The Auron MacIntyre Show - Religion and Politics in the Ancient City ｜ Guest： Chad Pecknold ｜ 5⧸18⧸23

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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:31.660 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.620 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:38.260 So I've been reading this book, The Ancient City, and I think it's a really fascinating book.

00:00:43.000 It kind of explains the traditions of ancient Rome and ancient Greece in a way that really

00:00:48.140 helps us to understand how central religion was to pretty much everything that existed

00:00:54.120 inside the cities, how it informed the law, how it informed politics, how it informed

00:00:58.500 pretty much every institution that they had in that time.

00:01:03.380 And so I wanted to talk to somebody who is very familiar with that book.

00:01:06.760 And so I have with me Dr. Chad Pecknell.

00:01:09.360 He is an assistant professor over at Catholic University of America of Theology.

00:01:15.900 Chad, thank you for joining me.

00:01:18.120 Yeah, my pleasure to be with you as always, Aaron.

00:01:19.980 Yeah, I think this is going to be really fascinating.

00:01:22.980 You wrote a piece for the post-liberal order on this book, or at least incorporating a good

00:01:28.880 amount of this book, which I thought was very interesting.

00:01:31.640 And so I definitely want to bring your perspective in here as we kind of look at what Collage had

00:01:36.140 to say about the ancient city and the way that religion really informed everything that

00:01:41.020 they did.

00:01:41.520 But before we get started with that, guys, let's go ahead and hear from today's sponsor.

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00:03:05.100 All right, guys.

00:03:05.940 So let's go ahead and jump right into it.

00:03:08.120 So one of the things that I think is very helpful in this book is at the very beginning,

00:03:13.060 Kalanj kind of encourages the reader to look at the ancient city as kind of an alien place,

00:03:20.060 right?

00:03:20.480 He says, a lot of people look at ancient Rome and ancient Greece, and they think of these

00:03:24.800 as our ancestors.

00:03:25.920 We're directly from their lineage.

00:03:28.340 This is kind of how Western civilization evolved.

00:03:31.060 And so we kind of push our own understanding of how these societies worked, our kind of

00:03:37.380 modern understanding onto the rituals, the religious beliefs of these people.

00:03:43.140 But he encourages us to really think of them as kind of an alien people because their ways

00:03:47.140 are so different, so radically set apart from the way that many modern people think about

00:03:52.260 religion and its role to be kind of very different, drastically different role.

00:04:01.060 Yeah, I think to make the ancient world strange, especially to Third Republic French liberals, 0.97

00:04:14.080 you know, like Robespierre and people who wanted to, you know, in a sense, have this ideal

00:04:20.040 of going back to the ancients.

00:04:21.840 We'll go back to, you know, Aristotle and Plato and we'll just be pure naturalists.

00:04:27.120 And I think one of the victories of this extraordinary study is not only that he got, this was written

00:04:35.020 in 1864, by the way, before there was such a thing as archaeology.

00:04:39.920 And it's an extraordinary book because Fustel gets all of his information from studying classic

00:04:45.620 texts.

00:04:46.340 And so he kind of, he kind of unearths the archaeology of Greek and Roman religion before

00:04:54.540 there was such a thing as the archaeology of religion.

00:04:57.720 And he gets it basically right.

00:05:00.400 But one of his aims is, in a sense, to demonstrate for his countrymen that,

00:05:08.080 in a sense, the ancient world that they're going, that they want to go back to is not

00:05:15.240 a religion-free zone. 0.94

00:05:17.780 I mean, that's what the, that's what the philosophes are kind of after is some atheistic kind of

00:05:22.900 natural order.

00:05:24.220 And going back to the ancients is their idea. 0.83

00:05:26.820 And he writes the ancient city in part to demonstrate to them that that is quixotic.

00:05:32.960 That's a fantasy.

00:05:34.080 You're not going to go back to the ancients and find a religion-less world.

00:05:39.220 In fact, when you go back to the ancients, what you find is that, as he says, religion

00:05:43.480 is the master science.

00:05:44.980 Religion is, has the kind of architectonic power, explanatory power for the whole thing.

00:05:53.120 It explains everything from marriage and, you know, family ties, kinship ties, how a family

00:06:00.280 is held together, how, how families of families are held together, how philosophy is held

00:06:06.100 together, uh, uh, how generations are held together, all by the bonds of religion.

00:06:14.280 And so part of the project here is to demonstrate to 19th century philosophes that there's no doing

00:06:20.960 without religion. 0.88

00:06:22.040 Which I think is a particularly useful project for, uh, many today who would like to abandon

00:06:29.280 this crazy wokeness and get us all the way back to the classical liberalism of the 1990s,

00:06:34.500 uh, thinking that we can kind of just, uh, purge ourselves of this crazy new religion and get 1.00

00:06:40.340 back to the good old days, uh, where everything was objective and scientific.

00:06:44.180 And I think it's really important for people to understand that that's just not how humans

00:06:48.520 operate.

00:06:49.220 It never has been how humans operate in the ancient city is most certainly a study on how

00:06:54.400 I think people do actually operate though.

00:06:56.980 Interestingly, he does say repeatedly, this is not a society that you can go back to in

00:07:01.560 general anyway, that this is very much kind of of its time, uh, of its people, uh, you

00:07:07.160 know, kind of of its particular spirit.

00:07:08.760 And so, uh, the, the caution about thinking that you're just going to return to a particular

00:07:13.700 time is useful, even as it comes from somebody in the 1860s.

00:07:17.420 Uh, but that said, let's kind of go ahead and get into some of the beginnings of his

00:07:21.800 explanation of the religion here, because I think most people, they think, you know,

00:07:26.100 the, the Romans, the Greeks, it's all about Zeus.

00:07:28.560 It's all about, uh, you know, Poseidon or something.

00:07:31.460 And he really goes, he really goes back and starts at a very ancient form of the religion

00:07:37.920 in, uh, kind of Greece and Rome talking about something that was much more akin to ancestor

00:07:43.240 worship and was rooted very much in the idea of a sacred hearth, a sacred fire that the

00:07:48.940 family would tend to kind of honor, uh, you know, their ancients that visit the tomb that

00:07:54.680 was in the land where they're that he even says things like property rights are developed

00:07:59.660 specifically, not because of any idea of individual ownership or, you know, a kind of autonomous

00:08:06.020 use of something, but very specifically because you had to own the field your family was buried

00:08:11.760 in because their spirits literally lived there.

00:08:16.020 Yeah.

00:08:16.600 And, and yeah, I mean the, and the, the, the hearth I'm pointing at my hearth and many

00:08:22.040 people still today, I mean, some contemporary homes are built without fireplaces and hearths,

00:08:27.540 but, but the idea even of in a single family home where you have a kind of classical eggs and

00:08:34.180 dental kind of structure around your fireplace, that is religious for the ancients that, that

00:08:41.860 there's a place in which the, the Vesta, the, the living flame of the family is the root of all

00:08:50.580 ancient civilization. And that sacred flame is the thing which binds together the family and then

00:08:57.780 binds together the city. And as you say, uh, it binds you not only temporally,

00:09:03.940 but also binds you to over across time to your ancestors and to the future. And, and that

00:09:11.940 hearth as it were has to be rooted somewhere. It has to, it has to be rooted in the place of your

00:09:18.820 ancestors. And so you have to have land, you have to have property. And so the very idea that, uh,

00:09:25.620 you know, the sale of property is a kind of religious event. Uh, it's, it's, it's extremely complex in the

00:09:33.300 ancient world to sell property. And we think, well, they didn't know about the free market and,

00:09:38.500 you know, uh, if, if only they, if only they had realtors, but, uh, but in fact, uh, the reason,

00:09:45.540 the reason why they don't do that is because, uh, even property is religious property has this religious

00:09:54.020 significant, um, inheritance, um, inheritance, the same way inheritance laws and primogeniture and the,

00:10:00.340 the connection between a father and the eldest son, uh, how things are passed on from one generation

00:10:07.140 to another is all bound by religion. And I mean, one of the interesting things is you might not see

00:10:14.900 it in the ways that you expect to, right? You're, you're looking for a place in which people are

00:10:19.700 gathering, you know, for, you know, singing hymns, you know, uh, passing, passing the tithe plate

00:10:26.820 around or something like that. And I think like Emil Durkheim, uh, uh, Fustel shows, I think that

00:10:36.980 religion is more suffused into everything. It's just kind of baked into everything.

00:10:42.180 Yeah. It's, it's the language by which kind of everyone communicates. It ties every different

00:10:49.620 social interaction together. And I think most interestingly, uh, at least for me,

00:10:54.020 because I spent a lot of time on kind of politics and political theory and the origins of these

00:10:57.940 things. Uh, it, he talks a lot about how all of the law in the ancient city is tied to religion.

00:11:06.660 So as you kind of alluded to there earlier, you, you had, it was considered, it wasn't just considered,

00:11:12.980 uh, bad for, you know, someone to stay celibate to not have children. It was, it was literally an

00:11:18.420 interruption of the worship. It was an interruption of the ability of father and son to pass along the

00:11:26.020 worship and to continue to care for the ancients and to continue, uh, to provide the, the things that

00:11:32.740 the ancestors would need once they had passed on. And so it was your moral duty to have that looks

00:11:39.300 like we might've lost, uh, Chad there for a second guys, but I'll just continue with explaining some of

00:11:44.900 these aspects and hopefully we'll have him back here soon. Uh, but the, uh, but the ancient world

00:11:51.940 is a place where you are continuing, uh, bloodline is not just there for your, you know, the, uh,

00:11:59.620 carrying on property or something, but very specifically because they will be, have a duty

00:12:05.140 to care for you in the afterlife. And so inheritance is not something you can just hand off through

00:12:11.220 something like a will, because the son, if you, if you were to, to hand this off to some random person,

00:12:17.300 this property off to some random person, that person would not be part of your worship.

00:12:21.540 And therefore them possessing your land would rob your ancestors and the future of your line of the 1.00

00:12:29.300 ability to continue to participate in the worship. And so as Dr. Pecknell was talking about, that's not

00:12:34.980 just something that you lose as a possession, but it's actually a lineage and a future, uh, that you're

00:12:41.940 denying to your family, as well as a denial of your ancestors of the worship that's due to them.

00:12:47.300 I think you're that back there, Mr. Yeah. And I think who still is very interested in

00:12:56.820 Yeah, I think, I think who still is interested in this question of, of the family structure

00:13:01.940 as the fundament of, of everything that, that the family structure is inherently religious

00:13:07.780 and that, uh, it's the relationship between families, which is also going to be religious.

00:13:14.020 And so one of the, one of the problems that who still talks about is the, the way in which

00:13:19.940 religion is essentially private, you know, and in a way, sometimes a liberal might think

00:13:26.740 religion is a private thing. Um, in a very, very special way in the ancient world, uh, the domestic 0.95

00:13:33.700 heart, the, the vest of the, of the, of the domestic religion was just for you, just for you and your

00:13:42.580 family. You didn't, you didn't pray to your ancestral gods for your neighbor, right? You wouldn't, you

00:13:48.740 wouldn't, don't pray for your city. You just, it's very private. And Fustel talks about the development of

00:13:56.420 the civic religion, uh, as itself a problem is you, if everything's religious and, and you have this

00:14:05.220 development of a connection between families and here, he has an, has in mind the primitive movement

00:14:12.740 was the connection between aristocratic families that the, the, what bound the aristocratic families

00:14:21.300 together was also a new civic hearth, you could call it a civic altar. And that that civic altar was

00:14:28.580 to a God that would protect that group of families as a, as a tribe and then as a city. Um, and so

00:14:36.740 everything for Fustel kind of expands off of that. So you move from the domestic religion, which is private

00:14:42.980 to a civic religion, which is totally public, but it's publicness is, uh, once again, jealous. So you would pray to the

00:14:53.780 God of that city for people in that city. You would never pray to that God for people in another city.

00:15:00.340 And so you have this kind of way in which the religion starts to build up. And, uh, this is how he,

00:15:07.860 he describes the movement of both Greek and Roman civilization as a movement of religious order that

00:15:14.580 is kind of organically, uh, grows up as the binding instrument, as the, the relegare, the thing that,

00:15:22.580 that knits things together, uh, each according to their capacity.

00:15:27.300 Yeah. And I found that particularly interesting because I think it also plays, uh, into something

00:15:33.780 that Bertrand Juvenal talks about with his metaphysics of power and how for the state to expand, it must

00:15:39.780 collapse all competing spheres of social authority. But I don't, I don't want to get too far into that

00:15:45.460 yet. Cause I think there's some other things I want to hit before we get there. But I, I think that

00:15:49.300 interesting thing about this book is it, it lays out the development of these societies so well that

00:15:55.220 I think it brings together a number of different threads of kind of political theory and, and it

00:15:59.780 becomes a showcase for, for a number of kind of how these mechanisms work. Uh, but I do want to go

00:16:05.860 ahead and touch before we get to some of that stuff about the power of the, of kind of how laws have to

00:16:14.180 follow the religious order. The laws, uh, for, uh, for style are basically things that come into being

00:16:22.340 because they are formalizations of what already is religious doctrine, which already is kind of the

00:16:29.860 tradition and that the laws couldn't be anything else. He specifically says the idea that the, uh,

00:16:36.100 that the Senate or that the, the legislative body would legislate something that was against the

00:16:40.580 religion or an opposition or restriction on the religion was crazy because the, the families had 0.62

00:16:46.980 so much authority and the worship of the families had so much authority that the government did not

00:16:52.420 have the ability to kind of basically enshrine anything else. And so things like the ownership

00:16:58.020 of the children, kind of a radical ownership of children where you could sell your, your, your son or

00:17:03.540 daughter. Um, you could choose to kill them. Uh, all of these things are, uh, things that the, 1.00

00:17:09.860 the society could not change the, the, the government could not change because the authority of the

00:17:15.620 families themselves was ultimate. And so that meant that the laws, as they came into being,

00:17:21.060 were purely kind of reflections of this religious order in many ways.

00:17:27.860 Yeah. I mean, specifically not just the power of the families.

00:17:30.500 Oh, I lost him again.

00:17:38.500 All right, guys. Well, exciting, uh, issues with connections. I guess I'll just continue to talk

00:17:43.620 about this again until we get him back. Oh, he's back already.

00:17:47.700 Sorry. All right. No problem. No, but the, the power of the fathers, the power of the fathers

00:17:54.340 absolute. And, uh, the, the power of the fathers fundamentally a religious power. And, uh, the

00:18:01.860 reason why the Senate won't intervene is because it's precisely the, the fathers who constitute the

00:18:08.820 regime. And so there's a kind of implicit classical sense of subsidiarity here that,

00:18:15.140 that, um, that, um, there's something inviolable about the power of the father to rule. Um,

00:18:23.780 even who still talks about how the father sits in the judgment seat in the court of his own home

00:18:32.020 and his judgments are supreme. So, you know, a father is like a Supreme Court justice in his own home,

00:18:38.180 and he can decide his own disputes. Now, uh, so the state, the, the government can't, uh, decide any,

00:18:46.500 I mean, we have civil disputes, disputes between families in our courts. There would be none of that for them.

00:18:52.740 Um, now a father could be judged, right, uh, by the Senate, uh, but his children couldn't be,

00:19:03.300 his wife couldn't be. Um, and I think that gives you the sense of, of the, uh, the way in which

00:19:11.540 the civilization is structured is, you know, Catholics have one way of saying that the family

00:19:16.740 is the fundamental unit. The ancients have another way of saying that it's, it is both the fundamental

00:19:21.940 unit and it's, it has, uh, it's already political, if I can put it that way. Some conservatives like this

00:19:28.900 idea of the pre-political, that the family is pre-political to the civic order, that is not an

00:19:36.100 ancient view at all. Uh, the ancients absolutely view the family as political. It's political all

00:19:41.940 the way through. It's religious all the way through. Um, and, uh, the Senate respects that, uh, respects

00:19:48.900 that the family is the basic political, social, religious unit of, uh, and, uh, doesn't, doesn't,

00:19:58.020 in a sense have rights over, uh, the father. Yeah. And it's very interesting that even as

00:20:04.660 many of these families kind of bind together and what he calls the gins here, kind of the, uh,

00:20:09.540 the, the old families, uh, the patrician families inside of them, they still have this order where 0.72

00:20:15.700 there, there are judges and priests and it's kind of sacred rights that only belong to that family,

00:20:21.740 only belong to that gen. And so there's basically, uh, even once we start seeing more of the

00:20:27.620 formation of the state, there's still all these subdivides inside these families that have

00:20:32.440 more weight, that have more authority, uh, than the, than whatever the top government level of

00:20:38.360 government would have. And so, like you said, that, that level of subsidiarity where kind of each level

00:20:42.940 has an authority that can't be breached by, uh, kind of the formal state is a constant, uh, theme

00:20:50.480 throughout here. Um, and, uh, he really also breaks in to the fact that a lot of what he's,

00:20:57.620 talked about is from kind of the nobility, uh, that you had, you know, your, your patrician families,

00:21:04.380 and then they had the clients that got to share the religion of those families. And then you had

00:21:11.400 the, uh, the plebs who had kind of no religion at all, or did not have a connection to this religion. 0.77

00:21:16.720 And so in some ways, slaves who were brought into the worship of these households were considered

00:21:23.680 kind of more citizens or part of the ancient city than the plebs were because they were initiated 1.00

00:21:30.140 into the worship in a way that these outside, uh, plebs without a religion were not. 0.99

00:21:38.220 Oh, got a re, uh, relocation and lost him again. Okay. Well, he'll probably be back right away.

00:21:45.940 But, uh, yeah, guys. So that was a big part of what he talks about that. Oh, and we're back again.

00:21:52.380 Okay. Hopefully that's. I hope this is better over here. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, no, I was just,

00:22:03.140 I was just talking about this, uh, patrician client distinction versus the plebs and how 0.97

00:22:07.920 the lack, the big, uh, delineation was the lack of religion on the part of plebs. They were not 0.98

00:22:14.180 considered part of kind of the original ancient city, mainly because they did not have this connection

00:22:19.140 to the ancient religions. They didn't have the worship that the other families had. 0.68

00:22:24.500 I think that, I think that's some, one of the striking things here is, is the class distinctions

00:22:29.620 that come up very strongly in this history that, that the political religious nature of families is

00:22:35.880 primarily a aristocratic thing. The plebs don't have this strong connection. Uh, they, they might 1.00

00:22:42.260 indeed have religious practices, uh, uh, uh, but, uh, they're, they're not constitutive. They don't

00:22:48.180 give them power. They, they, they might, you know, they, they, they might engage in, in various

00:22:54.260 religious exercises, but, but they're alienated from the central rights, the central rights of the civic

00:23:00.900 religion. Um, and I think he, he rightly, you know, draws out the way in which the, the relationship

00:23:09.540 between the, the potters and the plebs plays out in the various revolutions, both the Greek

00:23:15.460 revolutions and the, and especially the Roman revolutions. Uh, the, he does a very, very good job

00:23:22.180 of, of, of kind of tracing religion through the different revolutions from, from the monarchical

00:23:29.220 period to the Republican period to the Imperial period and in the Roman history. And, and helps

00:23:35.620 you to see, uh, you know, in a sense, how the civil wars between that developed between, uh, you know,

00:23:44.500 the, the sort of few and the many, uh, the, the war that develops between the few and the many is

00:23:51.220 partly a religious war, uh, partly a war between those who have access to, uh, to the, you know,

00:24:00.500 the hearth, the Vesta and, and those who don't. Yeah. And I think that's particularly interesting

00:24:06.180 because, you know, Joseph de Maestra talks about how law, uh, should, that constitutions are really

00:24:12.740 only a reflection of, again, the traditions, the folkways, uh, the, the religious beliefs of the

00:24:18.820 people that you can't really, uh, you know, just create these things out of thin air. And the more

00:24:24.580 you try to write them down, the more they lose their power because the real binding power was

00:24:29.460 that shared tradition, that shared origin, that shared religion. And so what's very interesting

00:24:34.740 is kind of, as the plebs want to participate more in society, they start demanding law because the law 1.00

00:24:41.540 of the city did not apply to them. The law was only for the religious and those who shared the worship.

00:24:45.780 And so as they demand kind of their own law, they almost kind of demand a secular, secularization

00:24:55.060 in some ways of law was still wouldn't be secular in the way we're talking about,

00:24:58.420 we would think of today, but, but something that is not of the original worship and due to the

00:25:04.020 formalization of that law that otherwise would have been kind of perpetuated through the gins,

00:25:09.540 perpetuated through the families, perpetuated through the tradition and religion,

00:25:12.340 and instead placing it kind of outside that tradition, you kind of start to see the first

00:25:17.620 crack in kind of the, the, the control or the complete, uh, inclusion only based on the worship

00:25:24.980 there. That's right. You, you get a kind of pulling away, uh, and, and Fustel has a very interesting

00:25:32.740 explanation for this. He says explicitly that this happens because the religion has lost power.

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00:26:06.260 Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Uh, when, when religion loss loses power, when it,

00:26:13.380 when it loses its kind of explanatory hold on the gins, on the kind of aristocratic structures,

00:26:21.860 um, it generated alongside of it, um, uh, laws, a law of politics, which were not so tightly bound,

00:26:34.340 not so suffused. And so you get, he kind of describes a kind of unraveling, which begins to

00:26:40.260 occur. But the reason why you get the unraveling and you get this just prior to the advent of

00:26:45.620 Christianity, you get this unraveling of religion and politics, um, at just the point at which religion

00:26:51.620 is losing its power. Um, and as religion loses its power, then, uh, the plebs actually make, uh, 1.00

00:27:00.020 a play, uh, for power, um, and succeed in, in a large part. Well, and I think it's really interesting

00:27:07.780 because he talks about the interplay throughout these different revolutions. You talked about,

00:27:11.460 you know, how he kind of details these different revolutions and he describes each one,

00:27:15.300 I think is an interplay between both the religion losing hold and, uh, the desires of those who

00:27:23.060 were outside the religion to be integrated into the city. So he specifically says in the book,

00:27:28.980 in order for the state to grow in power, the, the power of the families had to be lessened,

00:27:35.060 right? Had to be dissolved. And so, yeah. And so I think there's an interplay here where the,

00:27:40.500 the religion is weakening, but also it is in the material interests and the political

00:27:45.220 interests of many to see that authority weakened. And again, this is kind of, uh, the, this is

00:27:50.980 Bertrand de Juvenal's high and low versus middle where the, where the, you know, the king or the,

00:27:56.660 those that wish to, uh, kind of, uh, remove the aristocracy, the established middle from their

00:28:02.580 positions of power can offer new enfranchisement or new attachment to the lower classes to garner power

00:28:09.940 for themselves. And this is specifically done through religion because religion, like you said,

00:28:15.140 was so essential to this. So instead of just offering people, you know, the, the, the franchise

00:28:20.020 or something, which did eventually happen, but very specifically religion is offered to the plebs.

00:28:25.460 And so the, in order for the plebs to have a role in the society, they have to acquire their own 1.00

00:28:30.100 religion and it has become part of the civic religion for them to kind of then enter into the

00:28:35.460 ancient city. So for instance, they have these, um, you know, uh, these citywide sacrifices where

00:28:41.780 they share the meals that have been burnt to the city gods. And this is what then allows kind of

00:28:46.820 the larger integration of, uh, those who were not politically enfranchised into the whole.

00:28:53.540 Right. And you notice that, that at that, at that point, religion becomes public. You've moved from

00:28:59.300 having religion, which is private in the domestic sphere to having a kind of, you know, friendly

00:29:05.940 dynamic between the domestic hearth and the civic hearth to then the civic hearth dominating at the

00:29:12.580 expense of the family institutions and the expensive in a family religion. So I think that, that this

00:29:19.140 expansion of power, um, is, is kind of a zero sum game with the family institutions and the family

00:29:26.340 religion, uh, and the, the tensions of the civil wars are marked by this. I also think it's, you know,

00:29:34.820 notable that the, the civic religions, as they progress, get more and more vicious. The civic religion

00:29:43.380 gets more and more, um, perverse. Um, so the, the demos' religion is not necessarily elevated for being

00:29:50.820 more greatly shared. Yeah. Yeah. And in, in many ways it's, uh, a bastardization. So for instance,

00:29:59.780 uh, he talks about how the, uh, the consul ship or the, the, the, the kingship had to be stripped

00:30:07.940 of its religious connotations. Once the plebs started entering into the equation, because the plebs 0.99

00:30:13.700 wanted to be able to have a savor, this have a vote, have a voice, but if they were having a voice that

00:30:19.360 would have ruined the worship. And so they had to separate what had once been kind of a, the,

00:30:23.900 the chief and the priest were the same and that they were integrated and they had to be separated

00:30:29.480 so that the wider populace could participate and the religion could be protected. But once the

00:30:35.100 religion had been separated out of these leadership positions, people forgot that it should have been

00:30:40.780 integrated in the first place. And so the, the, the religion, the, the weakness of the religion

00:30:46.660 allowed for the separation, but the separation then created further weakening of the religion

00:30:51.960 because once people no longer understood these offices as religious in nature, uh, and their

00:30:57.940 authority as religious in nature, the religion then itself also starts to receive. Yeah. No,

00:31:03.700 there's a kind of feedback of, you know, feedback loop of the, the loss of, of religious strength

00:31:10.060 and political expansion of power. Yeah. So, uh, I also wanted to touch on the fact that, uh, he

00:31:20.000 again, repeatedly talks about how these different ways of religiosity, uh, each one of these revolutions

00:31:26.320 that brought the, uh, you know, that, that brought the plebs in that brought more outside elements in 1.00

00:31:31.560 that reduce the, the authority of the family also, uh, you know, fundamentally changed the way that the

00:31:38.700 religion was practiced. And it, it's funny because a lot of people today, it's very popular, especially

00:31:44.480 for a certain, uh, segment of kind of the online, right to say, well, Christianity undid all this

00:31:51.660 stuff, right? Christianity is for the downfall of the Roman empire. It's what brought about all this 1.00

00:31:57.040 bad stuff. It's the problem. Now this is the nature of Christianity. But I think, uh, he shows in this 1.00

00:32:03.740 case study is actually, this is just the nature of power and how it interacts with religion and that

00:32:09.740 for power to grow and centralize, it needs to subsume these different parts of religion. And

00:32:15.020 so Christianity does show up at the end of this weakened religion, like you were saying, but it is

00:32:19.880 not the cause of the weakening, uh, the weakening of this religion. The religion had already been 0.58

00:32:24.200 weakened through these many different revolutions that came in many ways due to the interests of the

00:32:29.360 state. I think, I think he, he demonstrates the, the natural tendency of, of power and religion to go

00:32:38.380 together, but also the natural tendency of power to want to dominate religion and to control religion.

00:32:45.640 And, um, and, and finally for, for the priests to be subject to the pontiff or to the king, uh, is the,

00:32:56.060 the, the essential movement of ancient civilization and the narrative that he tells it's, it's the,

00:33:01.580 you know, the, the triumph finally, the, the ruling of the, of the temporal over the spiritual,

00:33:09.540 if we want to put it in contemporary terms, the, the way in which, uh, uh, politics, um, uh, triumphs

00:33:17.680 over the spiritual. Um, it's interesting cause I have, I did, I don't talk about this in my piece

00:33:23.480 at post-liberal order, but I do, I do find it interesting that, uh, he has about a, you know,

00:33:29.820 10 page conclusion from which I dissent. Uh, I really, I really like, uh, Fustel's study. It's

00:33:37.260 just, it's just so helpful for all the reasons that you say. And, and I think it's also illuminating

00:33:41.700 for our own times and thinking about the relationship between, you know, our aristocracy and, and what,

00:33:47.920 what, what are aristocracies fighting for and what are, you know, what our few are fighting for and

00:33:52.780 what our many are fighting for, uh, have some similar dynamics. But one of the things that Fustel

00:33:58.960 concludes, um, and I, I think it's, doesn't follow from his, his argument throughout is that

00:34:07.440 Christianity changed everything by separating religion and politics. Um, that's his kind of 1.00

00:34:15.140 final conclusion, um, without any evidence. Uh, he doesn't, you know, it's, it's as if the,

00:34:21.880 it's as if Charlemagne never existed for Fustel somehow at the end. And I, I think there's reasons

00:34:28.580 for that. I think, I think it goes back to who he regards as his audience in the third Republic

00:34:34.980 in the 19th century. Um, and he, he has a really complicated, uh, agenda. One is to just totally

00:34:44.760 destroy the idea that you could have some religiously neutral regime. You could have some

00:34:50.280 political order without religion, but also to, uh, also to, in a sense, caution, uh, his French

00:35:01.820 philosophic friends, uh, about the idea of power overtaking religion, power commanding religion,

00:35:09.980 um, power dictating religion. And so he has this almost, I think, liberal Catholic idea of protecting,

00:35:18.620 protecting the Catholic church, um, from the power of liberal politics by, by insisting on another kind

00:35:25.600 of separation, which doesn't really map onto, you know, the other, the 2000 years he misses or the,

00:35:33.340 you know, 1900 years he misses, uh, uh, in, in terms of Christian history, because he just doesn't touch

00:35:40.800 Christian history. But I think he has, he has his eye on that question of, you know, how should liberals

00:35:47.100 regard the Catholic church? Well, they should regard it as set apart, as separate, separate from, 0.92

00:35:53.680 from the liberal order and respected, and that, uh, you should, you should be forewarned because

00:36:00.780 religion is, is powerful and, uh, you should, you should let it be its own, especially let

00:36:07.160 Christianity be its own separate transcendent thing above your laws and above your attempt to command 0.98

00:36:13.560 and control, uh, Christianity. Yeah. I have to say, this is something that continues to baffle me, 0.93

00:36:20.580 uh, when people talk about, uh, history and Christianity, that there's just this always

00:36:27.020 been the separation between Christianity and the law or governance, uh, particularly when they pretend

00:36:32.300 that like Christianity never, you know, allowed for like, for the protection of the state, uh, you

00:36:37.140 know, uh, through, through force and these kinds of things, like no one ever heard of Charles

00:36:41.260 Motel. Nobody knows about Charlemagne, like none of this stuff ever happened. It is, it is fast.

00:36:46.300 Yeah. It is fascinating that this is something I hear from both left and, and very far right,

00:36:51.940 that, that the Christianity is this soft, squishy thing that never got involved in politics and 0.99

00:36:55.960 was never able to protect itself or others. And I, I just don't know what history they're looking at

00:37:01.780 because it's just in no way, uh, reflected in the actual record. Uh, but I do want to talk about

00:37:07.460 what you mentioned there, uh, which I think, uh, for the next half of our, uh, uh, kind of broadcast

00:37:13.100 would be what lessons we can draw from this. What should modern people see from this? Now that

00:37:18.900 we have a better understanding of kind of the relationship and, uh, and the weaving of religion

00:37:23.600 into all of these things, what are, what are some lessons right off the top of your head that maybe

00:37:28.000 people should understand in the modern day when we're looking at our politics and the way it might

00:37:31.980 relate to religion? Well, I mean, I think it, you know, the, the, one of the, the really big

00:37:40.680 takeaways for me was, is, was to understand, uh, that in our contemporary terms, we, we have the few,

00:37:49.100 uh, we have our own kind of gens, uh, who, uh, are kind of trying to institute a very kind of pseudo

00:38:00.140 religious account of their power, call it wokeness or whatever. Um, and this kind of pseudo religious

00:38:07.820 sentiment, um, has rights that goes with it. It has sacraments that goes with it, the sacrament

00:38:15.600 of abortion, um, uh, the, the pride flag, the progress flag. These are all highly religious 0.87

00:38:22.480 kinds of commitments, uh, that are being promoted by the few, the corporate few, C-suite boards,

00:38:31.060 uh, aristocratic, uh, power is engaging in, uh, essentially the, the use of religious power,

00:38:39.640 uh, to, uh, establish, um, their control over civilization. And we see, you know, the party

00:38:49.920 of the many kind of pushing back against that, you know, the Bud Light's a kind of, you know,

00:38:55.660 great example of this where you, where you have, you know, okay, they, they, they realized

00:39:01.720 it didn't go well and they said, sorry about, you know, Dylan Mulvaney. Um, but, but ultimately

00:39:07.840 they, they, if they would have gotten away with that, they would have been perfectly happy

00:39:10.960 with that campaign because it was, it was a classic example of the few using religion, a

00:39:20.980 kind of religious, a sentiment, uh, to try to create a new way of binding people together.

00:39:28.180 And Bud Light, that's a, that's some, that's a pleb product, right? That's not a product for 1.00

00:39:34.100 aristocrats, uh, our own progressive aristocrats. That's a, that's a NASCAR beer. So if, if the few

00:39:43.540 could go in and capture the religio, the religion of the plebs and turn it to their own hearth, 0.96

00:39:53.620 as it were, uh, they would have gained enormous power, um, enormous power. Same Miller-Light's

00:40:00.740 very interesting, the different on the, on the same question is you see, you see a kind

00:40:05.880 of a gens of the progressive aristocrat, uh, working out its religious power, uh, to gain

00:40:13.800 political control of the plebs. And then you also see the plebs fighting back. 0.92

00:40:19.040 So I think there's a really interesting transition happening here. And I think it's, what's giving

00:40:23.140 a lot of classical liberals whiplash. So Alistair McIntyre talks in After Virtue about how managerialism

00:40:30.740 is kind of the, the political, uh, theology of our day. And that like the extraction of expertise

00:40:39.500 and the ability to plan and, uh, create this miracle of progress is, uh, kind of what, uh,

00:40:47.140 gave them their, uh, their political formula. And it feels like wokeness is here because that's

00:40:54.380 failing because we can't, uh, they can no longer produce that efficiency. They can no longer justify

00:41:02.520 the idea of objectivity and, and kind of material progress from what's happening. And so instead we

00:41:09.720 need a new kind of faith to enter in. And, uh, the reason that a lot of classical liberals are lost is

00:41:16.900 they never thought of managerialism as a fate. They never understood it as the kind of the, the

00:41:22.860 religious substrate that, that kind of bound, uh, their world together. And so now they see this

00:41:29.380 new, maybe perhaps more clearly religious to them sentiment being, uh, created by the same caste that

00:41:37.160 was supposed to be completely bought into kind of the managerialism, managerial liberalism, and they

00:41:43.080 are lost. Uh, they are confused in that moment. Do you, do you think that that tension will find a way

00:41:50.800 to ease itself or is that going to be a showdown, uh, that we're, that we're going to see here?

00:41:56.140 I mean, it's interesting because, uh, the first thing that popped in my head was, was precisely

00:42:01.280 Fustel's phrase is, is they lost power because their religion lost power. Yeah. Um, and I think this 0.95

00:42:09.720 is true for classical liberals as well. I think they're losing power because something about how they held

00:42:15.720 the world together and there was something religious about how they held the world together, that, that

00:42:22.140 kind of separation that they imagined that kind of neat sort of, here's politics over here, here's religion

00:42:28.520 over here. I think that neat separation, um, and which, um, you know, is, is kind of baked into liberalism

00:42:39.800 has, has lost its power. Nobody believes it anymore. I mean, the whole kind of, everyone, everyone is now

00:42:46.440 used to hearing, you know, neutrality is a myth, you know, uh, it's, it's, it's very hard to find people

00:42:53.560 who will push back hard on, I think one of the central theses of liberalism, which is that you can

00:43:00.480 have this neutral public space, uh, that's not religious, that's indifferent to religion. Nobody thinks

00:43:06.660 that anymore. And in a, in a sense, that's the loss of its religious power. And I think that's why

00:43:12.920 classical liberals, you know, are, are back footed on all of this because as, as you say, in a sense,

00:43:20.120 they, they had assumptions that have crumbled. Yeah. I, so here's the thing. I hear what you're

00:43:26.220 saying and I think you're right that I think a lot of people who talk about this a lot may not say

00:43:30.420 that, believe that anymore, but I think most people still do believe that. Like I think, I think,

00:43:35.480 and that's why I think so many of the classical liberal kind of opponents of wokeness play to

00:43:41.300 wider audiences because most people are still bought into this idea and it's, and it's falling

00:43:47.560 apart. There are pieces of it falling apart. Uh, ironically, the postmodern moment might be the

00:43:52.740 best thing to kind of shake up the idea, you know, religious people, very afraid of postmodernism,

00:43:58.280 but it, it might be the thing that, that shakes a lot of people out of this idea that you can't avoid

00:44:03.040 this, this, uh, religious scenario that there is a secular society, but I think we're in an

00:44:09.460 interesting transition where that is becoming more apparent, but it's still not, I think,

00:44:13.340 understood by the vast majority of people. Um, and so there's still this idea that we'll be able to

00:44:18.720 create this liberal consensus, uh, once again, we'll, we'll be able to reconstitute it once everybody,

00:44:24.780 you know, stops being crazy and gets over the wokeness and you know, whatnot, uh, that we'll,

00:44:29.220 we'll be, we'll be able to kind of reform it again. Um, and I wonder, do you, so, uh, obviously

00:44:36.420 we just get enough critical race theory, anti-critical race theory legislation through,

00:44:41.760 then people will come back to their senses and the managers in the C-suite will stop producing

00:44:47.340 Dylan Mulvaney or whatever. Right. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing is like, look, don't get me

00:44:52.880 wrong. I'm for the use of state power to stop this. I agree. Yeah. But, but the, you know, again,

00:44:57.920 as we, as, as Demetra asserted, as, as, uh, uh, Fastell says, you know, once you have to write

00:45:03.560 this stuff down, it loses its power. Like the reason this stuff has power is that it was already

00:45:09.120 stood. It was already understood and practiced and believed in by the people. And so you can't

00:45:14.180 just legislate out this stuff. You, you have to understand the kind of the level at which it's at.

00:45:20.320 So I guess that brings us to kind of the next point. If we, as people who are reading this book

00:45:25.560 and understanding the centrality of religion to, you know, kind of these processes of society,

00:45:32.080 of the city of law, all this stuff, if we know that we cannot have a neutral society,

00:45:38.800 many people who then hear me make this argument or you make this argument, other people say this

00:45:44.720 argument immediately come back with, Oh, well then it's just gotta be, you know, uh, it's gotta be,

00:45:50.000 you're the only one who's right. You're, you're the only one who's right. How do you,

00:45:53.300 in a society steeped in religion, in, in liberalism and that kind of using that still,

00:45:58.980 even though they now find themselves ruled by wokeness, how do you work against the ruling

00:46:04.920 ideology without, you know, kind of letting people know like, yeah, no, something has to

00:46:09.300 replace this. It's not just going to be neutral once this is gone. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think in a

00:46:15.200 way, um, I mean, if I, if I were to have written the last 10 pages, uh, on Christianity for Fustel,

00:46:22.520 one of the things I would have said is that, uh, that Christianity didn't, didn't really change the

00:46:31.640 notion that religion, uh, and politics go together. Didn't really change that. What it changed was the

00:46:41.600 superiority of the, the true religion over a bad religion to hold a society together. And so I 0.89

00:46:49.800 think the, the, the reason why Christianity kind of delivers us, uh, a civilization, which draws up

00:46:58.740 the Greek and the Roman, right? It doesn't, it, it, the Christianity doesn't, on some level, it's a 0.72

00:47:04.400 massive break from, from the ancient world, but another level, it just delivers all this

00:47:09.680 back to us, uh, under the, under true religio, true religion. And I think, I think the proper

00:47:17.180 conclusion to, to Fustel's book, if you weren't a liberal Catholic is that the, the, the natural

00:47:24.280 conclusion is Christianity, uh, raises the whole question of, of divine revelation. Has God spoken?

00:47:31.260 Do we, do we have true religion? And if we do have true religion, it should produce a better kind 0.95

00:47:36.740 of society. It should produce a more just society. Um, and, uh, I think that's the kind of level of

00:47:44.620 conversation that we need to have. What kind of society do we want to pass on to our children? What

00:47:50.600 would, what would it look like? What, uh, and what, what religion would be good at producing that?

00:47:56.660 Um, and, um, and then, then you have to face the question of, well, only a true religion, uh, could,

00:48:06.940 could produce good results. Um, and, and I think that's, that's kind of, that's kind of the best

00:48:13.880 answer I think you can give to the, to the person who says, well, we can't know the true and the good.

00:48:19.180 Um, uh, the, the, that's immediately falsifiable because you don't like the bad religion and what

00:48:27.460 it's producing. The reason why you don't like the fruits of, of the woke, you know, empire is

00:48:34.880 because it's religion's false, you know, and, and so the, you're, you're going to have an unhappy 0.98

00:48:41.500 society and we have a massively unhappy society. Why do we have a massively unhappy? Why do we have

00:48:47.760 these deaths of despair? We have these deaths of despair because we're operating on a totally false

00:48:53.400 ersatz religion. And so that's, I think that's the only way in which you can, you can address the 0.99

00:48:59.720 person who says which religion, um, at the very least you have to have the conversation. Well,

00:49:05.000 not this one, right? Cause this one's making you very unhappy.

00:49:09.760 Sure. And, and, and, you know, for so many of these people, they, what, one of the, I think the bad

00:49:15.520 lessons that a lot of these, uh, kind of reformed liberals or post liberals or, you know, kind of

00:49:22.220 atheists who saw the problem with kind of wokeness and what was going on is they just kind of took the

00:49:27.500 lesson that, well, if wokeness is a religion, then it's just bad because it's a religion and all 0.99

00:49:32.240 religions are bad. Yeah. And so we should just kind of eliminate all of them. And this is something 1.00

00:49:38.700 that I've, you know, argued against many times. I'm sure many people who are listening to this now

00:49:44.100 are very familiar with this argument, but it's, it's just that there is, you can sit around and

00:49:49.960 talk about like how you need to ally with people and you need to form coalitions. And I'm with you

00:49:55.040 on this, but like at some point, if these people do not have an answer to this problem, then they

00:50:01.520 kind of have to listen to the people who do right. Like you've got to find something to bind people

00:50:06.720 together. And if you don't have anything and you understand the thing that's binding kind of the

00:50:10.620 current regime together is bad, then maybe you should listen to the people who have something

00:50:14.580 that does actually do this. I think that's right. And, and the flip side to everyone who always

00:50:19.720 raises a pluralist, you know, pluralism, but what about pluralism? I mean, the flip side to pluralism

00:50:25.100 is what about the kind of unity that would enable us to be truly plural? Like you need, like the flip

00:50:31.020 side of plural is unity and what gives us our unity in which we could be actual. Nobody, I mean,

00:50:38.060 pluralism today just means being progressive or something. I think pluralism doesn't, doesn't

00:50:45.980 mean that everybody's different. It kind of means everybody has to think the same way is what is

00:50:51.120 what pluralism seems to me to mean. As soon as you're starting to talk about diversity, inclusion

00:50:59.160 and equity, I, I think I know exactly what you think. I know exactly what you think. And you think

00:51:07.940 exactly the same as somebody else who says diversity, inclusion, and equity. Um, the, if that's what

00:51:15.040 pluralism means, I know it doesn't really mean pluralism. It just means uniformity of thought. Um,

00:51:21.740 and so you need, you need to, I think, answer every kind of cry for pluralism with a cry for, yeah, but

00:51:28.680 what gives us unity? What, what's the, what's the generative unitive thing that makes us a people? Uh,

00:51:39.920 and, uh, uh, I, I think the classic ancient answer is religion. Uh, it's bad religion for the ancients 0.94

00:51:48.040 from a Christian point of view, but, uh, uh, the, I think Christianity's great innovation, great radical

00:51:55.760 revolution is, uh, not in saying that religion isn't our unity, but that, uh, we can only be united by,

00:52:03.240 uh, uh, God himself coming down into the person of Jesus Christ, uh, that that's true religion.

00:52:10.600 And that's the, that's the source of unity and also the source of any true pluralism.

00:52:17.140 Yeah. It's interesting. You know, in the book, he talks about how basically a son is only a son

00:52:22.580 because they are initiated into the worship. And even if, you know, you have a biological son,

00:52:28.900 if he's not, you know, uh, of the mother who entered the family through religious rights,

00:52:34.540 or if the son, uh, leaves for another family, renounces the name of the family and it's worship,

00:52:40.580 uh, then it doesn't matter. He doesn't have any rights anymore. And then adopted son who is entered

00:52:45.920 through these kinds of religious rights gains legitimacy in a way that the biological son doesn't

00:52:52.340 have. And, uh, if they, if they've kind of, uh, left the worship. And I think it's really

00:52:58.600 difficult to find another way to bind kind of a large community together because, you know, the,

00:53:05.160 the civic nationalism of so many of these classic liberals is kind of obviously, uh, you know,

00:53:13.500 useless in the long run. Cause it's like, okay, well, what binds the nation together? Oh, well,

00:53:17.600 they all say, share the same idea. Okay. Well, what happens if someone in America decides they don't

00:53:22.660 share the idea anymore? Do they lose their citizenship? Well, no. Okay. Well then what does your civic

00:53:26.700 nationalism mean? Like of what value is it? Like you need something that is deeper and, you know,

00:53:33.380 eternal, more connected to identity and who you are. If you're going to actually have any kind of

00:53:38.460 useful bond, uh, binding of a nation, you know, just, Oh, we all happen to agree on something for

00:53:44.040 10 seconds. And then everybody parts ways on it is nowhere to actually have any kind of functional

00:53:49.020 society. Exactly. And it's not like, it's not like he, Fustel completely recognizes that the family's a

00:53:56.520 natural thing, you know, a woman coming together and creating new life, but it's what binds, you know,

00:54:03.360 the family together as, as a unity, as a, as something which is generative. That's what, where the, the

00:54:10.200 gens come, comes from. And for that, he says, you need religion. And if you don't have religion to bind

00:54:17.000 together, you're going to reduce the blood and blood is just not a sufficient supplier of, you know,

00:54:25.360 and I think when, when I hear that, I think, well, this is why we're obsessed with race being white or 0.75

00:54:31.380 black or, you know, um, that, that all of these kind of nationalisms that work on blood on a unity of 0.94

00:54:40.100 blood, um, are, are not going to work. They're not going to work. They're just not going to hang

00:54:47.080 together. Um, and Fustel's kind of gives you 2000 years of classical history to show you that the

00:54:53.780 blood unity just doesn't work. You need religio to bind a family together, to bind a city together,

00:55:00.800 um, to, uh, bind philosophers together, everything to, to bind, um, uh, just about

00:55:12.180 everything business even. Well, and I think it's interesting that, you know, maybe even those who

00:55:17.980 are not Christian guys like Spangler or Avola thought that, uh, reducing race to simply biological

00:55:25.160 or blood ties was a mistake, that it was a tragedy of understanding. They understood race as a,

00:55:30.060 as kind of a cultural continuation, a binding metaphysical spirit, not simply a direct descent

00:55:36.780 of genetic lineage. Right. Even, even they recognize that it has to be religious, whatever it is.

00:55:44.280 Right. And so, and so I think that idea is, uh, I think the modern conception, uh, is one that, uh,

00:55:51.980 ignores many people, even those who wouldn't have been Christian, uh, and their understanding of kind

00:55:57.260 of what actually tied a civilization together and what made a race in their constitution,

00:56:01.900 their, their definition of that, uh, which I think.

00:56:04.540 And what makes a race is always, is always going to be something, uh, that is trans temporal. 0.89

00:56:11.980 Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Well, I think we hit most of what I wanted to talk about there.

00:56:18.800 Uh, we have a few questions from, uh, the audience here that we might hit real quick before we do,

00:56:25.140 is there anything that we didn't get to touch on that you wanted to cover?

00:56:30.520 Well, I think I, I mean, the, the only thing, uh, that, uh, you know, is, is interesting is a phrase

00:56:39.940 I use in, in the, the piece, um, at post liberal order is, uh, pseudo integralism. We hear a lot

00:56:47.060 about integralism and people have very strong views about integralism and they think it's one thing.

00:56:52.100 Um, and I, I call wokeism a pseudo integralism because it's the, the question of, of integralism

00:56:59.100 is in a sense, the same question of, of what will integrate, uh, what will unite, what will make

00:57:06.780 a society whole? And the question of integralism is really just that question is what's the religio

00:57:13.960 that's going to give integrity to a society as a, as a common thing, as a thing that everybody can

00:57:20.300 share in. And, and what, what I think makes wokeness a pseudo integralism is it is actually trying to

00:57:27.100 unite us all in a common view. You know, let's all share the, a view of abortion. Let's all share a view

00:57:32.640 of, of, of gays. Let's all share the same view of, you know, trans drag queen story hour. Let's all

00:57:38.740 get on the, on the progress train. Um, because they have a vision of an integrated society in which

00:57:45.980 everyone, you know, is sharing in the common faith. Um, and it's precisely what the many are

00:57:52.360 resisting. And I think they're, they're resisting for both political and religious reasons.

00:57:56.560 Yeah, I think that's right. And it's also, I think important for people to remember that,

00:58:01.420 you know, they, you need to dissolve, if you're going to manage a large amount of people, if you're

00:58:05.760 going to create this kind of globalism that they'd like to have rule everybody, you need to dissolve

00:58:11.460 moral and cultural particulars. You have to collapse again, those competing spheres of, uh, social

00:58:17.700 authority and moral authority. And so it's really important to dissolve, uh, you know, all these different

00:58:23.260 ideas and make sure they're unified under kind of this one cosmopolitan and hedonistic understanding

00:58:30.140 of kind of human wellbeing and, and, and, and good. And so it's really important to understand that

00:58:36.600 the, the, the wokeness is in many ways has a political utility to these people, but they also

00:58:43.780 believe it very deeply. It's, it's, it's, it's not just one or the other. It's, it's both. Uh, it is a

00:58:49.580 binding religion and also something that has political, a high degree of political utility.

00:58:54.920 Yeah. And I, and I think part of the reason why it has, has power too, is, is that in some ways it's,

00:59:03.460 it, it's a parody of Christianity. It's, it's still tied in, I mean, whatever you want to call it, 0.97

00:59:09.520 cathedral or the, the, the way in which, you know, Puritanism expresses itself through Boston

00:59:15.540 and through elites, uh, and through the, the few, uh, communicating, uh, in a kind of cell division

00:59:22.880 of ideas that descend from, descend from a kind of moral purity and a Puritanicalism. I mean,

00:59:30.080 that's, we see that very, very strongly. And the, the, the way in which wokeness is parasitic on

00:59:37.500 Christianity is also what explains a lot of its religious power.

00:59:40.760 Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, it is definitely a Christian heresy and 1.00

00:59:45.680 it would have to be because Christianity is what had bound the West together before it. And since 0.97

00:59:50.840 it has, I don't think any particularly generative qualities of its own, all it can really do is

00:59:56.900 bind together the kind of the fumes, the remaining, uh, Christian ethos, but once it's kind of deracinated, 0.93

01:00:02.500 uh, Christianity, then it just is, it's eventually going to die. And that's, that's the upside is, 1.00

01:00:08.520 and I think that's what we're seeing for a lot of people is, uh, the, the power of that religion is,

01:00:15.360 is, uh, very, very, uh, shallow because it, it calls on forces. It doesn't really control

01:00:22.800 and separates them from things that are actually meaningful. Uh, and so it can only really push,

01:00:27.820 uh, push those things so far, especially because it's denying truth about not just the metaphysical,

01:00:32.920 but the directly biological at this point. So. Yeah. And I, I think we've seen, we've seen it in

01:00:38.140 history before with Arianism. I mean, Athanasius woke up one day and said the whole world's whole

01:00:43.120 world has become, you know, Arian, um, and Arianism wasn't defeated by, you know, holding hands and

01:00:50.500 singing Kumbaya. Um, and same with Albigensianism, you know, it just, it, it ran through Europe,

01:00:58.360 uh, like wildfire. And, um, I think we, we have to, we have to come to terms with how important

01:01:07.700 it is to fight heresy. Um, this is something that the, that the liberal conscience does not

01:01:14.540 like this idea that you would fight heresy, uh, but there really is religious heresy. Um,

01:01:20.500 and it's important to know what religious truth is in order to know how to defeat it.

01:01:25.740 I mean, they don't, they do love, uh, fighting heresy, you know, just the, the, their current

01:01:31.760 version of it is, you know, they're all on board with it. It's like, you, you need to know what

01:01:35.820 they, what, what they, they, they, they, they believe that they have true religion, but, uh,

01:01:41.680 if you press them, they can't really support it. Right. All right. Well, we'll go ahead and

01:01:47.160 jump over to, I think a question or two we have real quick before we do. Is there anything you

01:01:51.440 want people to check out the post-liberal order or anything else that you want people

01:01:55.380 to, uh, to read or follow you or anything? Yeah, of course. Uh, come, come find us, uh,

01:02:00.940 my friend Patrick Denny and Gladden Tappen and I have, have, uh, this, uh, post-liberal order

01:02:06.380 that we're having a lot of fun with. And, uh, yeah. And if you know anybody who would like

01:02:10.940 to submit to us, uh, shoot us an email, uh, I'm just pechnold at cua.edu and you can find

01:02:17.320 post-liberal order at Substack. All right. Let's go ahead and jump over. Super chat real quick.

01:02:23.740 Uh, Colin for $5. It makes some very large assumptions around origins and customs that

01:02:29.780 ring true to me. Are there modern refutations or criticisms of this work? Uh, so yeah, I

01:02:35.920 know that a lot of this, like you said, a lot of this existed before archeology, uh, and

01:02:39.980 he's, it's, uh, it's thoroughly footnoted, but it is all based on a lot of Livy and such.

01:02:45.320 And, uh, I understand that he is filling in a lot of the logical holes here kind of with

01:02:51.580 his own understanding. I think he does a pretty good job with that, but it is of course, you

01:02:57.000 know, not a document of complete exact historical accuracy, I guess. I'm sure there are people

01:03:01.860 who have, uh, some, uh, some problems with kind of the conclusions he draws.

01:03:05.880 I think that's right. I think, you know, there there's, he, he, he gets it largely right.

01:03:12.240 I think is, I think the, I think the consensus in the, amongst classicists and now you probably

01:03:18.560 get classicists calling in, but my, my sense is that, well, one is that religion and antiquity

01:03:25.560 is not the biggest field in classics and it doesn't get as much treatment as it should.

01:03:30.700 Um, uh, you know, there, there have been studies, uh, Mary Beard comes to mind, uh, uh, ID Collins,

01:03:41.340 I think, uh, but the, the, the classical studies, I think generally remark on how right he gets

01:03:49.760 things considering that he has no archeological evidence before him. All he has are the old

01:03:54.920 texts and he's kind of piecing things together from firsthand accounts.

01:04:00.600 of their world. Um, and, uh, he gets it right like 80% of the time. And that's remarkable

01:04:08.200 in itself. You know, does he get things wrong from time to time? Yes. Um, but in the, on

01:04:13.640 the main, it, I think it remains the best book on ancient religion, um, uh, from the primary

01:04:21.920 texts.

01:04:23.160 Yeah. And guys, just as a thought on kind of how you view many of these texts when you're,

01:04:28.940 when you're trying to understand a lot of this stuff, there's a very modern impulse to say, well,

01:04:34.560 if there's something wrong here, then it's all useless. Right. If there's, if there's, yeah. If

01:04:39.800 there's a bad interpretation somewhere, if the footnoting was wrong, if we discover something

01:04:45.100 else, you know, it was written in 1860. So, you know, we might've figured something else out

01:04:49.100 between here and 1860, people will say, oh, well, you know, that that's wrong. So just the whole

01:04:53.700 argument falls apart. None of it's worthwhile. And I think it's really important to agree with

01:04:58.080 those last 10 pages. I think it's the most important book on Roman religion.

01:05:03.140 Sure. I've, I, there are many philosophers, many theorists that I think get certain things

01:05:09.200 wrong that, that make certain shortcomings, but are still extremely valuable. And I just

01:05:14.660 really encourage people not to throw the baby out with the bathwater with so much of this stuff

01:05:19.340 that everyone's looking for, oh, well, this, this one guy had a crackpot idea or he got one,

01:05:23.720 one part of an analysis wrong. And so therefore it's just not useful. No, find the useful parts,

01:05:28.860 find the things that are mostly right. Find the things that hang together, connect them to other

01:05:33.060 things that are useful rather than just trying to find one particular flaw. And then suddenly

01:05:39.300 discarding something that otherwise has a lot of explanatory power or is very useful in, in many ways,

01:05:45.620 just because again, you find, you find one thing that it turned out not to be correct.

01:05:50.200 There's a new translation, which I haven't looked at by Jody Bottom's daughter. I can't remember her

01:05:57.240 first name at the moment, but, but if you, if you look up, there's a, there's a new translation,

01:06:02.340 which I'm interested in looking at for myself. But the thing I was going to say about it is that

01:06:08.020 it's just beautifully written and you learn a lot about the ancients, you know, whether or not you

01:06:15.660 agree with everything, you just get a treasure trove of texts, you know, both read and like.

01:06:21.740 Yeah. I've got this edition, which I actually wouldn't recommend. It's poorly formatted,

01:06:25.820 but, but I've heard Empyrean Press has a good one. I'm sure there's other others that are out there.

01:06:31.420 Um, but yeah, it, it is, it is well-written. It is, I think very cogently put together again,

01:06:37.340 it's, it's heavily footnoted. So if you want to, uh, go back and look through primary sources,

01:06:43.080 you can do so. Uh, so I do think even again, if, if everything isn't perfect, if you don't agree

01:06:48.100 with every part of it, it's still well worth your time. I think it does. Um, it does open up your mind

01:06:53.700 to a way of being that is very hard, hard for modern people kind of wrap their, uh, mind around.

01:07:01.420 And it might even have you thinking more about, okay, what is the religion of my city? Uh, what

01:07:06.380 is, you know, what, what, what rituals are we performing together? What things are we centering

01:07:11.620 and what are we using to kind of bind our culture together? And are those things actually revealing

01:07:17.240 the good and the beautiful and the true? Are they really connecting us to things of value?

01:07:20.920 Is it really going to last in the long run? So. I think that's, that's the really crucial thing

01:07:25.800 is he makes you attentive to what's going to be durable. Absolutely. All right, guys,

01:07:31.240 we're going to go ahead and wrap this up, but once again, I want to thank, uh, Chad Pecknold

01:07:36.860 for coming on. I want to thank all of you guys for joining us. Had some good, uh, chat going on

01:07:41.940 there. Really appreciate it as always. Of course, if this is your first time coming by, make sure that

01:07:46.940 you subscribe to the channel. And if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that

01:07:51.780 you go ahead and subscribe to or Mac entire show on all your favorite podcast platforms. If you do that,

01:07:57.060 please go ahead and leave a rating or a review. Uh, that'll really help out with everything. Uh,

01:08:02.260 guys, I also was on Tim cast last week. That's why all of my normal streams that were usually live

01:08:07.640 weren't live. Cause I was traveling during that. Uh, but we will be live again tomorrow. I'm actually

01:08:12.580 going to be finishing up my series with Michael Millerman on the fourth political theory and

01:08:17.500 Alexander Dugan. So if you want to go ahead and check that out, you can turn into tune in tomorrow

01:08:23.180 at two 30. Thanks for coming by guys. And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - May 18, 2023

Religion and Politics in the Ancient City ｜ Guest： Chad Pecknold ｜ 5⧸18⧸23

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