The Auron MacIntyre Show - December 04, 2024


JRR Tolkien, Francisco Franco, and Media Literacy ｜ 12⧸4⧸24


Episode Stats

Length

49 minutes

Words per Minute

173.31557

Word Count

8,631

Sentence Count

560

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

21


Summary

In this episode, Oren talks about the surprising discovery that the author of The Lord of the Rings, J.R. R. Tolkien, was actually a conservative Catholic and supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He also wrote a letter arguing that C.S. Lewis was wrong about Tolkien.


Transcript

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00:00:15.340 Hey, how's it going, everybody?
00:00:17.400 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.
00:00:19.680 I am Oren McIntyre.
00:00:22.680 So a funny thing happens every few years.
00:00:25.160 The Redditors rediscovered the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, so many beloved stories, was actually a conservative.
00:00:37.000 He was actually a religious Catholic.
00:00:39.080 They are shocked every time because this meant that Tolkien actually supported Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
00:00:48.120 His sympathies were with the guys who were protecting the nuns and the priests who were being tortured and killed by the communists during this conflict.
00:00:57.140 That shouldn't be a surprise, but so many on the left have wrapped up all of their identity into these media properties that are made into movies, and they consume endlessly.
00:01:08.680 And they're shocked to discover that some of the people who wrote this stuff may not have been liberals.
00:01:14.100 They may not have been progressives.
00:01:15.680 They may not have had the approved opinions in 2024 that you are supposed to have.
00:01:21.860 And it's funny because this occurs over and over again in cycles.
00:01:24.960 You can see this going all the way back like 10 years ago on Reddit.
00:01:28.120 There are threads about this, and then a few years later, it'll die off, and it'll come back, and then it'll die off.
00:01:33.120 And even just in this year, there's more about this on Reddit.
00:01:36.920 And it's hilarious, especially because it comes this time around in a context of media literacy.
00:01:44.500 You've seen a lot of leftists talking about the importance of media literacy and how conservatives just don't understand media.
00:01:51.780 They just don't get the stories and the messages that filmmakers and authors and others are trying to tell.
00:01:57.640 Now, that's particularly rich because the left started this idea of deconstruction and death of the author.
00:02:04.540 The idea that once the author has written a work, the work is separate from the intention of the person creating it.
00:02:12.200 And ultimately, it's the audience and the critics and others who consume and think about and write about this artwork that define its true purpose.
00:02:21.580 They, of course, did that back when a lot of the people writing this stuff were conservative or right-wing or Christian, and they wanted to deconstruct all of that.
00:02:30.120 So they need to separate it from the actual intention of the author.
00:02:33.140 But now, most of the people writing things are progressive, and so conservatives and right-wingers have often used death of the author to take something away that was meant as a parody or something like that,
00:02:46.960 and instead understand it as a work that uplifts many of the things they believe.
00:02:51.820 The classic example here is, of course, Starship Troopers.
00:02:55.340 When the new game came out, Helldivers 2 that heavily was influenced by Starship Troopers, in fact, basically just ripped off the aesthetic, leftists went into another one of their tirades about,
00:03:07.460 you just don't understand.
00:03:08.600 It's a parody of fascism.
00:03:10.020 It's a parody of fascism.
00:03:11.560 And people are like, no, we get it.
00:03:13.540 Like, we understand what they're trying to do.
00:03:15.360 The problem is that the world that places like Starship Troopers depict in many ways are more orderly and clean and more, ironically, progressive in the sense that they've moved forward civilizationally than what we have now.
00:03:29.240 And so even though this is meant as a parody, ultimately it's embraced by many audiences who say, no, I know that's what the author intended to do, but I don't think that actually is what it represents.
00:03:40.380 But, of course, the left doesn't like this, and they start whining about media literacy.
00:03:43.500 Well, how does that work when one of the guys who wrote Lord of the Rings, the guy who wrote so many of your favorite works, actually supported Francisco Franco?
00:03:53.240 And why did he do that?
00:03:54.920 I think it's interesting to take a look at a letter that he wrote.
00:03:57.780 We have many of the letters of Tolkien, and one of the ones he wrote is actually, interestingly, about his disagreement with C.S. Lewis over this topic.
00:04:06.420 Now, C.S. Lewis is my probably favorite author of all time.
00:04:10.040 I have immense respect for Lewis.
00:04:11.740 However, in this instance, it seems like he and Tolkien clashed over this issue.
00:04:17.120 So I thought it would be really cool to read through this letter, get an idea of how Tolkien was thinking about this, how he was trying to talk with C.S. Lewis about this,
00:04:26.800 how this can impact our greater understanding of the Spanish Civil War and how contemporaries at the time thought about it,
00:04:32.720 and how this can also impact our understanding of media literacy.
00:04:35.900 So we'll get into all that, guys.
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00:06:05.220 All right, so like I said, we're going to be taking a look at this letter written by Tolkien.
00:06:12.100 This is sent out, or this is part of his collection of letters.
00:06:17.540 You can find this on the internet, or I'm sure there's published copies as well.
00:06:20.560 This is letter 83 inside of this publication.
00:06:24.860 And I'm going to start a few lines down because he's just kind of talking about day-to-day stuff
00:06:29.520 before we get into the meat of his disagreement with C.S. Lewis here.
00:06:35.900 So starting here, he says,
00:06:38.780 On Tuesday at noon, I looked in at the bird and bee with C. Williams.
00:06:43.960 He's going to do a lot of abbreviations here, so I'll do my best to clarify.
00:06:47.940 But there are a few names I just don't know in this.
00:06:50.880 He seems to like to abbreviate a lot of things,
00:06:53.300 even just kind of words in the middle of passages that aren't names.
00:06:56.640 But like I said, I'll do my best to expand those out.
00:06:58.900 The bird and the bee is one of the pubs in the area of Oxford.
00:07:02.480 It's actually really cool.
00:07:03.860 I did this.
00:07:04.500 You can go, if you go to England, you can go to Oxford,
00:07:07.840 and you can go to C.S. Lewis's house.
00:07:10.860 They give tours there.
00:07:12.160 You can see the kilns, which is the house, the estate he had there.
00:07:15.800 And also you can go to the different pubs that he and the rest of the Inklings,
00:07:21.920 including Tolkien, frequented.
00:07:23.860 So one of them is the bird and the bee.
00:07:27.180 There, to my surprise, I found Jack.
00:07:29.160 For those that don't know, C.S. Lewis went by Jack most of the time.
00:07:33.800 And Warnie, already ensconced.
00:07:36.420 For the present, the beer shortage is over and the Inns are almost habitable again.
00:07:40.640 Good to know that the beer shortage was over,
00:07:43.640 and that was something to rejoice about at the time.
00:07:45.980 You could once again feel good about going to the Inns.
00:07:48.900 The conversation was pretty lively,
00:07:50.920 though I can't remember any of it now,
00:07:53.260 except C.S. Lewis's story of an elderly lady he knows.
00:07:57.240 She was a student of English in the past days of Sir Walter Raleigh.
00:08:01.080 And her Viva, she was asked,
00:08:04.340 what period would you have lived in, Miss B?
00:08:07.740 And in the 15th century, she said,
00:08:09.720 oh, come on, Miss B, wouldn't you have liked to meet the Lake Poets?
00:08:12.700 No, sir.
00:08:13.200 I prefer the Society of Gentlemen, collapse of Viva.
00:08:16.500 And I noticed a strange, tall, gaunt man,
00:08:19.900 half in khaki, half in mufti,
00:08:23.400 with a large, wide-awake hat, bright eyes,
00:08:26.740 and a hooked nose sitting in the corner.
00:08:28.900 The others had their backs to me,
00:08:30.540 but I could see in his eye
00:08:32.780 that he was taking interest in the conversation
00:08:35.340 quite unlike the ordinary pained astonishment
00:08:38.320 of the British and American public
00:08:40.300 at the presence of the Lewis's and myself in a pub.
00:08:43.800 So I guess he had a certain level of notoriety at this time,
00:08:50.340 was somewhat famous.
00:08:53.040 And so there's plenty of people
00:08:54.560 kind of having an astonished look
00:08:55.940 when they see him and Lewis.
00:08:57.480 These are people that would have been known in the area,
00:09:00.480 so for the locals, for sure.
00:09:02.100 But even visitors coming in from both Britain and America,
00:09:05.920 I guess, recognize them.
00:09:07.320 But he says this guy didn't seem like
00:09:09.500 he was just kind of gawking at a celebrity.
00:09:11.660 He had a purpose about him.
00:09:13.800 It was rather like Trotter at the Prancing Pony.
00:09:19.620 In fact, very alike.
00:09:21.680 All of a sudden, he butted in
00:09:23.200 in a strange, unplaceable accent,
00:09:25.860 taking up some point about Wordsworth.
00:09:29.480 In a few seconds, he was revealed as Roy Campbell,
00:09:33.200 a flowering rifle and flaming terrapin.
00:09:35.860 So this is a guy who is a poet.
00:09:38.400 He's become somewhat famous himself
00:09:41.120 for recently having a very successful few poems.
00:09:46.160 And so he recognizes that this guy
00:09:48.000 is not just some kind of, you know,
00:09:51.900 random dude in a pub gawking at celebrities.
00:09:55.120 He himself is a mildly successful,
00:09:57.800 a relatively successful poet,
00:10:00.120 someone who would have notoriety.
00:10:02.840 Tableau, especially as C.S. Lewis
00:10:05.380 had not long ago violently lampooned him
00:10:07.940 in the Oxford magazine
00:10:09.320 and his press and his press cutters miss nothing.
00:10:13.220 Yeah, funny enough,
00:10:14.560 a lot of people don't know,
00:10:15.660 but C.S. Lewis was primarily actually
00:10:17.840 a critic of a lot of literary work.
00:10:20.880 I believe most of his stuff
00:10:21.980 was in medieval literary work,
00:10:24.340 but of course he had
00:10:25.460 the wider contemporary understanding as well.
00:10:28.460 And he was known for cutting criticism.
00:10:30.200 He was known for really not sparing people's feelings
00:10:32.860 when it came to criticizing their literary works.
00:10:35.840 And so why those of us
00:10:37.440 who mainly read his Christian apologetics
00:10:40.280 or his Narnia and space novels,
00:10:43.340 these other things,
00:10:44.420 Till We Have Faces,
00:10:45.460 may not recognize that aspect of him.
00:10:47.580 That was definitely part of
00:10:48.880 what C.S. Lewis was known for.
00:10:51.780 And apparently he had not liked
00:10:53.820 Mr. Campbell's poems here.
00:10:55.920 There's a good deal of Ulster still left in C.S. Lewis
00:10:59.040 if hidden from himself.
00:11:00.680 I'm assuming British people will get that joke.
00:11:03.140 I don't have the cultural context there.
00:11:05.820 After that, things became fast and furious
00:11:08.660 and I was late for lunch.
00:11:10.520 It was perhaps gratifying to find
00:11:12.660 that this powerful poet and soldier
00:11:15.100 desired in Oxford
00:11:17.200 chiefly to see Lewis and myself.
00:11:19.380 So Campbell is there
00:11:21.080 mainly to see C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.
00:11:24.560 He's aware of who they are
00:11:25.580 and he has primarily traveled to Oxford
00:11:28.460 in order to have conversations
00:11:30.080 with these two guys.
00:11:31.480 We made an appointment for Thursday,
00:11:34.180 that is last night.
00:11:35.700 If I could remember all that I heard
00:11:37.780 of C.S. Lewis's room last night,
00:11:39.800 it would fill several air letters.
00:11:41.940 C.S. Lewis had taken a fair deal of port
00:11:44.080 and was a little belligerent,
00:11:45.680 insisting on reading out his own lampooning
00:11:48.160 against R.C. laughing at him
00:11:50.860 while R.C. laughed at him.
00:11:54.560 So he basically got drunk on wine,
00:11:57.180 C.S. Lewis got drunk on wine,
00:11:58.740 and read his own criticism
00:12:00.200 of Campbell's poem back to him
00:12:03.860 while Campbell was laughing
00:12:05.460 through the whole thing.
00:12:06.460 So that's pretty funny.
00:12:08.140 But we were mostly obliged
00:12:09.320 to sit and listen to the guest.
00:12:11.600 A window on a wild world,
00:12:14.040 yet the man is in himself
00:12:15.980 gentle, modest, and compassionate.
00:12:18.720 Mostly, it interested me to learn
00:12:22.200 that this old-looking, war-scarred trotter
00:12:25.520 limping from recent wounds
00:12:27.300 is nine years younger than I am,
00:12:30.120 and we probably met when he was a lad,
00:12:32.840 as he lived in Oxford at the time
00:12:34.820 where we lived on, I guess it's Pussy Street,
00:12:37.000 rooming with Walton, the composer,
00:12:40.960 and going about with T.W. Earp,
00:12:43.560 the original twerp,
00:12:44.740 and with Woodfield Child,
00:12:46.360 your godfather,
00:12:47.980 whose works we must prize.
00:12:49.900 So interestingly, this guy has come back.
00:12:52.600 He is somebody who lived in Oxford
00:12:55.180 and may have run into Tolkien or Lewis
00:12:57.980 at some point while he lived there,
00:13:00.160 but has traveled abroad.
00:13:01.800 He is somebody who's been in a war
00:13:03.700 and is war-scarred,
00:13:05.160 and so even though he's nine years younger,
00:13:07.200 he's limping,
00:13:08.220 he doesn't look great in certain ways,
00:13:10.540 so you can see the damage
00:13:12.080 that's been done to him
00:13:13.260 through these wars,
00:13:14.780 even though he's younger
00:13:16.100 than both of these men.
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00:13:48.780 What he's done since
00:13:50.040 Beggar's description.
00:13:51.480 Here's a scion of the Ulster
00:13:53.040 Protestant family,
00:13:54.680 resident in South Africa,
00:13:56.600 most of whom fought in both wars,
00:14:00.780 who became a Catholic
00:14:01.720 after sheltering
00:14:03.060 the Carmelite fathers
00:14:04.340 in Barcelona.
00:14:05.700 In vain, they were caught
00:14:06.860 and butchered,
00:14:07.660 and Arce nearly lost his life.
00:14:09.540 So this is really important.
00:14:10.880 This is a guy who
00:14:11.960 had traveled to Spain.
00:14:15.840 He was in Barcelona.
00:14:17.460 He was sheltering
00:14:19.380 some of these monks,
00:14:21.000 some of the fathers
00:14:21.660 from the Carmelite faction.
00:14:23.960 And as I understand,
00:14:25.240 they tried to pass off
00:14:27.100 some of the works
00:14:27.880 that they had
00:14:28.680 on hand to this guy.
00:14:30.460 They wanted to preserve them
00:14:32.060 from the communist revolutionaries
00:14:34.060 that were taking over Spain
00:14:35.220 at the time.
00:14:36.120 A lot of people,
00:14:37.000 I've done episodes
00:14:37.980 on what led to
00:14:38.980 the Spanish Civil War,
00:14:40.060 so I'm not going to go in-depth
00:14:41.940 on all of the history
00:14:42.840 of the Spanish Civil War
00:14:43.760 here now.
00:14:44.260 That's not the point,
00:14:45.560 but I did an in-depth episode
00:14:48.080 on kind of the prior causes,
00:14:50.160 what led up to
00:14:50.760 the Spanish Civil War.
00:14:51.680 So if you want to go back
00:14:54.060 and check that out,
00:14:55.420 I think it's a good explanation
00:14:57.560 of, gives you the context
00:14:59.000 of what's happening here.
00:15:00.300 But a lot of Americans,
00:15:01.720 especially,
00:15:02.100 but many people in the West,
00:15:02.880 don't learn anything
00:15:03.540 about the Spanish Civil War.
00:15:04.940 There's a couple of reasons
00:15:05.740 for that.
00:15:06.360 You know,
00:15:06.580 there are plenty of wars
00:15:07.420 that we don't learn about.
00:15:08.820 But one of the reasons
00:15:09.940 is that it's one of those
00:15:11.760 that's much,
00:15:12.600 makes some of our narratives
00:15:16.580 around world conflict,
00:15:18.620 especially World War II,
00:15:19.640 a little more confusing.
00:15:21.520 The Spanish Civil War
00:15:22.640 is a little less cut and dry.
00:15:24.700 I mean, you know,
00:15:25.460 obviously with Hitler
00:15:26.760 and the Holocaust,
00:15:27.960 it's very easy to see
00:15:29.380 why Germany was very bad
00:15:31.340 during World War II.
00:15:34.120 However, in Spain,
00:15:37.020 you can see a more clear contrast
00:15:38.840 between the kind of communist forces
00:15:41.220 on the left
00:15:42.380 and an array of different
00:15:44.760 rightist forces
00:15:45.640 from monarchists to Republicans
00:15:47.720 to, yes, fascists as well,
00:15:50.120 who all worked together
00:15:51.860 to try to stop
00:15:52.980 the communist revolution there.
00:15:54.240 And they won.
00:15:55.360 So in a lot of ways,
00:15:56.940 you know,
00:15:57.460 kind of the current idea
00:15:58.860 is that the Spanish Civil War
00:16:00.660 was won by a fascist,
00:16:02.440 you know,
00:16:02.760 and it was a fascist dictatorship.
00:16:04.720 If you look into
00:16:05.560 the actual story,
00:16:07.080 no,
00:16:07.720 Francisco Franco
00:16:09.120 was pushing against
00:16:10.580 many of the fascists
00:16:12.140 for much of his thing.
00:16:13.140 It was more of a coalition
00:16:14.260 of different rightists,
00:16:15.760 but the fascists
00:16:16.700 were certainly involved
00:16:17.640 and the fact that
00:16:18.600 both the Soviet Union
00:16:19.800 and Nazi Germany
00:16:21.100 were funding
00:16:21.880 both sides
00:16:22.520 of the Spanish Civil War
00:16:23.460 tended to drive people
00:16:25.140 to ideological sides.
00:16:26.900 The war probably became
00:16:28.160 far more ideological
00:16:29.200 because of the outside
00:16:31.000 aid and influence.
00:16:32.360 The communists
00:16:33.140 would only give material
00:16:35.200 to different military leaders
00:16:37.800 if they were themselves communists.
00:16:39.440 So the communist faction
00:16:40.340 started to rise
00:16:41.100 inside the left in Spain
00:16:42.360 and Nazi Germany
00:16:44.780 would only give aid
00:16:46.440 to the right-wing forces
00:16:49.260 that were led
00:16:50.120 by the phalangists,
00:16:51.380 the fascists
00:16:52.540 inside of Spain.
00:16:54.380 And so they started
00:16:55.100 self-selecting leaders
00:16:56.100 for that.
00:16:56.700 And so this war,
00:16:58.220 which was already
00:16:59.100 kind of two loose coalitions,
00:17:02.720 became more radically
00:17:03.920 ideological on each side
00:17:05.600 because of the way
00:17:06.760 that incentives were structured.
00:17:08.020 But ultimately,
00:17:09.320 you know,
00:17:09.780 Franco was certainly
00:17:12.280 a right-wing authoritarian.
00:17:13.840 There's plenty of things,
00:17:15.640 you know,
00:17:15.860 Franco's a complicated guy
00:17:17.280 and there's,
00:17:18.760 we can go again,
00:17:19.500 there's an entire episode
00:17:20.340 of where we went into this,
00:17:21.420 so I'm not going to do it here.
00:17:22.740 But the point being is
00:17:24.180 a lot of people
00:17:25.200 don't recognize
00:17:26.160 the atrocities
00:17:27.240 that occurred
00:17:28.400 during the Spanish Civil War.
00:17:29.580 There were certainly
00:17:30.000 atrocities on both sides,
00:17:31.600 but the communist atrocities
00:17:33.040 were very much centered
00:17:34.460 on the destruction
00:17:35.280 of the Catholic Church.
00:17:36.820 They were raping nuns,
00:17:39.020 they were killing priests,
00:17:40.480 they were torturing Catholics,
00:17:42.200 they were slaughtering
00:17:43.240 people for their faith,
00:17:45.180 they were burning down churches,
00:17:47.020 relics,
00:17:47.760 destroying sacred manuscripts.
00:17:49.720 And so these were all things
00:17:50.940 that were part of the conflict.
00:17:52.960 So Tolkien,
00:17:55.000 being a Catholic,
00:17:56.040 you can understand
00:17:56.740 why he has a personal tie to this.
00:17:59.440 I want to get more into
00:18:00.400 why Catholicism was,
00:18:02.220 and Spain in particular,
00:18:03.660 was so important to Tolkien.
00:18:06.240 And I want to get back,
00:18:07.100 of course,
00:18:07.380 into this letter.
00:18:08.020 But before we do, guys,
00:18:09.300 let me tell you a little bit
00:18:10.520 about why you should
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00:19:26.180 All right, guys,
00:19:26.880 before we dive back
00:19:27.540 into this,
00:19:27.900 I did want to say this
00:19:28.900 at the beginning,
00:19:29.400 but I forgot.
00:19:30.060 Sorry,
00:19:30.520 I'm actually on vacation
00:19:31.580 right now.
00:19:32.140 So this is pre-recorded.
00:19:33.360 So if you are someone
00:19:34.380 who is wanting
00:19:35.700 to put in a super chat,
00:19:36.760 by all means,
00:19:37.300 thank you.
00:19:37.780 Appreciate you supporting
00:19:38.480 the show,
00:19:38.980 but I will not be able
00:19:40.460 to read it
00:19:40.980 because I'm not actually live
00:19:42.560 at the moment
00:19:43.380 where I'm streaming this,
00:19:44.560 but it's pre-recorded.
00:19:46.060 So I appreciate that.
00:19:47.280 Just wanted to let you know
00:19:48.200 if you end up doing that.
00:19:49.940 Also,
00:19:50.480 before we get back
00:19:51.640 into the note itself,
00:19:53.000 I want to give
00:19:53.500 a little background
00:19:54.180 on why Tolkien
00:19:55.380 is both Catholic
00:19:57.260 and very importantly,
00:19:59.080 tied to Spain.
00:19:59.900 So Tolkien's mother
00:20:03.640 died very young
00:20:05.640 and she had just
00:20:07.340 joined the Catholic Church
00:20:08.840 not very long
00:20:10.220 after,
00:20:11.260 before she died.
00:20:12.500 When she died,
00:20:13.960 Tolkien was left
00:20:14.560 in the care
00:20:15.040 of a priest
00:20:16.200 who had himself
00:20:17.400 been tied
00:20:18.800 very closely
00:20:19.640 to Spain.
00:20:20.760 It was his mother's
00:20:22.020 side of the family,
00:20:22.920 the priest's mother's
00:20:23.980 side of the family
00:20:24.460 was from Spain.
00:20:25.800 So he had been to Spain,
00:20:26.740 he had family in Spain,
00:20:28.180 he was familiar
00:20:29.020 with the Spanish Church.
00:20:31.060 And so the things
00:20:32.300 that were happening
00:20:33.020 to Spain
00:20:34.700 were not just
00:20:35.240 some kind of
00:20:35.720 distant understanding
00:20:36.740 of, oh, I'm a Catholic,
00:20:38.500 something bad
00:20:38.940 has happened to Catholics
00:20:39.700 there,
00:20:40.000 that should be enough.
00:20:41.280 But he had
00:20:42.100 very personal ties.
00:20:43.520 A guy who's a father figure,
00:20:45.060 essentially his adopted father
00:20:46.400 in a lot of ways
00:20:47.060 and was a church father
00:20:48.320 in a very real way,
00:20:49.840 was tied to the Catholic Church,
00:20:51.800 had roots
00:20:52.360 and cultural understandings
00:20:53.600 tied to this.
00:20:54.520 So he was very sympathetic
00:20:55.720 to the Catholic Church
00:20:57.520 in Spain,
00:20:58.240 to the suffering
00:20:58.960 of the priests
00:21:00.060 and the nuns
00:21:00.820 and the believers
00:21:01.460 inside of Spain.
00:21:02.980 And so when he saw
00:21:03.620 the violence
00:21:04.200 that was being done
00:21:05.180 by the communist
00:21:06.160 revolutionaries in Spain,
00:21:08.100 you can understand again
00:21:09.120 why his sympathies
00:21:10.520 tended to lie
00:21:11.440 with the nationalists
00:21:12.540 and Francisco Franco.
00:21:14.200 So let's get back
00:21:15.420 to the letter here.
00:21:16.400 He says,
00:21:17.240 but he got the Carmelite archives
00:21:19.160 from the burning library
00:21:20.460 and took them
00:21:21.200 through the red country.
00:21:22.460 So this guy was able
00:21:23.100 to spare some of the writings
00:21:24.460 out of the archives
00:21:26.160 and get them out of Spain.
00:21:28.640 He speaks Spanish fluently
00:21:30.600 and he's been
00:21:31.340 a professional bullfighter.
00:21:33.400 As you know,
00:21:34.660 he then fought
00:21:35.800 through the war
00:21:36.420 on Franco's side
00:21:37.440 and among other things
00:21:38.520 was in the vein
00:21:39.760 of the company
00:21:40.740 that chased the Reds
00:21:41.880 out of Malaga
00:21:43.000 and in such haste
00:21:45.280 that their general
00:21:46.360 could not carry off
00:21:48.480 his loot
00:21:49.220 and left
00:21:50.620 on his table
00:21:53.080 St. Teresa's hand
00:21:54.340 with all its jewels.
00:21:55.900 He had most interesting
00:21:57.580 things to say
00:21:58.260 about the situation
00:21:59.140 in Gibbs
00:21:59.640 since the war
00:22:00.580 in Spain.
00:22:01.760 But he is a patriotic man
00:22:03.380 and fought
00:22:03.920 for the British army
00:22:05.840 since.
00:22:06.360 So this guy
00:22:07.040 fought for Franco.
00:22:09.240 He fought in Spain
00:22:10.400 to try to fight
00:22:12.200 against the communist
00:22:13.460 revolution.
00:22:14.380 However,
00:22:15.240 he is,
00:22:16.040 like he says,
00:22:16.560 he's a patriotic man.
00:22:17.540 He didn't just go there
00:22:19.000 and fight in Franco's war.
00:22:20.080 He's returned to Britain
00:22:21.440 and he's fought
00:22:22.000 in the British army since.
00:22:23.620 So his loyalty
00:22:24.980 to kind of defending
00:22:27.080 the Catholics
00:22:28.520 in Spain
00:22:30.520 did not prevent him
00:22:32.120 from coming back.
00:22:32.840 He's not like,
00:22:33.240 oh, well,
00:22:33.720 I fought for Franco
00:22:34.800 and now I'm,
00:22:35.600 you know,
00:22:36.100 part of his regime
00:22:37.060 and I'm going to,
00:22:38.080 you know,
00:22:38.360 die here.
00:22:39.160 Like he goes back to Britain.
00:22:40.880 He fights with the British army
00:22:42.200 as well.
00:22:43.780 Well, well,
00:22:44.900 Martin Darcy
00:22:46.200 vouches for him
00:22:47.280 and told him
00:22:47.880 to seek us out.
00:22:49.100 But I wish
00:22:49.860 I could remember
00:22:51.520 half of his picturesque stories
00:22:53.600 about poets
00:22:54.360 and musicians,
00:22:55.240 et cetera,
00:22:55.560 from Peter Warlock
00:22:56.620 to Aldous Huxley.
00:22:58.320 The one I most enjoyed
00:22:59.920 was the tale
00:23:00.520 of a great,
00:23:01.180 of a,
00:23:01.720 of Greasy Epstein,
00:23:03.000 the sculptor
00:23:03.540 and how he fought him
00:23:04.580 and put him in hospital
00:23:05.880 for a week.
00:23:06.960 However,
00:23:07.300 it's not possible
00:23:08.140 to convey an impression
00:23:09.400 of such a rare character,
00:23:11.480 both a soldier
00:23:12.220 and a poet
00:23:13.040 and a Christian convert.
00:23:14.480 So as you can tell here,
00:23:16.580 Tolkien is very,
00:23:17.740 you know,
00:23:18.360 much admiring this guy.
00:23:19.740 He says,
00:23:20.420 yeah,
00:23:20.600 he's brave.
00:23:21.400 He's patriotic.
00:23:22.500 He's had all these adventures.
00:23:24.080 He's met all of these
00:23:25.320 poets
00:23:26.280 and authors
00:23:27.740 and,
00:23:28.560 you know,
00:23:28.980 gotten to a scuffle
00:23:29.860 with Sculptor
00:23:30.540 and put him in the hospital.
00:23:32.100 This guy is
00:23:33.260 multifaceted,
00:23:34.680 right?
00:23:35.000 In a way that
00:23:36.160 perhaps
00:23:36.920 an Oxford professor
00:23:39.100 had not seen a lot of,
00:23:40.740 but we see even less
00:23:41.920 of today.
00:23:42.720 You know,
00:23:42.900 of course,
00:23:43.560 C.S. Lewis and
00:23:44.480 Tolkien fought
00:23:45.460 in World War I,
00:23:46.460 so they understood
00:23:47.920 a certain level
00:23:49.000 of combat.
00:23:50.600 These are guys
00:23:51.160 who are themselves
00:23:51.960 combat veterans
00:23:52.900 and this is something
00:23:54.300 that we don't get
00:23:54.980 as much today
00:23:55.680 because we've reduced
00:23:57.180 military service
00:23:58.100 to a very small
00:23:59.000 percentage
00:23:59.480 of our population
00:24:01.320 in most Western countries,
00:24:02.540 including the United States
00:24:03.800 and Britain.
00:24:04.200 and so we don't see
00:24:05.700 a lot of people
00:24:06.360 who were soldiers
00:24:07.780 and poets
00:24:08.520 or soldiers
00:24:09.300 and guys
00:24:12.120 who were professors
00:24:12.700 at Oxford.
00:24:13.520 You know,
00:24:13.660 this is a very common
00:24:14.460 thing at the time
00:24:15.400 because every man
00:24:16.380 did military service
00:24:17.380 in these kind of
00:24:18.160 large compulsory wars,
00:24:20.360 but was less
00:24:21.240 of the case then.
00:24:22.940 Or, sorry,
00:24:23.380 less of the case now.
00:24:24.960 How unlike the left,
00:24:27.380 the Corduroy Panzers
00:24:29.280 who fled
00:24:30.380 to America,
00:24:32.540 odd and among them
00:24:33.480 who with his friends
00:24:35.100 got R.C.'s worked
00:24:36.080 banned from the
00:24:37.120 Brinkham Tea Council.
00:24:39.000 So he's criticizing,
00:24:40.200 you know,
00:24:40.520 these leftists
00:24:41.220 who refuse to be,
00:24:42.780 you know,
00:24:42.960 fight for their values
00:24:44.060 who fled
00:24:44.760 and, you know,
00:24:45.340 even go out of their way
00:24:46.300 to try to censor
00:24:47.200 the work of other guys
00:24:49.280 that perhaps
00:24:49.960 hold different views.
00:24:51.780 Nothing new
00:24:52.480 under the sun,
00:24:53.040 I guess.
00:24:53.880 I hope to see this man
00:24:55.160 again next week.
00:24:56.560 He didn't leave Magdalene
00:24:58.700 until midnight
00:24:59.600 and I walked up
00:25:00.680 to Bourbon
00:25:01.200 or to Beaumont Street
00:25:02.620 with him.
00:25:03.920 C.S. Lewis'
00:25:04.580 reactions
00:25:06.600 were odd.
00:25:08.140 Nothing is a greater
00:25:09.340 tribute to the
00:25:10.140 red propaganda
00:25:10.940 than the fact
00:25:11.660 that he,
00:25:12.560 who knows
00:25:13.180 that they are
00:25:13.860 in all other subjects,
00:25:15.120 liars and
00:25:16.060 trodcers,
00:25:18.580 I guess is the way
00:25:19.120 you say that one,
00:25:19.940 believes all
00:25:21.440 that is said
00:25:22.080 against Franco.
00:25:23.260 So here,
00:25:24.220 Tolkien is
00:25:25.080 very confused.
00:25:26.640 He says,
00:25:27.040 look,
00:25:27.500 C.S. Lewis knows
00:25:28.580 that the left
00:25:29.700 is lying.
00:25:30.460 They especially,
00:25:31.080 he knows that
00:25:31.360 these communists
00:25:32.380 are lying.
00:25:34.060 And yet,
00:25:34.820 when it comes
00:25:35.360 to the propaganda
00:25:36.060 that's been put out,
00:25:37.180 the red propaganda,
00:25:38.220 the communist propaganda
00:25:39.080 about what's happening
00:25:40.160 in Spain,
00:25:41.120 for some reason,
00:25:41.800 C.S. Lewis believes
00:25:43.560 that.
00:25:44.180 And so we're going to see
00:25:44.840 later in the letter,
00:25:45.740 he's going to kind of
00:25:46.500 interrogate,
00:25:47.060 well,
00:25:47.180 why does C.S. Lewis
00:25:48.360 believe this propaganda
00:25:49.760 even though he would
00:25:50.860 otherwise not believe
00:25:52.660 the left,
00:25:53.580 he knows that they're liars.
00:25:54.880 Again,
00:25:55.420 nothing new under the sun
00:25:56.400 there,
00:25:56.600 I guess.
00:25:57.700 But he said,
00:25:58.600 you know,
00:25:58.820 why is he so invested
00:26:00.880 in believing propaganda
00:26:02.460 from these guys
00:26:03.560 when normally he would
00:26:04.540 be more discerning
00:26:05.520 about the stories
00:26:06.240 being told
00:26:07.060 by leftists
00:26:08.020 and communists?
00:26:08.640 Even Churchill's
00:26:15.140 open speech
00:26:15.980 in Parliament
00:26:16.600 left him unshaken.
00:26:18.160 Yeah,
00:26:18.380 at some point,
00:26:19.280 you know,
00:26:20.020 Churchill had kind of
00:26:20.980 evolving views
00:26:21.900 or at least evolving
00:26:22.900 rhetoric on Franco.
00:26:24.560 But,
00:26:25.200 you know,
00:26:25.420 at one point,
00:26:26.140 he said this guy
00:26:26.980 is somebody
00:26:28.120 who's defending
00:26:28.780 his country
00:26:29.440 and defending the church
00:26:30.620 and fighting
00:26:31.640 against communism.
00:26:33.220 And so he's saying,
00:26:34.360 like,
00:26:34.480 even Churchill
00:26:35.300 giving speeches,
00:26:36.780 you know,
00:26:37.620 saying that,
00:26:38.240 you know,
00:26:38.500 maybe Franco's
00:26:39.340 not the bad guy here.
00:26:41.100 Now,
00:26:41.520 that's going to
00:26:42.440 blow the mind
00:26:42.980 of a lot of people.
00:26:43.960 A lot of people
00:26:44.980 got very,
00:26:45.860 very angry
00:26:46.420 at certain
00:26:46.880 Tucker Carlson episodes
00:26:48.040 and Daryl Cooper
00:26:49.320 Martyrmaids,
00:26:50.140 you know,
00:26:50.860 points about Churchill.
00:26:51.980 They're not going
00:26:52.640 to want to hear that.
00:26:54.140 But,
00:26:54.700 yeah,
00:26:54.820 this is a real thing
00:26:55.780 that Churchill
00:26:56.240 was talking about
00:26:56.840 and Tolkien saying,
00:26:58.100 hey,
00:26:58.560 if you respect Churchill,
00:26:59.900 why are you
00:27:00.980 responding this way?
00:27:02.460 Like,
00:27:02.740 why are you responding,
00:27:04.320 you know,
00:27:05.200 given what he said
00:27:06.460 about Franco,
00:27:07.100 then how could you
00:27:08.100 still ignore that
00:27:10.520 and believe
00:27:11.120 kind of the
00:27:11.480 communist propaganda?
00:27:13.060 But hatred
00:27:13.500 of our church
00:27:14.460 is after all
00:27:15.840 the real,
00:27:17.760 is after all
00:27:18.940 the real
00:27:19.740 only final foundation
00:27:21.020 of the Church of England.
00:27:22.520 So,
00:27:22.960 so deeply laid
00:27:24.500 that it remains
00:27:25.860 even when
00:27:27.160 all the superstructures
00:27:28.140 seem removed.
00:27:29.100 C.S. Lewis,
00:27:29.640 for instance,
00:27:30.140 reveals,
00:27:31.340 or reveres
00:27:31.880 the Blessed Sacrament
00:27:32.680 and admires nuns.
00:27:33.620 So,
00:27:34.300 he's saying here,
00:27:35.380 the Church of England
00:27:36.400 really only exists
00:27:37.920 to destroy the Catholic Church.
00:27:39.800 So,
00:27:40.400 a little bit of
00:27:41.100 interdenominational
00:27:42.560 showdown here.
00:27:44.180 He surmises
00:27:45.500 that the reason
00:27:47.340 that Lewis
00:27:48.360 is so vulnerable
00:27:49.520 to this propaganda
00:27:50.540 is that ultimately
00:27:52.120 this Church of England
00:27:53.440 has bred
00:27:54.080 such a deep
00:27:55.200 skepticism
00:27:56.680 of Catholics
00:27:58.480 that when
00:27:59.600 he looks at
00:28:00.580 these atrocities,
00:28:01.640 when he hears reports
00:28:02.820 of what's going on
00:28:03.800 in Spain,
00:28:07.420 he basically
00:28:08.640 pushes it aside.
00:28:09.880 He doesn't believe it.
00:28:10.760 Or he buys into
00:28:11.860 the communist propaganda
00:28:12.980 of what's going on
00:28:14.340 because he has
00:28:14.920 kind of this
00:28:15.440 pre-existing bias
00:28:17.360 for who the Catholics
00:28:19.620 are and what they believe
00:28:20.800 and this kind of thing.
00:28:22.140 He says,
00:28:22.660 like,
00:28:22.780 you know,
00:28:23.060 look,
00:28:23.340 ultimately,
00:28:24.260 Lewis has,
00:28:25.360 you know,
00:28:26.280 these parts of Catholicism
00:28:28.040 that he reveres,
00:28:28.860 but he still
00:28:29.960 can't believe
00:28:31.240 entirely
00:28:32.060 that these people
00:28:33.000 are victims.
00:28:33.900 He still buys
00:28:34.500 into the communist
00:28:35.040 propaganda
00:28:35.440 because ultimately
00:28:36.880 being a member
00:28:38.200 of the Church of England,
00:28:39.420 he still
00:28:40.360 is somebody
00:28:41.500 who very much
00:28:43.000 opposes the Catholic Church
00:28:44.160 and that bias
00:28:44.780 is baked in.
00:28:46.480 Yet if a Lutheran
00:28:47.540 is put in jail,
00:28:48.900 he's up in arms.
00:28:50.020 But if a Catholic priest
00:28:51.360 is being slaughtered,
00:28:53.220 he disbelieves it.
00:28:55.220 And I dare say
00:28:55.920 really thinks
00:28:56.800 they asked for it.
00:28:58.420 But Arcee
00:28:58.980 shook him a bit.
00:29:00.300 So he's saying
00:29:02.100 if another priest,
00:29:04.880 even a guy
00:29:05.540 who's like a full-on,
00:29:06.620 you know,
00:29:07.100 Protestant,
00:29:07.600 like a Lutheran,
00:29:08.440 is put in jail,
00:29:09.320 he's going to be up in arms.
00:29:10.720 He's going to be super angry.
00:29:11.720 How could you do this?
00:29:12.600 How could you infringe
00:29:13.460 on this guy's religious freedom?
00:29:15.220 How could you oppose
00:29:16.200 his right to worship God,
00:29:17.900 how he sees fit?
00:29:18.840 Like,
00:29:19.140 he's going to be
00:29:20.100 against that.
00:29:21.760 C.S. Lewis
00:29:22.180 would be against that.
00:29:23.440 But if it's a Catholic priest
00:29:24.940 who isn't just being put in jail,
00:29:26.480 but is actually being killed,
00:29:27.880 is being tortured,
00:29:29.240 is being humiliated,
00:29:30.360 and then destroyed,
00:29:31.800 he's going to disbelieve it.
00:29:33.620 Or if he does believe,
00:29:34.760 he's going to say,
00:29:35.100 well,
00:29:35.360 he probably had it coming.
00:29:36.460 Like,
00:29:36.580 he probably did something
00:29:37.520 that could do that.
00:29:39.000 You know,
00:29:39.200 that's what he's saying.
00:29:40.280 That's what he believes
00:29:41.680 that C.S. Lewis
00:29:42.540 is kind of
00:29:44.080 pushing all this off
00:29:45.680 because of that bias
00:29:46.620 and his desire
00:29:47.920 to defend Protestants
00:29:49.280 no matter what
00:29:50.360 and kind of disbelieve
00:29:51.540 that anything bad
00:29:52.320 is happening
00:29:52.840 to Catholics.
00:29:53.800 And,
00:29:54.640 you know,
00:29:55.080 I was just talking
00:29:55.480 to my wife about this,
00:29:56.480 but it's interesting a lot
00:29:57.820 because,
00:29:58.440 you know,
00:29:58.640 there are so many stories
00:29:59.500 and many legitimate stories
00:30:01.020 about Protestants
00:30:02.440 being persecuted
00:30:04.540 and,
00:30:05.680 you know,
00:30:05.960 Catholics being in charge.
00:30:07.240 It's a long story
00:30:08.700 of kind of
00:30:09.180 Europe is
00:30:10.200 the Catholic Church
00:30:12.080 and its control
00:30:12.880 and the breaking away from it.
00:30:14.220 A lot of people
00:30:14.640 don't think about
00:30:15.580 the Catholics
00:30:16.820 ever being persecuted.
00:30:18.720 We don't think of Catholics
00:30:20.200 as a persecuted people.
00:30:21.800 But,
00:30:22.280 of course,
00:30:22.560 in a place like Spain,
00:30:23.620 during this kind of
00:30:24.620 communist revolution
00:30:25.440 and actually during
00:30:26.340 all communist revolutions
00:30:27.420 because communism
00:30:28.520 is the enemy of Christianity
00:30:30.260 across all of history.
00:30:33.580 And Catholics
00:30:34.440 should do,
00:30:35.560 should remember that duly
00:30:36.680 now that they are
00:30:37.640 often embracing
00:30:39.240 so many of those policies,
00:30:41.660 sympathetic to so many
00:30:43.160 of those things,
00:30:44.080 or at least some are,
00:30:45.280 obviously,
00:30:45.700 not all,
00:30:46.200 not all.
00:30:47.100 But,
00:30:47.680 you know,
00:30:48.700 we don't think about this
00:30:49.980 as a group of people
00:30:51.740 who are persecuted.
00:30:52.640 But,
00:30:52.740 of course,
00:30:53.340 that is the case.
00:30:54.140 And this is what
00:30:54.980 Tolkien is ultimately saying
00:30:56.900 is,
00:30:57.240 you know,
00:30:57.640 C.S. Lewis has this bias
00:30:58.800 that it's only Protestants
00:31:00.420 that get persecuted.
00:31:01.500 It's never Catholics.
00:31:02.760 And so,
00:31:03.200 when he hears about
00:31:03.960 a Catholic being persecuted,
00:31:05.620 he just kind of
00:31:06.260 brushes it aside.
00:31:07.180 He doesn't think
00:31:07.720 very much about it.
00:31:09.060 Or he even says,
00:31:10.140 well,
00:31:10.240 maybe the guy had to come in.
00:31:11.180 Maybe he did something wrong.
00:31:12.240 These kind of things.
00:31:12.800 However,
00:31:13.020 he says,
00:31:13.660 look,
00:31:14.020 the conversation
00:31:15.180 with R.C.,
00:31:16.600 with Campbell,
00:31:17.160 with this poet,
00:31:18.200 shook him a bit.
00:31:18.980 Because this is a guy
00:31:19.600 who has seen it face-to-face,
00:31:20.980 right?
00:31:21.160 He knows that these guys
00:31:22.980 are getting slaughtered.
00:31:24.080 He carried out
00:31:25.460 forbidden papers,
00:31:27.160 you know,
00:31:27.320 these ancient documents
00:31:29.640 from one of these monasteries,
00:31:32.260 from this group of monks,
00:31:34.020 and smuggled them out of,
00:31:35.900 you know,
00:31:36.780 kind of communist territory,
00:31:38.260 saved them after these guys
00:31:39.460 were killed
00:31:40.040 and their libraries burned down.
00:31:42.260 So,
00:31:42.600 he is very aware.
00:31:44.240 He's got the scars to prove it.
00:31:46.120 He's fought in the war.
00:31:47.200 He has real skin in the game.
00:31:49.260 And so,
00:31:49.680 it's hard to deny those facts.
00:31:51.540 You can listen to all the propaganda
00:31:52.840 you want,
00:31:54.120 but when you actually see
00:31:55.540 somebody who has experienced
00:31:57.120 the war,
00:31:58.000 who has seen the torture,
00:31:59.240 who has seen the killing,
00:32:00.760 has seen the burning,
00:32:01.700 he has seen what is going on,
00:32:04.540 it's a lot harder to ignore that,
00:32:06.300 right?
00:32:06.620 And, you know,
00:32:07.340 C.S. Lewis has a reputation
00:32:08.960 for being belligerent.
00:32:10.520 He's the guy who got drunk enough
00:32:11.940 to read his own scathing review
00:32:14.560 of this guy's poems to him,
00:32:16.940 you know,
00:32:17.780 but even he is paused,
00:32:20.460 you know,
00:32:20.680 is given pause in this moment
00:32:22.920 by this veteran
00:32:24.940 who has seen the horrors of this war
00:32:27.140 and seen the horrors
00:32:28.380 of what the communist faction is doing,
00:32:30.040 the ridiculous
00:32:31.620 and terrible persecution
00:32:33.420 of the church.
00:32:34.920 So,
00:32:35.420 he has the context.
00:32:36.500 Now,
00:32:36.640 this is funny because,
00:32:37.680 again,
00:32:37.980 I think this still
00:32:39.000 relates a lot
00:32:40.240 to what is happening today.
00:32:41.500 There's so many people
00:32:42.940 who look at this conflict
00:32:44.420 as one-dimensional.
00:32:45.860 They don't know the history.
00:32:46.820 They don't know the context.
00:32:48.320 They don't know anything about it.
00:32:50.240 And I'm not an expert.
00:32:51.640 I've read a couple books about it.
00:32:53.340 I've,
00:32:53.620 you know,
00:32:53.900 listened to a few podcasts about it.
00:32:55.680 I know more than the average person,
00:32:57.300 but I'm in no way
00:32:58.320 an expert on the area and time.
00:33:00.220 But even if you read
00:33:01.580 some of the,
00:33:02.400 you know,
00:33:03.220 center-left books on this,
00:33:05.260 I believe the one I read
00:33:06.080 was The War for Spain.
00:33:07.600 I'm trying to remember the author.
00:33:09.060 I'm sorry.
00:33:09.480 I don't have it on my fingertips
00:33:10.760 at the moment.
00:33:11.860 But even this person
00:33:13.080 who's obviously more sympathetic
00:33:15.080 to kind of the Republican side,
00:33:19.060 as it's often called,
00:33:20.180 the left communist side,
00:33:23.320 they are still racking up
00:33:26.060 the insane atrocities
00:33:27.640 that the left committed.
00:33:29.100 Now, again,
00:33:29.520 atrocities on both sides.
00:33:30.620 This is not to absolve Franco
00:33:31.920 of, you know,
00:33:33.260 any atrocities that happened
00:33:35.260 on his side.
00:33:36.640 War is often
00:33:37.660 a collection of atrocities.
00:33:39.820 I'm not giving anyone
00:33:40.580 a free pass on that.
00:33:42.080 But if you read
00:33:43.520 about what happened
00:33:44.440 to the Catholic Church,
00:33:45.540 even in some of those
00:33:46.880 center-left sources,
00:33:48.080 you can recognize that,
00:33:49.440 you know,
00:33:49.860 there's a reason
00:33:50.400 that our post-liberal consensus
00:33:53.020 society doesn't want to talk
00:33:55.280 a lot about this war
00:33:56.240 because it really breaks
00:33:58.360 that morally gray narrative
00:33:59.840 that we kind of like to tell
00:34:01.680 about the 1930s
00:34:02.760 and the 1940s
00:34:03.760 and the conflicts
00:34:04.360 between communism
00:34:06.320 and right-wing factions,
00:34:08.100 some of which are fascists,
00:34:09.340 some of which are not.
00:34:10.820 And that's far more complicated.
00:34:12.900 It's easier to just kind of
00:34:13.920 call Franco a fascist,
00:34:15.900 be like anybody
00:34:16.740 who worked with him
00:34:17.860 or fought for him
00:34:18.560 or on his side or bad,
00:34:19.640 and then just kind of move on
00:34:20.740 rather than getting into
00:34:22.460 what actually happened
00:34:23.500 in the context there.
00:34:25.080 That's kind of the end
00:34:26.140 of what's happening.
00:34:27.220 He just talks a little bit
00:34:28.120 about Christmas
00:34:28.720 and other things here
00:34:30.960 at the end of this letter.
00:34:32.900 So we'll end
00:34:33.860 the reading of the letter there,
00:34:35.060 but I want to come back
00:34:35.800 and talk to you a little bit
00:34:37.080 about how this relates
00:34:38.400 to the media literacy aspect
00:34:40.100 of this.
00:34:40.920 Before I do, guys,
00:34:42.120 let's hear from Jobstacking.
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00:35:46.820 All right,
00:35:47.520 so like I said,
00:35:48.180 that's kind of the end
00:35:49.040 of the letter,
00:35:50.800 this disagreement
00:35:52.160 between C.S. Lewis
00:35:53.260 and J.R.R. Tolkien.
00:35:55.740 I think it's really interesting
00:35:56.840 to take this snapshot
00:35:58.040 and understand
00:35:59.000 these are two guys
00:36:00.420 who are committed Christians.
00:36:03.160 These are two guys
00:36:04.420 who I think we could safely say
00:36:05.600 are on the right
00:36:06.340 in many ways.
00:36:08.360 But we can see
00:36:09.940 that there's a disagreement
00:36:11.100 here between this
00:36:12.400 and in many ways
00:36:13.580 Tolkien is kind of befuddled
00:36:15.200 because he's like,
00:36:16.080 well, Lewis should recognize
00:36:17.460 that the people
00:36:18.520 who are against Franco
00:36:20.420 in Spain
00:36:20.740 are also his enemies.
00:36:21.980 These people are communists.
00:36:23.260 They would kill him
00:36:24.020 if they had the chance.
00:36:25.060 They would destroy
00:36:26.100 life as he knows it.
00:36:28.360 Why does he believe
00:36:30.120 this propaganda
00:36:31.140 when he wouldn't normally
00:36:32.320 believe the propaganda
00:36:33.180 of communists?
00:36:34.440 And he comes to the answer
00:36:35.600 that it's kind of
00:36:36.200 the religious bias built in.
00:36:37.720 This is a guy
00:36:38.180 who's a church in England.
00:36:39.280 He's a Protestant.
00:36:39.860 And so he tends
00:36:42.620 to believe
00:36:43.120 that there's something
00:36:43.840 wrong with Catholicism,
00:36:45.520 that if the Catholics
00:36:46.120 are on one side,
00:36:47.280 that's probably
00:36:47.740 the wrong side.
00:36:49.340 Probably should have known
00:36:50.200 that communists
00:36:51.440 are a worse threat.
00:36:52.340 But it is interesting
00:36:53.120 to peer into this moment
00:36:54.720 and look at two guys
00:36:56.000 that I think a lot of people
00:36:56.920 watching this show
00:36:57.900 will love and respect
00:36:59.400 and cherish
00:37:00.040 having a disagreement
00:37:01.500 and a pretty serious disagreement.
00:37:03.000 But you'll notice
00:37:03.760 that despite
00:37:04.460 this disagreement,
00:37:06.440 and I think this is
00:37:07.100 really important,
00:37:08.060 especially with the amount
00:37:09.380 of ridiculous infighting
00:37:11.920 as seen especially
00:37:12.780 on certain parts
00:37:13.720 of the Christian,
00:37:15.240 conservative,
00:37:15.960 Christian right movement
00:37:16.960 at the moment,
00:37:18.180 it's important to remember
00:37:19.840 that these two men,
00:37:21.700 even though Tolkien
00:37:22.760 had a,
00:37:24.120 basically a adopted father
00:37:26.500 who was very sympathetic
00:37:28.460 to the Spanish cause,
00:37:29.420 who was himself,
00:37:30.540 you know,
00:37:31.380 half Spanish
00:37:32.040 and was tied to church,
00:37:33.160 even though
00:37:33.700 this was very personal
00:37:35.900 in a lot of ways
00:37:36.820 for Tolkien.
00:37:37.940 He still remained
00:37:39.420 friends with C.S. Lewis.
00:37:40.960 This did not
00:37:41.580 end their friendship.
00:37:43.200 It did not keep them
00:37:44.000 from talking to each other.
00:37:45.240 It did not cause
00:37:46.340 either one of them
00:37:47.000 to go ahead
00:37:48.600 and argue.
00:37:50.640 No one made
00:37:51.400 a declaration
00:37:52.120 saying that
00:37:54.360 Tolkien needed
00:37:55.460 to be banned
00:37:56.000 from the church,
00:37:57.260 that he was unacceptable,
00:37:58.620 that he wasn't
00:37:59.660 a Christian
00:38:00.160 because he
00:38:01.320 had some sympathy
00:38:02.640 towards Franco.
00:38:04.560 No one felt the need
00:38:06.020 to make a million
00:38:07.020 podcasts
00:38:07.840 denouncing.
00:38:08.640 I mean,
00:38:08.840 it didn't exist at the time,
00:38:09.720 but you know what I'm saying.
00:38:10.640 You get the gist of this.
00:38:11.700 Like,
00:38:12.120 people were still able
00:38:12.820 to be Christian brothers
00:38:14.400 and sisters.
00:38:15.300 They were still able
00:38:15.860 to maintain friendships.
00:38:17.280 This did not become
00:38:18.680 some article
00:38:19.740 of faith
00:38:20.880 that somehow
00:38:21.960 challenged
00:38:22.640 Tolkien's Christianity
00:38:23.760 for people.
00:38:24.680 That simply
00:38:25.400 isn't what happened.
00:38:26.780 The fact that
00:38:27.440 people now,
00:38:29.200 currently,
00:38:29.700 right now,
00:38:30.740 are far less tolerant
00:38:32.020 than a guy who's,
00:38:33.400 you know,
00:38:33.600 the people who are
00:38:34.260 literally fighting
00:38:35.760 against fascism
00:38:36.960 at one point
00:38:37.720 and communism
00:38:38.280 at another point,
00:38:39.560 like,
00:38:40.080 it is kind of insane,
00:38:41.440 right?
00:38:41.720 People who have
00:38:42.540 no skin in the game,
00:38:44.960 who have never paid
00:38:46.100 a blood cost
00:38:47.400 for any
00:38:48.660 of their beliefs
00:38:49.860 are less tolerant
00:38:51.620 of opposing beliefs
00:38:53.320 inside
00:38:53.980 the Christian brotherhood
00:38:55.380 than those that
00:38:56.680 actually fought
00:38:57.880 and died,
00:38:58.340 actually knew people
00:38:59.180 who were dying,
00:38:59.740 actually saw persecution,
00:39:01.440 actually had ties
00:39:02.360 to that.
00:39:03.600 It's kind of wild.
00:39:04.540 It's kind of wild
00:39:05.160 that that's the case.
00:39:06.380 It says a lot
00:39:07.400 about kind of the,
00:39:09.960 how we've been gripped
00:39:11.240 by this,
00:39:12.040 again,
00:39:12.300 the post-war consensus,
00:39:13.420 man.
00:39:13.640 Like,
00:39:13.820 it really is.
00:39:14.580 Like,
00:39:14.800 how people will lose
00:39:16.660 their mind
00:39:17.340 if you mildly question
00:39:19.260 certain aspects
00:39:20.820 of a historical narrative
00:39:22.520 when guys who are,
00:39:24.060 like,
00:39:24.260 heroes to these people,
00:39:25.560 like Tolkien,
00:39:26.480 absolutely did that
00:39:27.660 and absolutely
00:39:28.560 had opinions contrary.
00:39:30.080 To be fair,
00:39:30.940 you know,
00:39:31.400 to Lewis,
00:39:32.360 his position
00:39:33.180 was the primary position
00:39:34.700 in England,
00:39:35.600 in Britain.
00:39:36.020 There was a lot
00:39:36.700 of sympathy
00:39:37.160 for kind of
00:39:38.560 the left Republican
00:39:40.200 communist side
00:39:41.780 of the conflict.
00:39:43.800 There's not as much
00:39:44.780 sympathy
00:39:45.080 for the nationalists.
00:39:46.380 Again,
00:39:46.560 maybe that was
00:39:47.260 just a religious disposition,
00:39:48.900 but that was the case.
00:39:50.740 And so,
00:39:51.200 Tolkien was the odd man out.
00:39:53.020 And yet,
00:39:53.400 even though he's living
00:39:54.220 in a country
00:39:54.740 where most people
00:39:55.620 hold an opinion
00:39:56.540 opposed to Franco,
00:39:58.120 the fact that Tolkien
00:39:58.960 held an opinion
00:40:00.020 that was relatively
00:40:01.080 pro-Franco,
00:40:03.200 nobody said he's not
00:40:04.100 a real Christian.
00:40:05.060 No one got him
00:40:05.760 canceled from Oxford.
00:40:07.140 None of that.
00:40:07.820 None of it happened.
00:40:11.180 Now,
00:40:12.160 I do want to clarify
00:40:13.160 for those who
00:40:14.160 aren't familiar,
00:40:15.220 Tolkien was absolutely
00:40:16.280 not a fascist,
00:40:17.500 even though
00:40:18.260 he had sympathies
00:40:19.760 for Franco here.
00:40:20.680 And I would make
00:40:21.480 the case
00:40:21.780 that Franco
00:40:22.640 is also not a fascist.
00:40:24.160 But again,
00:40:24.900 I have a video
00:40:25.380 on what fascism is.
00:40:27.280 You can go check that out.
00:40:28.600 Sorry,
00:40:28.840 I'm just referencing
00:40:29.360 other videos,
00:40:30.100 but these are
00:40:30.440 very complicated topics.
00:40:31.660 They can't be unpacked
00:40:32.620 in five minutes.
00:40:33.640 So I encourage you
00:40:34.880 to go to the videos
00:40:35.980 where I unpack them
00:40:36.820 over the course
00:40:37.400 of an hour or more
00:40:38.260 rather than just having
00:40:39.620 me regurgitate
00:40:40.820 entire videos here.
00:40:42.840 But ultimately,
00:40:44.500 he was not a fan
00:40:46.020 of fascism.
00:40:46.880 He made that clear.
00:40:47.960 Tolkien
00:40:48.360 had a statement
00:40:51.060 where he said
00:40:51.780 I think ultimately
00:40:53.380 that he did not
00:40:54.900 like the idea
00:40:55.660 of kind of the state
00:40:56.500 controlling everything.
00:40:57.460 That was a huge
00:40:58.200 big problem
00:40:58.880 with both communism
00:40:59.780 and fascism.
00:41:00.980 And he said
00:41:01.420 ultimately,
00:41:02.640 I find myself
00:41:03.440 more and more
00:41:03.900 drawn to anarchism.
00:41:05.120 Now,
00:41:05.500 interestingly,
00:41:06.160 for all the libertarian
00:41:07.360 anarcho-capitalist guys
00:41:08.680 cheering over there,
00:41:10.560 you may want to hold on
00:41:11.180 for a second.
00:41:12.060 He said
00:41:12.660 in that passage,
00:41:14.840 he says,
00:41:15.380 I feel myself
00:41:16.900 being drawn
00:41:17.380 toward anarchism
00:41:18.460 or maybe
00:41:19.320 an unconstitutional
00:41:21.620 monarchy.
00:41:22.560 Now,
00:41:22.800 that's going to
00:41:23.160 sound wild
00:41:23.620 for people.
00:41:24.060 They're not going
00:41:24.380 to put that together.
00:41:25.140 They're going to be like,
00:41:25.620 what is he talking about?
00:41:27.300 That those two systems
00:41:28.440 sound entirely
00:41:29.160 opposed to each other.
00:41:30.680 An unconstitutional
00:41:31.760 monarchy,
00:41:33.140 a monarchy
00:41:33.640 without
00:41:34.300 adherence to a constitution.
00:41:36.400 So not like England,
00:41:37.680 but an unconstitutional
00:41:38.740 monarchy
00:41:39.100 or anarchy.
00:41:40.740 How are those
00:41:41.440 things related?
00:41:42.940 If you're familiar,
00:41:44.420 and I need to have,
00:41:45.420 I'm going to go ahead
00:41:47.840 and get
00:41:48.280 Stephen Carson on,
00:41:49.680 I think,
00:41:50.000 to talk about this
00:41:50.740 because he's somebody
00:41:51.460 who has done episodes
00:41:52.820 of it on his own show.
00:41:54.440 You can probably
00:41:54.800 go look at those now
00:41:55.780 if you want,
00:41:56.380 but he talks a lot
00:41:58.980 about medieval anarchy.
00:42:02.120 We don't think
00:42:02.920 of that as anarchy,
00:42:04.060 of feudalism
00:42:04.960 as being an anarchic
00:42:06.260 type of governance.
00:42:08.300 However,
00:42:09.200 what you understand
00:42:10.160 is it's highly
00:42:10.880 territorialized,
00:42:12.020 right?
00:42:12.220 Everything is,
00:42:13.400 the baron takes care
00:42:14.580 of this area
00:42:15.380 and he's mostly
00:42:16.440 in charge
00:42:17.200 and the sovereign
00:42:18.320 in this small town
00:42:19.480 in this small region
00:42:20.600 and then he kicks it up
00:42:22.420 to the next feudal lord
00:42:23.820 and they kick it up
00:42:24.740 to the king
00:42:25.260 and, you know,
00:42:26.440 so there's
00:42:27.300 a monarchical structure
00:42:28.740 but the king
00:42:30.120 is basically
00:42:30.940 in negotiations
00:42:31.980 with these nobles
00:42:33.200 more than he is
00:42:34.460 kind of this
00:42:35.020 overarching figure
00:42:36.420 who controls
00:42:37.120 everything all the time.
00:42:38.340 A lot of people
00:42:38.760 have kind of a
00:42:39.400 misunderstanding
00:42:40.200 of the way
00:42:41.060 that feudalism
00:42:41.860 actually worked.
00:42:42.840 The whole reason
00:42:43.480 that feudalism
00:42:44.160 emerged was that
00:42:46.020 central governments
00:42:46.760 couldn't protect
00:42:47.800 their territory
00:42:48.780 in kind of the way
00:42:50.840 that we understand now
00:42:52.080 and so you needed
00:42:53.140 this patchwork
00:42:54.200 of different kind of
00:42:55.020 warlords basically
00:42:56.120 to control certain regions
00:42:58.180 and yes,
00:42:59.060 there's a larger structure
00:42:59.960 that they were plugged into
00:43:01.160 but the idea
00:43:02.360 of one overarching state
00:43:04.240 just didn't exist
00:43:05.560 and so in the sense,
00:43:07.040 in that sense,
00:43:07.580 it's anarchical
00:43:08.480 that there is no
00:43:09.740 unified state presence.
00:43:11.560 There is a king
00:43:12.380 but the king
00:43:12.960 is kind of
00:43:14.160 negotiating
00:43:14.800 with a bunch
00:43:15.480 of warlords
00:43:16.200 to figure out
00:43:17.120 kind of how
00:43:18.040 they can best
00:43:18.640 work together.
00:43:19.860 The warlords
00:43:20.260 have a lot
00:43:20.760 of individual power,
00:43:21.960 they have a lot
00:43:22.300 of regional power
00:43:23.080 close to the ground
00:43:23.980 that they're
00:43:25.200 very powerful
00:43:26.180 in their areas
00:43:27.440 and that's necessary
00:43:28.960 because you need
00:43:29.940 that localized power
00:43:30.960 because you don't
00:43:31.820 have kind of
00:43:32.620 this vast network
00:43:33.480 of trade,
00:43:34.300 logistics,
00:43:35.120 communication,
00:43:36.460 military,
00:43:37.280 everything else
00:43:37.960 that kind of
00:43:38.380 makes this
00:43:39.120 modern total state
00:43:41.180 the total state
00:43:42.320 and so in that sense,
00:43:44.500 I think it's what
00:43:45.100 he's talking about
00:43:45.740 with anarchy.
00:43:46.340 Now,
00:43:46.440 he never really expands
00:43:47.500 on this in great depth
00:43:48.960 to my knowledge
00:43:50.180 so I can't completely
00:43:52.880 assume that's what
00:43:53.760 he was talking about.
00:43:54.280 Maybe he truly was
00:43:55.240 a full-on anarchist
00:43:56.660 but he's certainly,
00:43:58.220 of course,
00:43:58.860 a guy who wrote
00:43:59.600 a lot about kings.
00:44:00.920 He had an appreciation
00:44:02.120 for monarchy.
00:44:03.500 He had an appreciation
00:44:04.220 for its role
00:44:05.800 and I think that's
00:44:06.960 kind of the type
00:44:08.300 of anarchy
00:44:08.760 he's talking about
00:44:09.400 because he buttresses
00:44:10.220 that discussion
00:44:12.740 of anarchy
00:44:13.400 with an,
00:44:14.660 you know,
00:44:15.140 or an unconstitutional
00:44:16.320 monarchy
00:44:16.860 so he's kind of
00:44:18.700 got that there.
00:44:20.460 The reason,
00:44:21.400 again,
00:44:21.900 that I did all of this
00:44:22.960 along with the fact
00:44:24.040 that we're unpacking
00:44:24.980 just an important
00:44:26.060 part of history,
00:44:27.100 insight into
00:44:27.980 these two men,
00:44:29.660 the reason I wanted
00:44:31.220 to talk about
00:44:31.880 all this
00:44:32.340 is ultimately
00:44:33.400 I think it's
00:44:34.020 fascinating
00:44:34.680 that so many
00:44:36.560 of these leftists
00:44:37.480 who are now
00:44:37.920 pushing media literacy,
00:44:39.280 media literacy,
00:44:40.460 ignore the fact
00:44:41.860 that a guy
00:44:43.060 like Tolkien
00:44:44.500 was supporting
00:44:46.800 someone like Franco.
00:44:48.320 They kind of
00:44:49.140 want that brush
00:44:50.340 out of history
00:44:50.940 and we've seen
00:44:52.380 like the destruction
00:44:53.200 of Tolkien's legacy
00:44:54.420 or the attempt to
00:44:55.380 his legacy
00:44:56.800 will never be destroyed.
00:44:57.720 The Lord of the Rings,
00:44:58.680 The Hobbit,
00:44:59.480 The Silmarillion,
00:45:00.200 these things are immortal.
00:45:01.340 They'll be here
00:45:01.720 long after,
00:45:02.600 you know,
00:45:03.440 producers on Amazon Prime
00:45:05.280 are dead.
00:45:06.200 But, you know,
00:45:07.100 the Tolkien family
00:45:08.380 does not care very much
00:45:09.420 about his legacy
00:45:10.880 and his beliefs.
00:45:11.920 They're super woke.
00:45:13.960 They sold their,
00:45:15.200 you know,
00:45:15.620 rights to Amazon
00:45:16.440 who completely,
00:45:17.680 you know,
00:45:18.580 introduced every modern
00:45:20.140 audience cliche
00:45:21.540 into the kind of
00:45:24.120 Tolkien universe.
00:45:25.400 And of course,
00:45:26.040 for a lot of these
00:45:27.160 leftists who are obsessed
00:45:28.940 with kind of nerd culture
00:45:30.560 and making that
00:45:31.200 in their entire identity,
00:45:32.320 that they suddenly
00:45:34.540 don't care about
00:45:35.460 media literacy
00:45:36.140 when it comes to Tolkien.
00:45:37.340 When it comes to
00:45:37.880 Lord of the Rings,
00:45:38.700 you know,
00:45:39.120 it doesn't matter.
00:45:39.760 It doesn't matter
00:45:40.420 that the author
00:45:42.020 didn't believe
00:45:42.820 any of these things
00:45:43.680 that you're pushing
00:45:44.300 in the new show.
00:45:45.000 It doesn't matter
00:45:45.540 that you're subverting
00:45:46.780 all of his values,
00:45:48.060 his Catholicism,
00:45:49.200 his understanding
00:45:50.100 of Christianity,
00:45:51.040 his love for tradition,
00:45:52.860 monarchy.
00:45:53.500 You're destroying
00:45:54.180 all of that
00:45:55.040 so that you can
00:45:56.220 kind of tell
00:45:56.680 your woke progressive story.
00:45:58.220 And it turns out
00:45:59.080 media literacy
00:45:59.680 doesn't matter at all.
00:46:00.980 It doesn't matter
00:46:01.840 about the Tolkien's
00:46:03.180 original intent.
00:46:04.200 It doesn't matter
00:46:04.700 what his actual
00:46:05.580 political beliefs are.
00:46:06.880 It doesn't matter
00:46:07.440 that when,
00:46:08.200 you know,
00:46:08.620 we have complete evidence
00:46:10.980 that when everything
00:46:12.900 is on the table,
00:46:14.040 he would back
00:46:14.780 Francisco Franco
00:46:15.640 over any of their heroes,
00:46:18.080 right?
00:46:18.320 He would say,
00:46:19.480 yeah,
00:46:19.900 no,
00:46:20.100 I'm a Franco guy.
00:46:21.600 Screw Che Guevara.
00:46:22.640 Screw,
00:46:23.120 you know,
00:46:23.700 Lenin or Marx
00:46:25.080 or any of these people.
00:46:26.500 I'm siding with Franco.
00:46:27.800 That does not impact
00:46:29.820 their desire
00:46:31.620 to make woke versions
00:46:32.640 of his stuff at all.
00:46:33.840 So when they're talking
00:46:34.840 about media literacy,
00:46:35.780 they don't mean a word of it.
00:46:37.180 It's all just
00:46:38.340 academic nonsense
00:46:40.460 generated entirely
00:46:42.260 to try to explain
00:46:43.840 why conservatives
00:46:45.380 can't have nice things,
00:46:47.380 why nothing is actually
00:46:48.740 on the right,
00:46:49.840 why the left
00:46:50.740 owns everything.
00:46:51.780 Either they got to
00:46:52.300 reconstruct it
00:46:53.040 through death of the author
00:46:53.840 or they've got to enforce
00:46:55.040 their worldview
00:46:55.700 through media literacy.
00:46:56.840 There's no consistency.
00:46:58.260 It's all just
00:46:59.460 friend and enemy.
00:47:00.540 It was this guy a friend.
00:47:01.980 Then everything he said
00:47:03.200 is gospel.
00:47:03.780 Everything he created
00:47:04.700 is,
00:47:05.440 you know,
00:47:06.340 true.
00:47:07.160 We have to hold to that
00:47:08.160 and with the spirit
00:47:09.020 of the author
00:47:09.600 and the spirit
00:47:10.560 of the filmmaker
00:47:11.380 is all that matters.
00:47:12.800 Oh,
00:47:13.220 is he an enemy?
00:47:13.900 Oh,
00:47:14.080 well,
00:47:14.200 no,
00:47:14.600 we can subvert it.
00:47:15.540 Death of the author.
00:47:16.300 We don't care.
00:47:17.060 We will remake it.
00:47:17.960 We'll do whatever we want.
00:47:19.560 And so that's really
00:47:20.640 the point here
00:47:21.480 is that that tactic
00:47:22.920 is entirely cynical.
00:47:24.180 It has no granting
00:47:25.160 in reality.
00:47:25.800 They cannot keep it together.
00:47:28.540 It's not internally consistent.
00:47:30.620 They change it
00:47:31.280 whenever they need to.
00:47:32.780 And I think it's worth
00:47:33.620 going back and reading
00:47:35.140 stuff like this
00:47:35.980 because when we don't
00:47:38.440 read things prior
00:47:39.900 to our current age,
00:47:41.060 we don't understand
00:47:41.800 the context in which
00:47:42.680 these decisions were made.
00:47:44.260 We don't understand
00:47:44.980 the complexities
00:47:45.660 that many people,
00:47:46.780 many people we admire,
00:47:48.400 were struggling with
00:47:49.680 in these moments.
00:47:50.540 and we see
00:47:51.880 that even when
00:47:52.560 they struggle
00:47:53.120 through these complexities,
00:47:53.960 they somehow manage
00:47:55.080 to maintain
00:47:55.680 Christian brotherhood,
00:47:57.160 something that could
00:47:58.240 probably be a great
00:47:59.760 lesson to many
00:48:00.840 who are currently
00:48:01.780 deciding that the
00:48:03.400 most important thing
00:48:04.040 in the world
00:48:04.440 is to cancel anybody
00:48:05.480 who has any questions
00:48:07.420 about kind of
00:48:08.400 the current ruling paradigm.
00:48:09.560 But that said,
00:48:11.780 thanks for watching,
00:48:12.660 guys.
00:48:12.920 I hope you enjoyed this.
00:48:13.940 I hope this was
00:48:14.680 an interesting look
00:48:16.320 into two figures
00:48:17.920 that, again,
00:48:18.640 I respect
00:48:19.540 and I know many
00:48:20.120 of you respect
00:48:20.760 and kind of the conflict
00:48:22.220 and the thoughts
00:48:22.800 that they had
00:48:23.480 and the reasons
00:48:24.060 and motivations
00:48:24.600 that they felt
00:48:25.280 were behind them,
00:48:26.740 along with just kind
00:48:28.020 of, you know,
00:48:28.920 pointing out the
00:48:29.800 empty, hollow, stupid
00:48:31.120 notion of media literacy
00:48:32.480 that has been advanced
00:48:33.520 by many on the left.
00:48:34.860 Once again,
00:48:35.660 if you put in any
00:48:36.980 super chats,
00:48:37.760 thank you so much.
00:48:38.620 But I, you know,
00:48:39.240 this is pre-recorded
00:48:40.180 so I won't be reading them,
00:48:41.680 but I really appreciate it.
00:48:43.160 Looking forward to
00:48:44.040 talking to you again
00:48:44.820 on Friday.
00:48:45.480 I'm going to have
00:48:46.060 both Morgoth
00:48:47.800 and Endeavor
00:48:48.520 are scheduled to come on.
00:48:49.640 We're going to be
00:48:50.040 discussing immigration
00:48:51.020 in both of their countries.
00:48:52.680 So I really encourage
00:48:53.860 you to tune in live.
00:48:55.280 That one will be live
00:48:56.080 and we'll, of course,
00:48:57.600 be taking questions then.
00:48:59.220 But if you want to
00:49:00.460 catch those broadcasts live,
00:49:01.840 then, of course,
00:49:02.400 you need to subscribe
00:49:03.000 to this channel
00:49:03.580 if it's your first time here,
00:49:04.440 make sure you do that.
00:49:05.700 If you would like to
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00:49:43.900 Thank you, everybody,
00:49:45.000 for watching.
00:49:45.700 And as always,
00:49:46.260 I will talk to you next time.