Deal Hudson is a Catholic activist, author, and former Catholic outreach guy for both George W. Bush and Donald Trump. He's also the author of a new book, The Desecrators, which deals with cancel culture and what it means for Catholics.
00:03:32.580The idea that natural law is a reflection grows out of God's law, the idea of the Ten Commandments,
00:03:38.780the idea of the supremacy of love as a virtue and what love means.
00:03:43.540So, it's a desecration on, at every level, beginning with life, beginning with the family, sexuality,
00:03:53.680the meaning of education, the meaning of community, the meaning of nationhood and self-governance,
00:04:01.280and the meaning, obviously, of ultimate, or ultimates in life.
00:04:05.900Are we going to begin with the understanding that we're all created in the image and likeness
00:04:12.640of God, or are we going to begin with the sort of sartrean and existentialist assumption that we all define who we are from the very beginning,
00:04:20.600and you can define yourself any way you like?
00:04:23.780I've been wanting to ask you this for a long time.
00:04:26.240Your background in Catholic activism and then in politics, particularly presidential politics.
00:04:33.720Is it fair to call Joe Biden the second Catholic president of the United States?
00:14:19.440There was an early movement in the pro-life movement that was all about making a big tent.
00:14:26.800In order to do that, they basically shoved Catholics, perhaps some Christians too, to the back of the bus.
00:14:35.940If you came to the March for Life with a crucifix or with, God forbid, a picture of Our Lady,
00:14:42.720you were told you could either leave those here in March or you can just go home.
00:14:46.280What is your takeaway on that, the approach that you would advocate for this kind of building a big tent and where we need to go with it?
00:14:56.740When I first came to Washington and was asked to work with Governor Bush, I met with Ralph Reed.
00:15:03.080He was handling the evangelical outreach and I was handling the Catholic outreach.
00:15:07.280And we met off and we said, we agreed we wanted to do something that would be a unified effort.
00:15:16.840And of course, we were all familiar with how, you know, the history of anti-Catholicism among evangelicals.
00:15:23.740And Ralph didn't have an iota of that.
00:15:28.020And of course, he was then head of the Christian coalition.
00:15:32.880And so we began messaging and having events bringing Catholics and evangelicals together, you know, on the ground rather than writing documents and having 20, 30 people sign them.
00:15:45.460I think since that was 1999, 2000, I think here in the year 2022, I think we've seen a real healing of the historical rift between Catholics and evangelicals through their political action.
00:16:04.180It hasn't come through doctrinal changes on either side.
00:16:09.320It's come because of the pro-life music movement primarily and people getting over this sort of, well, I'm the only, we're the only ones saved versus you say you're the only ones saved.
00:16:22.260I think that's, except for a few places in Florida, I think that's pretty much gone now.
00:16:27.300Now, there are some very controversial questions because, of course, you were heading up Catholics for Trump and Trump did some very controversial things from a Catholic perspective.
00:16:38.560One of the things was, you know, the LGBT push and the other, the vaccine push.
00:16:45.020So I'd like to have you address both of those, if you don't mind.
00:16:47.780So first of all, with the appointment of Rick Grinnell and Rick going out publicly saying he's, you know, Trump has done more for the LGBT community than any president in U.S. history.
00:16:59.620And of course, you could see some of that.
00:17:01.900He put out a very popular commercial because of that.
00:17:04.060But how did you take that as a Catholic and what would you respond to criticisms on that basis?
00:18:02.680And I'm all for mutual respect, which George Bush was, too, by the way.
00:18:07.120But when it comes to anything that would, any kind of legislation or educational policy that would seek to normalize in the minds of the nation, and minds especially of our young people, that this is normal sexual behavior, I'm opposed to.
00:18:26.860One of the things that your book is particular about is the cancel culture.
00:18:32.140This really took a foothold with the whole Black Lives Matter movement.
00:18:47.520But back when I was in college, the University of Texas, an existentialism was sweeping through the campus along with the anti-Vietnam riots.
00:18:57.140This was the seed time of this attitude that each individual is autonomous.
00:19:05.220There is no normative understanding of human beings.
00:19:10.020There is no common standard of right and wrong, virtues and vices.
00:19:19.500Like Jean-Paul Sartre, you know, saying that human life is like a blank chalkboard.
00:19:27.100You draw your own picture of existence.
00:19:29.240It doesn't have to match up to anybody else's because there is no common understanding of human existence.
00:19:36.280So this has been, and then you went through feminism, then you went through multiculturalism, which was very pernicious, because it was really not about multiple voices as much as it was getting rid of established Western voices.
00:19:51.940Then you go into this thing we call deconstruction and postmodernism, which is philosophically a direct attack on the notion of truth and knowledge.
00:20:02.380I mean, and so all of this has been growing since the 60s.
00:20:07.880And I lived through every step of it, and I thought every step of it, obviously not very effectively, because it's taken hold, and especially took hold in education and in departments of education, schools of education, schools of journalism, so that all those people that graduated since the 60s out of journalism, out of education, what have they done?
00:20:35.360They've gone on to educate generation after generation of people to their implicitly nihilistic point of view.
00:20:47.040I mean, they don't come out as nihilist.
00:20:49.320They come out as sort of multiculturalist, or they come out as feminist, or they come out as something where underneath that, and this is what we do in our book, underneath that, we show that it's a rejection of human nature,
00:21:04.020of any kind of absolute truth or any kind of moral norms.
00:21:12.980They are raising their kids in this most confusing of times, like probably the world has never, ever experienced, just because of that confusion at every single level.
00:21:23.420There's not a world war, so to speak, on the body, but there's a world war on the soul, arguably thus more severe than anything we've ever experienced.
00:21:36.240What are parents to do in such a culture, in such a time, with their children, anywhere from the little ones to the teenagers?
00:22:27.680Or are they all watching, you know, Marvel comic movies?
00:22:32.160Which, very entertaining, but life is not entertainment, and we're not in a situation where entertainment should get in the way of parents becoming representative of the culture that's being destroyed.
00:22:48.780The children, you don't just sit there and put books in children's hands and say, read it.
00:22:54.620But you let the children see you doing it, and then the children want to do it.
00:23:00.840You know, they want to be like mommy and daddy.
00:23:03.080Between fourth and fifth grade, I read three 1,000-page novels, Gone with a Wind, Advise and Consent, and what was, oh, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
00:23:14.800Now, I didn't think it was a big deal until I told people later on I had done it, and they looked at me like, did you play baseball?
00:23:22.780Yeah, I was the best hitter on the team.
00:23:32.580It deepens your understanding of yourself and your world.
00:23:36.880It gives you weapons because it helps you see into human nature, helps you to see what it is that motivates people, what it is that people fear.
00:23:51.200I mean, reading is the way in which a heart and soul are strengthened.
00:23:58.100I know that's a big claim, but there isn't any other thing other than prayer, other than liturgical experience, that can solidify a human being, an individual, a parent, like reading.
00:24:14.680One of the underpinnings, I think, of a lot of what we've seen, both in the secular culture and in the church, probably more sadly in the church than anything else, that we're now hearing echoed in Rome.
00:24:28.720But at least from the American perspective, it came from one of the most unlikely sources because it was the priest who headed up probably one of the most successful Catholic kind of feel-good rah-rah outreaches.
00:24:43.580The Catholic project headed up by then Father and now Bishop Barron.
00:24:48.760But his message that I found controversial and probably many didn't was the empty hell theory.
00:24:57.320Now we're hearing that sort of everywhere.
00:24:58.720But to me anyway, it underpins so much of modernism and modern day laissez-faire when it comes to the spiritual life, when it comes to acting morally in your existence.
00:25:11.260Since, what's your take on that question?
00:25:14.840You know, I went back and I read from Balthazar's book where, you know, a lot of people are getting this idea that if there's a hell, nobody's in it.
00:25:45.560And if you are not prepared to meet God, you will not meet him.
00:25:50.900You will meet something else, something hellish.
00:25:56.100I understood when I became a Christian, he's been as a Baptist, and I certainly understood it when I became Catholics, even though the Jesuits tried to talk me out of it.
00:26:06.020If our salvation is guaranteed, then we should, why are we even moaning and groaning?
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