You Gotta Serve Somebody ｜ 6⧸7⧸23
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
163.9068
Summary
Progressivism has become a pseudo-religion, and it s time to ask, what happened to the separation of church and state? Is it because Progressivism is a religion? Or is it because it s a political ideology?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:10.720
Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:00:25.260
Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
00:00:30.000
The realization that wokeness has transformed itself into a form of pseudo-religion
00:00:41.920
has become increasingly obvious to conservatives.
00:00:45.500
The ceremonies and festivals that occur during the month of June
00:00:48.320
make it hard to ignore as pride celebrations are increasingly treated as hedonistic sacrament.
00:00:53.560
The fact that the United States government has heavily invested in these rituals
00:00:57.340
creates an even more bewildering situation that trips the pattern recognition for those
00:01:01.880
who are familiar with our mechanisms of constitutional restraint.
00:01:05.800
As the Department of Defense, FBI, ATF, and Department of Education splash a rainbow across
00:01:11.440
their logos and make passionate declarations of faith, many conservatives start to wonder
00:01:15.980
what happened to separation of church and state.
00:01:18.220
Christians are regularly told that they must check their moral convictions at the door because
00:01:24.860
But the government seems to enthusiastically declare not just its preference, but its absolute
00:01:31.780
The truth is that separation of church and state didn't remove the reality of conflicting
00:01:37.300
Instead, it created selection pressures which favored an ideology which could circumvent those
00:01:44.520
While the modern understanding of separation of church and state would have been unrecognizable
00:01:48.400
to many of the American founders, it was interpreted in a manner which essentially banned former
00:01:53.080
religions from being adopted by government organizations, taught in schools, and eventually from even
00:02:00.980
The anti-religious jihad spearheaded by organizations like the ACLU has been far from even-handed.
00:02:07.500
Christianity, as the traditional religion of most Americans, faced the brunt of the effort
00:02:11.660
to purge faith from civic life, but in the end, any official religion was effectively barred
00:02:18.020
But humans are deeply religious creatures who will seek out a narrative framework to make
00:02:24.180
Progressivism, or wokeness if you prefer, has no holy book or formal church, and because
00:02:30.060
it is treated as a political ideology instead of an official religion, it was able to fill
00:02:34.560
the narrative void that existed in public institutions without triggering the defense mechanism of
00:02:41.760
Liberalism, and here I don't mean progressive leftist ideology but what most people would
00:02:45.840
call classical liberalism, offered a false promise.
00:02:49.900
It led many in the west to believe that social organizations, especially government institutions,
00:02:54.720
could be kept morally neutral by operating a basic, minimum morality which everyone could
00:03:00.780
But as I've explained in a previous video, cultural neutrality is impossible, and all
00:03:05.400
institutions must operate inside of someone's moral framework.
00:03:10.460
With all of its competition effectively banned by separation of church and state, progressivism
00:03:14.840
filled the natural void that was left once true religion had been stripped from public life.
00:03:19.500
When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
00:03:23.680
When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.
00:03:28.760
When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.
00:03:31.440
When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.
00:03:35.160
Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.
00:03:37.760
So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.
00:03:41.360
Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
00:03:46.900
To borrow an illustration from the political theorist Curtis Yarvin, progressivism became
00:03:54.980
a super-predator ideology, perfectly adapted to out-compete its religious rivals in a theoretically
00:04:02.520
Are you a college student who feels isolated as Cthulhu swims ever leftward?
00:04:07.560
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is here to help.
00:04:10.480
ISI offers programs and opportunities for conservative students across the country.
00:04:14.520
ISI understands that conservatives and right-of-center students feel isolated on campus and that
00:04:20.180
you're often fighting for your own reputation, dignity, and future.
00:04:24.220
Through ISI, you can learn about what Russell Kirk called permanent things, the philosophical
00:04:28.400
and political teachings that shaped and made Western civilization great.
00:04:32.900
ISI also offers many opportunities to jumpstart your career.
00:04:36.580
For example, Nate Hockman, who's been a guest on this show multiple times, got his start
00:04:40.760
of National Review through ISI, and he's just one of many journalists that ISI has helped
00:04:47.160
If you're a graduate student, ISI offers funding opportunities to sponsor the next generation
00:04:53.540
But most importantly, ISI offers college students a community of people that will help them grow.
00:04:59.480
If you're a college student, ISI can help you start a student organization or a student
00:05:03.840
newspaper, or meet other like-minded students at various conferences and events.
00:05:09.260
ISI is here to educate the next generation of great Americans.
00:05:18.100
You can click the link down in the description to learn more.
00:05:21.580
The ideology that would eventually become known as wokeness was given a legal monopoly to operate
00:05:26.340
unopposed in institutions like universities and corporations, which granted status, prestige,
00:05:33.620
Progressivism also became the only acceptable form of moral instruction in public schools
00:05:40.680
For all of our modern pretense about progress and reason, the inescapable fact is that humans
00:05:48.900
People will always need answers to questions of meaning, identity, and purpose, and will interact
00:05:53.880
with those narratives in a spiritual fashion, even if the new faith leaves behind the official
00:05:58.740
trappings of the holy book and church building.
00:06:01.940
This is why the current attempt to return to a neutral civilization by classical liberals
00:06:16.840
Every nation, organization, and community will be ordered towards some vision of the good.
00:06:22.300
And that vision of the good will have a religious narrative at its core.
00:06:25.800
Lying about or ignoring this truth doesn't solve the problem of conflicting moral visions.
00:06:31.280
It only allows someone else to smuggle their moral vision in the back door.
00:06:36.600
The only reason that this illusion of neutrality seemed even remotely possible in America's
00:06:41.360
past was that different regions were basically just deciding what flavor of Protestant Christianity
00:06:48.000
While serious disagreements still existed, this overlap in shared values formed a substrate
00:06:54.220
from which a common social fabric could emerge.
00:06:57.820
That unspoken Christian consensus was eroded through a series of sudden demographic shifts,
00:07:02.900
direct cultural assaults, and the disenchantment of modernity.
00:07:07.300
Many liberals assumed that this shared moral vision was the natural human inclination
00:07:11.840
and that it could be easily separated from what they saw as backward religious nonsense.
00:07:17.380
What has now become clear is that Americans separated from that Christian consensus don't
00:07:22.340
maintain some form of enlightened post-Christian secular humanism, but instead seek to embrace
00:07:27.720
whatever faith is offered, even if it proves to be an ugly and twisted character of true religion.
00:07:33.800
The baseline consensus conservatives refer to as American values turned out to be a very particular
00:07:41.840
And once that foundation had been demolished, the narrative framework which had been built
00:07:47.760
With the modern interpretation of separation of church and state purging Christianity from
00:07:52.040
most public spaces, the cultural consensus that was built on top of it slowly faded.
00:08:00.820
It's not enough for them to be written down on a piece of paper.
00:08:03.900
They must be acted out as part of people's daily lives in order to survive.
00:08:07.300
Increasingly, progressivism was the only moral vision around which institutions could be organized,
00:08:13.100
and so it became the narrative which was acted out and eventually internalized.
00:08:17.540
Even if wokeness could be purged from every American institution tomorrow, it would inevitably return
00:08:23.880
if the narrative and moral void it left was not deliberately filled with another faith.
00:08:29.680
As uncomfortable as it makes many on both the center and right, the illusion of cultural
00:08:36.720
Some vague return to classical liberalism will not solve the crisis America faces.
00:08:41.480
The only way to defeat progressivism is to replace it with a more compelling and true narrative.
00:08:48.400
The only way to once again weave a social fabric which can bind Americans together is by acknowledging
00:08:53.980
the indispensable nature of a shared moral vision.
00:08:57.880
This doesn't mean some kind of cartoonish theocracy.
00:09:00.900
It simply requires us to stop denying an essential truth about human nature.
00:09:06.000
Religion isn't going anywhere, and ignoring that fact doesn't make us enlightened, rational,
00:09:12.100
It only leaves us vulnerable to the destructive and hollow forms of belief that we allow to
00:09:20.040
America will be ordered toward a vision of the good.
00:09:23.020
Our nation will embody a moral tradition and act it out in our daily lives.
00:09:27.440
Every human civilization serves something higher.
00:09:38.200
If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and click like, and if you haven't subscribed yet, now
00:09:43.900
If you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to
00:09:48.300
The Oren McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platform.
00:09:51.460
And when you do, make sure that you go ahead and leave a rating or review.
00:09:54.600
That really helps with all the algorithm magic.
00:09:56.540
If you'd like to follow me on Twitter, or Substack, or Gab, if you'd like to watch these videos
00:10:02.500
on Rumble or Odyssey, make sure to follow the links down below in the description.
00:10:07.940
And of course, you can catch all of my videos and read all of my articles over at The Blaze.
00:10:13.760
Thanks for watching, guys, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.