The Auron MacIntyre Show - August 29, 2025


Everything You Know About the Separation of Church and State Is Wrong ｜ Guest： Timon Cline ｜ 8⧸29⧸25


Episode Stats

Length

57 minutes

Words per Minute

190.53485

Word Count

10,983

Sentence Count

485


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.840 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great
00:00:04.460 stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy. Before we get started,
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00:01:03.780 All right, guys, we have dove into the history behind the 14th Amendment and the incorporation
00:01:11.240 doctrine a couple times on the show. My audience is more familiar with this than most, but it's a
00:01:17.400 huge issue, one that continues to affect America's civil fabric to this day. And it's something that
00:01:23.740 really needs to be addressed at every level, especially obviously at the legal level. Joining
00:01:28.040 me today is Tymon Klein. He is the editor-in-chief over at American Reformer, and he is himself
00:01:33.420 a lawyer. He just submitted a paper along with a couple other authors about the incorporation
00:01:38.860 doctrine to the Harvard Law Review and why it needs to change. Tymon, thank you so much for coming
00:01:44.840 on, man. Tymon Klein. Yeah, thanks for having me, Oren. Big fan of the show and glad you've
00:01:49.400 made your listeners more informed than most audiences on this. So it'll make our conversation
00:01:55.340 a little easier that they're already up to speed on many of the underlying issues here.
00:02:00.520 Yeah, we've done this with Ryan Turnipseed, a guy who's really great on history, and I love
00:02:05.340 talking to him about this issue. But it's nice to get the legal angle as well, of course,
00:02:09.600 because this is ultimately an issue of law that needs to be addressed, and you're someone who is
00:02:14.200 an expert in this area. So just for those who might have not seen those previous episodes,
00:02:19.560 don't know kind of the background here, can we just give a quick review? I mean, was the United
00:02:24.700 States always just this extremely secular society? Was it founded on the principles of James Lindsay,
00:02:30.820 1990 liberalism? Or was there a different history that perhaps is a little truer for those who are
00:02:36.060 unfamiliar with the idea of separation of church and state being a rather new introduction?
00:02:42.080 That's right. Yeah, it was slightly different than what James Lindsay imagines, only slightly,
00:02:47.300 we should say, than the 1990s, in the 1790s. But that's right. I mean, so, you know, I've even,
00:02:55.920 I've written on this elsewhere before as well, and we have this some in our essay, and it really is,
00:03:00.740 in many ways, an essay. We have lots, you know, there's a political point to this,
00:03:04.720 even as we're delving into sort of establishment clause jurisprudence and all that. You know,
00:03:11.180 even Thomas Jefferson, you can find this in a lot of his private correspondence, his second
00:03:16.880 inaugural address, and it's even evident from his famous letter to the Danbury Baptist, right,
00:03:21.560 which has the wall of separation language in it. Even Jefferson didn't think it worked at the time
00:03:27.420 the way it does today, right? So he was very clear that what the establishment clause in the First
00:03:33.500 Amendment is doing, and there's only really one clause, as any grammarian will tell you,
00:03:37.860 there's not two clauses, but we've set it up this way. You know, liberalism is a doctrine of
00:03:42.440 separations in many ways, and we've even separated the clauses that are supposed to flow together.
00:03:47.740 But he's very clear that at the state, what the First Amendment is doing is protecting state
00:03:52.520 activity, right? And states had pretty much freedom to do whatever they wanted in terms of their
00:03:58.920 religious and moral policy. This is part of their state police powers, which they would attest they
00:04:04.440 inherited through their royal charters. And this is why the Constitution makes reference to it in the
00:04:09.860 10th Amendment as well, right? He's very clear that the federal government is not supposed to impose
00:04:14.660 itself on that religious activity. And many of those states, from our perspective, all of them had
00:04:20.040 elements of establishment, but many of them had sort of full-throated, self-expressed establishments.
00:04:26.280 You can look at somewhere like Massachusetts that provided through public maintenance, right? So
00:04:32.280 tax monies for Protestant ministers, it specifies this in the Declaration of Rights. You have religious
00:04:38.420 tests for offices in every state, even the late comers like Tennessee in 1791, which makes it clear
00:04:45.020 they're not going to have an established religion, still have a test for office that precludes atheism,
00:04:50.120 right? So from the perspective of liberals today, this would be an establishment clause violation,
00:04:55.140 right? But you have South Carolina declares itself Protestant. In New Jersey, one of my favorite
00:05:02.280 constitutions for this point, their 1776 constitution has a great article on religious liberty and
00:05:09.400 tolerance, right? No one's going to be sort of persecuted. We're not going to let vigilante
00:05:14.360 justice roam around and persecute people for the religion. The very next article says only Protestants
00:05:20.140 are going to hold office, right? So these things go together for them. This is not a contradiction to them.
00:05:25.960 This is the way all this works. So what you can describe the founding as, you know, all these states
00:05:30.780 have over 100 years of their own particular history at this point, right? And the question is how to hold
00:05:36.420 them together. The ratification debates make it very clear that because of anti-federalist, you know,
00:05:42.280 wrongly named probably, but anti-federalist concerns about national uniformity on all levels, right?
00:05:47.900 It's not just the religion question. They're concerned that a centralized national legislature
00:05:53.100 can't possibly legislate for this many people with this many particulars in their ways of life.
00:06:00.400 And so on the religion question in particular, if there was a sort of, if there had not been an
00:06:05.640 establishment clause working the way it did at the time, there would not have been ratification,
00:06:10.300 right? People were not going to have a sort of uniform religious policy imposed upon them,
00:06:14.780 pro or, or anti-religious, right? This was supposed to be something left to them so that they could
00:06:19.700 carry on their sort of way of life that was going to undergird this, you know, this, this form of a
00:06:26.200 republic. So this is, this is how it worked for a very long time. And as I said, even people like
00:06:30.960 Jefferson, John Adams has similar comments where he's like the, he doesn't want Congress, the first
00:06:36.100 word of the first amendment to be involved in religious policy, wants to leave that to the states and
00:06:40.740 they can do whatever they want, right? They can have these strong establishments, they can have
00:06:44.360 weaker ones. And as I always say, establishment is not one thing. It's like a bundle of sticks,
00:06:50.080 right? You can have less sort of like property rights, you can have less or more, it's still
00:06:53.860 establishment, but there's not just one mode of it. So you have this sort of, you know, these
00:06:58.900 laboratories, these experimentations based on their history and populations. Some places are more
00:07:04.360 homogenous than others. But everyone across the Eastern seaboard is governed by a general sort of
00:07:10.380 ecumenical Protestantism with various denominational forms and preferences in each state. And again,
00:07:16.440 the establishment clause was no incursion upon this. Obviously it was meant to be in happy sort
00:07:23.220 of agreement with it. And this is why you have very, very few first amendment cases all the way
00:07:27.860 through the 19th century. It's simply not an issue that's touched upon until the late 19th century.
00:07:32.680 And really our doctrine of religious liberty and our first amendment jurisprudence is a post-war
00:07:37.920 product that has, uh, that has been developed since then.
00:07:42.140 So when people are talking about the American tradition and the American value of a government
00:07:49.060 that doesn't choose religions, doesn't promote religions, doesn't require religious tests,
00:07:53.820 doesn't, uh, you know, support a particular religion. In fact, actually none of that is the
00:07:59.040 American tradition and early America is a place of blasphemy laws and, you know,
00:08:03.700 blasphemy laws, Sabbath laws, the whole thing, right? All these things would be, um, the,
00:08:09.060 the American tradition is one where these are, are locally, we might say decided, right? That it's
00:08:13.840 just a question of, of sort of, uh, distribution of labor or jurisdiction, right? It's not that these
00:08:19.460 things were wiped away and, and that the American experiment is supposed to be this a-religious,
00:08:23.820 you know, secular utopia. Um, it simply was a question of forming the proper mode of government
00:08:29.820 for this particular people, you know, basic sort of Montesquieu advice on how you, you dictate these
00:08:34.300 things, um, for the sake of having any kind of union. I think Max Edling rightly describes the,
00:08:39.880 the federal constitution as, uh, the form of an international treaty. I do think that's what it
00:08:44.640 mimics and that's how it essentially functions. And you have many comments in the, uh, late 18th
00:08:49.740 century that these are, these are all little republics, right? These are little nations. Um,
00:08:54.280 and that's how they're going to relate to one another. Um, so, so, you know, external policy,
00:09:00.200 things that concern all of them are, are something that the federal government can,
00:09:03.940 can sort of, uh, handle for the most part, but these domestic and internal questions,
00:09:08.760 health, safety, morals, religion are things that, uh, are almost entirely left to the states,
00:09:14.000 right? Unless there's some kind of irresolvable conflict, uh, between over state lines. Um,
00:09:19.360 and this function very well, I think it was a great thing to try. I think that sort of federalism,
00:09:23.220 um, is, is something that's a good thing. What we've had in the post-war period though,
00:09:28.700 is actually, uh, post incorporation, which is what Everson, the 1947 case does and incorporates
00:09:35.340 the establishment clause, the free, the free exercise clause have been incorporated seven years
00:09:39.380 prior. Since then, what you've done is taken a mecca, a constitutional mechanism meant to protect
00:09:45.640 the religious diversity across the states. And you've, uh, which was developed out of fear of
00:09:51.960 uniformity. And what you've done is enacted national uniformity, um, of a sort of, you know,
00:09:58.440 public atheism and secularism. So it's doing the, the diametrical opposite of what it's supposed to,
00:10:03.920 uh, supposed to have done. And, uh, this is, this is the effect of it at this place. So not only have
00:10:09.120 at this, at this date, you've removed not only state sort of purview of religious questions,
00:10:14.560 but which would have been a violation of the establishment clauses intent. Um, but you've
00:10:20.220 also used it, weaponized it to enact a sort of uniformity. As we know, this, uh, liberalism likes
00:10:25.660 to hide behind a veneer of neutrality and sort of disinterested, uh, you know, posture, salutary
00:10:32.040 neglect of these things. But in fact, uh, it can't escape the laws of politics and there's always a
00:10:37.540 sort of governing orthodoxy that's imposed. Uh, in fact, as I've said, the, you know, the fear
00:10:42.580 mongering over theocracy is, is, uh, is just that it's fear mongering. Theocracy is, you know,
00:10:48.300 by definition rule by a priesthood. And actually I think liberal modernity, uh, as we've experienced
00:10:53.700 it in since the forties is the closest anyone's ever really had to a theocracy, the rule by priests,
00:10:59.520 uh, just cause they don't wear collars and their cathedrals or brutalist architecture doesn't mean
00:11:04.300 it's not a priesthood. And you had a, you had a Florida case not too long ago responding to some
00:11:09.160 things that the DeSantis administration was doing with education at the time that declared, you know,
00:11:13.260 the professoriate as the priests of our sacred democracy, right? This is actually how they
00:11:18.220 conceive of themselves. Um, it's actually what they're doing. So we do have a national religion
00:11:21.960 and this was always thought to be, uh, problematic, uh, by the, by the founders and, um, also just
00:11:29.460 unworkable, perhaps more importantly, unworkable when you have, uh, this big of a country
00:11:34.280 which is only expanded. Right. So, so basically all the stuff that people describe as, you know,
00:11:40.420 Christian nationalism or scary Christo fascism, uh, is actually just what the founders believed
00:11:46.400 and is the actual American tradition. And what people are spouting now is an entirely different
00:11:51.440 faith that seems to more or less come to power after the second world war. Yeah. I mean, what we
00:11:56.940 have now is a complete aberration. I mean, there's, there's a good, uh, book by John Fia,
00:12:01.120 uh, historian who just, you know, he's no fan of Christian nationalism. You can read his columns
00:12:06.120 at the Atlantic and these places. Um, but just says that up through the 19th century, everyone
00:12:10.840 would have without question, thoughtlessly, uh, affirmed that we're a Christian nation. They were
00:12:16.400 Christian nationalists. Right. And, and, and that it's a good thing, or perhaps just at least a
00:12:20.660 natural thing. This is what we are. Um, what is bizarre, historically bizarre is what we've,
00:12:27.340 we've tried to say since the 1940s and 1950s about ourselves, uh, which is to the real experiment is
00:12:34.500 trying to experiment with irreligion or, uh, perhaps this sort of, uh, you know, fake pluralism,
00:12:42.020 uh, which is also unworkable and a, and a cover for many other things. Um, and it's led, I think,
00:12:47.360 to, um, the, the, the inattention to sort of basic questions of political science, which is like,
00:12:53.340 what, how many ways of life can you mix together, uh, when they're, when they're opposed to one
00:12:58.020 another or so radically different is actually what's led to the regionalization or balkanization
00:13:02.720 that you see people like at the Atlanta, you know, David French or Ann Applebaum or whomever,
00:13:07.520 uh, you know, freaking out about on a regular basis. This is actually what's created it.
00:13:11.800 And the original mechanisms, constitutional mechanisms were meant to preclude that by being
00:13:17.200 attentive to regional and state-based, uh, and even locally based differences that you could
00:13:23.000 allow to, uh, you know, coexist by not introducing a sort of uniformity over them,
00:13:28.720 allow them to have self-determination and self-governance at that, at that level. Um,
00:13:33.340 so it's actually the, uh, sort of liberal aversion to conflict and violence. You know,
00:13:39.420 most of liberalism is about, uh, conflict avoidance, um, in the, in the post-war period. It's,
00:13:46.340 it's this sort of approach that actually requires a uniformity that is, that is itself violent to
00:13:52.360 communities and violent to, uh, to the original constitutional order.
00:13:57.680 So let's get into the actual legal development. So prior to the idea of incorporation, uh, the,
00:14:06.840 uh, the, uh, bill of rights applied only to the federal government, to the national government.
00:14:12.920 It did not apply to the states, which most people somehow still do not know to this day that the
00:14:18.280 first amendment, all these amendments did not restrict any state government or any of these
00:14:22.440 other interactions. It was only the national government. What spurs the shift from the, uh,
00:14:29.860 you know, the, the, the first 10 amendments being something that are only restricting the national
00:14:34.900 government to be something that now needs to be directly applied to the states.
00:14:38.980 Yeah. Well, of course the, the context of, of the 14th amendment is, is the civil war, right? We,
00:14:43.480 we all sort of know this. What's, what's most interesting for our purposes is, um, at least
00:14:49.300 for the first, you know, now you have sort of jurisprudential arguments around every single
00:14:54.020 amendment of whether it's possible to incorporate it, whether it was intended to be incorporated by
00:14:58.080 the drafters and ratifiers of the 14th amendment and those debates, you know, you can, you sort of
00:15:02.480 break them down to each one for the, for the first amendment. What's interesting is that the same
00:15:06.880 people who ratified the 14th amendment were involved in the debates over the Blaine amendments,
00:15:11.620 right? And these are often cited, uh, in this context as a, as a reason for incorporation,
00:15:17.060 right? Because the Blaine amendments sort of, um, are, are, you know, anti-Roman Catholic and,
00:15:22.580 uh, have to do with public schools and these things. Um, what the Blaine amendments actually
00:15:27.440 demonstrate is that the, the first amendment was not intended to be incorporated by the 14th
00:15:32.100 amendment. Even if you wanted to argue that all the rest of them were supposed to be, I think it's a
00:15:35.360 bad argument, but let's say that that was the case because that mechanism was immediately
00:15:39.740 available to them and they never availed themselves of it, right? They had to come up with other
00:15:44.100 amendments to address this problem, right? To sort of, uh, make, uh, your, your schools non-sectarian,
00:15:50.700 which was really to say, we need to keep them default Protestant and not let, you know, the
00:15:55.520 Vulgate be taught or, or whatever else, uh, in schools. And so that, I mean, we put this in our,
00:16:01.940 in our essay, the Blaine amendments would on first sort of brush would seem to dismantle our,
00:16:07.760 our theory on this, but they actually, it actually affirms it, right? That these things were not
00:16:11.740 thought to be, uh, either necessary to incorporate or capable of being incorporated. And that's
00:16:17.000 probably, uh, almost certainly because the people, even of the mid to late 19th century understood,
00:16:22.200 uh, the original purpose of them. It had not dawned on them that you could possibly, uh, reverse the,
00:16:27.480 the, the purpose of the first amendment to create something new entirely. I mean, this is one of
00:16:31.840 those, as I think many people rightly point out the, uh, post-Civil War period is a, uh, is a change.
00:16:39.860 You, you should rightly label it a new Republic. Many things are changed, right? And this is certainly
00:16:44.180 not the only one, but this is one of them that you can, um, it's not just a new application. It's
00:16:49.920 a total reversal of, in this regard, what the constitutional order was meant to do. Therefore,
00:16:55.260 you have something entirely new. And these things, the 20th century is really about working all of this
00:17:00.540 out and applying it, uh, in real time. Um, because as we should note in the, by the time we get to
00:17:06.260 1947, there are no establishments in States, right? There's nothing to deal with. Uh, but it's, uh,
00:17:12.560 deemed important by Justice Hugo Black and the rest of the court to, uh, you know, apply and go ahead
00:17:18.680 and incorporate the first amendment, uh, so that we can, we can do some other things. So clearly the
00:17:23.700 impetus was different than simply saying, um, look, we don't think it's fair. You know, you had
00:17:28.740 arguments like this at the time and say, Massachusetts of, of religious dissenters,
00:17:32.720 still Protestants, but of other denominations saying, we don't want to, uh, pay for ministers
00:17:38.080 that aren't ours, right? That's a basic sort of objection at the time. Um, hence why they allowed
00:17:43.520 some diversity of allocation to different, different ministers, but that's not, that's not
00:17:48.020 what's going on by the time you get to the 1940s, right? This is not the issue. Um, so it's, uh,
00:17:54.280 all that to say the night, you know, the 14th amendment, um, has been, has produced many
00:17:59.760 confusions, many ills, um, through this process of incorporation and nowhere, I think more so than
00:18:06.740 on the religious question, because it's through this jurisprudence, you know, the legal, the legal,
00:18:11.240 uh, developments are very important to understand, but really what the court almost always does with
00:18:16.980 sort of watershed moments like this, you can point to Obergefell or, or whatever you'd like
00:18:20.740 is inform the public imagination of the public discourse. And all of a sudden it's in the
00:18:24.900 bloodstream. So, I mean, I maintain that culture really is downstream of law in, in many ways.
00:18:30.340 Once the magisterium weighs in, people, uh, discover new sort of uses and applications for
00:18:36.380 its dicta that, uh, perhaps weren't even intended. So how has this kind of mutated over the years?
00:18:43.960 We know that the, the intention was to impose this uniformity, uh, and, uh, that has certainly,
00:18:50.300 uh, happened to some degree. Uh, but it, it seems to have opened up a full blown jihad, uh, over kind
00:18:57.520 of, uh, Christianity in the public square, uh, other religions, not so much, uh, you know, we see very
00:19:02.600 few lawsuits brought against Hinduism or Judaism or Islam being practiced, uh, anywhere. Uh, but
00:19:09.380 ultimately this has not just impacted, you know, the establishment of state religions, this has
00:19:15.360 become a witch hunt on pretty much every level for the existence of Christianity and any organization,
00:19:20.840 uh, underpinning basically any, any structure of our society.
00:19:25.500 Yeah, it's, uh, you know, so I would say it's, it's enacted a public atheism, but the, the atheism is,
00:19:31.440 um, not equally concerned with all forms of theism, we might say. Uh, perhaps this is somewhat
00:19:38.940 natural if religion or if, uh, Christianity is the predominant and default religion, it's going to be
00:19:45.040 the one that comes under fire the most because most ingrained in public expression and public
00:19:49.440 institutions. Um, so this is where the war is going to be waged. And of course the, the people of
00:19:54.760 the persuasion that the court ends up articulating are already anti-Christian and, uh, you know, maybe
00:20:01.160 they think Islam, for example, is equally irrational, but in the forties and fifties, it's not around
00:20:06.180 either. Right. And up through the sixties, same, same kind of dynamics. It's not, uh, but, but this
00:20:11.440 has certainly opened the, the floodgates for other religions to gain a foothold. Um, and liberals are,
00:20:17.620 uh, you know, relatively unconcerned with, uh, these other religions that are more, should be more
00:20:25.800 offensive to their, their disposition and their proclivities, but for some reason it's not. So there's
00:20:30.800 an overarching, there's a different overarching narrative that that's informing them or animating
00:20:35.060 them, but it's, um, you know, in, in Everson in particular, what's, what's interesting, why it's
00:20:41.140 an interesting case is it's a pretty innocuous case. It's about basically public provisions for
00:20:46.980 busing to students, voucher system for, for busing, um, that applied to everybody. Right. So the fact
00:20:53.760 that in this case, predominantly Catholics in New Jersey were using this for their parochial
00:20:59.120 schools, uh, the court even decided was not, was not a problem. This is a sort of neutral law.
00:21:04.700 Everyone can benefit from it. Um, so for the particular case in controversy, no further
00:21:10.020 action was required, right? This is solved. It's not a violation of anything, but justice black
00:21:15.720 writing for the majority decides, no, it's time to go ahead and articulate what we think the
00:21:19.740 establishment clause does anyway. Um, and the courts usually do this when they're sort of wish
00:21:24.720 casting, right? They're signaling what the kind of case we really want you to bring. So we can
00:21:28.940 make this definitive. So we're going to, you know, through our dicta, tell you, um, what
00:21:33.540 the establishment clause means, even though it wasn't violated here, we have to say, right?
00:21:38.240 So this is where all of a sudden the establishment clause means that both state and federal governments,
00:21:43.400 um, lack any and all competency to, uh, determine anything about religion whatsoever. Right.
00:21:50.340 There's the, the, this competency is completely gone. Um, and that, you know, as, as you're
00:21:56.620 pointing out means they certainly can't decide later as, as things develop for various reasons,
00:22:02.620 whether, uh, certain religions are incongruent with the American way of life. Right. So you've
00:22:07.540 sort of taken that tool completely out of the toolbox for any government. Um, they claim this
00:22:13.340 is of course, original intent and all, and all of this. Um, and the rest of the 20th century
00:22:18.240 after, uh, Everson is really just about applying this to various things, especially in, you'll
00:22:24.000 see if you look up, you know, just establishment clause cases, sort of the string citation of
00:22:28.180 South, most of them have to do with education, right? Most of them are, are in the public school
00:22:33.540 arena. You have some that are dealing with, uh, you know, in 61, they decide Maryland's very
00:22:39.620 bland, theistic oath of office is unconstitutional. Um, you know, they just, there's other cases dealing
00:22:46.220 with public displays of, you know, crosses or the 10 commandments or what have you, but
00:22:50.740 most of them are really about what are we doing with the kids, right? How are we, how
00:22:55.980 are we indoctrinating them? So the left recognizes way earlier than the right does, or at least
00:23:01.100 the, the mainstream right does that this is really all about indoctrination and you're
00:23:05.520 going to do one or the other at, uh, with your children. And so this becomes the battleground
00:23:10.200 only recently have people, have you seen people on the right start to kind of recognize
00:23:13.620 this. Uh, but it's very obviously that the right or the, the left knew this, uh, you
00:23:19.100 know, a hundred years before we did and acted accordingly. And so, you know, the, the case
00:23:23.900 immediately after Everson, the next year is about in Chicago public schools. Um, are you
00:23:30.520 allowed to have a voluntary sort of theology elective that requires parental consent? And
00:23:36.620 they had them for Protestants, Jews, and Catholics. And the court says, no, this is a clear
00:23:40.900 violation of the establishment clause. You can't, you know, educate your kids the way you want
00:23:45.580 to, uh, if it's going to be religious, you know, in this sort of liberalism has to have
00:23:49.780 a, a formalist view of what religion is. You know, you need the collar. You, we kind of
00:23:54.580 know when we see it, it has to be official. Um, these are the things that are bad that lead
00:23:59.040 to the horrors of the 20th century, not any other ideologies, right? It's, it has to be
00:24:03.880 these, these formal, these, you know, if you use rusty Reno's phrase, these strong gods,
00:24:08.260 right. You have to get rid of them. Um, so much of it again has to do, and, and I think
00:24:13.820 the founders recognize this, right. You can read Benjamin Rush and others on like, we've
00:24:18.340 got to indoctrinate our kids. You have to teach them, you know, your, your religion. Otherwise,
00:24:23.280 this, this falls apart. So the, the left and the, in the, uh, the progressives in the 20th
00:24:28.840 century sort of got on about this and got serious about it. And this is what has opened the floodgates
00:24:34.260 to many crazy things in our, in our schooling system. Yeah. I, I actually, my father was
00:24:40.600 the attorney for a school, uh, board. One of the few in, uh, in the country that was teaching,
00:24:46.500 uh, elective, uh, uh, biblical history class. Um, that became like a huge flashpoint is actually
00:24:53.220 15 minutes of fame because it became so controversial. Not, not that there was any religion being taught
00:24:58.440 not that it was required to be taught, but that you could elect perhaps maybe to go learn,
00:25:04.180 you know, something about the book that defined our entire culture and civilization that was
00:25:09.360 considered very, very edgy and, and, and revolutionary at that time. Uh, so, so if the
00:25:17.200 indoctrinate or in, if the, um, incorporation clause was suddenly reversed, if we, if we understood
00:25:24.660 that properly tomorrow, what would that practically look like? Like what, what, what would change with
00:25:30.460 the States? How would that be any different than what we have now? Yeah. And I should point out that
00:25:35.380 like, you know, there's been signals from the bench for, you know, since the eighties, I mean,
00:25:40.960 justice Rehnquist, everyone can go read, uh, some of his dissents and in various cases, um, and see,
00:25:47.540 you know, especially the, the, uh, Joffrey case from, from Rehnquist, his dissent in that,
00:25:51.700 that case, he's very clear, uh, has very clear and proper view of the history,
00:25:56.320 original interpretation, all these things and thinks it's, it's nuts. Um, if you, if you go back
00:26:01.440 to the, uh, Shemp and, um, one of the other cases that justice Potter Stewart wrote a dissent in,
00:26:08.180 he's even more explicit in what's happening. He's like, this is, this is, uh, the enactment of a sort
00:26:13.320 of national secularism. This is what's happening and saying that very early. Right. So, um, and justice
00:26:19.260 Thomas has sort of taken up the mantle in various Elk Grove case, others where he either in
00:26:24.340 concurrences or dissents where he said, we need to rethink the entire establishment clause, uh,
00:26:30.040 jurisprudence. And he, at least he thinks the, the free exercise clause can be incorporated,
00:26:34.620 but the establishment clause can't, he calls it a federalist or federalism, uh, amendment or clause
00:26:41.260 in the amendment, uh, meaning it only applied to the federal government. There's no way to sort of
00:26:46.220 apply it otherwise. So there's, there's appetite or there has been appetite at various points from
00:26:51.180 the court to consider this. Right. And it seems to be growing. Uh, you had the case just this year
00:26:56.060 back in May where the, uh, you know, a, an explicitly Roman Catholic charter school that was online in
00:27:03.540 Oklahoma. Um, you know, that case turned in, went up to the Supreme court after the Oklahoma Supreme
00:27:09.320 court, um, ruled that it was a violation of the establishment clause. And because of justice Barrett,
00:27:14.840 weirdly recusing herself, you know, we got no decision. We had a four, four gridlock with no
00:27:19.660 opinion and no record of who voted what. So we need other cases like this to challenge it. Right.
00:27:24.000 And clearly the, the court is willing to hear something like it. So this is not a, this is not
00:27:28.840 a pipe dream to at least reconsider, uh, what we've been doing for the past 75 years. Um, what it would
00:27:35.360 look like practically on the ground. You know, we have to recognize that the context, the religious
00:27:42.060 makeup, the ethnic makeup, all these things are not the same as they were in the late 18th century.
00:27:46.520 Right. Um, perhaps, uh, you know, one argument we make that this is, is that this is even more
00:27:53.520 necessary now than it was then from the, from the perspective of an 18th century person, they thought
00:27:59.380 their, their country was, um, almost irreconcilably diverse. Right. We think it's quaint now that it's,
00:28:06.860 you know, it's 95% Anglo-Protestantism, but they think it's maybe unworkable that you have
00:28:11.720 Quakers and Anabaptists and, you know, Anglicans, Tories, you know, uh, along with Congregationalists
00:28:19.020 and Presbyterians and Baptists all in one place. Right. This is just nuts to them. Um,
00:28:24.020 this has all only been compounded and maybe to an unworkable extent in itself, but this is,
00:28:28.620 if there's anything to do on this, it would be to, um, remove sort of federal attention,
00:28:34.300 federal purview over these issues. So that states similar to the abortion question, I mean,
00:28:38.720 this is where we start in our essays with the Dobbs decision that Dobbs did not just return the
00:28:44.780 abortion question to probably where it always should have been decided, which was at a state
00:28:48.500 level. Cause it's a moral question. It's a religious question for the, for the left. It's
00:28:52.620 a sort of leftist sacrament. Um, but, and same, same thing with this, what Dobbs potentially signals
00:28:59.040 is a return to these sort of contentious political issues that are moral and religious being decided
00:29:04.780 in their proper venue, which is, which allows for, um, a diversity of answers on that. California
00:29:10.700 and Minnesota are going to be very different than Tennessee and Florida, right? This is just
00:29:15.540 obvious and it's already the, the case. Um, so you're, you're, if you sign up for sort of overturning
00:29:21.920 the establishment clause jurisprudence as it stands to remove this federal uniformity,
00:29:27.240 or at least federal management by judges of your religious policy in your States,
00:29:31.160 uh, what you're also signing up for is the prospect that you will have States that are in,
00:29:36.880 have, you know, inhospitable to you, especially as a Christian, right? There's not going to be
00:29:41.680 places that are good for you to live. Um, you certainly, uh, you know, might not want to live
00:29:47.120 in places like Minneapolis or Dearborn if you're a Christian, right? Those, it's very obvious the
00:29:51.580 way those cities, uh, in those States would go in terms of their religious policy. Um, so that's
00:29:57.860 what you're signing up for is that in order to have your way of life potentially protected,
00:30:02.500 you have to allow for your next door neighbors to have an entirely different way of life in this
00:30:07.120 regard, um, and return your state relations to predominantly economic, we might say, rather than
00:30:13.500 cultural, moral, and religious agreement. Um, I think there are great arguments. Um, you know,
00:30:19.380 if you're a Michigander or a Minnesotan or whatever, there's great arguments, uh, for yourself
00:30:24.620 at the state level of why particular religious establishments, if we're going to call them that
00:30:30.120 would be completely incongruent with, uh, your own history, texts, and tradition in those places,
00:30:35.000 right? Those arguments would be at your disposal. I think they're good ones. Um, but at the, in terms
00:30:40.420 of the federal landscape, the national landscape, you would have to accept that there can be a
00:30:45.900 diversity of ways of life, uh, religiously in each of these States. And that would include their
00:30:50.360 education and, and what their public displays are. Uh, you know, some States might allow the
00:30:55.680 Hindu statue to be, but that's already happening, right? We already have this. Um, this would,
00:31:00.800 if for Christians would level the playing field in a way, because the only check on Christians doing
00:31:06.220 this is the federal government and everyone else is sort of allowed to continue a pace in their
00:31:10.700 predominance and get the upper hand. So this, uh, I think would allow you to at least contest those
00:31:15.720 things in a reasonable way. And it would, um, you know, perhaps just like abortion, it doesn't go
00:31:21.640 exactly the way you want it to across the mainly because you're unprepared for those state battles,
00:31:26.440 but it does, um, allow you the, the chance to do something different in your localities. And many
00:31:32.660 of the, the laws you mentioned earlier, sort of obscenity laws in these things were previously
00:31:37.840 municipal questions, right? And that's a much more manageable sort of battleground for people,
00:31:43.400 uh, than going to the Supreme court every time you want to kneel and pray on a football field.
00:31:48.400 Right. And many of the places in America, especially in the Bible belt, um, you know,
00:31:53.980 never really complied with these anyway, right? These, these, uh, this precedent anyway, they still
00:31:59.320 kept having their prayer and Bibles and public schools after they were technically outlawed. But
00:32:04.020 what those precedents did is for liberal areas, uh, especially in the North allowed them to get rid of
00:32:10.240 it. Right. Um, and that happened fair, fairly early as well. So, and maybe, and maybe specifically
00:32:16.200 the prayer cases, as some have argued, I think Stephen Smith's argued this had the greatest
00:32:20.600 cultural effect in this way. It was those cases. Once it got to that point where you're, you're no
00:32:25.640 longer allowed to have a moment of silence in school, cause you might pray, you're no longer
00:32:29.640 allowed to have clergy or convocations, you know, all these sorts of graduations, all these sorts of
00:32:34.280 things, uh, were like the definitive cases, uh, in their, in those applications. So it allows you to,
00:32:41.320 um, to escape, you know, this sort of stranglehold that the left is at, what they do is produce
00:32:46.560 precedent in, in jurisdictions that are favorable to them and then gain federal or national, um,
00:32:54.200 you know, stamp of approval so that now they can weaponize them into any location they move into
00:32:59.140 in mass. Right. And that's, it's a great strategy. So what you do is sort of take that bullet out of the
00:33:03.660 chamber and allow yourself to, uh, to form different things.
00:33:08.160 So there's a, there's a couple of complications with that. And of course I, I agree with a lot of
00:33:13.740 what you're saying. I, I agree that ultimately, uh, the incorporation doctrine as it's currently
00:33:18.640 understood is, is just a disaster and that we need, you know, to return, uh, you know, uh, a good degree
00:33:25.260 of, of decision-making when it comes to these things, to the States, that would all be fantastic.
00:33:29.760 But just practically, I think we can probably see a pattern here that the need of uniformity is a
00:33:37.840 needed empire. And, you know, from the, from the 14th amendment, basically repealing the 10th
00:33:42.480 amendment after the North conquers the South, then, you know, after the United States conquers the
00:33:47.440 world and needs to unify its empire, he has a shared culture post-war, it needs to eliminate
00:33:53.020 these particulars across the rest of, of the contiguous 48. And so we see over and over again
00:34:00.140 that, well, uh, yes, technically law is what gets this done. And I'm with you that, you know,
00:34:05.220 culture is downstream from power, uh, and, and law is a central part of that. Ultimately, these things
00:34:10.780 are necessary to operate the country in that way. You, you can't, you can't be a unified empire.
00:34:17.240 If States can leave, you can't be a unified empire. States can decide when and where they want to,
00:34:22.440 uh, you know, uh, establish churches or make these different rules. And so, um, even if you
00:34:27.700 could make this argument and it's successfully, and I think you have, won't the problem ultimately be
00:34:33.900 that implementing what you're talking about is akin to a revolution, like basically an armed
00:34:40.080 revolution, because not only are you creating a scenario that is radically different, right? Like
00:34:44.540 people are going to lose their minds. If people in Alabama start establishing formal churches and,
00:34:49.700 and, and passing blasphemy laws. But also, as you pointed out, we now have a population that is so
00:34:55.740 diverse that it can only be governed by empire. You have a situation where if you, if we implement
00:35:01.500 the level of freedom, we're talking about for the different States, autonomy for the different
00:35:05.060 States, you're going to have Sharia law in, in, in Minnesota before you have any kind of Christian
00:35:10.100 establishment. And so part of what allowed for the religious liberty inside the United
00:35:14.520 States was that it was all going to basically be Protestant and Christian. Like it's still wildly
00:35:19.820 different as they saw it, but it's close enough to where it still can still kind of work together.
00:35:23.680 Now you're going to get full, full blown, you know, uh, Islamic, you know, republics in the middle
00:35:28.660 of, of the United States. So if we do actually go through with this, is it even possible to do this
00:35:34.820 without basically revolutionizing the entire system? And does it not open us up to some pretty
00:35:39.680 serious issues? Like the fact that Islamic or Hindu, uh, organizations are going to rise up in
00:35:45.720 these different States. Yeah, I think that, I think those are all fair points. Um, of, and from
00:35:51.060 our perspective, like this is certainly in this direction is uncharted territory, right? So we're,
00:35:56.000 we're arguing from original conditions and the original constitutional order. But as a, as I said,
00:36:03.680 you said, the conditions are totally different. And so it is uncharted territory to then, um, apply a
00:36:10.940 particular or political system and order and legal system to a people that are very different than
00:36:16.800 what, what it was originally formed for. Right. So this could potentially take adjustment. The, the,
00:36:22.160 you know, all I'll say for, on behalf of my coauthors is our, our argument in this sense is very narrow,
00:36:26.440 right? So I'll extend myself now having absolved them of anything else I might say. Um, we're simply
00:36:31.800 arguing for the, for this particular legal, legal change. Um, if, if you want to, uh, to, you know,
00:36:38.600 to stop somewhat abruptly, um, as we pointed out the, this, this is a one way ratchet. This is through,
00:36:45.060 this is a mechanism for de-Christianization and secularization of the public life. And so if you
00:36:50.580 want to stop that, you've got to get rid of this, this cudgel that they have. Right. Okay. So I think,
00:36:56.640 I mean, these, these are valid concerns and this, in a, in a sense would absolutely revolutionize
00:37:02.780 in this particular way. There's plenty of other components and pieces to the way we, uh, the
00:37:08.420 abysmal way we are governed now through the, the, this type of empire that you pointed out. Um, but
00:37:13.460 for this particular piece, it would totally revolutionize the post-war system, right? The
00:37:17.920 post-war bureaucracy is, is developed and how it's used to governing. Right. And, and, and we think this
00:37:23.640 would be a good thing. Of course, there's a sense in which you could say that the, that the United
00:37:27.540 States has always been a domestic empire. When you have this much diversity in this, in this
00:37:32.620 particular kind of system, it is, is by definition in a certain sense, imperial, you can't, it is not,
00:37:37.800 uh, you have maybe in a certain regard, a uniform administration, but as I, as we've already pointed
00:37:44.220 out, this is, uh, it's not as totalizing or as complete as, as other empires might be. So you're
00:37:49.460 governing loosely, uh, you could say you're governing almost in a Roman way, right? Like
00:37:53.440 Judea is allowed to have its particular form of religion, as long as it's, it's, uh, you
00:37:58.080 know, pays its dues to the, to the empire. And they saw this as, as necessary to govern
00:38:03.020 that bit, that many different types of people. You're going to have to let them, let them
00:38:06.360 have their own cult, uh, in this sense. So, um, that, that is in theory workable. The question
00:38:13.520 of whether it's, uh, what it would do to our particular, our particular empire is totally
00:38:19.100 up in the air because it's never worked. We've never tried to run it this direction, which
00:38:23.320 is sort of deconsolidation. Um, but I think if we, if we don't do it, the only possible
00:38:28.480 result is like, if it's not going to be Sharia, you know, use it as a metaphor in, in Minneapolis,
00:38:33.700 it's going to be Sharia in DC and, and nationally instituted, right? It's going to be, these things
00:38:39.400 are being currently permitted by the empire, by its administration, even in violation of
00:38:46.420 its own ostensible preferences and, and, uh, you know, values or whatever these things,
00:38:52.360 this is all being permitted. And so if there, if the, you know, the sovereign is declaring
00:38:56.900 the state of exception, which means it's going to go that direction. So if you want the best
00:39:01.040 way to sort of slow that down or to change it is to carve out sections, uh, for yourself
00:39:06.680 or to remove, uh, to sort of make it an impossibility that it would be at least by this mechanism
00:39:11.580 universally and uniformly enforced. I don't really see another way out of it. Uh, we can,
00:39:16.420 we can look at all the trends, uh, say, you know, the same thing happens with, uh, as, as many have
00:39:21.600 pointed out with our immigration policy, there's, there's almost no need, uh, for any kind of new
00:39:27.280 immigration law. Everything's there. The states of exception have been applied in a particular
00:39:31.700 direction to reform the country and replace people. Right. And this is, I think how, uh, first
00:39:37.360 amendment jurisprudence generally has, has been applied is to de-Christianize. It's not to sort
00:39:43.080 of actually create this neutral playing field or this, this real sort of pluralism. So I don't
00:39:48.420 really see another, um, in this regard mechanism of, of, uh, correction, even though it will certainly
00:39:54.560 unleash many complications that it wasn't really built for, right. This, the constitutional order
00:39:59.160 wasn't built for this type of diversity. Um, but you've got to sort of take the first step to see
00:40:04.680 what, what happens and what shakes out then, because the current trajectory is, is insufferable.
00:40:09.160 You certainly can't continue this way. Um, and you would have to, as I said, potentially sign up for
00:40:14.840 these kinds of, from our perspective, abysmal results in particular localities. Um, and people
00:40:20.280 will be encouraged to vote with their feet as they already kind of are, especially in the past five
00:40:25.960 years, right. This has already sort of happened. Um, and you'll have to, again, at least you'll have a
00:40:31.120 more manageable potentially, uh, playing field and a more manageable sort of, uh, you know,
00:40:37.540 be able to take sort of more manageable slices out of this thing, uh, as you go.
00:40:43.080 Yeah, I would say, I mean, I agree with all of that and I ultimately agree that this does have to
00:40:47.860 happen. Uh, but it is, if, if it could happen, which I'm kind of doubtful that it can with, like,
00:40:54.900 I literally think it would require a shooting war, but, but you know, for, for this kind of thing
00:40:59.180 to develop. Uh, but, but if it does, uh, if it does happen legally, uh, then it would just
00:41:05.100 accelerate. I think ultimately the, the balkanization of the United States due to the level of, of
00:41:09.980 diversity in some of these areas. Uh, and I, I suppose ultimately people would have to decide
00:41:15.800 whether they think that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I think you're right that as long as we
00:41:19.140 continue to stay under the current paradigm, we're just going to continue to trend in the same
00:41:23.320 direction. There's, there's no escape from this without having to go through it. Uh, and going
00:41:28.360 through it will, would be rather difficult, but also, you know, if, if you don't stop this, if we
00:41:33.180 don't, uh, you know, stop going down the road we're going on, then even if the government doesn't,
00:41:37.580 you know, technically change the official religion of the United States or anything, the demographics
00:41:43.520 will shift the, the, the, the groups that are allowed to practice, uh, their, uh, their collective
00:41:48.720 interests will dominate and these things will continue to move in their direction. Even, you
00:41:53.300 know, even if the forum formally, we're still, uh, theoretically, you know, talking about
00:41:57.560 religious neutrality or any of these things. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, um, you know, talk of
00:42:02.720 balkanization is, uh, again, it's different now, but we should, should note that like most of the
00:42:08.260 people fear-mongering over balkanization, um, would consider the, you know, the 1789 settlement to
00:42:14.400 be balkanized. You know, that's how it would appear to them because they're, they're comforted by it
00:42:18.580 because they're used to a certain type of uniformity that, uh, you know, projects a
00:42:24.400 unity that's never there under the surface, right? It's simply impossible to actually do,
00:42:29.200 but it's comforting to them. That's what they like. So they actually, they, you know, just like
00:42:32.220 on the, the initial religion question we were covering of like, what was the landscape at the
00:42:35.780 time they would froth at this, right? Uh, at 18th century life, they, they simply, they think
00:42:41.140 would think it's evil. A lot of evangelical Christians would think that, that this is radically
00:42:45.060 intolerant and bad and all these things. So some of the, the results, uh, even chaotic
00:42:50.940 kind of result, which would is, is how, cause your work trying to work in reverse is really
00:42:55.240 just getting you back to a place that approximates more what you actually began with. Again, we've
00:43:00.260 already noted the, the radical differences, but in, in some of these things that scare
00:43:04.040 people, it's like this, this simply was the, the mode of governing or intended mode of governing
00:43:08.780 at the beginning. And this is how it would be. They were worried about the same things,
00:43:12.480 right? There's just no possible, uh, settlement otherwise. Um, so I think it certainly would
00:43:18.140 stretch people, but, uh, none of it would actually be that historically novel from that perspective,
00:43:23.460 right? There, the other things that we've introduced since the 20th century, um, as well
00:43:27.840 in, in concert with this are, uh, genuinely scary, but those things are scary, whether, uh, we
00:43:34.180 introduced this, this sort of correction or not they're, they're happening anyway. So I really
00:43:38.200 don't see it as, um, as, uh, making any things worse. All it does is gives you the opportunity
00:43:43.340 to make some things better. Um, I think it's those, even those results, we could say sort
00:43:48.840 of violent balkanization or whatever we're gonna say are coming one way or the other, right?
00:43:53.080 So this, this potentially has a salutary effect, a sort of calming effect. If you at least give
00:43:57.400 people the prospect of self-determination as communities in this way, if you continue to deny
00:44:03.400 that to them and the one way ratchets becoming more apparent, um, it's going to explode more
00:44:08.600 violently, I think, than it would otherwise. If you, this is, you know, this is, I don't agree
00:44:12.640 with, um, you know, I'm not an originalist myself and I don't, even though I appreciate
00:44:16.780 just Scalia, but this is one of his, you know, uh, valid points is like, if you, if you continue
00:44:22.320 to introduce this uniformity with the stroke of a pen by the court, um, it it's going to make
00:44:28.920 things hotter. Every court case, every election at the federal level is going to mean way more
00:44:34.880 than it should and be more, and the results will become less acceptable. If you allow, um,
00:44:40.500 you know, this can be taken too far, but sort of, if you allow the losers, the prospect of regrouping
00:44:44.900 and maybe winning, it allows people to accept defeat more easily. Um, and last thing I'll say
00:44:49.960 is just, you know, whether this happens or not, um, you're going to have the, uh, sort of,
00:44:56.980 you know, fleeing from places like Minneapolis anyway, um, because of what's happening there.
00:45:02.520 And there's nothing built into the system currently as it stands that can check that
00:45:06.360 it is going to happen. Um, so whether you remove the establishment clause or not that, you know,
00:45:11.820 Minneapolis is, is fallen, right. It's not being applied to them anyway. So it's like,
00:45:16.420 there's nothing to do there. All we're saying is how about, you know, Christians, um, and people
00:45:22.120 that would like to live in culturally Christian societies have a chance to form their laws,
00:45:27.820 their customs, their norms in a similar way. And this is the impediment to that. Um, I don't think,
00:45:33.720 you know, given, given the state or sort of dynamics currently in the country, you're ever going to
00:45:38.440 have, uh, you know, 17th century new England back. That's not going to happen, but what you could have
00:45:44.560 is, is, uh, you know, if you want your theology elective in your public schools, you can have it,
00:45:48.900 right. You can do these sort of, sort of things and, um, um, apply or maybe recover a form of
00:45:55.860 toleration that may, that is still able to maintain a moral and religious center, which was the whole
00:46:01.360 idea that holds things together, um, rather than just completely removing that, that essential glue
00:46:07.300 from your social political life. Yeah. As is pretty much the case with everything at this point,
00:46:12.540 it's a matter of knowing what time it is. Radical action now will save more radical action down the
00:46:18.400 road. Uh, but you'd have to have the, uh, the foresight and the political will to, uh, to take,
00:46:24.060 to take a strong action. Yeah. You have to recognize, uh, for me, Machiavellian, the necessity
00:46:28.460 of the, the future potential problem. Right. So, uh, the, the prudence is in the way that he'd
00:46:34.760 describe it that. So if, if, uh, again, it's all, everything is going to seem increasingly going
00:46:40.080 forward is going to seem radical and crazy. This is the moderate option, just like current, uh,
00:46:45.680 immigration policy is the moderate option, right? So the, you know, ignore the fear mongering.
00:46:50.780 What's actually being avoided is something that no one wants, um, which, which would be radical sort
00:46:56.640 of, uh, you know, violent explosion. Uh, what we're looking for solutions that, uh, actually maintain
00:47:03.500 some of what we have left and, uh, do it relatively peacefully. Well, uh, we have a few questions from the
00:47:10.840 people over here. Is there anything that you want to cover that we didn't get to before we check out,
00:47:15.460 uh, what they're asking? No, I think, I mean, I think broad strokes, we covered it. It's a,
00:47:20.480 it's a long essay, but, uh, and we cover, you know, in, in depth things about, uh, that we've hit on,
00:47:26.320 you know, early, early American life or early constitutional interpretation from all of your
00:47:31.480 household name founders, you know, you have to get those in there, um, as well as others that don't
00:47:36.280 know it. And then just basics of, you would, you know, we should say like reasonable political
00:47:42.060 science and how you approach these, these things, uh, contrary to the, uh, the truisms of modern
00:47:48.220 liberalism that, that are everyone's indoctrinated. And so we're trying to, you know, we try to explain
00:47:52.940 it and chart the course in various ways, according to various, uh, you'd say dynamics or elements that
00:47:59.000 are in play on this. Uh, but ultimately, as I said, it's a, it's a narrow argument. This is a bad precedent
00:48:04.520 that's been extended, you know, um, into, into various parts of very intrusive into regulars of
00:48:11.400 ordinary life, which I think ordinary people would feel it being overturned the soonest and best,
00:48:16.960 because your, your debates over the 10 commandments at the courthouse is going to continue just in the
00:48:21.140 state venue, but regular people are not going to be, uh, bothered as much. Um, and as a, and we
00:48:27.800 cover it as a potential, uh, solution to the stuff we were discovering at the end there. So there's,
00:48:31.760 there's various angles to this. Ultimately it's one piece of the puzzle, right? There's many other
00:48:35.760 things that, that ail us at this point. So if people want to find the essay, uh, where can they
00:48:41.140 find that? And if they want to find your other work, where can they read you? Yeah. So most of my
00:48:45.260 other work, usually at American reformer, I write some for American mind of other places. Um, and then
00:48:51.960 this is at the, um, whatever their website is, Harvard journal, law and public policy, people can go find
00:48:56.800 it. I think it's the first essay at the top on the, on the website currently they, and they can buy it
00:49:01.600 in print if they like, uh, also. Excellent. All right. Let's get to the questions of the people.
00:49:07.000 Then we've got based hillbilly here that says America is non-denominational, not secular.
00:49:16.180 Yeah, I would, I would say it's right. I mean, the, uh, Winthrop Hudson from the back in the sixties
00:49:21.520 has a great little book on American Protestantism and, and essentially argues that American Protestantism
00:49:28.080 this way invented the concept of denominations, um, as a necessary sort of way to, to make sense
00:49:34.080 of everything. Right. Um, so, so I think, I think that's true is of course, never meant to be
00:49:40.240 secular. Even, uh, you know, there's a famous anecdote of Jefferson walking around the national
00:49:44.720 mall, such as it was at the time with a book of common prayer under his arm. And someone stops him
00:49:49.660 and says, you don't believe any of that. And he says, there's never been a society, certainly not a
00:49:54.720 republic without religion. Right. So even he was, uh, you know, astute enough to sort of, um,
00:50:01.440 at least appear to have the pieties of the day. I mean, you know, everyone's Christian and my own
00:50:05.800 religion Presbyterianism was the one that was roundly suspected by almost everyone of trying
00:50:10.040 to have a national establishment. Um, and they were, uh, William Tudor called them the Protestant
00:50:15.220 Jesuits, uh, the Presbyterians. So they were trying to have, and everyone is against it, right?
00:50:19.940 Because you want to be able to have your own, uh, kind of establishment such as it is. So I think
00:50:24.900 that's right. There was never any, any, there's no indication in the record that, uh, secularism,
00:50:29.660 and there's, you know, just to plug someone like, uh, Joshua Mitchell is very good at pointing out
00:50:34.160 this, that secular is the secularization thesis itself is bunk and there's really no such thing.
00:50:39.880 All you have today, uh, is sort of this, the skin suit worn by identity politics is bastardized
00:50:45.640 Protestantism. The theological thought theological concepts are all still there. It's how it's
00:50:49.920 thinking and functioning.
00:50:53.040 Please tell ability also says make Minnesota Lutheran again, mandatorily. Well, yeah, at this
00:50:57.500 point you'd pretty much need to reconstruct it. Uh, so those kind of the options, you probably need
00:51:01.960 to get some more Lutherans too. There's not that many. Very true. Well, they're doing their best to
00:51:06.740 drive them away. They're doing their best. Ex communicating young men for following their
00:51:10.720 traditions, you know, um, Elijah Tymon says, uh, you don't understand the slave owning, uh, sexist homophobic
00:51:18.360 founding fathers whose stat statues I tear down actually agreed with me on state secularism. Yeah.
00:51:24.520 Well, so I'll say this normally these arguments, um, to these appeals to American values and
00:51:30.680 traditions are not made by leftists. They don't care about those. You know, it's, it's, it's all
00:51:34.720 about human universal value or something else. These are generally made by kind of the Joel
00:51:39.960 berries of the world. They're made by conservatives who want to maintain this kind of post-war,
00:51:45.240 very novel version of American identity that actually doesn't exist. Never existed as
00:51:51.640 wildly a historical, but they got all their history from like Sean Hannity. So they don't
00:51:55.220 know. Yeah. Yeah. And then we've got, yes. Oh, sorry. No, that we can let that one stand
00:52:02.500 that comment. I'll take that one. Uh, let's see. Uh, Astra Astaroth the Grim says, uh, mass
00:52:11.180 remigration is needed to need needs to occur before this can even be discussed, including
00:52:17.900 people that are here legally, but aren't fit for American society. Fair point. If you got
00:52:22.920 your immigration down, uh, Pat first, and then took this action, the consequences would
00:52:28.900 be much lessened. And I think we're closer to getting, uh, you know, a good amount of deportations
00:52:34.400 than we are getting, uh, incorporation doctrine, uh, looked at again. However, uh, the order of operations
00:52:39.940 there could, could ease the pain. Yeah. I w I would actually agree with that, that point.
00:52:44.740 Um, I mean, we make clear in our essay, we're like, what one thing we're also answering is
00:52:50.260 post Dobbs, the sort of such as it is the, the conservative legal movement has a bit of
00:52:55.400 an identity crisis. It's like, what do we do next for the next 50 year project? And so we're
00:52:59.960 asserting this as saying, here's the, here's what you should be working on, right? Get creative,
00:53:03.700 figure out how to chip away at this and get it overturned. I do not think it's the most pressing
00:53:08.340 thing. I think you have to have a country before you can determine it's, it's religious
00:53:12.660 orientation. So I think, uh, you know, I am a single issue voter currently, which is the
00:53:18.080 immigration question. Um, and I think most people, uh, share that persuasion. They know
00:53:23.000 something's wrong. So I would agree with that. And then I would also say in order for any
00:53:27.820 semblance, anything approximating the original constitutional order, which requires a certain
00:53:32.620 kind of people, you have to, you have to manage that if it's going to fit them and suit them
00:53:36.040 well. Um, and those, you know, we were different as, as a people now. So getting, um, a handle
00:53:42.220 on this is important. And, you know, I, I would say, uh, you need to be able to, if we can get
00:53:48.240 that under, under control, then we can reassess more appropriately of what's actually going
00:53:52.200 to work right now. It's simply too influx and chaotic in terms of the population. So I think
00:53:57.200 it's totally fair point. And again, this is, uh, not being presented as the most ultimate
00:54:01.840 or pressing question yet, but I think it, it, it could become one if we do other things,
00:54:06.060 right. Well, and these things usually have to kind of maturate in the public consciousness
00:54:11.540 for a while before. So you want to start this conversation now. So in 10 years, if you've
00:54:16.780 got the immigration squared away, this thing is already in motion. And I, and I would say
00:54:21.780 to the, the type of people you have, when you do have, you know, heterogeneity is a political
00:54:27.060 problem. It always exists, but it's not a good thing. You want people to be in agreement.
00:54:31.880 You want them to be homogenous, right? As much as possible. You want them to agree on
00:54:35.320 basic things and be the same. And then you are able to enjoy a certain kind of liberality
00:54:40.020 among one another, right? Not as like a universal principle, but as a practice because other things
00:54:45.500 are settled. So until you get the people that are big fans of mass toleration, you know, maximal
00:54:50.720 toleration and religious Liberty scare quotes, as we understand it today, um, need to understand
00:54:56.040 that to get that, to have that in a real way, you have to have a stronger homogeneity and,
00:55:02.740 uh, have the sort of requisite peace and basic agreement about general ways of life. Then
00:55:07.800 before you can do that, as, as things become more diversified, the hand has to be stronger.
00:55:13.820 Yeah. If you're, uh, if you're playing your Orin, uh, bingo card, uh, this, uh, you can check
00:55:19.140 your, uh, Bertrand de Juvenal box. Uh, but, but Bertrand de Juvenal is very good on this. He talks
00:55:23.780 about why, uh, you know, governments don't feel tyrannical due to the amount of power they
00:55:28.720 have. They feel tyrannical because they govern people in ways that don't accord with their
00:55:32.900 culture and way of being. And so it's not that the government has a specific power that
00:55:36.880 makes you feel like you're under tyranny. It's that the government governs you in a way
00:55:41.020 that is completely different from how you would normally live your life. And so if everyone
00:55:44.580 has a similar way of understanding how they should live their life, then the government doesn't
00:55:49.520 seem as tyrannical because you all are aligned in the same way. You're all living in the same way,
00:55:54.760 even if the government has more power. And I, and I would say that's especially,
00:55:59.140 this becomes like especially offensive if you've, if you've accepted sort of liberal,
00:56:04.160 you know, modern liberal democracy, which is all about indirect and representative government,
00:56:09.300 the myth that has to be able to survive for that Harvey Mansfield's great on, I'm pointing this
00:56:13.520 out. The myth that has to survive is that you're governing yourself. So like when the cop pulls you over
00:56:17.480 and you're like, why is like, well, you pay me and you pass the law. And so I'm just enforcing your
00:56:22.480 will actually. Right. And that's why, you know, every elected official does the same thing. I'm,
00:56:28.040 he's a maximum populist one way or the other, you know, it's the voice of the people, it's the voice
00:56:31.700 of God. And so that all works if it actually looks like you when they show you the mirror. Right. But
00:56:36.940 when it doesn't, and it's like, I don't agree with any of this, then the necessary myth for this
00:56:42.220 form of governance is completely stripped out and there's no, it actually becomes the least
00:56:47.160 accountable and most totalizing thing possible. Absolutely. All right, guys, well, we're going
00:56:51.960 to go ahead and wrap this up as always really appreciate everybody coming by to watch appreciate
00:56:57.280 time and coming on. And of course, make sure you read his essay and head over to the American
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00:57:35.760 Thank you everybody for watching. And as always, I'll talk to you next time.