The John-Henry Westen Show - April 27, 2023


Solutions To The ‘Woke’ Agenda ｜ Internationally Acclaimed Podcaster Jonathon Van Maren


Episode Stats

Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

169.05342

Word Count

7,748

Sentence Count

345

Misogynist Sentences

16

Hate Speech Sentences

32


Summary

Jonathan Van Maren, a frequent contributor to Life Site News, joins us to talk about what it's like to be a pro-life advocate in Canada. He talks about the pushback he gets when he speaks about abortion and pornography, and how he deals with it.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Let me know whenever you're ready.
00:00:07.060 Jonathan Van Maren, welcome to the program.
00:00:09.620 So good to be here.
00:00:11.200 Let's begin as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:00:13.700 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:00:18.100 Amen.
00:00:19.880 So Jonathan, you have to write about, at LifeSite, sometimes some of the most uncomfortable topics.
00:00:25.400 You do that with great grace, and a lot of courage, and even a lot of fun.
00:00:30.720 So thank you for that.
00:00:32.140 And you've experienced a lot of what people go through as we report on trying to make sane presentations,
00:00:41.580 and being booed and cajoled out of places.
00:00:44.720 You do a lot of that yourself.
00:00:47.580 Just for those of you who might not know, Jonathan is a very frequent contributor to LifeSite News.
00:00:53.660 He also runs the Van Maren podcast at LifeSite News.
00:00:56.260 So if you don't know that, please go check it out.
00:00:58.180 But why don't you start with that, Jonathan?
00:01:00.400 Tell us a little bit about the presentations that you make at schools, and some of the pushback that you've received.
00:01:07.260 Yeah, it's interesting.
00:01:08.780 It's hard to know which topic to start with.
00:01:10.720 Because as you noted, for LifeSite, I write about a lot of the key cultural issues.
00:01:15.460 But especially the issues where the clashes are the loudest and the haughtest.
00:01:21.240 With regards to the presentations, I do two kinds of presentations.
00:01:24.800 I work full-time for a pro-life organization.
00:01:27.400 My entry into the writing was actually the pro-life movement, similar to how many of the people at LifeSite actually got involved originally in writing.
00:01:35.220 And of course, in Canada, you can't say anything in opposition to abortion without attracting loud and angry protests,
00:01:41.860 especially at the universities.
00:01:44.500 And I think one of the things people don't realize about the pro-life movement here in Canada is that the opposition of the pro-life movement is frequently violent.
00:01:53.540 I've covered that for LifeSite.
00:01:55.220 I think it was LifeSite who broke the story of the man who roundhouse kicked Mary Claire Bissonette at LifeChain one year.
00:02:03.600 What many people might not know is that fellow, a man named Jordan Hunt, also assaulted some of my female colleagues a few months previous to that.
00:02:11.820 And so when you stand up for life in the Canadian context, you have to assume that you're going to get some pushback.
00:02:17.620 And then the other presentations I give at schools, which are simultaneously more rewarding and sometimes more depressing, are presentations on pornography.
00:02:27.600 Because what we've seen in our culture, especially since COVID, when everybody was staying at home,
00:02:34.420 is that porn addiction has gone from something that's an enormous problem to something that's poisoning the hearts and minds of a majority of young people,
00:02:42.620 even inside the churches. At the height of COVID, when everybody was being forced to stay at home,
00:02:49.080 we saw Pornhub getting more hits than Google and Facebook combined.
00:02:53.520 They were getting trillions of hits every month.
00:02:57.100 And so we've begun the long process of trying to reach out to young people to address the problem
00:03:01.960 and to try and give them the assistance they need to break the addiction to what I think is probably the most poisonous toxin available online in a host of options.
00:03:11.240 Indeed it is. In fact, that stat, that understanding, if you think about what Jonathan just said there,
00:03:19.540 more hits than Google and Facebook combined, that's just unreal.
00:03:24.440 And if you remember, not you, Jonathan, but I think our viewers would remember very well about Our Lady Fatima
00:03:31.440 told the three little children, more souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.
00:03:38.120 And a lot of people wonder, oh, are the times we're living in today so bad, really?
00:03:42.160 Or are they, you know, what are they?
00:03:44.800 Oh, we're, David, we're having a massive delay.
00:03:51.580 Oh, are you hearing the delay on your end?
00:03:55.300 Jonathan?
00:03:55.740 You delayed me for a minute and it suddenly caught up.
00:03:58.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So he's hearing that as well.
00:04:01.440 Okay, wait, okay. All right, let me just start. I think he heard your reply just fine, so I'll start again.
00:04:13.160 What Jonathan said there is so important because to realize that it's trillions of hits on this one pornography station channel,
00:04:23.140 whatever you want to call it, and it so outweighs things that Google and Facebook together don't even have that kind of traffic.
00:04:28.840 It does go to show where we are in the world today.
00:04:34.060 Do you remember Our Lady of Fatima said to the three children in 1917
00:04:37.340 that more souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason?
00:04:42.700 It's stunning because people wonder, oh, are the times now worse than they were back then?
00:04:46.460 No, there was really bad times back then.
00:04:48.640 It's not even as bad now.
00:04:50.420 Actually, if you think about what Jonathan just said, the numbers of people who are now addicted to porn.
00:04:57.920 In fact, there's more people today regularly viewing porn than there were people alive back in 1917.
00:05:03.800 We're in perilous times.
00:05:05.360 I get very frustrated when people say things aren't any worse because it's not just something people say to comfort themselves
00:05:13.520 about all the evils going on as sort of an excuse not to do anything.
00:05:17.460 But I think also, especially for anybody who's got kids or grandkids, it's ignoring a threat that can destroy the souls of your children.
00:05:25.540 And you're precisely right, while it's true that pornography has always existed,
00:05:30.180 the things that kids are getting hooked on now between the ages of 5 and 10
00:05:33.640 are not the sorts of things that were scratched onto the wall at Pompeii.
00:05:37.660 And these things are things that, quite frankly, my dad couldn't have gotten his hands on
00:05:41.960 and my grandparents, in many cases, couldn't imagine.
00:05:44.760 So the scale of the evil and the accessibility of the evil that we're facing right now
00:05:50.540 is unprecedented in recorded human history.
00:05:53.100 And I actually believe that the omni-presence of pornography now in Western culture
00:05:58.600 is contributing to a lot of the other issues that you discuss on the show,
00:06:03.320 that we discuss as columnists at LifeSite,
00:06:06.220 and also that anybody, culturally speaking, is talking about,
00:06:10.360 I don't think you can understand the LGBT movement.
00:06:13.220 You can't understand the sexual revolution.
00:06:15.560 You can't understand the degradation of entertainment
00:06:17.780 without understanding the extent to which porn has conquered our culture.
00:06:21.640 A pornography may not be the worst problem, but it makes every other problem worse.
00:06:26.380 You know, I had a conversation the other day here with my studio manager, David,
00:06:31.260 and he was mentioning three items that really drive the destruction of our culture today.
00:06:39.200 Fear that we saw so evidently with the whole COVID nonsense,
00:06:43.460 and then confusion and lust.
00:06:46.440 And they all sort of work together and perpetuate one another.
00:06:49.420 It's just unreal.
00:06:50.500 So that such that the human mind seems to be gone.
00:06:53.020 We can't even understand ourselves anymore because of this delusion we're all under,
00:06:58.580 and it's fueled also by lust.
00:07:01.720 It's so interesting that you mentioned those three,
00:07:04.620 because to such a large extent, I think that Christians still haven't fully understood
00:07:08.580 the impact of the digital era and the extent to which the internet,
00:07:14.080 this thing that we're chatting on right now,
00:07:15.960 but this thing that in a handful of years has invaded every aspect of our lives,
00:07:20.260 has transformed the way we communicate, the way that we think,
00:07:24.040 and the extent to which big corporations are essentially making millions of dollars,
00:07:28.520 billions of dollars, getting us addicted to fear and lust and rage,
00:07:33.760 and setting us at variance with each other.
00:07:36.820 And we don't even fully understand how these things work yet.
00:07:40.820 You remember, of course, an era where the internet didn't dominate all of life.
00:07:44.700 My generation kind of straddles the digital age and the previous age,
00:07:49.920 because I couldn't get a smartphone until well after I graduated high school.
00:07:53.960 So my childhood would have more resembled yours than it would a kid today.
00:07:59.460 But the extent to which these tools have actually shaped us rather than we've shaped them,
00:08:05.740 and then to understand that the creators of the tools and the messages being sent through them
00:08:09.740 are deeply corrupt, I think, is important to understand the contours of the postmodern context
00:08:15.280 and the post-Christian context.
00:08:18.000 Indeed.
00:08:18.840 One of the things you write about a lot that is really endemic of where we are as a culture right now
00:08:24.680 is the whole transgender phenomenon that's just going crazy.
00:08:30.140 Give us a snapshot, if you will, of where we are today on that score,
00:08:34.580 so people can just tell where we are as a culture.
00:08:37.980 Well, let me give you a snapshot of where we are today, and then we'll work back a little bit.
00:08:44.000 To give you an idea of how far we've moved and how fast we've moved,
00:08:49.240 we are now seeing headlines in every Western country that I think even 10 years ago
00:08:54.000 we wouldn't have been able to fathom.
00:08:56.020 And a good microcosmic example of this would be a tweet that was sent out by the Windsor Police Service
00:09:01.340 a couple of weeks back.
00:09:03.240 And it was a picture of this sort of ugly-looking, very obviously male criminal.
00:09:09.000 But the pronouns that were being used were she pronouns, her pronouns,
00:09:13.140 because this woman had sexually assaulted a woman in a rape crisis centre
00:09:19.460 where the vulnerable victim had gone to get help or to get safety.
00:09:24.160 But instead, because a man identifying as a woman was allowed into the centre,
00:09:29.280 and in fact the centre was legally obligated to permit this man to come in,
00:09:33.280 she was instead re-victimised.
00:09:35.780 That is not a standalone incident, because it's important here for listeners and watchers to understand
00:09:42.020 that one of the things the LGBT movement does to incessantly gaslight us
00:09:46.300 is to insist when we provide an example of the threat this movement poses to our society
00:09:51.580 of accusing us to cherry-pick in order to demonize.
00:09:55.260 And sometimes I struggle when I'm writing the columns for my site,
00:09:58.560 one of the editors will say,
00:10:00.240 you need to cover the story, and I'll have to read the details closely,
00:10:04.140 because sometimes it doesn't seem to differ a lot from a story I wrote about the previous month.
00:10:08.140 And that's because these things are happening so often,
00:10:11.000 but the reason it's important to cover all of these stories is to establish to the audience
00:10:15.560 that you're not insane, you are being gaslit, there is a pattern here,
00:10:20.340 it's a pattern that's provable, and then once you recognise that pattern,
00:10:24.520 you realise the extent to which we're being lied to by virtually every gatekeeper.
00:10:29.880 And so where we are now in 2023 is an era in Canada,
00:10:35.440 in parts of the United States, in most of the Western world,
00:10:38.200 in which a biological man identifying as a woman
00:10:41.640 is not only legally considered to literally be a woman,
00:10:45.900 but if he claims to be a woman, will be locked up with females,
00:10:49.980 or more accurately, females locked into prison will be locked behind bars
00:10:54.540 with a man who is most often a violent criminal.
00:10:58.140 We are seeing children claiming, because of social contagion,
00:11:03.020 because of propaganda they've been exposed to,
00:11:05.380 because of public indoctrination in state schools,
00:11:07.660 that they are either the opposite gender or any number of genders in between.
00:11:13.080 There are more than 80 of them now, all total.
00:11:15.480 They rise probably as we speak.
00:11:17.860 But horrifyingly, those children are being introduced
00:11:20.680 to what is now called gender affirmation surgery.
00:11:24.520 When I started writing about this for LifeSide,
00:11:26.600 it was called sex change surgery.
00:11:28.580 The terminology is changing to hem in the parameters of the debate,
00:11:32.840 to herd us towards specific conclusions.
00:11:35.520 Those children are already hitting the ages of 16 and 17
00:11:40.740 and revealing the extent to which they've been physically and psychologically destroyed
00:11:44.660 by these alleged treatments, by these cross-sex hormones,
00:11:48.640 by these puberty blockers.
00:11:50.620 And for the Canadian listeners, what I think is so disturbing
00:11:54.200 is that we're the only country not having an open discussion about what's going on.
00:11:59.580 So in the United States, you know, blue states, red states,
00:12:03.260 there's these fierce debates about whether transgender health care is health care
00:12:07.460 or whether, in fact, it's systematic mutilation of genders for children.
00:12:12.760 In the UK, they're debating whether or not these clinics
00:12:15.440 should be permitted to engage in these alleged treatments.
00:12:19.180 Finland, Sweden, the Scandinavian countries
00:12:21.660 are actually passing legislation or changing medical protocols
00:12:25.780 to stop doing these things to kids.
00:12:28.460 Here in Canada, of course, our prime minister is full steam ahead
00:12:32.300 on every aspect of this agenda.
00:12:34.320 But what's even more disturbing is that aside from a handful
00:12:37.080 of sort of dissident countercultural outlets,
00:12:40.520 the post-millennial, although I still think they're weak on the pronouns,
00:12:44.280 the rebel, LifeSide, there's almost nobody else
00:12:47.220 that's willing to tackle the issue.
00:12:50.000 National Post was considered our right of center publication
00:12:52.920 before they went libertarian, but even they will post a picture
00:12:56.480 of, again, some, you know, great bruiser of a man
00:12:59.000 and obediently use the she, her pronouns.
00:13:02.480 And if you use the she, her pronouns,
00:13:04.580 you've seen the entire premises of the debate,
00:13:06.920 because if you admit that that guy is a woman,
00:13:09.520 then what possible reason do you have to keep that woman
00:13:13.980 out of the change room or out of a bad woman's shelter
00:13:16.880 or out of a female prison?
00:13:18.680 If you cave on pronouns, you cave on premises,
00:13:20.840 and you end up where we are now.
00:13:23.640 One of the biggest debates in this whole area
00:13:25.860 has been over in and in the sports world.
00:13:29.200 I know you've written a lot about that.
00:13:31.040 What's the latest there?
00:13:33.340 Well, what's interesting about the sports world
00:13:35.680 is that that's honestly where you're getting the most pushback.
00:13:38.440 And I'm not, I am aggressively disinterested
00:13:41.280 in professional sports and always have been.
00:13:43.520 And so I'm actually getting sort of a crash course
00:13:45.460 on professional sports just because it's become
00:13:47.980 this tempest in a teapot with a transgender issue.
00:13:50.900 So you've got three things happening simultaneously
00:13:53.740 that are very interesting.
00:13:55.540 First, you have an enormous number of people
00:13:58.060 who are opposing referring to men who identify as women
00:14:02.360 as women because they recognize that this ruins the sport.
00:14:06.000 But yet they still want to say this is a transgender woman,
00:14:10.080 but they shouldn't be able to participate.
00:14:12.160 And they're starting to recognize that that halfway position
00:14:14.980 doesn't do any good because, again, if you see the premises,
00:14:18.820 you're finished.
00:14:20.000 If that's a woman, then you can't actually borrow that woman
00:14:23.380 from playing these sports.
00:14:24.780 And you're getting a lot of backlash.
00:14:26.880 But now, finally, for the first time in a couple of years,
00:14:29.500 you're actually having young women come forward
00:14:31.680 and explain that this is something that is discrimination.
00:14:35.680 They have practiced for years and they're getting destroyed
00:14:37.980 in these contexts because mediocre men are competing
00:14:42.000 against women and destroying them due to physiological
00:14:44.560 and physical differences that can't be controlled.
00:14:48.040 And so that's been really encouraging to see.
00:14:50.520 The strangest little culture war incident that I wrote about
00:14:54.120 for this site is the fact that the NHL is actually reconsidering
00:15:00.640 their pride night and their pride jerseys, their rainbow jerseys,
00:15:05.400 because first this one Orthodox player comes forward and says,
00:15:09.580 I'm not going to do that.
00:15:10.420 When they asked him why, he says, I don't really need to explain.
00:15:12.900 This is my faith.
00:15:13.580 I'm not going to do that.
00:15:14.840 Then you had players from Minnesota Wild doing the same thing.
00:15:18.520 And then a couple of other players, a Christian goalie,
00:15:21.560 then other team members are all stepping forward.
00:15:23.960 And suddenly the NHL is saying, we're going to have to reconsider this.
00:15:27.040 And you've got sports commentators melting down
00:15:29.600 about how disgusting this is.
00:15:32.440 And the things that you need to notice here are twofold.
00:15:35.020 One, consider how totalitarian you have to be
00:15:38.500 to think that somebody should get fired or fined
00:15:41.360 for not physically wearing the flag of your preferred ideology
00:15:45.360 on their physical person, right?
00:15:47.740 It's just wild to consider the level of entitlement
00:15:50.520 that these people have.
00:15:51.860 The second thing that's important to note about the NHL story,
00:15:55.240 and as somebody who doesn't even like professional sports,
00:15:58.820 this is very weird for me to say,
00:16:01.040 one guy started this whole thing.
00:16:03.400 Like one Russian Orthodox player who was like,
00:16:06.320 not going to do it, not going to wear the jersey,
00:16:08.760 not going to fight about it, just not going to play your game.
00:16:11.960 That is what triggered this whole chain reaction
00:16:14.680 that now may well end up seeing the NHL
00:16:17.880 abandoning Pride Nights altogether.
00:16:20.320 And so we're going to talk about a lot of depressing stuff
00:16:22.740 here in the next bit.
00:16:23.600 So one of the things listeners need to understand
00:16:25.860 is that I believe the way forward
00:16:28.400 is very small acts of courage consistently performed
00:16:32.560 by ordinary people, right?
00:16:35.300 Most people watching will often think,
00:16:38.460 well, what can I do, right?
00:16:39.460 I'm not a podcaster or a columnist
00:16:41.340 or a pro-life activist or any kind of activist.
00:16:43.940 What can I do?
00:16:45.180 The reason that the transgender movement
00:16:47.360 has conquered our society
00:16:48.740 is because ordinary people have played along
00:16:50.980 because they just don't want the fight.
00:16:52.940 They've gone along to get along.
00:16:54.500 And so now when you end up being asked
00:16:57.820 to apply your pronouns on your email, you do it.
00:17:01.440 When you're asked to offer your pronouns on your name tag,
00:17:04.520 people just do it.
00:17:06.440 Bit by bit, it's all these little small things
00:17:09.080 where people are like, okay, fine, right?
00:17:10.940 You might get a Christian player who's like,
00:17:12.240 okay, it's Pride Night.
00:17:13.320 I'll wear the stupid jersey.
00:17:15.040 It doesn't really matter.
00:17:16.500 I'm not supporting it.
00:17:17.900 I'm just, you know, trying to stand up for tolerance.
00:17:20.580 One guy says no,
00:17:21.900 and suddenly you see this chain reaction.
00:17:24.920 And I've thought now, ever since he did that,
00:17:28.540 if ordinary guys like him can do this,
00:17:32.060 then everybody listening is going to encounter
00:17:34.500 in the next couple of years a scenario
00:17:36.200 in which they'll have a choice.
00:17:38.380 They can just roll with it
00:17:39.780 because it's not worth the fight,
00:17:41.640 or they can take what might seem like a small stand
00:17:44.520 with large consequences.
00:17:46.920 And I think we need to start considering
00:17:48.600 what our hill to die on is
00:17:50.560 because the thing about hills to die on
00:17:53.100 is that the closer they get,
00:17:54.240 the more they look like a hill to stay alive on.
00:17:57.140 And surrender is habit-forming.
00:17:59.040 And that's how the sexual revolutionaries win
00:18:01.160 and are winning.
00:18:02.360 But I still think that it's possible
00:18:03.660 to stop the transgender juggernaut.
00:18:06.920 Wow.
00:18:07.720 And coming from Canada,
00:18:09.460 that's a big thing to say.
00:18:11.700 Canada is a very unique place.
00:18:13.260 While you were mentioning in the States
00:18:14.840 that they have some states actually fighting
00:18:16.480 and passing legislation to stop the trans agenda,
00:18:19.940 which is just incredible,
00:18:21.020 which we just don't see any of here.
00:18:23.200 But in Canada,
00:18:24.920 our conservatives are so weird.
00:18:26.940 I want to play a clip and get your reaction to it.
00:18:29.200 These are conservative male politicians
00:18:31.080 saying that they're supporting women.
00:18:34.300 By doing what?
00:18:35.320 Well, they're prancing around in high heels.
00:18:38.380 Let's watch this.
00:18:40.720 Now, Jonathan, you've seen this, right?
00:18:42.900 Yeah.
00:18:43.500 Okay.
00:18:44.020 I didn't know they were conservatives.
00:18:45.780 Yeah.
00:18:47.080 So, Jonathan, if you can give us your take on that.
00:18:50.760 So the difficulty...
00:18:52.220 So here is, I think, the tragedy of Canada
00:18:55.920 is that if you look at all of the available public data we have,
00:19:00.040 the majority of people on the issues we're discussing
00:19:02.560 are more closely aligned to you and I
00:19:04.700 than to Justin Trudeau and his government.
00:19:07.380 But there's a couple of key things that are missing.
00:19:10.100 First and foremost, the Catholic community,
00:19:13.180 the Orthodox Protestant community,
00:19:14.960 more traditionally-minded immigrant groups
00:19:17.340 who haven't gone insane,
00:19:18.780 don't even understand the concept of gender ideology yet.
00:19:22.120 There is no coalition or real relationship
00:19:24.840 between all of these groups together.
00:19:27.220 We caught a glimpse of what it might look like
00:19:29.140 during the Canada Summer Jobs incident
00:19:31.360 where Trudeau initially said that every group
00:19:34.820 applying for funding in the Canada Summer Jobs program
00:19:37.940 would have to proactively endorse LGBT ideology and abortion.
00:19:41.400 And suddenly I was at the same meetings as rabbis and imams
00:19:45.380 and temple leaders from the Sikh and Hindu community.
00:19:48.560 And I think the liberals got a glimpse, too,
00:19:50.960 of what diversity in Canada actually means,
00:19:53.820 which is that the majority of religious groups
00:19:55.820 dislike all this stuff.
00:19:57.940 But I met with it with a conservative politician
00:20:00.000 earlier this month, and I asked,
00:20:01.640 you see the same things that I do.
00:20:04.060 You're looking for the same polling data.
00:20:05.620 I get that politicians are politicians,
00:20:07.780 and that you don't want to be hammering on the Overton window.
00:20:10.560 That's my job as a pro-life activist.
00:20:12.780 But why won't you stake out a position
00:20:14.440 where the Canadian public already is?
00:20:17.360 The majority of Canadians are not supportive
00:20:19.860 of sex changes for children, for example.
00:20:22.360 Interestingly enough, a CTV released polling
00:20:24.480 a couple of years ago
00:20:25.420 that indicated the vast majority
00:20:27.280 of non-white Canadians
00:20:29.140 are still against the redefinition of marriage.
00:20:32.120 And so, you know, post-Christian white Canadians
00:20:34.860 have moved on from that debate.
00:20:36.620 Most of these Canadians
00:20:37.520 still hold to the traditional views.
00:20:39.640 And basically his answer to me was
00:20:41.100 that this is cowardice.
00:20:42.920 And the reality of Canada
00:20:44.680 is that unlike the U.S.,
00:20:45.980 we simply don't have any political representation.
00:20:48.920 There are some notable exceptions.
00:20:50.480 You and I could probably name all of them
00:20:52.080 if you gave us less than a minute.
00:20:54.040 We really appreciate those people.
00:20:56.200 We pray for those people.
00:20:57.060 We're grateful to have them
00:20:58.260 and we're grateful to have their voice.
00:21:00.100 But they're a tiny minority.
00:21:02.140 And this goes back to my question
00:21:04.340 of cowardice versus courage.
00:21:06.780 Most, I would argue, almost everyone,
00:21:09.840 except for a handful of conservative politicians
00:21:11.920 in this country,
00:21:13.460 would tell you or I in private
00:21:15.060 that they think all this gender ideology stuff
00:21:17.340 is nonsense.
00:21:18.260 But in public,
00:21:19.500 they don't have the testicular fortitude themselves
00:21:22.540 to actually say men can't get pregnant
00:21:26.220 or women don't have penises.
00:21:28.820 They don't actually have the guts
00:21:30.420 to say those phrases
00:21:32.100 because our conservative party
00:21:33.740 essentially transitioned with the rest of the culture
00:21:36.080 and they're now the liberals,
00:21:37.720 they're the liberals driving the speed limit.
00:21:39.500 And so what you end up having
00:21:41.660 is Pierre Polyev,
00:21:43.700 who's basically,
00:21:44.760 he's pitching freedom,
00:21:46.300 although it doesn't apply it to Christians
00:21:48.820 because he voted for the conversion therapy ban
00:21:51.200 that bans pastoral conversations
00:21:53.020 and some parental conversations
00:21:54.960 with kids struggling with identity issues.
00:21:57.700 What he's really pitching
00:21:59.320 is social liberalism
00:22:00.420 with a better accountant than Trudeau has.
00:22:02.300 So what makes Canada different
00:22:05.340 really is a lack of a political option.
00:22:08.760 There's nobody to take advantage of a consensus
00:22:10.840 that I still think largely exists
00:22:12.840 outside the big cities.
00:22:15.120 Unbelievable.
00:22:16.580 So developing this internal fortitude,
00:22:21.860 it's not only for Canadians,
00:22:23.960 it's largely here we have to do it,
00:22:25.400 but it's everywhere.
00:22:26.500 As you mentioned,
00:22:28.040 the powers that be,
00:22:31.360 the elites, if you will,
00:22:32.760 that don't have the majority yet,
00:22:34.240 but they are coming for those
00:22:36.020 who would dare to stand out,
00:22:38.180 who would dare to oppose
00:22:39.560 what really does seem like a new religion
00:22:42.900 because it's pushed with religious fervor
00:22:45.580 and it is very much an anti-Christian,
00:22:48.180 particularly anti-Christian.
00:22:50.440 Not, you know,
00:22:51.040 they're really,
00:22:51.820 it seems like they're totally picking on
00:22:53.980 all the moral stands
00:22:55.460 of Christianity in particular.
00:22:58.540 And so this is coming,
00:23:00.680 this is being forced,
00:23:01.540 like a new religion,
00:23:02.600 they're demanding acquiescence,
00:23:05.100 they're demanding,
00:23:06.360 you know,
00:23:08.200 full obeisance.
00:23:10.180 And where do we develop,
00:23:12.240 how do we develop
00:23:13.100 that internal fortitude
00:23:14.400 to stand up against it?
00:23:16.540 That's such an interesting question
00:23:18.320 because it really is the question.
00:23:20.440 I don't believe that the West
00:23:22.080 as such can be recovered.
00:23:24.120 The inheritance of the West
00:23:26.500 is still there.
00:23:27.740 We can teach it in our schools,
00:23:29.420 in our own colleges,
00:23:30.200 and in our family circles.
00:23:31.280 So it's not like that inheritance is gone.
00:23:34.000 But Christendom as it was,
00:23:36.020 it is finished.
00:23:37.640 If you look at the philosopher,
00:23:38.880 Charles Taylor kind of described it,
00:23:40.560 Christendom as nations of bulwarks of belief,
00:23:43.340 which meant that all of the pressure
00:23:45.800 was towards the Christian views,
00:23:47.740 that you were actually sort of awed
00:23:49.300 if you didn't believe in Christianity,
00:23:51.520 you were the outlier.
00:23:52.880 Now we live in nations
00:23:54.580 with bulwarks of unbelief,
00:23:56.700 strengthened by this new religion
00:23:58.380 that you just described,
00:23:59.680 which is,
00:24:00.400 the best way to put it
00:24:01.580 would just be sort of
00:24:02.220 the religion of the self,
00:24:03.540 because fundamentally
00:24:04.400 that's what transgender ideology is,
00:24:07.200 is not only can I reject
00:24:09.040 all sexual boundaries,
00:24:10.380 all moral boundaries,
00:24:11.380 but I can reconstruct myself
00:24:13.260 sort of brick by brick.
00:24:15.280 I can decide who I am internally
00:24:17.260 and then conform physical reality
00:24:19.520 to the person,
00:24:21.100 the individual
00:24:21.640 that I've conjured up in my mind.
00:24:23.460 And I think that the Christians,
00:24:25.460 in the face of that,
00:24:26.800 have to do two things.
00:24:28.460 First, we have to create
00:24:29.660 very robust subcultures.
00:24:32.080 We need to ensure
00:24:33.100 that our children are not educated
00:24:35.140 by the state,
00:24:37.460 by any of those
00:24:38.540 who seek to impose their ideology
00:24:40.220 on the rest of us.
00:24:42.100 I think 20 years ago
00:24:43.400 you could have had an argument
00:24:44.560 about the public school
00:24:45.660 and whether or not
00:24:47.000 it was legitimate
00:24:47.780 to consider sending your kids there.
00:24:49.840 I'm about as radical
00:24:50.820 as they get on that issue now.
00:24:52.920 I think it's criminally negligent
00:24:54.440 to send your kids
00:24:55.080 to a public school.
00:24:56.340 I know for a lot of people
00:24:57.720 it would take a lot of sacrifice
00:24:59.120 to not send their kids
00:25:00.460 to a public school,
00:25:01.420 but I think you're sacrificing your kid
00:25:03.240 or at least taking
00:25:04.240 a very, very high risk
00:25:05.840 to get there.
00:25:06.820 And if you want to know
00:25:07.680 where my extremism
00:25:09.840 on this issue comes from,
00:25:11.300 I've gotten plenty
00:25:12.080 of phone calls
00:25:12.860 from my conservative
00:25:14.240 Catholic moms
00:25:15.220 with nine kids
00:25:16.380 who already have two kids
00:25:18.040 identifying as transgender
00:25:19.200 because they went
00:25:19.880 to the public school.
00:25:22.040 And these are tragedies
00:25:23.520 that...
00:25:26.680 Secondarily,
00:25:32.300 when we look at
00:25:33.080 the social imaginary
00:25:34.080 of our culture,
00:25:34.900 we have to be very careful
00:25:36.060 which storytellers
00:25:37.300 are telling their stories
00:25:38.820 to our kids
00:25:39.460 because the mainstream culture,
00:25:41.500 the storytellers
00:25:42.300 are Hollywood,
00:25:42.960 the entertainment industry,
00:25:44.180 the big screen
00:25:44.820 and the small screen,
00:25:46.080 and the stories
00:25:47.000 that are being told now
00:25:47.900 by those storytellers
00:25:49.160 are stories
00:25:50.180 which have new heroes
00:25:51.700 and new villains.
00:25:53.180 So in the past,
00:25:54.960 you know,
00:25:55.240 our heroes were,
00:25:56.440 our great historical figures,
00:25:57.920 religious figures.
00:25:59.080 Those are the sorts of people
00:26:00.240 that are getting
00:26:00.680 their statues torn down
00:26:01.840 right now.
00:26:02.820 The new heroes
00:26:03.620 are the sexual revolutionaries
00:26:05.060 which is why men
00:26:06.100 like statutory rapist
00:26:07.400 Harvey Milk
00:26:08.000 got a biopic,
00:26:09.520 you know,
00:26:10.380 with Sean Penn
00:26:11.320 starring as Harvey Milk.
00:26:13.040 Alfred Kinsey,
00:26:14.140 the sex criminal,
00:26:15.880 got a biopic
00:26:16.640 called Kinsey.
00:26:17.500 Liam Neeson
00:26:18.060 starred as him.
00:26:19.540 Gloria Steinem,
00:26:20.620 the famous abortion activist,
00:26:22.420 got two films
00:26:23.100 about her in 2020 alone.
00:26:25.400 And so these people
00:26:26.340 are now lionized
00:26:27.520 as heroes
00:26:28.160 whereas whenever
00:26:29.800 anybody,
00:26:30.660 a Christian
00:26:31.260 who are social conservative
00:26:32.440 or pro-life
00:26:33.140 who are in front of these films,
00:26:34.480 they're demonized
00:26:35.280 and they're mocked.
00:26:36.460 If we allow
00:26:37.220 those storytellers
00:26:38.380 to tell stories
00:26:39.120 to our children,
00:26:40.500 again,
00:26:41.020 their moral imagination
00:26:42.420 will be shaped
00:26:43.520 by the sexual revolutionaries.
00:26:46.280 And so we have to create
00:26:47.240 a robust subculture
00:26:48.300 that involves
00:26:48.900 cutting those people out
00:26:50.760 and then I believe
00:26:52.260 telling the truth
00:26:53.300 into this dark culture
00:26:54.480 is essential.
00:26:55.320 So that will look different
00:26:56.620 for different people.
00:26:57.700 We just discussed
00:26:58.360 small acts of courage.
00:26:59.660 I use things
00:27:00.560 like run a podcast
00:27:01.500 and write.
00:27:02.500 One of the things
00:27:03.560 that I do, of course,
00:27:04.660 is I believe
00:27:05.100 the pro-life movement
00:27:06.120 is one of the most
00:27:06.840 important movements
00:27:07.620 because if you go back
00:27:08.740 to the very early church,
00:27:10.360 saving children
00:27:11.720 is something
00:27:12.200 the very first Christians did.
00:27:14.200 And there's one
00:27:14.840 great Christian philosopher
00:27:16.140 who said
00:27:16.660 if in a hundred years
00:27:18.180 Christians are known
00:27:19.240 as the people
00:27:19.760 who don't kill
00:27:20.660 their infants
00:27:21.500 and their elderly,
00:27:22.320 I think we'll have
00:27:23.000 done pretty well.
00:27:23.740 Hmm.
00:27:25.620 Indeed.
00:27:26.060 Yeah, Jonathan,
00:27:37.980 you froze there
00:27:38.580 for a second.
00:27:39.900 If you're able
00:27:40.500 to repeat
00:27:41.780 that part of the story
00:27:42.700 where you talked
00:27:43.180 about the Catholic mother
00:27:44.600 who did that
00:27:45.880 and then we'll
00:27:46.840 break and go on
00:27:47.780 from there
00:27:48.060 because I think
00:27:48.660 they caught the rest.
00:27:49.320 It was just at that point
00:27:50.260 that you froze up
00:27:51.440 for a second.
00:27:51.780 And for those
00:27:54.620 who are wondering
00:27:55.120 where my extremism
00:27:56.200 on this issue
00:27:56.720 comes from,
00:27:57.320 I've gotten phone calls
00:27:58.320 from some Catholic moms
00:27:59.500 with nine kids
00:28:00.540 who already have
00:28:01.640 two kids
00:28:02.400 identifying as transgender
00:28:03.720 because they sent them
00:28:04.540 to public school.
00:28:05.680 So I believe
00:28:06.360 the public school
00:28:07.200 poses an actual
00:28:08.580 physical and spiritual
00:28:10.460 threat to our children
00:28:11.640 and that's why
00:28:12.420 I'm so opposed
00:28:13.240 to sending our children there.
00:28:15.340 Great.
00:28:16.060 Is that good, David?
00:28:16.880 That's good.
00:28:17.840 Perfect.
00:28:18.340 Okay.
00:28:18.460 So one of the things
00:28:21.980 that is truly remarkable,
00:28:23.660 you talked about us
00:28:25.020 being basically
00:28:26.000 in a post-Christian world
00:28:27.560 that the Christendom
00:28:28.500 is sort of dead in a way
00:28:29.680 and I would agree.
00:28:30.580 I mean,
00:28:30.740 it certainly looks that way
00:28:32.000 when you look
00:28:33.360 at the whole world scene.
00:28:34.680 It doesn't seem like,
00:28:35.860 you know,
00:28:36.800 Christendom is still standing.
00:28:38.260 We know, though,
00:28:39.040 the promise of our Lord
00:28:39.940 that he will be
00:28:41.340 with his church
00:28:41.980 to the end of time.
00:28:42.780 That still exists.
00:28:43.940 Wherever there's one believer,
00:28:44.920 you have,
00:28:45.540 you know,
00:28:46.320 our Lord still present.
00:28:48.080 But what do you think?
00:28:50.200 I mean,
00:28:50.900 I honestly believe
00:28:51.940 we're in a time
00:28:52.900 where we're out
00:28:54.140 of political solutions
00:28:55.000 that divine intervention
00:28:56.240 needs to come.
00:28:58.420 I'd love to hear
00:28:59.020 your take on that,
00:29:00.340 where we are
00:29:01.000 in terms of the divine
00:29:03.380 looking down.
00:29:04.060 The famous quote from,
00:29:05.620 I think it was
00:29:06.060 Billy Graham's wife,
00:29:07.180 if our Lord
00:29:07.700 doesn't do something soon,
00:29:08.680 he's going to have
00:29:09.100 to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:29:11.060 Where do you think we're at?
00:29:13.540 I would tend
00:29:14.600 to agree with you.
00:29:15.800 And I'll give one proviso
00:29:18.400 in a moment,
00:29:19.020 but I would tend
00:29:20.160 to agree with you
00:29:21.020 simply because
00:29:21.620 it's very difficult
00:29:22.440 to see the way back
00:29:23.820 from some of the things
00:29:24.820 that have happened.
00:29:26.100 There are some things
00:29:26.800 that I don't know
00:29:27.300 if they can be undone.
00:29:29.140 And so where you're from,
00:29:30.200 there's a lot of big families
00:29:31.360 still, right?
00:29:32.360 Parents with lots of kids.
00:29:34.180 And where I'm from,
00:29:34.960 it's the same thing.
00:29:35.780 I come from a family
00:29:36.900 of big families.
00:29:38.460 But what I've found
00:29:39.500 doing pro-life activism
00:29:40.720 and being on the streets
00:29:41.840 is when you hear somebody
00:29:43.860 say, you know,
00:29:44.600 I couldn't have three kids,
00:29:46.340 I couldn't have four kids,
00:29:48.380 I think they're serious.
00:29:49.820 I think that there's
00:29:51.020 been a break
00:29:51.900 in the intergenerational
00:29:53.040 experience
00:29:53.740 and that the sexual revolution
00:29:54.980 has been so totalizing
00:29:56.280 that we no longer
00:29:57.580 live in countries
00:29:58.380 where people can't imagine
00:30:00.220 having even three
00:30:01.160 or four kids,
00:30:01.940 much less seven
00:30:02.920 or eight
00:30:03.220 or nine or four.
00:30:04.780 And so sometimes
00:30:05.480 I wonder that even
00:30:06.420 if the political conditions
00:30:07.560 were perfect,
00:30:08.180 you had the right president,
00:30:09.200 the right prime minister,
00:30:10.840 you know,
00:30:11.180 the policies that you
00:30:12.180 and I would prefer
00:30:13.100 if we have a population
00:30:15.180 that has actually
00:30:16.100 not only lost
00:30:17.180 the spiritual knowledge
00:30:18.360 of what is best for them,
00:30:20.500 but they've also lost
00:30:21.520 the practical knowledge
00:30:22.500 of how to live
00:30:23.120 a different life.
00:30:24.500 And I realized,
00:30:25.540 actually,
00:30:26.040 the more I engaged
00:30:27.460 with the pro-life movement
00:30:28.320 that the subculture
00:30:29.220 I myself grew up in
00:30:30.480 was sort of a pocket
00:30:31.980 where people still
00:30:33.480 lived their lives
00:30:34.280 as they had
00:30:34.900 in generations past
00:30:36.180 while Christendom
00:30:37.380 was sort of dying
00:30:38.180 all around us.
00:30:39.200 And that people
00:30:40.080 no longer knew
00:30:41.240 how to carry on
00:30:42.300 those old ways of life.
00:30:43.480 There's a phrase
00:30:45.100 Tolkien uses
00:30:45.880 in the first book
00:30:46.720 in his trilogy
00:30:47.200 where he said
00:30:47.640 some things
00:30:48.020 that were forgotten
00:30:48.760 that should not
00:30:49.800 have been forgotten
00:30:50.440 were lost.
00:30:51.820 And so sometimes
00:30:52.500 I think,
00:30:53.400 yeah,
00:30:53.680 I'm not sure
00:30:54.480 how people would
00:30:56.180 go back to that
00:30:57.640 because of the break
00:31:00.160 in the intergenerational
00:31:01.200 experience.
00:31:02.460 The same thing
00:31:03.340 is true when I look
00:31:04.180 at what gender ideology
00:31:05.240 is doing
00:31:05.820 and it really breaks
00:31:06.900 my heart
00:31:07.560 because I'm not
00:31:08.300 sure what to say
00:31:10.120 to these young people.
00:31:12.060 If we believe
00:31:12.860 what we say
00:31:13.740 in the columns
00:31:15.080 of the podcast
00:31:15.740 and the advocacy
00:31:16.680 that we do
00:31:17.340 that the trans movement
00:31:18.980 is perpetrating
00:31:19.740 irreversible damage
00:31:20.800 on these children,
00:31:22.680 the reality of that
00:31:24.100 is what this means
00:31:25.000 is that in the next
00:31:25.620 10 years
00:31:26.180 you're going to have
00:31:26.740 an army of mutilations
00:31:28.080 in every institution's
00:31:32.360 task.
00:31:35.460 As to all the most
00:31:36.600 recent research
00:31:37.340 we have,
00:31:37.860 as recently as this month,
00:31:39.240 will be incapable
00:31:39.920 of burying children
00:31:41.400 or experiencing
00:31:42.300 sexual intimacy,
00:31:43.720 which will essentially
00:31:44.860 mean that
00:31:45.580 even pleasure,
00:31:48.040 even fulfillment
00:31:48.860 as the culture
00:31:49.820 understands it
00:31:50.640 will be denied to them,
00:31:51.980 much less the idea
00:31:53.280 of being able
00:31:54.000 to become one
00:31:54.640 with somebody else
00:31:55.500 and then watch
00:31:56.080 that love
00:31:56.640 grow onto another
00:31:58.000 human being
00:31:58.620 that's half you
00:31:59.320 and half her.
00:32:00.620 And so there's no
00:32:01.480 way back
00:32:02.440 for these kids either.
00:32:03.520 There's so many things
00:32:04.220 that are being done
00:32:04.940 that cannot be undone.
00:32:06.840 And I really would
00:32:08.100 tend to agree
00:32:09.460 with you
00:32:10.000 that short of
00:32:11.000 a divine intervention,
00:32:12.580 this train is going
00:32:13.320 too fast
00:32:14.100 and the cliff
00:32:14.560 is too close
00:32:15.340 to turn it around.
00:32:16.620 The only sort of
00:32:18.680 spasm of hope
00:32:20.080 I've had
00:32:20.680 in all of this though
00:32:21.620 is the overturn
00:32:23.260 of Roe v. Wade
00:32:24.100 last year.
00:32:25.900 And the reason
00:32:26.600 for that
00:32:27.300 is because
00:32:28.340 for the first time
00:32:29.760 since the sexual
00:32:30.420 revolution has begun,
00:32:32.000 something that was done
00:32:33.220 was undone.
00:32:34.900 And watching the panic
00:32:36.300 of the sexual revolutionaries
00:32:38.820 over Roe v. Wade,
00:32:40.200 reading about it
00:32:40.820 in the Guardian
00:32:41.340 and the New York Times,
00:32:42.840 hearing abortion activists
00:32:44.100 in the Global South
00:32:44.980 and Africa
00:32:45.440 saying things like
00:32:46.180 this is going to set us
00:32:46.800 back years,
00:32:48.040 I realized
00:32:48.720 when Roe died,
00:32:50.300 the myth of inevitability died.
00:32:52.780 The idea
00:32:53.440 that all of history
00:32:55.040 is marching
00:32:55.520 in a single direction,
00:32:57.060 that abortion is legal,
00:32:58.660 that abortion regimes
00:32:59.920 are inevitable,
00:33:00.820 which many people felt
00:33:02.180 after Ireland fell
00:33:03.200 in 2018.
00:33:05.080 And then suddenly
00:33:05.680 the world's
00:33:06.900 greatest superpower
00:33:08.000 for the moment,
00:33:09.340 which had declared
00:33:10.360 abortion to be
00:33:10.960 a constitutional right,
00:33:12.520 suddenly declared
00:33:13.360 that abortion
00:33:13.860 was not a constitutional right
00:33:15.560 and did so
00:33:16.340 in those terms.
00:33:17.980 And so that's where
00:33:22.020 the myth
00:33:22.660 of inevitability died
00:33:24.460 and looking back
00:33:26.100 at the 50 years
00:33:27.080 of committed
00:33:27.640 and dedicated work
00:33:28.740 of ordinary men
00:33:29.980 and women
00:33:30.340 praying outside
00:33:31.040 abortion clinics
00:33:31.920 and going to the
00:33:32.560 freezing march
00:33:33.160 for life in January,
00:33:34.540 culminating in this,
00:33:35.880 did make me realize
00:33:37.080 that to lose hope
00:33:38.500 is also a historical
00:33:39.600 because there's
00:33:41.240 no good reason
00:33:42.000 that Roe
00:33:42.560 should have happened.
00:33:43.180 And your memory
00:33:44.240 will go back
00:33:44.760 further than me,
00:33:45.500 but, you know,
00:33:46.620 they said the
00:33:47.180 pro-life movement
00:33:47.600 was dead
00:33:47.980 when the Human Life
00:33:48.600 Amendment
00:33:48.840 failed in the 80s.
00:33:49.760 And then they said
00:33:50.240 it was dead
00:33:50.780 in 1992
00:33:51.900 when Planned Parenthood
00:33:53.040 v. Casey came down.
00:33:54.520 And then they said
00:33:54.980 it was dead
00:33:55.380 when Obama
00:33:55.920 got re-elected
00:33:56.940 and it looked like
00:33:57.880 the court was his.
00:33:59.360 And then they said
00:33:59.860 it was dead
00:34:00.320 when Scalia died
00:34:01.480 and there was
00:34:02.720 another spot
00:34:03.960 for Obama
00:34:04.640 to a point
00:34:05.480 and that spot
00:34:07.100 was held open
00:34:07.720 for a whole year.
00:34:09.220 And then this happened,
00:34:11.100 right?
00:34:11.560 So I don't know
00:34:12.760 how you feel about that,
00:34:13.740 but I felt like
00:34:14.820 the significance
00:34:15.720 of Roe v. Wade's
00:34:16.720 overturn for me
00:34:17.920 wasn't just
00:34:18.800 that 13 states
00:34:19.960 now largely
00:34:20.520 restrict abortion.
00:34:21.760 According to Dr. Michael New,
00:34:23.080 who regularly emails
00:34:23.920 both of us
00:34:24.520 with latest statistics,
00:34:25.980 34,000 babies are alive
00:34:27.800 and would have been dead
00:34:28.660 if that hadn't happened.
00:34:29.580 But also just this sort of
00:34:31.960 this jolt
00:34:32.900 in this march
00:34:34.400 where it's like,
00:34:35.180 no, actually
00:34:35.840 what's been done
00:34:37.100 can be undone.
00:34:38.620 And that's sort of
00:34:39.700 encouraging to consider.
00:34:42.180 Do you have just a second?
00:34:43.120 Just for 10 seconds
00:34:44.160 we're going to have
00:34:45.880 an army
00:34:46.420 coming to the future
00:34:47.800 of mutilated
00:34:49.380 and kids.
00:34:50.020 Yeah, yeah.
00:34:50.800 Yeah, okay.
00:34:52.180 You cut out slightly
00:34:53.420 again
00:34:54.480 where you were talking
00:34:56.020 about
00:34:56.380 an army of mutilated.
00:34:58.500 Can you give us
00:34:59.660 that snippet again?
00:35:00.560 We'll put it in
00:35:01.060 and put it in there.
00:35:02.220 Okay.
00:35:02.640 I'm sorry about that.
00:35:03.940 I don't know.
00:35:05.680 It's your end.
00:35:06.720 Might be ours,
00:35:07.480 but
00:35:07.560 so we'll see
00:35:09.120 what it is.
00:35:10.360 So we've had issues here.
00:35:11.640 This is our fourth
00:35:12.660 internet iteration
00:35:14.620 that we've tried
00:35:15.540 to switch
00:35:16.080 from one to the other,
00:35:17.140 but we're in Barry's Berry.
00:35:18.380 So
00:35:18.500 it's hard here.
00:35:20.460 Go on.
00:35:20.760 One of the things
00:35:24.320 that can't be undone
00:35:25.520 and if we believe
00:35:26.340 what we write
00:35:27.040 and podcast about
00:35:28.320 and advocate for
00:35:29.520 is that there's an army
00:35:30.780 of mutilated children
00:35:31.840 who have been physically
00:35:32.740 and physiologically destroyed
00:35:34.480 by butchers
00:35:36.000 calling themselves
00:35:36.980 surgeons
00:35:37.620 and by healthcare
00:35:38.820 that in reality
00:35:40.120 was poison.
00:35:41.300 And what we're going
00:35:42.120 to have
00:35:42.560 is a generation
00:35:43.240 of young girls
00:35:44.180 with chest scars
00:35:45.140 and mutilated genitals,
00:35:47.140 young boys
00:35:47.780 who have been castrated.
00:35:48.780 How those children
00:35:51.020 will react
00:35:51.860 to discovering
00:35:52.780 how much of life
00:35:54.380 is now denied to them
00:35:55.480 and was denied to them
00:35:57.000 before they could even
00:35:58.000 drink, smoke,
00:35:59.160 vote, or drive.
00:36:00.300 That I think
00:36:00.960 is one of the big questions
00:36:02.300 of the next 10 years.
00:36:05.220 Beautiful.
00:36:05.900 That's great.
00:36:08.940 Okay.
00:36:11.500 Jonathan,
00:36:12.160 first of all,
00:36:12.780 I want to tell everybody
00:36:13.440 Jonathan Van Maren,
00:36:14.660 as we said earlier
00:36:15.560 in the program,
00:36:16.480 is one of our podcasters.
00:36:17.900 The Van Maren Show
00:36:18.820 and LifeSite News
00:36:19.520 also is a frequent
00:36:21.900 contributor to
00:36:22.660 LifeSiteNews.com.
00:36:23.600 Go to LifeSiteNews.com
00:36:24.640 and search up
00:36:25.420 Jonathan Van Maren.
00:36:26.820 Jonathan,
00:36:27.200 any final thoughts
00:36:28.160 for us
00:36:28.540 with regard to
00:36:29.760 this mess
00:36:31.980 where we are
00:36:32.520 in our culture today,
00:36:33.740 the road out,
00:36:34.720 and since you talk
00:36:36.340 to so many young people,
00:36:38.060 specifically a message
00:36:38.880 for them?
00:36:41.480 Oh,
00:36:41.760 that's very interesting
00:36:42.540 because
00:36:43.680 I'll go back
00:36:44.720 to what I said earlier.
00:36:45.660 I think that
00:36:46.740 where people
00:36:48.000 despair
00:36:48.680 is when they look
00:36:49.500 at the very big picture.
00:36:51.360 But not only
00:36:52.360 are none of us
00:36:53.260 in control
00:36:53.800 of the big picture,
00:36:55.120 but we're also
00:36:55.860 not called
00:36:56.780 to do the big picture.
00:36:58.680 We're not called
00:36:59.300 to save the world.
00:37:00.200 We're called
00:37:00.580 to deal with
00:37:01.080 what's directly
00:37:01.640 in front of us.
00:37:03.060 And so one of the things
00:37:04.020 that I think
00:37:04.500 that I would say
00:37:05.520 to encourage
00:37:06.280 all parents
00:37:07.180 for starters
00:37:07.780 is that
00:37:08.900 it is much
00:37:10.020 more difficult
00:37:10.700 today
00:37:11.280 to give your children
00:37:12.760 the sort of upbringing
00:37:13.640 that I got to have
00:37:14.740 almost by default
00:37:15.760 by amazing parents
00:37:17.120 that your generation
00:37:18.820 would have had
00:37:19.320 simply because
00:37:19.840 the poison
00:37:20.380 wasn't available
00:37:21.060 on screens
00:37:21.780 everywhere you looked.
00:37:23.300 It is still possible
00:37:24.440 to give your children
00:37:25.340 that upbringing
00:37:25.900 if you orient
00:37:27.200 your life
00:37:27.880 towards doing so.
00:37:29.300 If you make
00:37:29.740 conscious decisions
00:37:30.680 about cutting out
00:37:31.580 the storytellers
00:37:32.540 that want to poison
00:37:33.680 your mind
00:37:34.240 and the minds
00:37:34.720 of your children
00:37:35.680 by refusing
00:37:36.720 to give them
00:37:37.380 technological devices
00:37:38.560 that are pipelines
00:37:39.380 for the porn industry,
00:37:40.260 by instead giving them
00:37:42.200 the Western inheritance
00:37:43.960 that's been
00:37:44.500 completely abandoned
00:37:45.700 by our mainstream
00:37:47.480 culture now.
00:37:48.500 The books
00:37:48.920 and the music
00:37:49.640 that was written
00:37:50.580 by people
00:37:51.320 whose statues
00:37:52.080 are currently
00:37:52.680 being torn down.
00:37:54.400 I pitch myself
00:37:55.200 sometimes and think
00:37:56.120 how can these
00:37:57.040 revolutionaries
00:37:57.700 be so insane
00:37:58.840 that they've left
00:37:59.460 it to me
00:38:00.100 to defend
00:38:01.080 Dostoyevsky
00:38:02.060 and Dickens
00:38:02.900 and Bach
00:38:03.680 and Beethoven
00:38:04.220 while they defend
00:38:05.920 rock and roll
00:38:06.940 and genital mutilation.
00:38:08.600 It seems surreal
00:38:09.480 that they would have
00:38:10.020 given this ground
00:38:10.820 to us
00:38:11.320 and occupied
00:38:12.260 the ground
00:38:12.920 where they stand
00:38:13.640 instead.
00:38:14.780 And so Anthony Esalen
00:38:15.960 who I know
00:38:16.480 that we've both
00:38:17.300 read much of
00:38:18.040 once called
00:38:19.500 literature
00:38:20.100 the great unused
00:38:21.580 artillery of the
00:38:22.540 culture wars.
00:38:23.560 And so it is
00:38:24.700 still possible
00:38:25.640 to raise your
00:38:26.400 children the way
00:38:27.220 that you were raised
00:38:28.020 or you weren't
00:38:29.100 raised that way
00:38:29.760 to give them
00:38:30.640 a new opportunity
00:38:31.520 to give them
00:38:32.180 a new opportunity
00:38:33.560 to give them
00:38:36.180 a new opportunity
00:38:39.460 and what do
00:38:40.520 you make
00:38:40.900 of young people
00:38:41.780 who are so
00:38:42.440 steeped in this
00:38:43.460 themselves?
00:38:43.900 We don't have
00:38:44.180 to give them
00:38:44.920 a new opportunity.
00:38:47.020 Wait one second
00:38:48.220 what's we don't
00:38:49.160 give them a new
00:38:49.600 opportunity
00:38:50.140 and that's
00:38:51.100 you froze at that.
00:38:52.020 Okay.
00:38:53.080 I don't know
00:38:53.980 what's going on
00:38:54.480 but you froze
00:38:55.100 you froze again
00:38:55.940 there at
00:38:56.960 to give them
00:38:58.000 a new opportunity.
00:39:00.440 So I stopped
00:39:01.240 right there
00:39:01.640 I saw you freeze
00:39:02.600 and I stopped
00:39:03.140 talking because
00:39:03.660 I knew this
00:39:03.960 would happen.
00:39:04.980 Ah okay.
00:39:05.460 and that's
00:39:07.580 why I didn't
00:39:07.920 go right
00:39:08.240 into the
00:39:08.500 young people
00:39:08.920 because I
00:39:09.280 knew there
00:39:09.480 was a
00:39:09.700 freeze
00:39:09.880 freeze
00:39:10.100 there.
00:39:10.480 Okay.
00:39:11.160 Could you
00:39:11.620 continue from
00:39:12.780 there then
00:39:13.140 when I think
00:39:14.060 it was that
00:39:14.420 where you
00:39:14.660 said to give
00:39:15.380 young people
00:39:15.840 an opportunity.
00:39:16.300 What was the
00:39:16.620 last sentence?
00:39:17.740 What was the
00:39:18.180 last line he
00:39:18.720 had?
00:39:19.520 We were talking
00:39:20.460 about literature
00:39:21.060 and it was to
00:39:21.920 give them a
00:39:22.680 new opportunity.
00:39:25.360 Yeah.
00:39:25.920 Did you hear that?
00:39:27.520 Yeah.
00:39:28.120 Yeah.
00:39:28.460 Good.
00:39:28.600 So just
00:39:31.200 because the
00:39:32.200 secular culture
00:39:32.900 the post-Christian
00:39:33.820 culture
00:39:34.320 the anti-Christian
00:39:35.320 culture has
00:39:35.940 rejected this
00:39:36.720 way of life
00:39:37.280 it doesn't
00:39:37.900 mean we need
00:39:38.380 to do so.
00:39:39.220 That way of
00:39:39.720 life is still
00:39:40.460 available to us
00:39:41.300 if we are
00:39:41.780 incredibly
00:39:42.240 intentional
00:39:42.760 and work
00:39:43.540 very hard
00:39:44.100 and all of
00:39:44.600 that is worth
00:39:45.280 it.
00:39:46.340 And to
00:39:46.600 young people
00:39:47.200 I have the
00:39:48.380 same message
00:39:48.940 but it's
00:39:49.300 more difficult
00:39:49.960 because their
00:39:50.720 minds are
00:39:51.220 shaped by what
00:39:51.980 they see
00:39:52.320 around them
00:39:53.040 and those
00:39:54.140 who have been
00:39:54.620 struggling with
00:39:55.120 pornography
00:39:55.680 those who see
00:39:57.000 all of the
00:39:57.540 peer pressure
00:39:58.160 orienting them
00:39:59.080 towards an
00:39:59.740 anti-Christian
00:40:00.320 world view
00:40:00.900 it is much
00:40:02.060 more difficult
00:40:02.620 for them
00:40:03.160 and I always
00:40:03.820 want to start
00:40:04.320 off by saying
00:40:05.100 I can never
00:40:06.160 browbeat young
00:40:06.940 people because
00:40:07.600 they didn't
00:40:08.120 choose to
00:40:09.020 grow up in
00:40:09.460 this world
00:40:09.920 and the
00:40:10.740 poisonous world
00:40:11.520 they're being
00:40:11.860 forced to
00:40:12.420 grow up in
00:40:12.900 was created
00:40:13.600 by adults
00:40:14.460 and those
00:40:15.180 adults fully
00:40:16.140 intended to
00:40:17.340 destroy their
00:40:18.160 minds simply
00:40:19.300 for profit.
00:40:20.400 People often
00:40:20.920 ask me
00:40:21.280 do the porn
00:40:21.680 companies want
00:40:22.560 to corrupt
00:40:22.900 the youth?
00:40:23.500 I don't think
00:40:24.040 they care
00:40:24.600 as long as
00:40:25.320 that corruption
00:40:25.880 results in
00:40:26.480 enormous amounts
00:40:27.160 of money
00:40:27.620 going into
00:40:28.500 their
00:40:28.700 coffers
00:40:29.320 but the
00:40:30.360 good news
00:40:30.880 is the same
00:40:31.360 good news
00:40:31.920 that has
00:40:32.340 always been
00:40:32.940 there is
00:40:34.220 so much
00:40:35.120 fulfillment
00:40:35.860 in a
00:40:36.820 Christian life
00:40:37.820 and this is
00:40:38.940 something that
00:40:39.520 every generation
00:40:40.180 has to rediscover
00:40:41.080 for itself
00:40:41.780 but these rules
00:40:43.340 are not put in
00:40:44.500 place to
00:40:45.320 restrict us
00:40:46.040 they are put in
00:40:46.820 place that we
00:40:47.400 can fully
00:40:47.960 understand and
00:40:49.040 fully enjoy
00:40:49.860 and fully
00:40:50.340 embrace the
00:40:51.300 things that are
00:40:51.860 best for us
00:40:52.480 because our
00:40:52.880 creator knew
00:40:53.780 best what a
00:40:55.220 man is
00:40:55.660 what a
00:40:56.160 woman is
00:40:56.740 what marriage
00:40:57.560 is and he
00:40:58.700 has given
00:40:59.100 us the
00:40:59.500 recipe for
00:41:00.700 a happy
00:41:01.180 life and
00:41:02.220 what we are
00:41:02.680 called to
00:41:03.060 do is to
00:41:03.520 follow that
00:41:04.240 but to
00:41:05.160 recognize what
00:41:06.200 is being sold
00:41:06.820 by the world
00:41:07.540 will inevitably
00:41:08.320 destroy your
00:41:09.400 chances at
00:41:10.080 happiness and
00:41:11.480 what is laid
00:41:12.440 out in the
00:41:13.660 Christian faith
00:41:14.300 will give you
00:41:14.740 the recipe to
00:41:15.940 happiness and
00:41:16.700 I'm much less
00:41:18.580 far down that
00:41:19.580 road than you
00:41:20.280 are because you've
00:41:20.980 got a much
00:41:21.320 bigger family
00:41:21.920 than you and
00:41:22.500 so if you
00:41:24.420 John Henry
00:41:24.920 could almost
00:41:25.380 just tell the
00:41:26.180 young people
00:41:26.880 out there just
00:41:27.720 for a minute
00:41:28.160 what is it like
00:41:29.140 being a dad to
00:41:30.100 a huge family
00:41:30.860 and getting to
00:41:31.460 be married for
00:41:32.540 25 years because
00:41:33.780 I hope to
00:41:34.820 achieve a long
00:41:36.300 marriage but I
00:41:37.200 look at my
00:41:37.660 grandparents I
00:41:38.300 look at people
00:41:38.820 who have been
00:41:39.160 married for so
00:41:39.700 long and think
00:41:40.300 it takes decades
00:41:41.520 to have a love
00:41:42.960 that looks like
00:41:43.600 that to have a
00:41:44.520 family that looks
00:41:45.160 like that but I
00:41:46.240 think that's so
00:41:46.820 attractive to young
00:41:47.660 people who don't
00:41:48.220 know how to get
00:41:48.840 it yeah it's
00:41:51.560 funny you know
00:41:52.500 the one thing
00:41:53.400 that I'd say
00:41:54.040 it's a generosity
00:41:57.380 on God's part
00:41:58.300 and I did so
00:42:01.280 many things that
00:42:02.120 made me so
00:42:03.100 unworthy of
00:42:04.240 anything like
00:42:05.180 what I've been
00:42:07.040 gifted with
00:42:07.600 I have eight
00:42:08.920 children eight
00:42:10.220 beautiful children
00:42:10.920 whom I love
00:42:11.880 and can say
00:42:14.280 as far as I
00:42:15.580 know love me
00:42:16.120 and and my
00:42:16.900 wife a beautiful
00:42:18.260 wife who's been
00:42:19.120 open to life
00:42:19.900 who's been open
00:42:20.620 to family who's
00:42:21.320 been open to
00:42:22.460 faith I
00:42:24.100 don't deserve
00:42:24.580 any of those
00:42:25.080 things that's
00:42:26.780 the generosity
00:42:27.500 of our good
00:42:28.160 Lord who even
00:42:29.120 after we've
00:42:30.260 offended him
00:42:30.940 who when we
00:42:32.720 know full well
00:42:34.160 that our own
00:42:34.940 sins have
00:42:36.400 caused his
00:42:37.120 crucifixion he
00:42:38.980 bore that for
00:42:39.840 us and he
00:42:41.700 turns around from
00:42:42.560 that as soon as
00:42:43.180 we turn to him
00:42:43.720 even a little
00:42:44.280 bit and blesses
00:42:47.280 us no matter
00:42:48.900 what mess you've
00:42:50.340 got yourself
00:42:50.780 into it's
00:42:52.880 amazing to
00:42:54.780 see how God
00:42:56.160 is willing to
00:42:56.720 bless you the
00:42:58.560 blessing of
00:42:59.040 family is
00:43:00.680 something I
00:43:01.040 know I don't
00:43:01.640 deserve it's a
00:43:04.200 beautiful thing
00:43:04.600 because it brings
00:43:05.960 you out of
00:43:07.260 yourself it
00:43:09.540 brings you to
00:43:10.160 serve in a
00:43:12.380 way that is
00:43:13.220 it's very
00:43:14.020 natural to
00:43:14.720 because the
00:43:16.100 motivation to
00:43:17.280 live your life
00:43:18.200 for Christ to
00:43:18.920 live a life of
00:43:20.980 generosity and
00:43:22.700 of self-giving
00:43:23.340 is tough
00:43:24.860 but when the
00:43:27.020 motivation is
00:43:27.640 there in the
00:43:29.480 little mouths
00:43:30.720 to feed the
00:43:31.980 little bums to
00:43:33.480 change it
00:43:35.720 moves you to
00:43:37.500 do what you
00:43:38.200 know is right
00:43:38.860 but sometimes
00:43:39.940 don't have what
00:43:41.220 it takes within
00:43:41.820 you to go
00:43:42.360 forward
00:43:42.640 family is a
00:43:44.620 great motivational
00:43:46.480 factor that way
00:43:47.360 and you get to
00:43:49.060 learn in your
00:43:50.920 life as you
00:43:51.680 live your life
00:43:52.220 God's way is
00:43:53.620 the best way
00:43:54.120 it's the only
00:43:56.640 real beauty that
00:43:57.880 exists it's the
00:43:58.800 one that Christ
00:43:59.520 showed us in his
00:44:00.200 example with you
00:44:01.500 know he said
00:44:02.060 and for this
00:44:03.820 reason a man
00:44:04.500 shall leave his
00:44:05.060 father and mother
00:44:05.600 and be joined to
00:44:06.800 his wife and the
00:44:07.560 two shall become
00:44:08.120 one flesh
00:44:08.600 it's the
00:44:09.840 example of his
00:44:11.220 own life
00:44:12.780 union with the
00:44:13.800 church it's the
00:44:15.500 example that we
00:44:16.180 live out in our
00:44:16.780 family lives we
00:44:18.100 can all strive for
00:44:18.720 that unworthy of
00:44:20.100 it though I be
00:44:21.260 and anyone else
00:44:22.980 maybe he still
00:44:24.160 puts it out for
00:44:24.760 us that to me is
00:44:26.800 what family is
00:44:27.260 like
00:44:27.500 Jonathan van
00:44:30.860 Marijn what a
00:44:32.560 what a wealth of
00:44:33.280 knowledge thank you
00:44:35.020 thank you from
00:44:36.140 all the many
00:44:36.860 life site readers
00:44:37.540 who have for
00:44:38.620 years appreciated
00:44:40.180 your writing your
00:44:41.440 insights your
00:44:42.400 podcasts they're a
00:44:44.560 great blessing to
00:44:45.500 us God bless you
00:44:47.180 I think we're
00:44:55.380 frozen to you is
00:44:56.140 that right
00:44:56.480 well thank you so
00:45:05.000 much for having
00:45:05.420 me
00:45:05.960 go ahead Jonathan
00:45:09.100 I can hear you
00:45:09.720 now
00:45:09.900 yeah thank you so
00:45:12.480 much for having
00:45:12.900 me it's uh it's
00:45:14.220 always a pleasure to
00:45:14.860 talk to you and
00:45:15.360 hope to see you
00:45:15.840 again very soon
00:45:16.700 very good and
00:45:19.660 God bless all of
00:45:20.280 you we'll see you
00:45:21.860 next time
00:45:22.240 we'll see you
00:45:48.660 I'll see you