanced are always the parts of personal freedom and the parts that get left behind
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are all the ones that would restrict government or control any of the growth. So all it turns
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into is a way to wedge open the expansion of the state. Libertarianism ends up working hand
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I would completely agree. And so, and I'll mention like, I just had a great two hour long
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prerecorded conversation with Eric July yesterday. He's an old friend. He's, he's also one of
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these guys who's libertarian, but I think he understands the culture well enough. And his
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personal values are not like libertarian in the sense that he believes everything and two people
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consent to is, is great. Or he buys into this kind of milqueto social liberalism. And one thing
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to quote him one more time, to give him one last shout out, um, is that, um, Dave Smith said
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this in his debate with Nicholas Sarwark, who I think Sarwark represents like the worst,
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most cringy element within libertarian thought where he was saying, well, look at this massive
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libertarian victory of getting, you know, drugs legalized or decriminalized. And the point Dave
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made is that wasn't libertarians who did that. Okay. That was the left. The left is the reason
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why marijuana is legal in most places. This was not a libertarian victory. This is, this is something
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that happened to line up with libertarian values, but libertarians didn't do it. The, the progressives
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did. Yeah. And, and I think that's true, but at the same time, that's usually the kinds of
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victories that libertarians will claim, right? Yes. 100%. Right. Yeah. And so I think, uh, I think,
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I think that they kind of fall into that trap over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. That's no, it's true.
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They will claim that it's just, it's misguided because that was not your achievement. Uh, you, you,
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the left happened to want the same thing you wanted. That's why it happened. Yeah. And, and I,
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I, you know, again, I don't want to turn this into the libertarian back. I know, I know. I'm sorry.
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But, but, but just to say like, I, you know, people I'll, I'll show up on like Tom,
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Tom Wood's show or Dave Smith's show and people will be like, well, I thought you didn't like
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libertarian. It's like, no, no, no. You, they just, I just want them to understand the problems
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with their, the philosophy. These people are often closer to. Are you saying they're part of the
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problem? I might be saying that. Yes. But, but yeah, no, I just, you know, they're,
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they're very close to, they're often on their, on their journey to a more based understanding of
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reality. And I just want to help them get there faster. I just don't want them to get stuck along
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the way. Well, I think what happens is the ones who I get along with and the ones who I like are
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people who have a very solid conception of how an individual person should act and they embody that
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in their personal lives. And so in that sense, they are that, which we would call boost, but I don't
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think they do enough to engage with the fact that at some level, there does need to be a use of,
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of state force, even if just at a local level to ensure things don't go too off the rails as they
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clearly have. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like Hoppe again. I love Hoppe because he's the libertarian
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that actually understands power because he's using the juveniles model of power in democracy,
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the God that failed. And so like he's the rare libertarian that actually has a functional
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understanding of power, but he just kind of rearranges what the state means until its function
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kind of disappears rather than understanding that no, it will continue to exist. It's alongside
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the family and religion, like the most, the most consistent feature of human social organization.
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It emerges naturally over and over again. So trying to stamp it out is basically trying
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to eradicate human nature. And anytime you're fighting human nature, you're losing, right?
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Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So now that we're done, we had to spend our first 15 minutes
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bashing libertarianism. Yeah. While also expressing that there are some good eggs over there.
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Yeah. Not all. Hashtag not all. Hashtag not all. So the thing I've kind of wanted to talk to you
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about today is there's a, there's another kind of interesting flashpoint being created right now.
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We're approaching, uh, America's most holy month. Ramadan is once again, uh, upon us. The
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rainbow, uh, will, will dominate the sacred heart. Yes. Yes. Yes. I want everyone to know
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that sometimes more so than bashing something ugly, it's more helpful to celebrate something
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beautiful. So this June just celebrate the month of the sacred heart. You can still bash pride month,
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but, but please like, just let it be known. This is the, the month of the sacred heart or June is the
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month of the sacred heart. Yes. And that, yeah, there you go. So, um, yeah, so, so this is upon us
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and as it comes upon us, we're starting to see once again, kind of the fissure that exists, I think
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kind of naturally at the heart of the anti-woke movement. We had this kind of, uh, coalition of
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convenience arise, a lot of discarded progressives, a lot of liberal casts off, a lot of, uh, classical
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liberals who once saw themselves in as a, having a place in the leftist movement have joined kind
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of this anti-woke coalition with conservatives because they're no longer welcome there. Right.
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As you, we've kind of both said that they fell off the spear tip of the revolution. They don't
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understand how they got here. The, the, the conservatives are the only people who'll talk
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to them anymore. And they're kind of uneasy standing next to these people, but they'll do it if they have
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to, because they want to make sure they get back to the 1990s. And all of a sudden, like, uh, whenever we
00:14:01.260
get kind of the, this, a moment like this, those fracture points start to show because all of these
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people are like, Oh, well we, we don't, you know, we're not against all of these other celebrations.
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We're not against recognizing all of this stuff. We just don't want it to go far enough to where
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they start like mutilating kids. And it's like, okay, but these are naturally linked things.
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And, and so that was always the intention, by the way, abusing children was always the intention
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of the sexual revolution. If you look back to the work of Alfred Kinsey and his coauthors,
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they were perfectly clear about the way they felt about pedophilia.
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Yeah. And, and, and this is the, the heart of queer theory. This is the heart of people like
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Foucault. This is a part of people like Butler. I mean, there's that famous, I don't know if you've
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ever seen the, the queer three bingo where the professor is going through and naming all these
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passages of, of kind of foundational members of a queer theory. And they're just all about
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normalizing, you know, pedophilia. So this, this, this is baked into the movement from its very
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beginning, but you know, we kind of have to pretend it's Marxism or something. So that,
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yeah. Well, it's not real. And there's just, there's, there's a failure to understand
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that this was not as if this was not a case of social revolutionaries wanting to break down
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all of the social taboos that prevented consenting adults from engaging in sexually perverse
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behaviors while leaving the other taboos intact. The, the entire purpose of this movement was to
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break down all sexual taboo. The ones that still remain are the ones that they are going to try to
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destroy without, without qualification, without a doubt. I mean, this has been the goal from the
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get-go. This began with child abuse. Alfred Kinsey's work included data tables, which explicitly
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confessed to the abuse of boys, the, the rape of children. Many, many young boys were included in
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these data tables. And I won't get too into detail because it's very sickening. And I hate to even utter
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these things out loud because they're so filthy, but he included data tables that included certain
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physiological reactions to, to being raped essentially. And this was published. This was
00:16:02.400
out in the mainstream. This was not hidden. Wardell Pomeroy is quoted in time magazine in the 1980s as
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saying that he believed that incest between adults and children could be in his words, beneficial.
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Kinsey wrote in his book, sexual behavior in the human female, that the reason children are so shaken
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up when they're abused is because of the reaction of the other adults, not because of what actually
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happened to them. This stuff is baked into the movement and Kinsey's not just some guy. All right.
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The New York times referred to him as the father of the sexual revolution. And the reality is if you're
00:16:36.100
talking about the sexual revolution that happened in the United States in the 1960s, that's absolutely
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correct. That's absolutely correct. So from day one, the entire purpose of this movement was to
00:16:44.720
normalize pedophilia. And it actually started with pedophilia. This was not some good faith effort.
00:16:50.000
If it could even be called a good faith effort to try to remove certain taboos that might normalize,
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you know, adultery or fornication, and then eventually sodomy, right? The whole purpose of this
00:17:00.600
was no taboos because in the words of Alfred Kinsey, the only aberrant or perverse sexual behavior is
00:17:06.180
chastity. Yeah. And when you're in a situation, he didn't name pedophilia, by the way, he said
00:17:11.680
chastity. That's the only perverse sexual behavior. And, you know, there, it just makes perfect sense.
00:17:19.260
I mean, all these people were warned about where this was going. This is something that, you know,
00:17:23.580
a lot of people on the religious right and things were laughed at for decades about, oh, this is
00:17:28.880
backwards and stupid for you to, to kind of notice this, to call, you know, there's the slippery slope
00:17:33.700
and pretending like all this is going to naturally lead from one thing to another. It's like, but of
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course it is because if these social mores, if these taboos exist because they've been put in
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place through traditional values, because they've been put in place because of a particular tradition,
00:17:48.620
a religious tradition, which made these, you know, things unacceptable, you can't just selectively
00:17:55.000
pull that. You can't just crack the foundation out from under this thing and expect certain pieces
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of it to remain in place, just floating in midair. You've completely disassembled the rationale that
00:18:04.460
held this stuff in place. And it's only a matter of time before each one of these things falls.
00:18:09.460
And so this is one of the massive issues. People have these inbuilt intuitions and it's possible
00:18:14.500
that they're innate. It's also possible that on some level they're socially constructed. And I mean
00:18:19.260
that in a good way, right? Because not all social constructs are bad. Societies are supposed to
00:18:22.900
construct things, right? We should want them to do that. Social construct doesn't equal that.
00:18:27.460
But that said, people have an intuitive revulsion when they hear about pedophilia. They know what's
00:18:34.020
wrong on an innate level, but they also can't give you a robust intellectual framework for what the
00:18:40.220
purpose of human sexuality is in a way such that it refutes the possibility of allowing any and all
00:18:47.340
perverse behaviors. And so this was the case with gay marriage. I think conservatives and probably more
00:18:54.060
moderate people who were, again, relying on their intuitive revulsion to this repulsive behavior
00:18:59.900
were saying, I know this is gross. The vast majority of people know this is gross. So our argument is
00:19:03.860
going to be, this is gross. And it's okay if nobody understands what the purpose of sex is or how our
00:19:09.940
culture should hold to strong and reason-based sexual morals. Instead, it was, this is gross. And I'm
00:19:18.940
going to assume everyone else knows it's gross. Well, over time, right, the, the perverse exposure
00:19:26.120
therapy continues. And that which you consider to be absolutely hideous becomes gross and it becomes
00:19:32.200
tolerable. And then it just becomes a part of life. And so people were willing to rest on this is
00:19:40.580
disgusting and not do the intellectual legwork to say gay marriage is wrong. And in many cases, or that
00:19:45.580
it doesn't exist in the reason for that is because most of these people were using artificial
00:19:49.120
contraceptives or having sex outside of marriage or doing things which precluded them from recognizing
00:19:54.020
a reason based understanding of sex. And so they had this wishful thinking that I don't need to
00:20:03.280
straighten out my own sexual behavior in order to thoroughly combat the, the encroachment of
00:20:11.240
perversion. And we're seeing the same thing now as, as the left is inching closer and closer towards
00:20:18.760
completely normalizing pedophilia. What's being done is moderates are just assuming, well, this is
00:20:24.880
disgusting and no one is ever going to go for it. I'm sorry, but you're wrong about the fact that no
00:20:29.920
one's ever going to go for it. You're right that it's disgusting, but the story of the last 60 years
00:20:34.800
has been the story of the American public calling disgusting things beautiful. Don't think that won't
00:20:40.360
continue. Yeah. Things like, you know, originally the redefinition of marriage was wildly unpopular
00:20:46.100
when it was handed down by judicial fiat. And now it's considered a fait accompli that, you know,
00:20:51.180
it's impossible to roll back that it's, that it's widely accepted and only in the, in the case of a
00:20:56.060
decade or so here. Right. And it's a settled issue. Yeah, exactly. And pretending that this can't happen
00:21:01.200
again, that that's going to be the only thing where that occurred is ridiculous. And I think a big
00:21:06.460
thing that people don't think about with this is kind of the way that we shifted a lot of what used
00:21:11.260
to be mediated by the sacred into the realm of the scientific and the rational. I did a thread on
00:21:16.460
this on Twitter. You know, we had the, the Dodgers game, right. And they had all the, this, uh, this
00:21:21.840
like satanic, uh, you know, drag show thing that's going to show up at Dodgers games. And people are
00:21:27.320
like, I don't understand. I don't understand kind of why this stuff is out there. And it's like,
00:21:31.440
well, because you, because it's ugly, right? Well, and because you thought that religion was
00:21:37.480
dead and gone, you, you didn't think that this is a backward thing. This is something for stupid
00:21:42.600
people that they use as a crutch, but it's still here and it's still manifesting itself. And just
00:21:47.280
because you closed your mind to a connection of the metaphysical, to the spiritual, doesn't mean
00:21:52.560
that it stops because just because you decided to stop paying attention to it. Yeah. And so I think
00:21:57.680
this is something we see with many of the classical liberals is it by classical liberals. I don't mean
00:22:03.980
actual classical liberals. I mean, the people who refer to themselves that way to people who think
00:22:07.320
that 2008 was the year when we solved politics and finally figured out how the world should look.
00:22:12.320
And that was embodied in the democratic party platform of that period. And anything past that
00:22:16.640
was just too far to the left because, you know, we finally reached the end of history. And then the
00:22:21.880
woke lefties came along and ruined all of it. These types have a very confused, two-faced,
00:22:28.460
almost schizophrenic worldview where on the one hand, they're willing to believe that
00:22:34.020
we do need to look at the biological reality with respect to the differences between men and women
00:22:40.460
in certain circumstances where it's convenient.
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00:23:13.440
But then we can also hold to this tabula rasa view of how man operates in the world. Everything he believes
00:23:24.820
in is sort of imposed by the external society and authority structure is something that cultures decide
00:23:31.140
for on their own and not something that's built into the nature of man. This is important. Like failing
00:23:38.680
to understand that authority is inherent to human beings, that this understanding of the world is literally built
00:23:47.880
into us. It's not externally imposed. The failure to understand that is almost as absurd as a failure to
00:23:56.120
understand the differences between men and women. And it ends up getting you to a place where you eventually will
00:24:02.080
not. Because one of the fundamental authority structures is the family and the father is the head
00:24:09.820
of the household. And I think one way you can really delineate between a true ally in this fight is
00:24:17.660
whether they're willing to say that. I'm not saying there are, I'm not saying the only people we can work
00:24:24.380
with are the people who are completely on the same page with us on these issues. I think when we agree
00:24:29.560
with people, we should work with them to get to that point. We want to know whether someone is going
00:24:34.920
to be a long-term ally and they're going to be willing to embrace the kind of reason-based view
00:24:38.960
of the world that's necessary in order to repair this culture is, can you admit that the father is
00:24:44.320
the head of the household? Can you admit that that is a natural part of the human inbuilt structure of
00:24:50.020
authority? And if they can't, if they hem and haw about it and about exceptions to the rule that they
00:24:54.700
might find and how, you know, we should still promote the idea of being a girl boss, then
00:24:59.540
I'm sorry, their shit is weak. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the reasons that liberalism was so
00:25:07.100
easy to subvert was that it basically completely denies human nature and then attempts to make
00:25:14.300
claims on something it completely denies. Exactly. Exactly. And so when the question is like,
00:25:21.760
how do we define these social categories and how do we continue to uphold and maintain social
00:25:27.140
categories, even though we know that there are people who aren't comfortable with them and your
00:25:32.300
answer to that isn't, well, if the person's lack of comfort has something to do with their own
00:25:37.340
shortcomings, then we try to help them conform to reality instead of indulging them. Then you don't
00:25:45.740
have any ground to say that there's anything wrong with transgenderism.
00:25:51.760
Yeah. It's just that you currently find it personally distasteful, but there's no reason
00:25:57.520
that you couldn't be persuaded to follow along later here. Exactly. You probably won't find it
00:26:03.920
personally distasteful in 10 or 20 years. Right. You don't want to be that guy holding the sign
00:26:09.040
saying no transgenderism in the photo in the textbook in 20 years, right? The worst thing possible is to
00:26:14.560
be on the wrong side of history. You can't be one of the deplorables. Yeah. Well, and this is what
00:26:17.980
happens when you're not rooted in God because trying to be on the right side of history is a
00:26:21.200
small and petty goal in light of the possibility of being on the right side of eternity.
00:26:26.160
So I think the thing that is really hard for a lot of people, because I hear this all the time,
00:26:30.820
is like, well, why don't you guys understand your allies? Why don't you understand your allies? And I
00:26:34.520
think the answer is we're not. There is a conflict of moral visions here, not just against the woke and
00:26:40.660
the non-woke, but just incite even the opposition to the woke. There are those who cannot find a
00:26:47.140
substantive reason to be against wokeness other than they just got recently discarded from the
00:26:52.280
coalition. And there are those that really do find that there is an eternal truth that stands
00:26:56.700
against this. And those are the people that I think are going to mount any kind of substantive
00:27:02.140
opposition. But it feels like there's always this constant tension for those who have at least some
00:27:08.940
connection to that eternal truth to make concessions to those who just got discarded
00:27:14.220
from the liberal coalition in hopes that they're going to somehow bring these people over and they're
00:27:18.880
suddenly going to have a majority and then they're going to win the democratic process. And then they're
00:27:23.380
just going to reverse this whole thing in one fell swoop. And that means we constantly ratchet leftward
00:27:27.660
rather than having any kind of real opposition. And so what you were describing earlier about there
00:27:33.100
being an eternal truth that people have to be rooted in and the fact that people don't have any firm
00:27:38.400
footing to be able to say that because they don't have any faith and they're more or less just upset
00:27:42.540
that they've been pushed outside of the confines of what the left considers to be intellectually
00:27:46.920
fashionable. This is one of the massive fatal intellectual flaws of enlightenment thinking in
00:27:54.520
general, because it presupposes that we live in a universe well ordered enough that we can determine
00:28:00.600
truths about reality based on our own observations and measurement of reality, which is an idea we take for
00:28:07.720
granted as modern people, but that's not something that everyone believed throughout all of history.
00:28:11.920
And you read ancient pagan literature and you find in many cultures, it was believed that the universe
00:28:17.580
was confusing, shapeless, and we couldn't really know anything for sure. It was Christianity that gave
00:28:26.340
people the intellectual footing to be able to say the universe operates based on fixed intellectual
00:28:33.340
principles. And that is true of the physical world. And that is true of the metaphysical world. There are
00:28:40.000
things that man is meant to do based on his own nature in the same way that I can observe the universe
00:28:47.400
well enough that I'm able to now determine that a rainbow is made of light refracting off of water
00:28:55.500
particles in the air. I can also observe man's happiness or misery and,
00:29:03.340
and determine that that was based on his prior actions.
00:29:08.000
Now, enlightenment style thinking, while understanding we can make observations about
00:29:14.400
nature of the kind I just mentioned, becomes much more reluctant to make observations about the nature
00:29:20.420
of man. Because even though it's operating based on principles, a person could only possibly have,
00:29:27.120
if they believed that the universe was authored by a rational mind, reject the existence of that very rational
00:29:36.420
mind. Because they have put themselves in the place of God. They believe that the world exists and operates
00:29:48.460
based on reasonable principles, but only because they were the ones who discovered those principles. In a way, they view
00:29:55.060
themselves as the authors of that order because they discovered it. So they begin to think that because
00:30:03.720
they observed this, they're the creator of it. And they don't want to observe anything in their own personal
00:30:12.140
lives that might tell them that pursuing instant gratification is not conducive to long-term happiness.
00:30:18.980
And so because of that, they also can't make prescriptions for other people. They're only
00:30:24.620
capable of saying, that's gross. I don't like that. So in the same way that they would scoff at, at
00:30:31.540
their caricature of pre-enlightenment man and say, man could only observe nature in terms of what he
00:30:38.860
liked and disliked and not the rational operations of it. They're only capable of observing human behavior in
00:30:45.420
the exact same way. I like that. Or that disgusts me and not, what's the mechanism behind this?
00:30:53.300
What, what is this conducive to? Does this behavior help man flourish? Is this in line with his purpose?
00:31:01.100
Yeah. Once again, it's the appeal to a self-evident truth without the, the tradition from which that
00:31:07.000
truth became self-evident. You've, you've removed the ability to actually make appeals to this. And so
00:31:12.640
everything becomes a motive because there's no longer a shared substrate of like how we understand
00:31:18.500
and how we view the world and how we contextualize all this. You can't really pick a telos for a human
00:31:23.720
if you don't understand the human inside, it's different relationships between the divine,
00:31:29.480
between the family, between the church, between its tradition, between its community. You're not,
00:31:34.000
you're not some atomized, completely alone individual. You are someone who is from the very moment you're
00:31:40.180
born existing inside, sorry guys, a society. We are a society. And, and that context is what gives
00:31:47.440
you meaning. It's what, it's what helps you evaluate truth. And whenever you're trying to
00:31:50.900
communicate with another human being, it's that tradition you're appealing to for them to understand
00:31:55.540
what you're talking about. And freed from that context, all you have left is kind of these vague
00:32:01.000
notions of preference rather than anything that you can, you can actually move forward with logically,
00:32:07.580
any, any kind of system in which you can kind of advance that discussion.
00:32:12.180
Exactly. And so I was speaking to a man by the name of Steven Jonathan. I've had him on my podcast
00:32:17.400
twice at this point. He's very brilliant. He's actually someone I would really encourage you to
00:32:20.520
have a conversation with at some point, if you could, because he'd make a fantastic guest. But
00:32:24.200
he and I were having a conversation on our show when he mentioned C.S. Lewis and how C.S. Lewis
00:32:28.320
talks about sort of the first and second things and how, when you pursue the first thing,
00:32:32.560
you end up getting the second thing and they're both good. You want both of them.
00:32:36.380
When you pursue the second thing and sort of subvert that order, not only do you not get the
00:32:41.600
first thing, but like you don't even end up getting the second thing that you were aiming for.
00:32:48.840
And so what's happened is people have identified that their social role gives them meaning. Of course,
00:32:55.240
that meaning comes in large part to what you are contributing. And your identity is very largely
00:33:01.420
a product of what you can contribute, what you can give to other people. And we've subverted that.
00:33:08.760
Now, our attempt is to seek out the benefits of having an identity without giving thought to the
00:33:15.620
first thing from which that identity in part or in large part or entirely arises, which is firstly,
00:33:21.220
God, the fact that you were created by an all-knowing, all-loving God and the social
00:33:25.460
expectations that come from the gifts that he gave you. Now it's, well, I see the esteem that
00:33:32.840
a person might have as a result of their social standing. And I want that esteem. And so I will
00:33:38.440
pursue the second thing without having grounded myself in the first thing. And then you don't
00:33:43.760
get either. So the perfect example of this that we see today is the esteem of womanhood. Womanhood is
00:33:49.160
such an unbelievably beautiful thing. Well, how do we know that someone's a woman, right? It's an adult
00:33:53.900
human, female. Well, it's an adult human, female. How do we define female? Some lefties argue that's
00:33:57.440
a tautological definition because female and woman are synonymous. Okay. Well, I like the way Trent
00:34:02.680
Horn defines this. A female is that whose sexual anatomy is ordered towards gestation. And a male is
00:34:10.020
that whose sexual anatomy is ordered towards insemination. Very basic, very straightforward.
00:34:15.780
Also paints a very clear picture of what role that person plays and what they're capable of providing.
00:34:20.600
In order towards is the operating phrase because your anatomy can break down, but it's still ordered
00:34:25.500
towards that. So you see the esteem of womanhood. Well, we hold women in high esteem for a very
00:34:32.840
important reason, right? Women create people inside of their bodies. That's unbelievable. There are other
00:34:41.420
things women do. There are other reasons we value women, but let's just look at that. Okay. That is a
00:34:46.600
massive part. It's a massive part of why women have the social esteem that they have because that's
00:34:51.760
pretty important. Also pretty impressive. Well, when you're only looking at that social esteem,
00:34:56.680
when you're only looking at the second thing there or what comes from it. Now you as a man want to fit
00:35:03.080
into that category. And it's not because you want to create life. It's not because you're looking at
00:35:07.560
the productive role. It's frankly, in most cases, because you've been sexually perverted either by your
00:35:13.020
own fantasies or the pornography you've consumed. And there's something sexual thrilling about a
00:35:18.200
female identity to you and conceiving of yourself and that identity. So you've taken the second thing
00:35:23.440
without the first thing. We don't have the first thing. And guess what? We don't have the second
00:35:26.560
thing because no one actually holds you in esteem the way they hold a woman in esteem. Okay. They feel
00:35:30.760
sorry for you at best. And at worst, they're angry with you. Now I think everyone should feel sorry for
00:35:36.060
these people. They do need our compassion. But to be clear, everyone does. No one on the left
00:35:43.080
truly feels happy for these people. They're pretending. They're pretending. They feel bad
00:35:47.400
for them. If they're even capable of feeling bad for them, if they have that level of compassion left.
00:35:52.360
No one says this is a woman. But some people say, I feel bad enough for this person to call him a woman.
00:35:58.900
Well, and I think it's because of this entire deracination, right? These identities are consumer
00:36:04.080
products. You don't have an identity is not something that's ingrained. It's not something
00:36:08.140
that's connected to other things. It's not something that's unshakable. It's something you
00:36:12.160
can wear as a suit. It's a chameleon. You can change at any moment because you're not a person
00:36:18.220
who's locked into a particular community. You're not locked into a particular gender. You're not
00:36:23.280
locked into biological sex. It's something that you can simply consume and discard. And that's why they
00:36:29.780
kind of have to sell these operations as something that's disposable, reversible, right? Because none
00:36:35.840
of this can become permanent because if it's permanent, oh, well, then there might be some
00:36:39.480
kind of limitation, some kind of inbuilt design that you might have to acknowledge. And so everything
00:36:45.820
needs to be consumed one day, disposed of the next. You can switch them at will.
00:36:50.740
Yeah. Well, I think this is fundamentally a product of a total lack of maturity. I think
00:36:55.280
I had an experience right around the time when I turned 20. I think many men will have a similar
00:36:59.980
kind of experience where something happened to me that caused me to realize that permanency
00:37:03.100
is a factor in life. I think when you're a kid growing up, as long as nothing horribly traumatic
00:37:08.760
happens to you, you don't really understand the nature of permanency. The idea that there are things
00:37:14.460
you can't turn back from. You could actually cause long-term damage to yourself. You lose an arm,
00:37:20.220
it's not growing back, okay? I think that this failure to understand permanency
00:37:26.320
is linked to being juvenile, right? When you're a kid, this is pretty standard. And I also think
00:37:34.560
when you have a culture where the stories that we tell reset, it creates a bad status quo in people's
00:37:42.460
minds. You watch a 22-minute or 44-minute episode of a TV show where everything is the same at the end
00:37:47.800
of the episode as it was at the beginning, regardless of what happened. This shapes the way
00:37:51.600
that people think. And when it comes to these surgeries, these operations, let's not even call
00:37:58.200
them that, these acts of mutilation, these acts of violence against the body and against the person
00:38:02.960
and against God and against morality, there has to be sold to the person the idea that this is
00:38:10.120
reversible because no one's willing to commit to anything anymore. Now, cutting off your penis,
00:38:16.260
pretty massive commitment, not one you should make. Irreversible. But they have to convince a person
00:38:22.540
that these things can be undone. Or once you start down the path to do this, it can be reversed. But
00:38:28.340
at every step of the way, irreversible change occurs. And so this is in many ways like a fundamental
00:38:36.020
rejection of maturity. And we see this, I think, with the fact that historically in the transgender
00:38:42.400
movement, it's mostly been male to female. This is really important because historically it's been
00:38:48.820
understood that you need coming of age rituals for men because our bodies don't force us to grow up the
00:38:55.400
way that women's do. Like women literally bleed for days out of the month. Their body actually does
00:39:03.280
violence to them. They're constantly at war with their own nature. Men absent formation can kind
00:39:11.740
of go along and get along without ever going to war against themselves. And so this is why every
00:39:19.000
society through history has had some kind of set social expectations and rules for men that were only
00:39:25.820
for men because they need that extra push. And I think when a man is struggling to find a masculine
00:39:32.460
identity and he sees that women just very gracefully move into maturity without needing to subject
00:39:40.620
themselves to this kind of warfare while missing the fact that their bodies subject them to that
00:39:45.320
warfare, they want that because they don't realize what it actually is. So they think that by having a
00:39:52.540
female identity, they can just have an identity without working for it because they don't understand
00:39:57.700
understand what women have to go through on a biological level without any social intervention
00:40:02.800
being necessary. Well, I think they also understand, I think, honestly, the attention that comes with
00:40:09.600
and some of the that they're going to get treated with kid gloves. I mean, just just cards on table
00:40:16.500
here. You know, I've got a lot of friends who were autistic or, you know, kind of on the spectrum
00:40:21.500
and they've decided this is the way out. You know, they've gone through this process because
00:40:26.460
they didn't know how to interact in social situations. They didn't know how to have something
00:40:30.980
that was interesting. They didn't know how to have something that have them stand apart. They didn't
00:40:35.660
know how to like make people kind of treat them better and not be so harsh toward them. And what is
00:40:40.500
this? Oh, this is this is kind of a magical identity shield. I used to teach and I taught in a title
00:40:47.580
one school and the kids were really nasty to each other, like really awful to each other.
00:40:52.100
But even like the most aggressive, nasty kid knew that they had to treat the trans kid well
00:40:58.600
because they knew that kid was untouchable. So you could bully everybody else. You could be
00:41:03.140
merciless to everybody else. But the one kid you couldn't treat badly, the one kid you couldn't make
00:41:07.700
fun of because of something going on with them, something physical was that kid. They're wearing plot
00:41:12.540
armor. And because of that, there's an incentive that if, OK, I don't know how to hand myself
00:41:17.140
a social situation. I'm a teenager. I'm awkward. I'm a little on the spectrum. Well, what's the
00:41:21.300
best way out of this? Oh, well, I'll transition and then I don't have to deal with this.
00:41:24.820
Yeah, no, I mean, it's very real. And sometimes it's even more insidious than that. So I remember
00:41:30.620
when I was in high school, you know, I graduated 10 years ago this June. So this is a little while
00:41:36.760
ago, but it's massive how much social change has happened since then. Really, really quite
00:41:40.900
remarkable. But there was a there was a gay kid in our school who everyone knew. And I'm sure
00:41:46.720
there were multiple gay kids, but everyone knew this one gay kid because he was the loud
00:41:51.380
activist at the school and he was very nasty to people. I mean, he would say things to
00:41:58.780
other students that no one could hope to get away with saying. Right. But if you responded
00:42:05.660
to him the way you responded to anyone else who had just said what he had said, now you're
00:42:10.960
in trouble because now you're being mean to the gay kid. How dare you? And so. There's
00:42:17.540
also this very antisocial angle, which is I can get away with treating other people however
00:42:23.660
I want if I'm part of this identity class. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a large amount
00:42:29.260
of the leftist coalition in general. Right. If I get special benefits, I get special privileges.
00:42:34.380
I'm allowed to do certain things and I'm I have an errors. Basically, I'm the aristocracy.
00:42:39.160
I have special rights that you don't. And I get to kind of treat you however I like because
00:42:43.300
I have these particular markers. And that's the thing about a lot, again, of kind of the
00:42:48.140
anti woke center or left. They want to maintain most of those privileges. They want to maintain
00:42:53.500
most of that structure. They see everything up until, like you said, like 2008 as as just fine.
00:42:59.720
And all of that stuff needs to be protected. And that's why I think that the coalition
00:43:03.940
is is starting to see these, you know, these flashpoints, because it becomes clear that these
00:43:09.820
things are linked. It becomes clear to a lot of people that there is a clear through line
00:43:14.120
of history and logic and kind of moral degradation that comes along these things. But it's really
00:43:18.940
important for those who held these liberal values and want to continue to see that worldview
00:43:23.660
kind of perpetuated that they not notice. It's really important that these things
00:43:28.860
not be noticed, because if they are, then we might start understanding that you can't
00:43:33.080
keep the whole thing together. Exactly. And so I think you and I understand this as a
00:43:39.140
boulder that was pushed down a hill. And many left wingers who have been pushed outside of
00:43:45.420
the coalition say, man, the left made a mistake when the ball kept rolling past the halfway point.
00:43:53.240
It wasn't going to stop. It wasn't possible for it to stop. If we are to agree that pushing it down
00:44:01.420
the hill in the first place was a good idea. And you've got to stop the thing. And when you do stop
00:44:06.120
it, if you try to hold it in place halfway down the hill, it's just going to start rolling again at
00:44:11.060
some point. Like you have to push the thing all the way back up to the top and then you've got to leave
00:44:16.820
it there. And then you've got to be hyper vigilant about allowing people to push it down. And the
00:44:22.820
reason I use this analogy is because what we're seeing now is absolutely natural because decay
00:44:30.620
is a part of nature. This is why it's so difficult for the right and so easy for the left to have
00:44:35.640
political victories because a political victory on the left is merely tearing something down that
00:44:41.720
people far stronger and wiser than you built in which you resent the existence of, because it
00:44:48.620
reminds you of your own failure to live in line with the ideals of the people who gave you the
00:44:53.700
inheritance that you're squandering. And so leftism is just the intellectual rationalization a person
00:45:00.420
engages in to not live a virtuous life. And this is true of basically every left-wing cause.
00:45:07.320
There's nothing noble about it. They try to kind of use the pretext of nobility. They try to pretend
00:45:13.960
as if this comes from some genuine concern for other people. But at bottom, it's always,
00:45:18.760
I don't want anyone to interfere with my ability to fail to contribute with respect to my labor
00:45:26.580
or to restrain me from licentious sexual behavior. And I think at the heart of this, and this is why I hit
00:45:34.740
on this so often, is sexual licentiousness because that is the easiest, most surefire way to get a
00:45:42.880
person to stop caring about reason and start caring merely about their own pleasure. And when people
00:45:49.520
care about that, it's not simply the case that decay sets in. It's that is decay. Okay. That is decay.
00:45:55.700
And then it just spreads out from there. Yeah. There's a reason that pretty much every society
00:46:00.640
that made major advancements and had a high degree of success had a serious amount of rules built up
00:46:07.560
around this practice, right? Exactly. Because like you said, if you don't, then you just enter this
00:46:12.060
spiral of social entropy. And the extrapy is far harder. The erection of the standards, the
00:46:18.460
substantiation of the tradition, the creation of these institutions is far more difficult than the
00:46:26.940
disassembly of them. Yeah. The erection of the standards and the standards of erections, I guess.
00:46:32.880
But no, I mean, I mean, pardon me. I just, I couldn't help it. I think that it's very real. And
00:46:41.180
part of why this is so important is because sex is, it's all or nothing in this sense. Carol Wojtya,
00:46:46.180
St. Pope John Paul II said, as goes sex, so goes the family, so goes the world. This is undeniable.
00:46:52.920
And sex is either one of, if not the most beautiful thing human beings engage in and the
00:47:03.920
most wholesome, wonderful, wholesome, wonderful thing that creates new life and gives to the world
00:47:10.480
and bonds to people and is ultimately productive and the maximally productive thing a person can do
00:47:19.620
in some sense. Or it is completely abhorrent and disgusting and perverted. When people see sexual
00:47:29.660
perversion, they don't feel like there's something a little bit wrong with that. I mean, it shakes you
00:47:33.520
to your core. You're viscerally disgusted by it. What is food supposed to do? It's supposed to fuel
00:47:39.940
your metabolism. It's supposed to provide you with nutrients. There's a proper way to eat. And we all
00:47:45.400
know that. And when someone eats in an improper way, we're not thrilled with it. But there's not
00:47:50.640
the same level of disgust as when somebody exercises their sexual function in an improper way. There's
00:47:57.500
something much darker about it. And it's because sex is so good and has the potential to create such
00:48:02.600
beauty that it has to be attacked. Because when you can get somebody to, rather than subjugate their
00:48:10.960
passions to reason, subjugate their reason to their passions, and pursue that which feels good
00:48:17.220
at the expense of their own dignity, you've got a perfect slave.
00:48:21.260
Is this why, and I've seen you talk about this on Twitter and I have too, is this why it's so
00:48:26.620
important for many progressives and even centrists at this point to talk about the 1950s or earlier
00:48:33.360
periods as if they were somehow ridiculous? No one was ever happy. There were never intact families.
00:48:39.800
There were never people who owned homes and had good families and good churches. And there was
00:48:45.760
never a place where you could walk down the street and not have to worry about your kid getting
00:48:49.020
attacked. And you could send your kid to school and not have to worry about them getting indoctrinated
00:48:54.340
with really ridiculous stuff. Is that why? Because they just have to pretend like the past was always
00:49:00.060
so horrible. Because if you acknowledged that these standards worked, if you acknowledged that these
00:49:04.880
structures were important and maintained something important, then they might have to understand that
00:49:09.560
what's happened is not progress, but instead regress.
00:49:12.700
Exactly. Well, I don't know if you know this, Aaron, but in the 1950s, you might think it was
00:49:16.520
the case that your average man could graduate from high school at the age of 18, start a family,
00:49:22.200
have children, and a wholesome life experience all while working a job that didn't require him to
00:49:27.000
have an obscene level of education. And for his wife to be able to stay home and care for those
00:49:31.660
children and for people to reach their personal fulfillment while also having surplus wealth.
00:49:35.440
Uh, everyone was secretly gay and super sad about the fact that they were secretly gay.
00:49:40.980
That's the story of the 1950s. And every single time you discuss the nuclear family structure,
00:49:48.780
or even just fighting for the family, recognizing that men and women are different, saying that
00:49:53.960
marriage is not some archaic, outdated institution. What you are met with was, well, you want things to be
00:50:00.300
like they were in the 1950s and the 1950s racist. That was a racist time. This is so funny. The
00:50:05.920
1950s, those were the bad decade. I don't like that decade. It's a very interesting kind of slogan,
00:50:11.700
kind of rallying cry, kind of bit of citizenism we see from them. The left claims that their main
00:50:16.660
issue with the 1950s is how racist that era was. But every critique or satirization of the 1950s in
00:50:25.720
popular culture or in academia relies entirely on mocking suburban life in the nuclear family
00:50:32.880
with racism being a more peripheral issue. So we know what bothers the left about the 1950s.
00:50:41.300
Now I'll add this. One thing the left is very effective at doing is taking something that people
00:50:50.480
know is a little bit off and honing in on that and then critiquing it on the basis of the things
00:50:58.560
that actually made it wholesome while pushing for that, which made it off, made it not quite work.
00:51:05.400
There were issues with the 1950s. So for example, I think rampant materialism and consumer culture
00:51:13.180
really take off at this point in time. Basically, all of, if not all of, or at the very least,
00:51:21.660
many of the cultural shortcomings that arise when people become too wealthy begin to set in in the
00:51:29.080
1950s. And there's also an atomization of the nuclear family. Prior to the 50s, it was far more
00:51:37.560
normal to live with your extended family or at the very least close to them. And then in the 1950s,
00:51:43.960
this atomization begins to occur where now people are just within the nuclear family structure
00:51:49.860
and they moved out of the cities. There's been de-urbanization. And so people aren't living
00:51:57.760
in the communities that their immigrant forefathers moved to and then remained in. So now they're no longer
00:52:04.640
in touch with their ethnic identity and culture. And so in some sense, they've been homogenized.
00:52:10.940
And this actually pushes them away from their religious roots because for many people,
00:52:16.300
their ethnic identity and religiosity are tied together. Now, I think Christianity supersedes
00:52:22.520
ethnicity, of course, and should, and that's one of the great values of it. But you talk to people
00:52:26.960
today, I'm Irish Catholic. I'm Italian Catholic, right? I'm a WASP. People will include
00:52:33.660
their country of origin in with their religious faith. And so-
00:52:40.960
No, please, because I'm going to go on for like an hour if you don't interrupt me. I'm sorry.
00:52:44.100
Well, I was just going to say, that's kind of one of the beauties of Christianity, though,
00:52:47.400
is it can be practiced as one faith while taking on the ethnic particularity of the communities in
00:52:58.400
Yeah, no, it remains a true faith. It retains the truth of the faith while still taking on that
00:53:05.440
character. And so it allows- the one thing about Christianity is it can become the faith of many
00:53:10.480
peoples while still allowing those peoples to remain distinct and have their own cultural
00:53:17.760
Bingo. And I'm really glad you said that because I would not have put those words to it, but
00:53:21.900
I think the way to conceive of it is Christianity tells you that your ethnicity is far from being
00:53:27.520
the most important thing about you. However, it does not erase your ethnicity. It takes it into
00:53:32.840
account. It takes it seriously. It loves it because God created all the different groups of people on
00:53:36.720
the planet. Why would we want to erase that? Why would we want to destroy that? Christianity
00:53:41.620
recognizes, yes, you can absolutely put far too much emphasis on ethnicity. We've seen people do
00:53:45.380
that throughout history, but to put no emphasis on it is also equally foolish, right? Because God created
00:53:51.380
different groups of people and he engineered the circumstances that led to different cultures
00:53:54.680
arising. And no, not all cultures are equal. We should be willing to engage in cultural critique.
00:54:00.040
But that said, it's okay for people to be different. It's okay for culture to be different. And this is
00:54:04.460
one of these things when the left would talk about multiculturalism that they would say, and it was
00:54:08.320
one of the things that resonated with people because intuitively we know this is true. Like we know
00:54:12.080
it's good for different cultures to get along, but to also remain distinct. We know that, and we know
00:54:18.900
that it can be good for there to be crossover too, but we, we kind of end up in this all or nothing
00:54:24.300
space today where it's culture is all that matters. And this should be, you know, the dominant
00:54:31.240
factor in determining identity. And also culture is pointless. Let's erase it. We need to homogenize.
00:54:39.780
Yeah. The left's understanding of multiculturalism is a cuisine, right?
00:54:43.780
Yes. Yes. A consumer product. What you consume. Culture is about what you consume and not what
00:54:50.040
you give. Yeah. We, we all have to believe exactly the same thing about every social issue,
00:54:54.600
every political issue, every moral issue, but we can go eat at the Thai restaurant or Mexican
00:55:00.260
restaurant or, you know, Polish restaurant. And that's the, that's the amount of cultural
00:55:04.480
particularity you're allowed. Nothing that's actually existential, nothing that actually would make
00:55:09.060
you say not a servant of a particular corporation or a particular government, right? All those things
00:55:14.740
we have to be in unity about. And we've seen this happen on a massive scale, just with how corporate
00:55:19.340
America has homogenized the United States by itself. We don't even have to talk about like different
00:55:23.340
ethnic groups. We can just talk about the fact that in the U S we had, you can almost call them
00:55:28.220
proto-ethnic groups or like different States operated through our history until, you know,
00:55:34.720
between 15 and a hundred years ago, almost as different countries. I mean, and prior to the
00:55:39.580
civil war, people really did see their state as that, which they were patriotic to in a way which they
00:55:45.980
don't today. Yeah. There's a, there's a reason that Lee sides with Virginia, even though he was the
00:55:50.460
shoe in for the commandership of the union, it's because he's a Virginian first. That's why they were
00:55:55.760
these United States, not the United States. That's a very good way of putting it. That's, and that's
00:56:00.920
exactly right. I mean, people in their own individual States had their own state identity
00:56:06.000
and in a way, which was very wholesome nowadays, you know, man, even just 20 years ago, right.
00:56:13.820
When I was a kid, we would go on vacation. You know, my dad would pack up the van and take me and
00:56:18.460
my brothers across the country, uh, over the summer, every, uh, like every other year, we'd go on like
00:56:22.780
a two, three week long road trip. And so much homogenization had already occurred by that point in
00:56:28.640
time, but you could still find unique local shops. Like if you were in an area, maybe instead
00:56:35.740
of a Walmart, there was a different kind of department store that was local and was unique
00:56:41.180
to that region. They were scarce even then, but now you don't get any of that. Like there's no
00:56:47.860
mom and pa shop left. It's the only thing that allows you to tell the difference in many cases
00:56:53.200
between Georgia and Illinois and California are climate and socioeconomics. But the way people
00:57:02.840
talk is roughly similar or becoming much more similar. Accents have melted away in many areas.
00:57:09.080
They're buying all the same products. They're consuming all of the same art. So much uniqueness
00:57:13.920
is lost. I find that to be very sad. No, I agree 100%, but I think that is what is necessary for the
00:57:21.020
state to centralize power. If they want to be able to propagandize people with the same message,
00:57:26.100
if they want to be able to put everyone under the same rubric of control, when it comes to public
00:57:31.140
schools or corporations, then you need everyone homogenized so that your managerial techniques can
00:57:36.140
be applied routinely so that there aren't any, any moral tastes, any cultural tastes, any, uh, any actions
00:57:43.580
that would put you outside of a very small, uh, defined set. This managerialism is all about
00:57:49.500
predictability, right? Every person needs to be predictable. You need to be able to control
00:57:53.180
everyone's reactions. You need to be able to plan for everything. And so any kind of individualization
00:57:58.940
in communities is a, is a problem because it runs up against that. And so I think that that has to
00:58:04.780
happen because otherwise it becomes difficult to kind of manage the, the, the nation, then eventually
00:58:10.000
kind of a global empire at scale. Yeah. And so I think what's sort of being touched on here is the fact
00:58:17.020
that what the United States did to itself and all of its subcultures, had it conquered another land
00:58:24.420
equally large and done the same thing, we would consider that one of the most horrific, uh,
00:58:30.860
examples of colonial cultural erasure that could happen in the modern world. Right. And I add like
00:58:37.500
in the modern world, cause obviously like we're not going around murdering people from different
00:58:41.740
states. I get all that, but the kind of cultural erasure is something that we just take for granted
00:58:47.260
as having happened. And people almost don't even lament. They don't think about, um, but it's very,
00:58:53.320
it's very real. And recently I was in Texas for a conference and it was unbelievably fun. I mean,
00:59:01.860
there's still an identity to Texas that I think other states have very much lost.
00:59:07.920
And it's not a perfect identity. I think just like the rest of the culture, uh, there, there was
00:59:14.160
somewhat of like an encouragement of debauchery and licentiousness, but there's this lightheartedness
00:59:21.080
to, to Texan culture even now. And it leans into its own tropes. It doesn't see them as something to
00:59:28.140
be ashamed of or something that has to be dealt with. Ironically, they don't care. They're just doing
00:59:34.480
their Texas thing. And I find that beautiful. And it's telling that Texas is so often ridiculed
00:59:43.000
because their culture is different and it's weird. And the thing that the, the, the leftist
00:59:48.760
multiculturalist always argues is we shouldn't make fun of other cultures. But of course, now that we
00:59:55.300
actually do have one culture we can identify, which is separate from the, the massive homogenous,
00:59:59.960
you know, progressive fascist American culture. We have to make fun of it. We have to ridicule
01:00:05.520
it. It's stupid. It's lowbrow. It's, it's backwater. It's low class. And you and I have
01:00:12.200
talked about this, right? Uh, you made a good point about this, the coding of basic understanding
01:00:18.660
of natural law as being low class. That's what poor people believe you're against gay marriage
01:00:23.660
and transgenderism. That's what stupid poor people think. Well, and that's because it's
01:00:29.520
something that's observable and you don't have to do a lot of education or rationalization to
01:00:34.440
understand it, but you do have to pile on a large amount of ideology to deny it. And so the overeducated
01:00:40.640
become those most easily persuadable when it comes to denying the natural order of things
01:00:46.020
because they're the only ones. Yeah. Oh no, no, no, no. I hate to keep interrupting you. Please
01:00:50.300
continue. No, no, no. Go ahead. I just, there was, there's some ideas only so absurd,
01:00:54.060
some ideas so absurd, only an intellectual could be brought to believe them. Right. It's very,
01:00:57.860
it's a very real phenomena. Um, and I think there's something to that. And I think there's
01:01:02.840
also something to the fact that when you break down the social conventions that we had so many
01:01:07.120
social conventions surrounding wealth, surrounding faith, surrounding sex, surrounding our daily
01:01:12.820
interactions. And what the left said was these social conventions are born of some primitive
01:01:17.160
part of us that needs to die. And then when they, what they, when they stripped away those,
01:01:21.060
those social conventions, what happened was those social conventions stopped restraining the parts
01:01:26.460
of us that are ancient and that will always live, but which do need to be restrained. And one of those
01:01:32.280
conventions is people will, without the proper social programming, without a firm footing in morality
01:01:39.120
or a properly formed conscience, they will look down on people who have less than them.
01:01:43.060
So when you tear around the, so when you tear down the social conventions surrounding wealth,
01:01:47.960
you return people to that ugly part of their nature in many circumstances.
01:01:52.060
So this is why we see this critique, right? When people make fun of the Southern accent,
01:01:56.840
what they're, what they're basically doing is they're making fun of people for being low class,
01:02:01.220
right? They're saying this person's poor. They're not part of my economic bracket. And so much of the
01:02:06.320
comedy we see surrounding like rednecks, quote unquote, is all punching down,
01:02:10.420
but no one cares. That doesn't upset anybody. I wouldn't consider myself obviously like an
01:02:16.020
evangelical. That term isn't usually applied to Catholics, but I find it very interesting.
01:02:23.360
The difference between the way evangelicals are regarded in the way that wasps are regarded,
01:02:29.660
like they're both Protestant. What's the difference between an evangelical and a wasp?
01:02:35.420
An evangelical actually believes in Christianity.
01:02:40.820
There's a reason that Southern Baptists still actually have prohibitions against,
01:02:44.280
you know, immoral things and mainline Protestants are all bought into it a hundred percent.
01:02:48.620
Exactly. Exactly. And so evangelicals were the Christians who actually believed in Christianity
01:02:55.760
because they were stupid and poor. And wasps were people sophisticated enough to know that
01:03:02.540
you shouldn't not believe in God because that's weird, but you shouldn't really make any changes
01:03:08.300
to your life because you believe in God. The trick is to believe in God, but not really care what he
01:03:13.080
thinks. And progressives never made as much of a conservative effort to make fun of wasp culture.
01:03:20.540
And that's because in many ways, progressivism was born of wasp culture, even if it doesn't want to
01:03:24.760
acknowledge those roots. And so evangelicals are constantly torn apart and they're made fun of
01:03:31.160
because look at these, these stupid, uneducated Southerners who don't think that sodomy is beautiful
01:03:37.120
or, or who believe that like the purpose of the anus is to defecate and not to, well, let's not get
01:03:45.940
into detail, right? They're lampooned for a basic understanding of the way human beings are in
01:03:54.740
morality. Well, we can feel wonderful about our absurd worldview because, you know, we're educated
01:04:00.240
and we're wealthy. And I just want to hit on that. The white Anglo-Saxon Protestant is not relentlessly
01:04:06.380
bashed or not viewed as public enemy. Number one, the way the evangelical is.
01:04:10.380
Nope. Did I lose you there for a second? Yeah, I think we might've lost each other.
01:04:17.560
Oh, okay. No, I got you there. You're, I can hear you now. You're saying that they're not
01:04:21.440
viewed the same way as the evangelical because, because the evangelical actually believes in,
01:04:26.420
and by the way, let's not pretend that the fact that the evangelical actually believes
01:04:31.140
is totally unlinked from the poverty of the average evangelical comparatively to other Americans,
01:04:39.160
right? I mean, there's a reason Christ told us that it's easier for a camel to pass through the
01:04:44.760
eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. So when the left makes fun of
01:04:48.740
poverty, there's actually nothing ironic about that. Like they're, they're given their worldview,
01:04:54.360
they should make fun of poverty because they believe that the solution to all of the world's
01:04:59.860
problems is to properly arrange matter. That is the actual core superstition of leftism
01:05:08.200
and of Marxism. That if we move the material things of the world around in such a way that economic
01:05:17.440
resources are distributed more equitably, we bring about the end of history.
01:05:23.740
Well, and I think, you know, because, because the class situation didn't work out in the West that
01:05:31.700
the way it did in other nations where Marxism kind of took more of a hold, they understood that it had
01:05:37.040
to become social engineering instead of maybe economic engineering. And so even though we do see the
01:05:42.600
economic engineering, it's almost become secondary. It comes after the social engineering has been
01:05:48.020
achieved. So once you've got the, the, the social engineering properly lined up, then you can convince
01:05:52.840
people to do all the economic engineering that's supposed to bring about this miracle. But yeah,
01:05:57.440
I agree with you that this is, this is the lie. And, and I don't think it's just a lie at the heart
01:06:02.420
of Marxism. I think it's the lie at the heart of liberalism because liberalism believes in, uh, again,
01:06:07.880
kind of that bent blank slate. It believes in the, the infinite malleability of people that equality
01:06:13.520
is achievable, but it's not. Um, and you know, all the social and economic engineering in the world
01:06:19.580
will not make everyone equal. Uh, and all Marxism does is call liberalism on that lie and say,
01:06:25.940
we've got a better way to do it, but it's also a lie.
01:06:28.780
Exactly. And so, no, I think you're right. And I appreciate you saying that because I should also
01:06:32.420
draw that distinction as well. And I should acknowledge that similarity, which is that
01:06:35.820
both enlightenment liberals and progressive leftists believe that all the world is, is its material
01:06:42.240
elements. And there's no such thing as spiritual warfare. God's not real. And if he is, he's so
01:06:49.640
removed from our day-to-day life as to be completely irrelevant. So, whereas the Christian recognizes
01:06:56.540
the logos moves in history, Christ is truth. Not just that Jesus was a teacher who had the truth,
01:07:03.600
that he is truth. Like God is truth. The truth is not some mere abstraction. You don't get to deny
01:07:11.900
the truth because then you're actually denying Jesus Christ. And instead, what Western society
01:07:19.280
has decided to believe and what it believes now, what it has abandoned those morals for is all that
01:07:23.420
exists is the material world. And the way we will solve all of our problems in bringing about heaven
01:07:30.240
on earth is by rearranging matter. We just have to keep rearranging matter until we get to the point
01:07:36.780
where we have reached the end of history and everyone's perfectly cared for. And we're no
01:07:41.760
longer subject to the natural consequences of our actions. And what the liberal says is this should
01:07:47.380
be done mostly by the free market. And then maybe they'll embrace some form of moderate socialism.
01:07:53.340
What the Marxist says is, well, actually, no, you need total social control to be capable of something
01:07:58.280
of this. And they're correct in the sense that if such a goal were possible, which even by that
01:08:03.100
frame, I mean, that's insane. It couldn't be. But you would need massive oversight to rearrange
01:08:08.820
matter in such a way that you brought about utopia because the truth is no amount of rearranging
01:08:16.300
matter is enough to move the heart of man. You need grace for that. And you're not in charge of who
01:08:25.340
gets it. You can pray. You can try to merit graces. You can beg God. You can do fasting and abstinence
01:08:35.240
and penance. But ultimately, this is not a question of how much we've moved material around. This is
01:08:41.960
how much his man moved his heart because he has responded to the graces of God.
01:08:46.520
Yeah. C.S. Lewis says, I believe in Christianity like I believe in the sun because it's the way that
01:08:51.180
I see everything else around me. And yeah. And when you have worldviews that I think are stand in such
01:08:58.100
opposition to each other in such a fundamental level, it's hard for them to kind of work together in
01:09:02.460
that way. But let me ask you, I guess, before we move to the questions of the people here, because
01:09:06.600
they are stacking up and I don't want to keep you forever. But before we move on, let's get to the
01:09:11.060
actual answer of the question of the subject of the podcast, I guess. Do you think that the
01:09:17.640
anti-woke coalition can hold together or will these differences, will these fundamental differences
01:09:23.160
in moral visions pull it apart as it tries to push back against what's happening with progressives?
01:09:29.200
So nothing that is not rooted in Christ can hold together. I firmly believe that. And again,
01:09:35.660
just going back to what I said a moment ago, Christ is truth. It's another way of saying the same thing.
01:09:40.900
And ultimately, this isn't rooted in truth. However, is the untruth that it's rooted in
01:09:48.040
still mixed in with enough truth to withstand the untruth being forced upon it by its enemies?
01:09:56.860
That's a complicated question. What I will say is the best strategy for victory is for people to
01:10:03.420
adopt the truth. I think it's perfectly good to work with these people when that can be beneficial,
01:10:08.860
when it can help us move the cultural goalpost in the right direction. However, the problem is
01:10:18.260
many of these former liberals or people who the left left are unfortunately individuals who just
01:10:29.920
haven't gotten enough exposure therapy to the far left way of life. If you give it a little bit more
01:10:36.460
time, they'll be sufficiently inculcated in this perverse way of thinking. And we saw this happen.
01:10:45.000
So in 2014, 2013, around that time, when the anti-SJW YouTube coalition began forming,
01:10:52.260
and this was pretty much around Gamergate. This was kind of where this all began.
01:10:57.660
There were many people on the left who said, look, I was liberal and I believe in equality between the
01:11:03.260
sexes. People who would never say that the father's the head of the household. And they were saying,
01:11:08.820
well, we need to fight feminism because it may have destroyed the family, but now it's affecting video
01:11:14.280
games. So we got to get serious. Well, all of those people, or very many of those people,
01:11:20.880
they went in one direction or the other. Many of them did actually become conservative. That's great.
01:11:26.960
Yeah. You look at someone like Carl, Carl Benjamin had a very different path than say like shoe on head,
01:11:31.320
right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Um, and some of them proved to merely be patients who had not yet
01:11:40.700
received enough exposure therapy. And now they're completely on board with all of the progressive
01:11:44.800
causes. And this is why I said I had a long conversation. Sorry. I just want to, I had a
01:11:50.720
long conversation with Tim Pool and Lauren Southern about this a few weeks ago where I was trying to
01:11:55.820
impart and communicate. It was a little bit of a debate, but we should work with these people,
01:11:58.880
but we have to know who is and is not a hero. Yep. No, I think that's absolutely right. And it's a tool.
01:12:04.660
It's a, it's a skill. It's a, that's going to be essential going forward. If, if you don't want to
01:12:09.120
watch, uh, if you don't want to watch this whole thing, get co-opted or completely dismantled in any
01:12:14.180
meaningful way. There's a reason that some of these people are bucking up against say these boycotts
01:12:18.200
is because, you know, Oh, we can't do anything. It's actually effective. Oh, I don't want to actually
01:12:22.120
be seen as someone who opposes any of this stuff. I only wanted to do this when I get to, you know,
01:12:26.740
cry about getting deep platformed or, you know, losing my speech. Yeah. Bringing it full circle back to
01:12:32.240
the libertarians. One of the, uh, one of the good ones is I like to say, um, Robert P Murphy, the
01:12:37.560
economist, I follow him on Twitter, very funny guy. He was tweeting in response to people who were
01:12:42.300
upset about the target boycott. And they were, they were saying there's basically a libertarian
01:12:47.460
saying that libertarians shouldn't promote boycotts. He was laughing. He was like laughing. I can't
01:12:52.120
remember exactly what he said in reply to him, but it was something like, Oh, I wish I had it. Cause I'm
01:12:58.680
not going to even come close to doing it justice. But of course the whole joke had
01:13:02.200
bottom is wait a minute. Like boycotts aren't libertarian. That's the one thing libertarians
01:13:06.000
claim we can do or they like people are allowed to do. Like we're not supposed to run to the state.
01:13:10.420
Okay. So surely we can boycott target, but no, you're only supposed to boycott social conservatives,
01:13:15.080
right? Yeah. All of a sudden it becomes very clear what the agenda actually was in the first,
01:13:19.560
in the first place. But all right. So before we go over to the questions of the people,
01:13:23.440
Shamus, I'm sure most people have seen your work. It's everywhere and it's very good,
01:13:26.880
but just in case they don't know, uh, where should they find your stuff?
01:13:30.040
So I'm on freedom tunes, youtube.com slash freedom tunes, but we also have a website,
01:13:34.340
which I would encourage you to bookmark in case YouTube ever deletes us someday.
01:13:37.560
That's a just freedom tunes.com. We, we post all of the videos there. And also we post special
01:13:43.980
videos on the freedom tunes website once each week. So, so there's almost 50 videos now that
01:13:49.220
are only available on the freedom tunes website, but the catch is you have to be a supporter to watch
01:13:53.600
those. So if you become a member at freedom tunes.com, you'll get behind the scenes stuff and some
01:13:59.680
special perks. And you'll also get to watch one extra video each week that people who are just
01:14:05.180
subscribed to the main channel don't get to see. And there's like 50 of them already there. So
01:14:10.760
you'll have quite a lot of catching up to do to entertain yourself for a while. I think it's worth
01:14:16.560
it. Absolutely. All right, guys, we'll make sure that you check all of that out and let's go ahead
01:14:21.260
and check out the questions of the people. By the way, I'm so sorry. Cause this is my millionth
01:14:26.780
time interrupting you. This is a very bad look, but my podcast is called shamer. It's on rumble
01:14:30.540
and it's called shamer. Check that out. Absolutely. Get all the plugs in. That's what that time was
01:14:34.180
for. Absolutely. All right. So, uh, Jacob here for $10, uh, number one papist potato Biden bops and
01:14:41.800
Chris cucker playing Baker street for the wind. Oh, that's, that's a classic man. Chris cucker
01:14:48.000
playing Baker street. That was a video I must've made back in like 2016, 2017, maybe uploaded in 2018.
01:14:54.040
But, uh, that was a fun one. I was just, it was just a little live action video I did
01:14:58.180
where I was playing a white night. Um, and his name is actually not featured in the video or no,
01:15:04.060
I don't say it, but it's just sort of in the background on the computer screen. So I'm glad
01:15:07.080
he caught that. I was like, wait, Chris cucker. What was that? And then I remembered, oh my gosh,
01:15:10.780
that's what I, that was what I had that character is like Facebook profile picture. Say his name was,
01:15:15.960
I'm glad you like Biden bops too. Uh, that was a fun one. I think we're overdue for another music video.
01:15:21.180
Nice. All right. And a weirder, uh, uh, creeper weirdo for $5 Seamus. Have you ever watched or read
01:15:27.880
the symbolic word? You kind of talk like Jonathan, uh, Pajow, I believe is, uh, the guy who hosts that
01:15:33.100
one. Here's the thing. I will take that as a massive compliment because everything I've seen
01:15:37.580
from him has been absolutely brilliant. And I think you're being way too kind to me. I haven't seen
01:15:43.720
enough of his work. Does he interrupt people all the time and go on for like an hour? Sorry. Uh, he's,
01:15:48.820
I think he's fantastic. I've seen some of his work. Um, I've probably seen three or four of his
01:15:52.800
videos and I really should watch more because I found all of his observations to be very resonant.
01:15:57.160
One thing he said that there's two things he said, which I'll repeat now, which is people ask
01:16:01.460
about young earth creationism and they say, do you really think the world is 60 to 8,000 years old?
01:16:05.220
What he says is like everything relevant to us is fair, fair point, right? Like everything that human
01:16:11.600
beings can conceive of in terms of society, uh, all of our social structures are understanding,
01:16:16.420
like pretty much goes back to, to about that time. Obviously you get an evolutionary biology
01:16:20.160
that becomes more complicated, but you get the point. I don't think that refutes any of what he
01:16:23.840
said. He also made this point about how Neil deGrasse Tyson and these other leftists try to
01:16:28.800
deconstruct, but they only go one layer deep. And I don't know that I'll, I'll do justice to his full
01:16:35.740
point here, but he was talking about how, you know, Neil deGrasse Tyson will say something like
01:16:39.160
happy new year. January 1st has no astrological significance. It's just the earth making one
01:16:47.040
rotation around the sun. So, so he's, he's taken us one level deeper in deconstruction. Okay.
01:16:52.320
But he stops there. Like he doesn't continue to deconstruct and say like, well, what, like maybe
01:16:56.900
we should deconstruct why it would need to be astrologically significant. Like maybe we should
01:17:00.560
deconstruct the words you're using to even make that statement. Maybe we should deconstruct the entire
01:17:05.380
purpose of saying something like that, but they, they just go one level deeper and then
01:17:09.580
they feel very smug and satisfied. And instead of asking the question, like, why don't I deconstruct
01:17:15.680
my own motivations for wanting to do this? Why don't I like further deconstruct the language I'm
01:17:19.420
using or, or like, I guess the underlying social ideals that tell us that this deconstruction is
01:17:23.700
valuable. Yeah, no, there's a, the Alistair McIntyre is a philosopher and he has a great book called
01:17:30.500
After Virtue. And in that book, he, you know, kind of points out that every rebel who wants to
01:17:35.720
critique, uh, kind of, uh, the, the morality of, uh, maybe Christianity or the traditional world,
01:17:41.480
always the one thing they don't question is whether or not they have the language to actually
01:17:44.960
critique it, where the language they have actually came from. They're always willing to just go to the,
01:17:49.460
the direct critique of the, uh, of the society, but never think about the fact that they're using
01:17:53.440
the society's own moral framework, uh, to even process that in the first way, the first place.
01:17:58.240
And they don't doubt that they have the capacity to do that, but, uh, but yeah, I'm sorry. Good.
01:18:03.100
No, no, no, no, no. You go ahead. I was going to interrupt you. I thought you were done, but
01:18:05.860
just, but I was going to say, uh, yeah, everything I've only seen Pajal really in, in conversation
01:18:10.740
with others on other people's podcasts. I haven't watched a lot of his own solo stuff, but everything
01:18:15.200
I've seen from him is very good. And I think, uh, he does a great job. Well, you have to remember
01:18:19.220
is Christianity is always critiqued for not being Christian enough. That's it. Like I, I criticize
01:18:24.220
communism because it in no way, shape or form maps onto reality in a meaningful way.
01:18:27.700
That's why I critique it. The critique of Christianity is like, okay, this is all well
01:18:31.160
and good, but you're not actually doing it. Okay. Well, if it's all well and good, why
01:18:34.720
don't you try? Oh, okay. You don't want to, cause it's hard. Interesting. Yeah. Not, not
01:18:40.840
left wanting found, uh, left, uh, found difficult and left untried. Right. Amen. Yeah. Uh, Cooper
01:18:47.040
weirdo here for $2, the sex, sexual revolution and its consequences, uh, have been a disaster
01:18:52.680
for the human race. Yeah. Cue your Ted Kaczynski meme. Uh, let's see here. Uh, Paladin, uh,
01:19:00.680
YYZ for $21. Thank you very much, sir. The anti-well coalition has no chance of succeeding
01:19:05.940
if they have to defeat the alt-right in a logical debate against Orr McIntyre and his guests
01:19:10.400
in every other area of life they win. Uh, yeah, obviously these are, uh, people who usually
01:19:16.780
have not had significant parts of their worldview, their underlying worldview challenged. Uh, and
01:19:24.020
so they kind of, again, just assume that there's this self-evident truth and everybody on the
01:19:29.040
woke left is just ignoring the self-evident truth without asking themselves, how did I disassemble
01:19:33.780
the things that made that truth self-evident? Uh, I did a five episode series on Alexander
01:19:40.120
Dugan with Michael Millerman. It's rather long, but I think it's worth investing in for a lot of
01:19:45.400
people because it gets into, uh, it gets into, uh, um, post-modernism a lot and how the left
01:19:54.100
is just completely, or kind of the, uh, the, the center left is completely disarmed. Liberalism
01:19:59.220
is completely disarmed by post-modernism because they don't realize that they themselves
01:20:03.660
uh, created kind of the tool by which meaning would be eroded. Uh, and so they don't really
01:20:08.400
have a way to fight back against any of that because as Seamus and I have both pointed out
01:20:12.740
on this, uh, podcast repeatedly, they've already deracinated their, uh, their culture. They've
01:20:17.760
already deracinated their values. And so they don't really have anything to do or anything to say of
01:20:22.420
meaning, uh, or substance when post-modernism, uh, post-modernists point out you, you've, you've
01:20:28.380
completely pushed beyond this. There's no longer any leg for you to stand on.
01:20:32.020
Yeah. I'll also add this cause you mentioned sort of like the, the alt-right and illogical
01:20:35.360
debate. I wouldn't consider myself alt-right, but I also have no idea how to define it. It's
01:20:39.500
always used as this kind of vague boogeyman term. Um, I don't know what it means, but I,
01:20:45.120
I used to conceive of it as meaning like ethno-nationalist, but that's also not really
01:20:50.180
how it's used. It's thrown around a lot. I think the point is the point your, your commenter
01:20:54.600
is making is that they, they can debate lefties and they can even debate conservatives because
01:21:00.320
most conservatives don't have a firm footing in what conservatism actually means. Uh, and that's,
01:21:06.760
that's true. I've seen this happen, dude. I've seen like left-wing podcasters like destiny
01:21:10.760
take conservatives to task on basic stuff like sex and gender real. How could you as a conservative
01:21:17.600
lose the debate that a man can't become a woman, but I've seen it happen because they don't
01:21:22.940
understand these values. They don't actually understand these principles.
01:21:27.380
Yeah, I think it's really, uh, hard there. There's certainly something beyond conservatism
01:21:33.220
forming. And I made this argument that that conservatism is dead and you have to build
01:21:37.180
something new. Conservatism was about retaining institutions and their values, but all of those
01:21:43.300
institutions in the United States don't hold traditional religious values anymore. And so
01:21:49.040
conserving those institutions doesn't have any value. And so you have to show, you have to shift
01:21:53.760
focus of one of protecting institutions that no longer hold your values to ones of creating
01:21:58.720
institutions that will hold those values that perpetuate those values into the future. And so I
01:22:04.420
think we're moving from a time of conservatism to a time of building and no one knows what to call
01:22:08.620
that yet. Uh, but, but it is a, it is something I think that is distinct and different from kind of
01:22:13.620
that can, you know, conservatism Inc, you know, national review, you know, uh, weekly standard
01:22:19.700
kind of thing that got, you know, pushed around as, as a right wing in America for decades.
01:22:25.360
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. There are certain things we need to consider. I mean,
01:22:29.560
when I think of conservatism and what it should mean, it's, it's conserving the family. That's what
01:22:33.500
it should be about. And this is why like, I'll call myself, I guess I'm pro family, uh, conservative.
01:22:37.760
Uh, but I would agree with you. I mean, we can't conceive of this is trying to preserve
01:22:45.780
a Christian culture or conserve a Christian culture. We're actually trying to evangelize
01:22:50.740
a post-Christian pagan culture. Yes, exactly. I agree a hundred percent. All right. So let's
01:22:57.040
see another one here from Florida. Henry for $5 is the core of all this insanity, just people
01:23:02.700
wanting attention. I mean, it is to some extent it's, it's also because a lot of the
01:23:07.740
this brings power. I mean, there, there, we, we, we, we could go on that could do an entirely
01:23:12.480
different podcast on, on, on what the core of all this is. Uh, but, but the ability to garner
01:23:18.220
attention and acceptance is a big part of it. The long and the short of this is, this is what became
01:23:23.580
elite culture. Uh, and because this is what became elite culture, this is what gives people power.
01:23:27.900
This is what gives people social standing. This is what gives people acceptability. And that's why
01:23:31.500
they want to adopt it. People don't want to just construct, deconstruct traditional values
01:23:36.280
because they want to deconstruct traditional values. They do it because they're being rewarded
01:23:39.640
for doing it. And because it became the dominant culture, that's why people do it.
01:23:43.660
And I'll, I'll add this. I think that culture, I think that question is actually a lot deeper than
01:23:48.380
someone might initially hear it and conceive of it as, because when we're talking about a person
01:23:52.420
wanting attention, we're talking about a person wanting to be known. And we live in such an alienating
01:23:56.980
culture. And it's not just the blue haired social justice warrior screaming their head off
01:24:02.200
because Michael Knowles is speaking on campus who is seeking attention. And I don't even know if
01:24:07.680
they're doing it in that moment to seek attention. I think the reason they engage in these perverse
01:24:11.400
lifestyle choices is because part of them like wants to be known and no one's ever given them God
01:24:17.600
or they've never learned about Christ in the proper way, or they've rejected their faith.
01:24:22.140
And so there is an attention that they don't understand they're receiving from the divine,
01:24:26.720
or they do realize they're receiving it, but they know that they are not living in God's grace
01:24:31.480
and friendship. And so they need everyone else's approval instead. That's a massive part of this.
01:24:36.420
A massive part of this is alienated, lonely people wanting to be known, wanting to be loved,
01:24:41.160
wanting to know that they matter. And because our culture doesn't properly form people's
01:24:46.580
conscience or give them the tools to form healthy relationships or obey God and do what's expected
01:24:52.420
of them, they slip into debauchery and hedonism and perversion. And they ruin their lives.
01:24:59.340
They ruin their lives. I think that's actually a very good point. I think a lot of people bypass
01:25:04.340
that desire for meaning that's been created by the destruction of more organic communities.
01:25:10.500
And so by demolishing those more organic religious communities, those more tight-knit,
01:25:16.120
close-to-home communities, by making sure that everyone is atomized and alone, you increase the
01:25:22.140
need for social conformity on the mass scale because that allows you to feel once again noticed to be
01:25:27.680
accepted, to be part of it. And I think that is a big driver as well.
01:25:32.680
Creeper Weero here for $5. Richard Dawkins said he liked the idea of a creator so long as he was a
01:25:38.020
materialist nerd. So AI did something good. I don't quite understand that one. So he's okay with God
01:25:48.860
Maybe simulate. It sounds to me like this is a reference to the simulation. Yeah. No, people
01:25:52.760
will do, will believe in all kinds of dumb stuff to try not believing in God. Yeah. Not admitting
01:25:57.160
that God exists. So it's like Chesterton said, once you stop believing in God, you don't believe
01:26:00.580
in nothing. You believe in anything. Yeah. And with, with AI, I always laugh at this, this idea of
01:26:05.840
simulism because they see this as a more sophisticated approach to understanding religion.
01:26:09.640
Saying that God uses the same tools I use is an unbelievably primitive approach, which pagan
01:26:14.060
cultures have engaged in throughout all of history. God made universe with hammer. God made universe
01:26:18.440
in fight. God made universe through sex. God made universe doing things I do. No, God spoke the
01:26:23.440
universe into existence. That is a profound idea. And I hate to call it sophisticated because I don't
01:26:28.180
actually agree that sophistication is necessarily good. It's very simple and very beautiful idea. And it's one
01:26:34.300
that, that isn't totally self-evident to humans, which is why it took a lot of, a lot of history
01:26:38.280
and doctrinal development and revelation for us to fully understand that. But thinking that God uses
01:26:43.140
a computer, like you use a computer. Come on, dude, come on. Be imaginative.
01:26:48.560
It is a, it is a very desperate reach. Yeah. Uh, Darth Calhoun here for $5. If you're Catholic,
01:26:56.200
you cannot support liberalism slash Americanism. Read the papal bull of Pius the ninth and Leo the 13th.
01:27:02.520
Uh, I'll have to leave that one to you. Seamus, uh, Kim, Kim, let's not believe you.
01:27:07.180
Well, I'm not Catholic, so I can't help you on that. Yeah. I'll have to refresh myself on those,
01:27:11.720
but there's definitely a lot that the popes wrote, um, in the, the, um, industrial era
01:27:17.080
through the 18th or I'm sorry, through the 19th and 20th century that do touch on the evils of
01:27:22.020
unmitigated, unrestrained capitalism. And part of it is that it plays into this idea that all we have
01:27:27.480
to do is rearrange material reality until we bring about a utopia. That's a lot of what capitalism
01:27:32.800
says. That's a lot of what market thinking says that is thoroughly critiqued. And also
01:27:36.460
what Catholic thinkers have said, uh, writing in response to the industrial revolution is that
01:27:41.980
the excesses of capitalism, uh, will invariably lead to communism. That's something Marx was
01:27:47.080
actually right about. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, he was, he was certainly right that, uh,
01:27:54.400
that there are, there are certainly issues that will lead to particular outcomes. I don't know if
01:27:59.700
he was right that that will never leave to communism just because all of the communist
01:28:03.620
revolutions happened in poor places. But no, no, that is the thing. Marx was wrong about how it was
01:28:09.000
going to happen. Marx thought that capitalism was going to crash under its own weight and there was no
01:28:12.260
way people could be as productive as we are today or that we could amass as much wealth as we have
01:28:15.680
today. And so wealth would just become so centralized that everyone would become poor and then they would
01:28:19.260
revolt. That didn't happen. But what did happen was people got rich and lazy and uncaring enough
01:28:25.500
to allow their culture to become entirely subverted. Um, and that's what happens, right? The, the,
01:28:30.580
the population begins to only conceive of things in material terms. And once you do that, Marxism is
01:28:34.800
just a step away. Yeah. Uh, weak men make strong or make hard times. Yeah. All right. And Darth
01:28:40.680
Kilhune here again for $2. Uh, Catholic affirms truth. Liberalism denies truth. Based, based, based,
01:28:48.400
based. All right, guys. Well, I think we made it through all of our super chats again. I want to
01:28:53.420
thank Seamus so much for coming on a pleasure. Absolutely. To talk to you, sir. Yeah, this has
01:28:58.460
been fantastic, man. I'd love to do this again at any time. I would also love to have you back on my
01:29:02.260
podcast whenever you're interested. Absolutely. No. And everybody again, make sure that you're
01:29:06.540
checking out all of Seamus's work. I'm sure you are ER, but just in case you aren't, make sure you
01:29:10.540
get over there, watch freedom tunes, uh, check out the podcast on rumble. Make sure that you're
01:29:15.500
looking at all that. And of course, guys, if this is your first time on this channel, make sure that
01:29:19.440
you are subscribing. And if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that you go
01:29:23.760
ahead and go to your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show. When you do
01:29:28.500
make sure that you leave a rating or review that helps with all the algorithm magic. All right,
01:29:33.040
everybody. Thank you for coming by. Had a lot of great questions, a great crowd today,
01:29:36.440
really appreciate it, really appreciate Seamus. And as always, we'll talk to you next time.