00:00:23.040Pre-order it today at newchristendompress.com slash longhouse.
00:00:26.600And as a thank you for pre-ordering, you'll get 10% off automatically.
00:00:30.900We'll also be signing the first thousand copies, so pick yours up today.
00:00:36.320As many of you know, Dan, Eric, and I met with Douglas Wilson, Nate Wilson, Joe Rigney,
00:00:42.020Toby Sumter, and several other men from Moscow, Idaho last week.
00:00:45.960That meeting arose because the elders of our church sent a nine-page letter to the elders
00:00:51.020of Christ Church detailing our concerns with Pastor Wilson's involvement in and handling
00:00:56.580of the Joel Webb and Tobias situation, as well as his use of the May blog to damage the reputation
00:01:02.280of other faithful pastors, including Joel Webb. Our goal in this was to clarify motives and actions
00:01:09.000taken by Doug and to give him a chance to respond before we said anything publicly.
00:01:14.340Our desire was to promote peace if possible. Sadly, before and after our meeting, Doug continued to
00:01:21.320attack the character of Joel, Stephen Wolf, Eric, and others whom he called pastorally inept in a
00:01:28.340May blog for failing to properly police what he calls Dankanons and for engaging in Revoice for
00:01:34.960Nazis. More on that later. Doug confirmed in the meeting that he does in fact believe those charges
00:01:40.940are true. Yesterday, Doug released another blog post stating that, quote, much like Revoice attempted
00:01:47.940to keep the door of flamer sympathy cracked open in the PCA, the leadership in Ogden continues to
00:01:54.220conduct a sympathetic bromance with the cancers of racial spite, malice, vainglory, and pagan
00:02:01.200tribal hate. We believe these charges are reckless, uncharitable, and false. The bottom line is that
00:02:09.100we simply don't agree about the greatest needs of the hour, a fact which became clear over the
00:02:14.200course of our lengthy conversation. While Doug and his friends believe that one of the greatest
00:02:19.500threats to the conservative movement right now is alleged anti-Semitism and Nazism, we believe it
00:02:25.800to be, on a much more significant scale, the subversion of our historically Christian and
00:02:31.440Protestant American culture with the slow rot of Gramsian Marxism. Doug and his friends believe
00:02:38.180that Jews in America, a notoriously left-leaning and left-voting bloc, who turned out for Kamala
00:02:44.460Harris in the November election in numbers ranging from 70 to even 80 plus percent, depending on which
00:02:50.220surveys you believe, are fed up with liberalism and teetering on the brink of conversion to
00:02:56.160conservative politics. They believe that the deep state is desperately trying to prevent this from
00:03:01.840happening by fomenting anti-Semitic rage within the conservative movement. We simply disagree
00:03:08.300that this is a likely course of future events. We don't see Jews in America suddenly turning
00:03:14.440from deeply ingrained political action, like their support of transgenderism, LGBTQ, open borders,
00:03:21.860free pornography, government censorship of social media, and all the rest, to the politics of
00:03:27.480Christian conservatism, let alone Christian nationalism. This to us seems like magical
00:03:33.220thinking on a near absurd level. Even worse, it's not just that we disagree with the likelihood of
00:03:39.100this outcome. It seems rather that anyone acting on the sincerely held belief that this is a highly
00:03:45.280likely outcome in the near future is in grave danger of being subverted, of living under a
00:03:50.680leftist gaze, tailoring their actions to ingratiate themselves with one of the most liberal groups in
00:03:56.680America. Has this kind of tactic worked in the past? Let's test this thinking with a recent
00:04:02.620example. 83% of Black voters punched their ticket for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential
00:04:09.500election. This is consistent with their voting patterns in the previous three elections and
00:04:14.100beyond. Over this time period, a huge amount of energy on the right was spent supporting DEI
00:04:20.740programs, hunting down white racism, and virtue signaling to the black vote. Just a few examples
00:04:27.120of this would include Alabama Governor Robert Bentley's 2017 authorization to remove a plaque
00:04:34.120commemorating Jefferson Davis from an Alabama courthouse, Republican Governor Tate Reeves'
00:04:39.3802020 legislation retiring the Mississippi state flag for its inclusion of the Confederate battle
00:04:45.460emblem and Mitch McConnell's support for an initiative to rename military bases previously
00:04:51.360named after Confederate heroes. Did this turn the tide for black voters? Did they suddenly begin to
00:04:57.740vote Republican, softened by our national self-flagellation? Of course not. And politicians
00:05:04.280on the right who tried to pander to the black vote in this way only ended up aiding and abetting
00:05:09.660in the creation of a culture where men like Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse would be dragged
00:05:15.140through show trials for the crime of being white men in America who tried to do their duty.
00:05:21.000Here's the problem with this tactic. To embrace witch hunts for racism and anti-Semitism
00:05:26.440is to embrace the left's frame from the outset. All it serves to accomplish is the enforcement
00:05:33.020of leftist cancel tactics on the right. So to summarize, Doug, Nate, and others in Moscow
00:05:39.140are convinced that the deep state is attempting to prevent Jews from teaming up with conservatives.
00:05:45.140Because of this, they believe it's very important to leverage public statements and media to attempt to show how much we all hate anti-Semitism, how much we all agree with their definitions of what that means in the first place,
00:05:57.300and otherwise make sure everyone knows that we think all those people noticing things are probably feds sent by the deep state to keep the Jews liberal.
00:06:07.300This belief is driving their online anti-Semitism witch hunt.
00:06:11.200We don't share that belief, and so we have behaved accordingly.
00:06:15.140Rather than accepting this leftist framing, we've instead opted to do what is often the most potent action one can take when faced with idols and their attendant blasphemy laws.
00:06:27.540False gods hate it when you make fun of them.
00:06:30.740Now, none of this, of course, means that our behavior amounts to anything like a sympathetic bromance with the cancers of racial spite, malice, vainglory, and pagan tribal hate.
00:06:40.500That is slanderous nonsense, which we reject with prejudice.
00:06:45.140As just one example from a recent piece of alleged evidence of our raging anti-Semitism,
00:09:05.700Because I shared this video and think it made it an important point about our culture and the battles of our time,
00:09:10.860I'm Nickabrick, the black dwarf who wants to resurrect ghouls and witches in necromantic ceremony.
00:09:17.340I am allied with Jew-killing demon Santas.
00:09:20.940While it might seem like the charity is about as dried up as it could possibly be at this point,
00:09:25.180Doug ends with a dark prophecy over our little town, church, and publishing house.
00:09:30.140Quote, within a few years, Ogden will have either fully succumbed and been torn apart by the poison they are currently declining to resist, or by God's grace, they will eventually stand and fight and triumph over this toxic nonsense.
00:09:43.980In the latter case, if and when that time comes, we will rejoice to have gained wiser and more battle-tested allies.
00:09:49.980end quote. It's hard to resist the conclusion that to Moscow, unless we agree with them on
00:09:56.700their read of the political landscape, their theory of the Jewish vote, their definition of
00:10:01.540anti-Semitism, the propriety of sharing or not sharing campy white boy summer memes, basically
00:10:06.780all of their views all the way down the line, then we are poison drinking naves teetering at the edge
00:10:12.320of the abyss. We are deep state stooges feasting on toxic nonsense. The only solution is to flee
00:10:19.740to the safety of their positions on all these things. The simple problem is that we don't agree
00:10:24.780with that either. We think there's plenty of room for nuance, disagreements, and all the rest
00:10:30.100on basically all of these issues. We don't begrudge Moscow for their read, even if we think
00:10:35.300it's off. I literally don't care if Doug never wears pit vipers or chuckles at a white boy summer
00:10:40.260meme. Such a thing doesn't keep me up at night. So if I might make a simple request at the end of
00:10:45.940these introductory remarks. It would be something like this. How about we agree to disagree without
00:10:51.200the name calling and prophecies of doom? We recorded the episode that follows prior to our
00:10:56.800meeting in Moscow. We had withheld its release in hopes that the tactics and issues we describe
00:11:02.500in what follows would be effectively addressed in private. In fact, our hope was that our concerns
00:11:07.540would be allayed and subsequently that the episode need never be released at all. We believe we were
00:11:13.420fair and charitable in the episode, particularly in contrast to the name calling and frankly wild
00:11:18.960accusations of the aforementioned May blog. If you followed us throughout this escalating war
00:11:24.660of accusations, epithets, debates over anti-Semitism, and all the rest over the last
00:11:29.560months, you know that we've tried hard to avoid unnecessary brother wars. This hasn't been easy
00:11:34.800as accusations and epithets have been publicly attached to our names by several prominent
00:11:40.080leaders, but in consultation with our session, it seemed necessary to exercise patience. However,
00:11:47.020in light of these continued and very much public attacks on our good names,
00:11:51.200we believe it necessary to release the episode now. In what follows, we hope you'll discover that,
00:11:57.420much to the disappointment of our assigned federal agents,
00:12:00.300we are neither Nazis nor men content to live under the leftist gaze.
00:14:12.640As for the meaning of 322, it is said to be the date of Demosthenes' death, 322 BC,
00:14:18.880a man known for his brilliant intellect and political savvy.
00:14:22.380The society also worships Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence.
00:14:27.460Its members, known as Bonesmen, have been connected to various conspiracy theories,
00:14:32.280largely because they have always formed an interconnected network of America's most powerful elites.
00:14:38.300Bonesmen alumni include men like Buckley, George H.W. Bush, John Kerry,
00:14:43.180and many others who have occupied roles in the State Department, White House, Judiciary, and CIA.
00:14:50.300In 1951, Buckley signed on at the Central Intelligence Agency and worked in Mexico.
00:14:56.720While at the CIA, he published God and Man at Yale, and later The Road to Jenin, which told of a communist conspiracy to obtain world domination.
00:15:06.620In 1954, Buckley wrote another book, this time defending Joseph McCarthy and his purge of communists.
00:15:13.840Then, a pivotal moment that would shape the landscape of conservative politics for decades.
00:15:19.240In 1955, Buckley founded National Review, a right-wing journal with tremendous influence on the elite ruling class.
00:15:28.460Because of his work at National Review, Buckley would become a conservative icon.
00:15:33.260Later, in 1962, Buckley's column On the Right would appear in more than 200 newspapers nationwide.
00:15:40.460He would also serve as host of the PBS television show Firing Line in the late 1960s.
00:15:46.040He supported Barry Goldwater and later launched Ronald Reagan into the political stratosphere.
00:15:52.000Buckley met Reagan before he had entered politics and helped jumpstart his political career,
00:15:57.280first as governor of California, then for the presidency.
00:16:01.040Buckley's career was not without controversy, as he weaved together powerful relationships
00:16:06.600between an elite class of politicians, statesmen, and the intelligence community.
00:16:11.620For example, on September 18th, 1976, a Chilean foreign ambassador was killed in a car bomb.
00:16:19.080Several of George H.W. Bush's agents were connected to the assassination.
00:16:23.620And so as director of the CIA, Bush quickly sought to cover up the incident by spreading disinformation.
00:16:30.060Buckley also took part in the disinformation campaign.
00:16:32.740In fact, he ran disinformation campaigns for Chilean factions as early as October 1974, according to investigative journalist Donald Freed.
00:16:43.140He also discovered that Buckley's brother, James, had met with the assassin, Michael Townley, a week before the assassination.
00:16:50.600Townley later confessed to the killing.
00:16:53.320Buckley also played a somewhat controversial role as editor-in-chief at National Review
00:16:57.960because of the way he used his position to gatekeep the right,
00:17:01.820which led to his extremely public fallout with several of his longtime friends and writers.
00:17:08.140One of those men was Joe Sobrin, who wrote for National Review for years,
00:17:12.600but came into Buckley's bad graces because of his stance on Israel.
00:17:17.460Critical of U.S. foreign policy in relation to Israel,
00:17:21.100Sobrin was a decorated journalist, devout Roman Catholic,
00:17:24.080commentator on CBS radio and regular columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Chronicles magazine.
00:17:31.540He was also a media fellow at the Mises Institute. In 1993 Buckley took Sobrin to lunch and told him
00:17:38.640to stop criticizing Israel's domestic and foreign policies because Buckley said quote we need these
00:17:45.120people end quote referring to the Jews. Sobrin refused to budge on the issue resulting in his
00:17:51.480abrupt and unceremonious firing. Buckley reportedly returned to his office after their lunch and sent
00:17:57.040his old friend a fax informing him of his termination. What brought about Buckley's
00:18:02.720ultimatum was that Sobrin had written a column in which he said Buckley was, quote, jumpy about the
00:18:07.980Jews. He hadn't just touched the third rail of Jewish influence in America. Sobrin had grabbed
00:18:13.640it with both hands. It would spell the end of his time at National Review. Of the incident, Sobrin
00:18:19.680later said, quote, since then it has become a neoconservative legend that I was fired for
00:18:25.480anti-Semitism. But the truth is that it was far more personal than that. Bill knew me too well to
00:18:31.860make such a charge. I was fired for making him look bad. He considered making others look bad
00:18:37.280his prerogative, end quote. Once loyal friends and fellow Catholics, Buckley would indeed publicly
00:18:43.940Smear Sobran and Pat Buchanan, also a writer for National Review, as anti-Semites. It wasn't a new
00:18:50.660initiative for Buckley. After starting the magazine, he took it upon himself to ensure that anyone
00:18:56.260critical of the Jews or a Jewish state would not be welcome in the conservative ranks. It became
00:19:02.200part of his key mission to root out those who'd taken the wrong side on Israel. In the end, he
00:19:09.520would politically and economically destroy anyone who opposed pro-Israel foreign policy,
00:19:15.420including old friends. Although conservative, Buckley was also squarely within the 1950s
00:19:21.900liberal consensus, or what has been lately called the post-war consensus. Even as communism,
00:19:27.580with its death toll in the hundreds of millions, stood threateningly off to the left, Buckley's
00:19:33.180conservatives also began to fear the re-emergence of a right-wing threat in the form of fascism,
00:19:38.900with its attendant companions religion and nationalism. Buckley's anti-communistic bent
00:19:44.360was a major feature of the direction in which he ultimately took the conservative movement as a
00:19:49.500whole. And in this, he would play a leading role in reducing the right to a monolith based not in
00:19:55.860true conservatism, but in the left liberal consensus. As long as someone was an avowed
00:20:01.740anti-communist, or more particularly an anti-Stalinist or anti-Sovietist, Buckley was
00:20:08.000generally willing to welcome them into the conservative ranks. From the 1930s to the 1950s,
00:20:13.600the conservative movement was dominated by the old right, with its emphasis on opposition to
00:20:19.160the New Deal policies of FDR, the Federal Reserve, and globalist intervention on the foreign policy
00:20:25.520front. But then in the 1960s with National Review, Buckley started purging right-wing ranks of what
00:20:32.260he considered radicals, which largely meant the old right. Buckley would in turn welcome Trotskyites,
00:20:39.120New Deal Social Democrats, Truman-Humphrey liberals, and others from the quota-loving
00:20:44.400advanced victimological left. And this group would become what we now call the neoconservatives.
00:20:51.100As Murray Rothbard pointed out, Buckley has effectively purged the conservative movement
00:20:56.180of the real right and allowed it to be taken over by enemies. Why did Buckley, the self-appointed
00:21:03.320pope of conservatism, do it? After helping Reagan get elected in the 1980s, Buckley was ready to
00:21:10.180take his movement to the real places of power in America. To do this, he judged that conservatives
00:21:16.000had to rebrand themselves in a way that gained them respectability with liberal centrist elites.
00:21:21.920He was constantly concerned, for example, about what the editorial board at the New York Times thought of him.
00:21:29.600Like many other American journalists in the second half of the last century, Buckley moved periodically to the left to remain relevant.
00:21:38.280He also moved in that direction during the second half of his life because of his extensive involvement in New York's social life, end quote.
00:21:46.680Gottfried concluded with an anecdote from his interactions late in Buckley's life.
00:21:51.340He wrote, quote, as a final memory, I recall my correspondence with Buckley in the late 1990s,
00:21:57.020when he asserted that he had never changed his political or moral principles.
00:22:01.460I only wish that were true, end quote.
00:22:04.860Buckley's strategic maneuvering was controlled, effectively, by the gaze of those to his left.
00:22:11.020Rothbard explains, quote, Buckley was almost ready to take power in America, but not quite,
00:22:16.400because first, all of the various heretics of the right,
00:22:20.220some left over from the original right,
00:22:22.300all the groups that were in any way radical
00:22:24.500or could deprive the new conservative movement
00:37:12.200Sobern himself was little more than a crude and naked anti-Semite.
00:37:16.760Podoretz and his wife, Midge, Dector, maiden name Rosenthal, were both Jews.
00:37:21.800Podoretz's parents immigrated from Poland, present-day Ukraine,
00:37:26.160and settled into the Jewish New York culture as staunch leftists.
00:37:31.240He gained acceptance to Harvard, but instead attended Columbia University,
00:37:36.060and then later the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
00:37:39.360He never intended to enter the rabbinate, but his father wanted to ensure that his son was nonetheless conversant in the intellectual tradition of his people as a non-observant New World Jew who treasured the Hebraic tradition, end quote.
00:37:55.400In other words, outside pressure from Jewish influence and other donors caused Buckley to detonate his relationship and decades-long friendship with Sobrin.
00:38:04.760Again, he succumbed to the left liberal gaze
00:38:08.260and burned one of his friends to the ground
00:38:33.440Those who do the policing of the ranks gain more power by destroying other right-wing opponents in the media, which is left-controlled space.
00:38:42.080One of the easiest ways to do this is to accuse those on the right of the kind of things the left-liberal consensus finds most appalling.
00:38:49.640Racism, anti-Semitism, and Nazism being the epithets of choice.
00:38:54.840To cancel, denounce, or dox someone isn't fundamentally about engaging with their arguments.
00:39:00.560it's about attaching some unforgivable sin to them in the form of a slur that triggers public
00:39:06.380outrage. Like Sobrin, the goal is that the doxed become unemployable, untouchable, anathema,
00:39:13.280so that they're left driving FedEx delivery trucks, a respectable profession to be sure,
00:39:18.340but not one generally associated with the kind of political and social power needed to lead
00:39:23.480the national conversation. This type of behavior is largely what prompted Charles Haywood to weigh
00:39:29.900end with his principle, no enemies to the right, which was later amended to no enemies on the right.
00:39:36.420Haywood noted that for the right to gain victory, it had to stop destroying its own by feeding them
00:39:41.420to wolves on the left. Yes, corrections to the camp should be made, but they should be made
00:39:46.960within the camp. The principle is simple. Settle disputes privately, save your strength for
00:39:52.460destroying the real enemy on the left, where there are genuine and acceptable disagreements
00:39:57.880and strategy and cultural political engagement,
00:40:01.000right-wing groups should agree to pursue their ends
00:43:37.680In 2021, Doug Wilson helpfully described this type of dynamic in his blog post,
00:43:43.060Kevin DeYoung and the Taxonomy of Conflict.
00:43:45.660In that article, Wilson describes a scale from one to four,
00:43:49.920in which fours speak most courageously on cultural hot-button issues,
00:43:53.580and ones simply agree with the left's framing.
00:43:56.820The threes are DeYoung Big Eva types, who will be friendly in public discourse with twos,
00:44:01.860but, and here's the key point, always distance themselves from fours.
00:44:05.500To the threes, the fours represent the dangerous right that will cause them to lose influence with the twos, normies, which is their main aim.
00:44:13.800The problem is that by destroying the fours, with whom threes actually have more in common, they also eliminate the people who would actually contribute to a decisive victory for the right.
00:44:24.820The left, on the other hand, is successful because it doesn't throw its most extreme elements to the wolves.
00:44:30.940Instead, it sees them as useful tools for advancing its cause.
00:44:34.360They are the hinge that swings the Overton window left and opens the door for progress by more moderate leftists.
00:44:42.600Nancy Pelosi had a strong personal distaste for AOC, for example, but never tried to destroy her publicly.
00:44:49.840Unlike the right, the left embraces a no enemies on the left strategy and is largely victorious because of it.
00:44:55.800The reformed camp, let's call the majority threes, has often followed the Buckley-esque instinct to distance itself from and or destroy people to its right, fours.
00:45:07.020Why? Because its goal is to gain approval with the people to its left, twos, the ones who guard access to larger platforms.
00:45:14.740They always do this while claiming, like Dreher, that they're converting the normies.
00:45:18.280People to the right, fours, are considered flight risks because their edginess jeopardizes the three's ability to partner with twos.
00:45:25.800This is why when the TGC crowd talks about winsomeness, they only mean being winsome to their left, not to their right.
00:45:32.960In their view, danger to their camp basically always comes from the right.
00:45:37.320This is also why Kevin DeYoung would actively try to create a poisonous gas cloud around Doug Wilson with his article on culture war, Doug Wilson and the Moscow mood.
00:45:48.120This also helps explain what has been going on in reformed camps for the past few years after COVID.
00:49:46.080So far, they've pointed to one churchman in Webin's church who, by the way, has said explicitly that he does not hate the Jews
00:49:52.420and has even repented of previous off-color comments made privately.
00:49:56.540It's important to note that it was the supposed Revoice for Nazis pastor, Joel Webin, who actually pastored this young man through these issues effectively.
00:50:05.560Additionally, there was a White Boy Summer video that showed the lighting of the torch from the 1936 Olympics and other Nazi or Nazi-adjacent imagery.
00:50:13.540While we, too, would offer critiques about some of the images used, it hardly demonstrates a widespread problem or actual ethnic hatred,
00:50:20.580particularly when most of those who shared it, including me, by the way, didn't even notice the imagery in the first place.
00:50:26.500In any case, Wilson and James White have made a concerted effort to publicly and relentlessly call out White Boy Summer,
00:50:33.880or as they call it, variously white boy dumber, white soy bummer, non-meme lords,
00:50:40.240and even certain pastors like Joel Webin and us.
00:50:43.360I suppose for allegedly sympathizing with neo-Nazi content, which none of us do, by the way.
00:50:50.540Eric found himself in the crosshairs for retweeting something Aristotle said
00:50:54.520about the negative effects of multiculturalism on democracy.
00:50:58.660Putting a bow on the messaging, Wilson literally lit a prop bridge on fire in his recent No Quarter November video,
00:51:05.340a bridge emblazoned with a sign reading White Boy Dumber,
00:51:09.000indicating his apparent desire to burn the bridge once and for all between himself and anyone who enjoys the pit vipers and campy memes of the White Boy Summer crew.
00:51:18.240Wilson clearly thinks that anti-Semitism is a threat to the Reformed Church and, like cancer, must be cut out.
00:51:25.360White, for his part, has said that men who traffic in dark MAGA profile pictures,
00:51:30.020put too much stock in Jewish influence, and entertain alt-right histories of World War II
00:51:34.740are beyond pastoral shepherding. As I mentioned a moment ago, a big problem embedded in this
00:51:40.480discussion is that anti-Semitism, like racism, has never been well-defined or demonstrated at
00:51:45.760a wide scale. Even in the Moscow camp, it's been defined in different but still unsatisfactory ways.
00:51:52.200In his book, American Milk and Honey, Wilson defines anti-Semitism as, quote,
00:51:57.420the notion that Jews are uniquely malevolent and destructive in their cultural, economic, and political influence in the world.
00:52:04.580It is not anti-Semitism to believe that Jews are sinful, but anti-Semitism does believe that Jews are uniquely sinful and particularly destructive, end quote.
00:52:14.560One problem with this definition of anti-Semitism is that the scriptures themselves speak of the Jews
00:52:19.840who received God's revelation but rejected it as being particularly hostile to Christ and his kingdom.
00:52:26.240Paul, for example, told the Thessalonian church that they, quote,
00:52:29.740suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews
00:52:34.000who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and oppose all mankind.
00:52:43.840Likewise, in Ezekiel 5, the prophet says,
00:52:47.600The point is that Scripture often speaks of degrees of wickedness with different peoples,
00:53:01.180and a greater degree of hardened wickedness is ascribed to those who reject God's special revelation.
00:53:07.620Thus, it is completely inconsistent with Scripture to say that assigning a greater or even unique degree of wickedness to a certain people is sinful.
00:53:16.120Between Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, only Judaism blasphemously claims that Jesus is burning in hell in a vat of excrement and that Mary is a harlot.
00:53:26.380The phrase uniquely malevolent doesn't seem to me to be particularly controversial in light of politically incorrect facts such as this.
01:07:51.860Our good name and that of our friend Joel has been maligned,
01:07:54.880and we believe we have a right to give a public defense.
01:07:57.940When you have good evidence that people are warning about you privately and via whisper campaigns, as well as making claims about you publicly, for example, the one that Eric and I are leaders of a racist and anti-Semitic movement, the only way to clear your name is with a public response, since you can't possibly know how far the whispers have spread and state your case individually to all involved parties.
01:08:20.140Now, we've done our best to stay out of this publicly
01:26:49.180I know that as you delve into them on social media, you just you have the sense that you're
01:26:54.620like, are we walking on thin ice here because culturally it's so unacceptable.
01:27:00.000So my question for you is, how do you think through?
01:27:02.200okay does that mean we just shouldn't address those things yeah we certainly have to make value
01:27:07.880judgments on you know importance level that we put on them but how do you think through that
01:27:14.840i mean you you do have to be to be quite careful and precise in how you're thinking through some
01:27:21.380of these things so give you some examples and and um like one of the one of the fallacies i think
01:27:26.460can come into play that we see played out. We all have to be aware of. You think about the
01:27:32.260transgenderism and some of the sexual madness and gender madness that's been ascendant in the last
01:27:39.80020 years. Really, it goes back quite a bit further than that to Gramsci and Marxist strategy to
01:27:46.260undermine the natural family and kind of slowly march through the institutions to dissolve
01:27:51.800the christianity of the west to make them a conquerable foe to some modified form of communism
01:27:58.620or socialism so that's the long play but when you think about what that's been like experientially
01:28:03.860for us it meant that when you maybe when you're an 11th grader in public school as i was and you
01:28:11.380you know maybe want to say you want to notice something about the difference between men and
01:28:15.900women and their strength or something like that and say like you know i really the the air force
01:28:20.500or the Marines or whatever, they just kind of said, let's open up standards to allow women to
01:28:24.500serve in combat in certain roles or things like that. And you might want to notice, well, but
01:28:29.260hang on, women aren't strong in the way men are strong physically. They don't seem to be suited
01:28:34.520in their nature to combat. Maybe you don't even cite a Bible verse, but you're just, you're just
01:28:38.560noticing sort of, there's a check in you that knows just, and it's, it's sometimes visible,
01:28:44.320sometimes invisible, sometimes opaque, sometimes transparent. You know that you've been discipled
01:28:49.180to be careful about saying something like that out loud and and in that case there really is a
01:28:54.300blasphemy law operating which is egalitarianism and feminism where we're trying to dissolve all
01:29:00.060distinctions of hierarchy because hierarchy is highly problematic to a marxist worldview or a
01:29:07.060worldview that's attempting to flatten everything so it's like you know one big i've said before and
01:29:11.880all the kansans get mad at me to make everything like one big kansas sorry guys nebraska's flat
01:29:17.200too one big nebraska um so there's real blasphemy laws operating there um you you can you could give
01:29:23.880many many examples of this where the blasphemy laws are surrounding an idol or an opposing
01:29:29.300ideology a god and his opposing ideology now we do need to be careful um though of what i've seen
01:29:36.220called the youtube comment or fallacy which is that it's basically a two-step argument and it's
01:29:42.160You know, imagine somebody commenting on YouTube and in the first pane of the meme, they notice whenever I say the truth about such and such subject, everybody gets mad at me.
01:29:53.220And so then in the second pane, they conclude, and this is fallaciously, they conclude, therefore, anytime anybody is mad at me or pushes back against something I say, I must be right, which is not actually true.
01:30:06.100You can say something dumb and also have people mad at you or disagree with you.
01:30:10.400And I bring that up because what that then requires is that we have sobriety when we approach these issues and we have to be thinking in terms of truth.
01:30:17.240So we talked in the cold open about steel manning your opponents.
01:30:21.040You know, we called it the courtesy of specificity, but that's basically just steel manning, which which is a it's for your opponent, but it's also for you, because when you're able to present somebody else's argument in a way you think they would agree with, that is what I'm saying.
01:30:37.540and then say, okay, and here's why I think you're wrong. Reason, reason, reason, reason, reason.
01:30:43.860That protects everybody from fallacious emotional kind of reasoning that's steered by the gaze of
01:30:50.500some God and its attendant blasphemy laws. Now, what's dangerous about that is that it can lead
01:30:56.620you into some places that are, let's say, politically incorrect, where maybe you start
01:31:02.980doing this and you're going down a rabbit hole and, uh, you know, all of us who went to public
01:31:08.560school to, to the previous illustration know what this is like. All of a sudden you're, you're like
01:31:14.260my, the people who are supposed to be teaching me, they actually don't know what they're talking
01:31:18.540about. Cause even when I steel man their position, it's nonsense, it's word salad. It doesn't make
01:31:23.180sense. It's emotional. It's blustering. It's unfair. It's straw man. It's not driven by reason.
01:31:59.120so there's like landmines all around and it calls for sobriety i think it calls for for care
01:32:03.780well don't you think there's there's a point here about christians should argue a certain way
01:32:08.300so doug has made this point in the past like you want to steel man your opponent
01:32:11.960meaning you put his argument in terms that he would agree with right so you fairly represent
01:32:17.780this kind of goes to the gas cloud fallacy as you've called it one of the other things i've
01:32:23.300seen in play um we we've kind of described as like a kafka trap this is a logical fallacy that
01:32:30.380occurs when someone is accused of something and their defense is used as evidence of their guilt
01:32:36.240so i actually found this helpful jd hall had posted this on twitter and he said i've seen
01:32:41.600this argument in woke wars one and and it seems like it's being used again so he says step one
01:32:48.100call someone a racist bigot or anti-semite step two say whatever you want about them no matter
01:32:53.740how dishonest because that's how you're allowed to treat racist bigots and anti-semites step three
01:32:58.720when you're called out for this ask why they're defending racism bigotry and anti-semitism so
01:33:04.480these are i think variations they're not all the same thing but the kafka trap is a little bit the
01:33:10.600same way like i know that you're seething with hatred or crackling with envy and and the best
01:33:17.240way to identify someone who has that envy is they'll deny it so then you're like well if i
01:33:21.820deny it it just in their in their way they set up the argument well then i'm guilty of it
01:33:26.500um it seems like brian now asking about the the gas cloud fallacy yeah um why would this be
01:33:33.620particularly harmful i mean just thinking about christian communities and christian brothers
01:33:38.100i guess two questions why is it harmful and where have you kind of seen this happen so it's harmful
01:33:44.160because one of the things that it doesn't allow for is actually robust debate about things that
01:33:49.300can be somewhat nuanced or have multiple layers to them one of the issues with some of the framing
01:33:54.640i've seen around as an example around the anti-semitism charges is that um number one
01:34:00.520the the argument itself we just have to admit as uncomfortable as as it is because of our the
01:34:07.420wiring we've all received from our cultural upbringing just the stuff in the air um is that
01:34:13.620arguments about racism and anti-semitism are left framed to begin with yeah you're in stepping into
01:34:21.660those debates and um treating them as existential threats and as like one of the most serious things
01:34:28.020that's happening in the world today is there's a bunch of white racists you know going around who
01:34:32.620we're going to, you know, whatever, destroy everything. That is the leftist frame. It's
01:34:37.200why we brought up the, you know, remember old Jack, C.S. Lewis, and what he said about fire
01:34:41.540extinguishers and floods. If you look at our culture today, and you were just to ask on an
01:34:45.840objective level, what is the biggest, what are, what are some of the biggest problems related to
01:34:50.460race, ethnos, all of these various tangled nest of problems? What is a bigger problem?
01:34:57.500white people heritage americans however you want to put it you know being taught to hate themselves
01:35:04.740and consider themselves as entrenched structurally racist people destroying the world who come from
01:35:11.580evil people who uh and and that have a kind of privilege that was built on the back of
01:35:17.500um black evils or is a bigger problem that um white people are likely to in in sinful ways go
01:35:27.940out and mistreat um blacks latina some other other races or ethnicities out in the world
01:35:34.620and i would argue that it's not even close the far far bigger problem you just read a book like
01:35:40.080jeremy carl's unprotected class i got that right right yes yeah something in my head prevalent it
01:35:46.740It's very prevalent. So one of the problems right now with the poison gas fallacy, the imprecision, is that one of the things it's trying to do is adopt this left-framed gatekeeping of a conversation itself and what you're fundamentally doing.
01:36:02.840I think I see this a lot out of Doug's work in American Milk and Honey and some of the conversations surrounding this are that what it amounts to is to say you have to adopt my definitions on the definitional level.
01:36:18.200You have to adopt my arguments or you are very likely one of these anti-Semitic or in danger of being anti-Semitic, black hearted, seething kind of person.
01:36:29.820And so the tactic is like dropping a big gas cloud that's sort of imprecise and it's defining characteristics over a whole conversation.
01:36:37.940And the tactic is flee the gas cloud to the only acceptable position in the debate, which is mine.
01:36:45.580And if you don't, then I'm not saying you're an anti-Semite, but you probably are.
01:36:51.540So the problem with this is it's not precise enough and it doesn't allow for genuine disagreement on the definitional level to actually say, like, as we did in the cold open, well, hang on.
01:37:03.420Some of this language on the defining level is it's too it's you're proving too much.
01:37:09.700Other people have raised these criticisms of his work as well.
01:37:12.860But I think even like Joe Soberen's point that we talked about was that in the West, one of the defining characteristics of our legal system, I think as it accords with the Ten Commandments and witness bearing, is that we should be precise in defining crimes and sins.
01:37:32.060But one of the tactics of the left is let's define them very loosely so we have a lot of power to condemn people.
01:37:38.080and then people go around in this existential dread,
01:38:08.080I didn't realize there was a Christian position, like an orthodox position, in other words, on a historical narrative.
01:38:15.680Well, that really makes people, to Brian's point, I think you're like, wow, I really don't want to question too much about the historical narrative.
01:38:24.740Because it sounds like if I do, I no longer have the quote-unquote Christian position.
01:38:29.140one of the things that happens is that the further distance you get from an event
01:38:33.220the more cartoonized often our recollections of it become and this is just not natural you you come
01:38:40.380to historical or scholarly consensus that's based on the conversations happened for a long time and
01:38:45.620so people to develop like the crusades are a good example of this one of the reasons we went through
01:38:50.420them and have gone through many elements of the crusades and saying well the cartoonized version
01:38:56.580of the crusades that that the west basically adopted in its own self-reflection concerning
01:39:02.200its christian tradition in history was to say the crusades were unjustified wars of aggression by
01:39:08.860greedy christians who were just going and destroying peaceful muslims who were just trying
01:39:13.980to invent calculus and we just wouldn't leave them alone yeah and so we committed atrocities
01:39:19.580and oh by the way against a lot of jews along the way now christians sin in the crusades but
01:39:25.080the point is that it's actually a lot more complicated than that and so when you get
01:39:30.460again with the blasphemy laws attending an idol or some sort of ideological um blasphemy law issue
01:39:37.380when you start to say things like that about any historical event i'm immediately suspicious i have
01:39:44.140a red flag going up in my mind saying there's something ideological happening here there's
01:39:50.280something political and ideological that's less based about the actual truth of the events
01:39:54.800themselves than about the the utility of this version of events for political reasons today
01:40:03.080so so to be clear people are like wow they love the nazi you know no that's not the point we're
01:40:09.680making isn't to all of a sudden assert our own cartoonized version of world war ii that's like
01:40:16.040Hitler was an unqualified Christian prince and the Nazis were unqualifiedly the good guys and
01:40:22.240Churchill was just this black-hearted thug who never did anything right and he secretly tortured
01:40:26.840puppies in his basement. The point is no cartoons anywhere. Let's do the difficult work of history
01:40:34.720and also just recognize that there's a reason that more than one book is written about any
01:40:40.240historical event. One of the reasons is because even professional historians disagree about
01:40:44.980different the nature of different events well that that's why even um you know in very brief
01:40:50.200research on topics like what is the genetic history of the ashkenazi jews well like a two
01:40:56.840minutes of google searching and you'll find this is highly debated it can often be very contentious
01:41:02.240people don't agree so that in and of itself should should kind of be a warning to me when somebody
01:41:08.840says this must be your position on on the ashkenazi jews and i'm like well but even the
01:41:15.340geneticists who are many of which are not christians even they don't agree with something
01:41:19.560like that one one clarification here i think is helpful with an actual example is that when we're
01:41:26.400when a christian is doing history we want the christian position on a thing really is what
01:41:31.480truly happened because christians believe in truth yeah we don't want to believe something false
01:41:36.800but you have to distinguish then between different layers of the christian approach to a thing the
01:41:42.580ethical approach to something like let's take world war ii christians should all agree um or
01:41:49.240at least there should be a really robust conversation about the ethics of firebombing
01:41:53.340civilians right we should not be christians should not be in the business of intentionally
01:41:59.580murdering women and children in combat okay now that principle i just laid out first of all there's
01:42:04.580a debate that would happen historically concerning the horror of war and the ethic ethical calculation
01:42:10.520of that claim the that comes into the crusades world war one world like all of the wars all right
01:42:15.980but but the the question i would have that would immediately arise from that on a historical level
01:42:20.440is then let's say that we agree some hypothetical group of christians and pastors or whatever
01:42:25.420agreed on that ethical claim i just made well then we would be forced to say the allies were
01:42:32.740therefore extremely wicked and sinful in their approach to the war in firebombing dresden at
01:42:39.860least at many points and the the axis powers were extremely sinful in their actions in uh rocketing
01:42:48.240london and blitzkrieg so we could say something like that we could also say as an objective
01:42:54.660ethical fact that the darwinism that was in the air at that time that affected germany but also
01:43:01.420So America, England, this absolutely ascendant Darwinism at that time and its child, which is eugenics, led to some absolute evils and atrocities.
01:43:13.380For example, Hitler's, I think it's the T4 basically extermination eugenics program where he ordered, and this is undisputed, where he ordered the liquidation, the murder of a million basically like mental ward patients in Germany.
01:43:32.960And they had carried out this to the tune of at least hundreds of thousands by the time some church leaders in Germany within the party actually said, hey, you need to stop doing that.
01:43:42.840that this is actually just plain murder and then he halted that program at some point so we say
01:43:49.480that's evil and then we could also say and all of similar programs like that everywhere in the world
01:43:54.840that they were because of this darwinism in the air all of those were evil and what we've just done
01:44:00.520is some like not super complex but a little bit more complex than a cartoon version
01:44:05.560of ethical analysis treating history on its different layers of truth the historical fact
01:44:11.720the ethical fact and and this is the kind of thing that happens when you don't get emotional
01:44:18.440and try to shut down the whole conversation with left-coded epithets from the beginning
01:44:23.620you can then have that conversation where people can get in the same room or they can exchange
01:44:29.860books articles podcasts whatever and have a robust debate about some of these topics um
01:44:35.560but when you see that debate can't even be had you're not even allowed to have that debate and
01:44:43.880anybody having that debate on on any level is an anti-semite or is a racist or is that screams
01:44:51.580Saul Alinsky Gramsci and Marxist left-coded framing that all right-wing people should agree
01:44:59.180let's get rid of that let's actually just jettison that whole mode of um exchange of ideas
01:45:08.320yeah let's at least be able to have a conversation yeah it is really interesting because if you
01:45:12.880recall doug wilson one of his favorite lines for the last i don't know however long i've been
01:45:17.000reading him was that um the the war that we're fighting is actually control over the dictionary
01:45:21.860and so it is really unhelpful when you define anti-semitism as loosely as possible so that
01:45:28.500even certain fine forms of noticing as, as Yuri Burrito said, uh, are not the same, you know?
01:45:35.360And so you're actually guilty. What's interesting with this leftist tactic that you were talking
01:45:39.480about, Brian, is that I actually experienced this firsthand. A lot of us have, especially
01:45:43.020millennials. I'm graduating from, from college around the 2008, 2009 time period. And for you
01:45:49.780zoomers, the economy was really bad. That was the housing crisis. Um, it was actually really
01:45:55.360unemployment numbers were really high. So I'm getting out of college. I have college loans to
01:45:59.580pay off, you know, and I'm trying to start a household and all this. And I'm in my college
01:46:05.360classes, business school. I had to take some HR classes, which is quite unfortunate, but I had to
01:46:10.900take some HR classes and you had affirmative action at the time. So they had certain hiring
01:46:15.960quotas based on race and gender and things like that, that they had to fulfill. And so even if
01:46:21.460you graduated with good marks and you had a lot of experience, it didn't necessarily mean that you
01:46:26.900were going to be the best qualified person for the job because they had to fill their quotas.
01:46:30.640So that was what I was dealing with at the time. And if you noticed, like I may or may not have
01:46:35.460at my public university, that that was actually unjust and it was actually a form of racism,
01:46:41.500you got a lot of pushback. Like, no, I'm not saying anything bad about any of these people
01:46:46.600that are within the quotas that they have to fill. But don't you think that we should just
01:46:50.800hire someone based upon their merit for the position and not necessarily just based upon
01:46:55.620their skin color. And automatically, because of the loose terms that they're able to control the
01:47:00.720dictionary and to divine things, you're actually a racist for that sort of noticing because you
01:47:06.100actually have privilege. And we've seen this played out time and time again over the years
01:47:11.000into this self-loathing that is encouraged and shame for just simply being a white person and
01:47:17.540the privilege that that you have that you don't even understand why you why you have it but it's
01:47:22.440because of that you're actually an oppressor that you have the privilege that you have and so you
01:47:26.720see this this trap that was laid out for us and in that sort of noticing but it's just being
01:47:31.900reapplied now in this uh in this uh topic of anti-semitism where even certain types of noticing
01:47:38.120is sinful and you are the nabal you know that that abigail should definitely be warning their
01:47:44.040pastors against just because you notice like like in the example that that pastor so they gave
01:47:49.200about this historical narrative being actually history is really complex and so it really is
01:47:55.620i think a war over the dictionary and so i think that those not not being able to define your terms
01:48:03.800very tightly but intentionally having the loosest form of a definition you can for a sin
01:48:09.380is really problematic to the point where you're saying there are certain pastors that need to
01:48:14.840step down and certain church members that need to be put under church discipline just for laughing
01:48:21.360at the wrong thing or noticing the wrong thing. Yeah, that's actually an interesting thing. It's
01:48:25.940in American Milk and Honey. I've seen it on the blog and the Doug has repeated it like in the
01:48:30.260CrossPolitik episode where he said the problem is Stone Choir. And then he went on to describe
01:48:36.820joel is revoiced for nazis um which and then the most of the show is actually about joel so it
01:48:43.480really seems to be a gas cloud kind of attack but what's interesting about this is um you have this
01:48:52.120dynamic where you're kind of lumping all these things together you're using pretty charged
01:48:57.280language and then there's as brian said there's always kind of a escape hatch of what didn't
01:49:02.580specifically say it's kind of like the buckley like why didn't say buchanan was an anti-semite
01:49:07.220i just said he said and done some anti-semitic things um as you look at uh some of this though
01:49:13.540brian i do want to specifically ask about the revoice for nazis we talked about that in the
01:49:18.900episode uh what is revoice first of all what's the the connotation denotation there um and and
01:49:26.320how do you think that's being used well so revoice was surrounding this whole leftist play to
01:49:32.400do a gramsian play about homosexuality about sodomy and to basically say that we need to be
01:49:39.580really tender towards men who are homosexual attracted and we we basically need to say that
01:49:46.300as long as they're not actually sodomizing one another or carrying out homosexual behaviors
01:49:52.520sexual behaviors then the desires yeah they could form like a covenant with another man and live
01:49:58.960with them and have a celibate cuddle friendship. They could have, you know, all of this happening
01:50:04.340within the PCA. Yeah. It's, it's happening in the PCA and the reform world. And, um, and, and the,
01:50:09.600the, the key point was that there were some of it was a debate about whether the desire itself,
01:50:14.700like if you're in that situation and you constantly desire to sodomize another man,
01:50:18.440um, was, was that actually itself sinful if you resisted the desire and you didn't actually act
01:50:24.740on it. And we would obviously say, along with the reformed tradition on concupiscence, that
01:50:29.760the desire itself is sinful and needs to be mortified. And so you absolutely can't be carving
01:50:35.400out this side B gay, I identify as gay, but I just don't sodomize another man. It's like identifying
01:50:43.160as a thief or a greedy man. And I just continue to use the label, but I don't actually go and do
01:50:51.240the thing. I just carve out this space where it's not sinful for me to want to. So the revoice for
01:50:58.060Nazis tactic is to say that us and Joel Webin are doing that same play with men who are sinfully
01:51:07.880partial against the Jews or sin in, I guess, some ways that the Nazis did.
01:51:13.020It's usually like the hatred or the envy.
01:51:15.040Yeah, they hate and they envy the Jews, but as long as they don't actually go and
01:51:18.000beat up jews nobody needs to address the state of the heart that's fine um the behavior is really
01:51:26.320all that matters as long as they don't and this was a real example i think in an opc church
01:51:30.820where a young man went and like shot up a synagogue and yeah it's california they're saying
01:51:35.720the revoice thing is saying well as long as you don't do that it's fine right and and which to
01:51:41.580be clear i think it's very clear like it's bad this is kind of the point that is not what we're
01:51:46.040saying. That's not a steel man of our position. All sinful desire needs to be mortified. So those
01:51:52.980are the desires of the flesh, not of the new man. They need to be mortified and see with any sin,
01:51:59.480how would you mortify that desire? You'll know that in glory, one of the ways to see that these
01:52:04.440sinful desires are sins in themselves is that in glory, we will no longer desire to commit sexual
01:52:11.740sin or greed or murder or whatever, whatever it may be. So some of the problems that surround
01:52:18.580this sort of language is that, again, it's not a steel man, Joel nor us. Nobody would say
01:52:25.100that if somebody really wanted to, let's say, like deep in their heart, they absolutely wanted
01:52:31.920to commit genocide. We would just say, that's fine as long as you don't. I would say for any
01:52:38.600rate for any people group if they were like really guys i just have a problem with with black people
01:52:44.420and i would i want to murder them all like i see a black person little kid up to a grown man and i
01:52:51.000just really want to kill them and they'd come to us if with that sort of thing and i would say
01:52:55.940okay let we have some work to do we're going to establish it you know we're going to start
01:53:00.040talking through the the the desires of the flesh the murderous desires of your flesh that are
01:53:05.340rising up but i think it would be like just to be clear we would call that person to repent we would
01:53:09.760say you need to repent horrible not only of like if you had done it but you need to repent of the
01:53:14.620inward sinful desire you should not be cultivating that desire absolutely not no nobody should give
01:53:19.780quarter to that desire no so but one of the things that's happening is that we're because of the
01:53:24.080looseness of the defining terms when it comes to anti-semitism and the assumption of envy
01:53:27.960yeah we're we're actually begging the question in many ways we've smuggled into the premises
01:53:33.340the conclusion that a person is anti-Semitic by defining it very loosely in ways that before we
01:53:39.860even get to the conclusion, we've already rigged the game to say that somebody is sinning. I would
01:53:45.680even say that defining racism, again, these left-framed anti-Semitism as sinful partiality
01:53:51.980is fundamentally a tautologous definition because partiality is not sinful in its absolute sense.
01:54:00.920Like, we can be partial in ways that are not sinful.
01:54:04.100I could prefer one thing over another.
01:58:22.840It's begging the question, of course you're going to conclude someone is a misogynist if you just get to own the dictionary, to Dan's point, about what defines a misogynist in the first place.
01:58:34.340Instead of defining it in a way that can then actions and words and deeds can be actually examined under the light of reason.
01:58:40.580so it's an unfalsifiable claim so you have two routes you either say you're right i am a
01:58:46.280misogynist or you say i'm not and they say a misogynist would say that that's the kafka trap
01:58:51.720the kafka trap yeah well and especially how uh you think of the term nazi you know brian said
01:58:57.720in the cold open nobody in our camp nobody that we're affiliated with talk to including the anons
01:59:04.140it there's a i'm there's tons of crazies out there i'm not saying there's not but the people
01:59:08.320that we actually know nobody is saying i am a nazi let's resurrect 1940s political party nobody
01:59:15.420doug said something in the cross politics show that i thought was interesting he said we never
01:59:20.440want to call somebody a nazi who doesn't call themselves one and he uses the samuel holden
01:59:25.960video because there was a 1936 the olympics the olympics he said samuel is calling himself a nazi
01:59:31.780and i'm like no no no no no he's actually not um so because you talked to him and he said i'm not
01:59:37.820a nazi correct and that's what i mean like i specifically asked because i didn't recognize
01:59:42.380any of the images in the video i said hey what's the deal with this um and i think the main point
01:59:48.480from my understanding was uh they were trying to offend the post-war consensus sensibilities they
01:59:54.760were committed on this on the level of when doug said if you really want to you know make waves
01:59:59.400make white babies right a while ago doug knew what he was doing or when he said to the you know
02:00:05.600whatever the crazy jezebel lady i can't remember her name and he used the c word he said they're
02:00:10.060they're saying to themselves look we're just a bunch of c words um and and i am i don't have i
02:00:15.320guess the stones of doug to say that word in in public or in private honestly because it's a gross
02:00:20.040word but what he was doing is he's intentionally outraging the god what we've called what i call
02:00:26.460a sunday school class once this was an actual sunday school class um wasn't the call i'm calling
02:00:31.740things gay yeah the virtue of calling these gay because what you're doing is you're looking the
02:00:36.260idol square in the eyes and you're poking it in both eyes yes and when you poke something in both
02:00:41.040eyes you know there's going to not going to be like an oh your arguments were persuasive to me
02:00:45.340they're going to be like outraged and hysterical so there's a tactical thing there where i think
02:00:51.500um you know you can you can judge the tactics those are they're public actions they're open
02:00:57.020for public debate. Um, but you have to at least in charity say, Oh, in terms of the play,
02:01:04.120that's what you were doing when you did this thing. Yes. Uh, the other thing that I think
02:01:09.460is helpful. We've had a lot of pastoral conversations with people, um, and a lot
02:01:13.760of really good people, I think who feel caught in the middle. Um, and so people who've come to
02:01:18.240church, people from afar pastors, again, Brian mentioned this in the cold open, but
02:01:23.500one of the questions that i get is i wish you guys would just be clear about what you believe
02:01:29.360about nazism anti-semitism but particularly stone choir and it's interesting because i've made
02:01:35.780numerous comments about it uh brian's made numerous comments about it i know that um it's
02:01:43.300like this the gas clouding you've been gas clouded so a lot of times i haven't said anything because
02:01:49.700number one i've actually never listened to a stone choir podcast um so i'm like well i feel
02:01:56.600kind of stupid weighing in on a conversation that i'm not an expert in and have no experience experience
02:02:02.260with how can i possibly denounce it um now i will say i've seen a lot of tweets uh from cory and the
02:02:10.760other uh is it whoa uh the other hosts i've seen the tweets uh i think one this week was uh hitler
02:02:18.580hating the jews or attack whatever he said is proof that he was a christian and i read that
02:02:23.900and i thought that is idiotic um i think that some of the stuff like comparing mixed race children
02:02:31.080to feces to feces and i read that and i didn't like the reaction in my heart wasn't like you
02:02:36.300know there's probably some nuanced debate here that could be had i just went like oh yeah whatever
02:02:43.240whatever we believe not that right so so and to be clear i think in our discussions with some of
02:02:50.660the pastors in in moscow i was concerned because they're saying hey there's a huge problem and i
02:02:55.820was like okay maybe there's something i'm missing because in our context this isn't a problem none
02:03:01.300of the people that i've talked to are you know ready to become nazis or there's no hatred of
02:03:06.760the jews i don't i'm just not seeing that and we pastor a lot of people it's not hiding under like
02:03:12.060us not guys we have book groups constantly we have leadership cohorts with you know pretty much all
02:03:17.900of the men in our church who are you know actively members and involved parish events we've talked
02:03:23.740about world war ii nazism anti-semitism the jew stuff we've we've talked about these things like
02:03:30.200to in in the way that you know you get a bunch of nerds together who all play like the same video
02:03:34.840games or whatever and they're like oh have you know did you see the glitch at you know if you
02:03:39.080up down left right x y jump you know did you see that and this like our guys are tismed out on a
02:03:44.740on on all sorts of but you go through the stuff and you're like what do you think about that tweet
02:03:49.480of cory mahler like oh that was dumb that was stupid yeah well i don't know what he's doing
02:03:55.960with that like our guys aren't um influenced in the sense of like again you said i i've never
02:04:01.500listened to even a minute of stone choir podcast um not even one minute not even 10 seconds i've
02:04:07.520never hit play on a Stone Choir podcast. So it's not as if we haven't discussed some of these
02:04:13.360things with our guys, but we talked about it in the cold open. If we ask any of our guys,
02:04:18.480what do you think about this popular conversation that's happening, you know, surrounding Stone
02:04:23.180Choir and these guys and our stuff and Stephen Wolf and Doug Wilson, all this stuff. Most of
02:04:27.920them will say like 80 to 95% of them will say some variation of, you know, I really disagreed
02:04:33.880with this i you know i agreed with this i thought there'd be more nuance here hated that but you
02:04:39.160know none of them are like yes ich bin ein nazi i don't even know what that means i believe it
02:04:48.140means i am a nazi okay somebody's gonna cut that uh yes uh you remember when what's his name said
02:04:54.500i'm a jelly donut ich bin ein berliner i can't remember which president yeah maybe jfk so i
02:05:01.340think um just providing clarity and and when a honest churchman asks me these questions i will
02:05:08.000give an honest answer what i am careful to do is not play the public denouncement game just for
02:05:13.960the sake of it because i think it's a leftist play do you know how i'm sorry i interrupted you
02:05:19.160i just you know i just interrupted eric it's allowable okay dan i'm really tempted to interrupt
02:05:26.240do right now on performative denouncements and how they're never, you're never able to satisfy
02:05:31.860the appetite. Okay. You will always be able to pull up another screenshot of another anonymous
02:05:37.860account or not anonymous account on X saying something, I'll just say stupid and sinful.
02:05:44.940And like, well, that was dumb. And I know what they're doing. They're being transgressive.
02:05:49.160They're being whatever. And you will never get to the bottom of denouncing them because
02:05:55.800they will keep making that more new ones will keep happening right so our approach to these
02:06:01.540things has generally been it's not as if our positions are kind of mysterious we are in the
02:06:08.040habit of recording multi-hour podcasts for years now talking about stuff including controversial
02:06:14.120stuff where we just tell a well hopefully well-researched historical tale talk about the
02:06:21.220issues apply them to our current day that's our approach the thing that you're not like the thing
02:06:26.540you're just not going to find if you want it from us i'm sorry you're not going to find it is
02:06:31.300constant discernment media uh you know type of tactics constant denouncements and really allowing
02:06:38.880anybody to steer our denouncements through demands it's just like not going to be a thing that we do
02:06:44.700and the reason is because it's left coded and if you do it you've just adopted their frame you've
02:06:51.500said you're right about it you've paid the dangle you've said you're right about how this debate
02:06:55.720should go you're in charge of it but i've seen other people do this where they're like okay
02:07:00.120fine i'll denounce them and then they denounce it whatever the thing is and then they're like
02:07:05.480that wasn't enough it's never enough denounce it again denounce it again so one of the charge
02:07:09.680against our camp has been why are you riling up the anons and why are you and by which they mean
02:07:16.400like why is eric you know it was on the may blog this week but you know why why is eric sharing
02:07:22.580uh white boy summer meme campy memes with 80s synth vibes and you know what i would say to that
02:07:30.420is i i think it's kind of cool because we like them it's it's not uh nobody in that movement
02:07:37.680is like again i'm not asking boomers to understand millennial and zoomer humor no like literally not
02:07:43.420going to do a course it's okay if they don't i don't lose any sleep if james white doesn't
02:07:47.600understand a meme i like that's right it doesn't bother me at all i still think about it so i i
02:07:51.940think about that whole conversation and then i think about a the denouncements don't work
02:07:56.080number two is left coated but then i also think this is a genuine strategic difference pastorally
02:08:02.460that when I see young men particularly, and by the way, a lot of these Anons are guys with
02:08:09.980businesses and family men with more than five children and good churchmen and good churches.
02:08:14.820But let's talk about young men. If I see young men who are interested in this sort of subject
02:08:21.820matter, I say, well, we're Christians. Let's engage in debate and argumentation. As Brian
02:08:28.800mentioned earlier let's let's present the cases what i won't do is a left-coded denouncement
02:08:36.140having never even listened to some of the content wait you're not allowed to even ask that question
02:08:40.700right the jd hall flat earth example yeah it was a great example explain this because i think jd
02:08:46.260had a great point and jd hall is probably whatever there's like a whole every anytime on the internet
02:08:50.580now you mention a person there's like a whole lore where the denouncement thing again you're
02:08:55.040like, but, but did you know that JD Hall wants sin? You're like, okay, whatever. Um, the whole
02:08:58.880thing was, it was so, it was a brilliant tweet. He basically said, um, you know, this is how you
02:09:04.400should deal with subversive or conspiratorial or edge, like fringe conspiracy type of thinking
02:09:10.880or anything that has the reputation of that. Uh, he's like a guy, you know, ask me, maybe he's in
02:09:15.600his church or something. Ask, um, Hey, what do you think about the earth? Like, do you think
02:09:19.220the earth is around? Do you think we've been in space? Do you think like the earth is flat?
02:09:21.680and jd hall was like you know um no i've but i've never heard what what do you think and he said
02:09:27.720and then he listened and the guy for like 20 minutes explained why he believes the earth is
02:09:32.580flat and as one of the hosts of haunted cosmos let me just say that both ben and i have been in
02:09:39.120these conversations multiple times and instead of 20 minutes it's been two hours of just and we've
02:09:44.100done the exact same thing jd hall describes which was he listened and then he gave like a couple he
02:09:50.000was like wow that's that's really dumb and the guy was like well am i in trouble for like could
02:09:56.840i be in your church and believe that and he was like yeah what does that have to do with anything
02:10:01.340right you can believe something dumb like you could believe that the browns are the greatest
02:10:05.620nfl team of all time right you would just be i mean you'd be wrong like the earth isn't flat like
02:10:11.500we've had these conversations i'm just impressed you used a sports analogy
02:10:15.420oh everyone knows that i am like i know of the king's hall like very apt to reach for you know
02:10:22.960it reminds me a lot of um you know that one quarterback that one time for the dolphins
02:10:28.720yes who am i thinking of you're thinking of to a tag of aloa after the concussion yeah that's
02:10:34.640that's after i don't even need to say it because everyone knows um yeah so so uh providing clarity
02:10:41.400for for the good people in the middle who are genuinely wondering like are you guys harboring
02:10:45.680nazis no are you nazis no are you anti-semites no do you are you avid fans of stone choir we've
02:10:52.880not listened to it um and then saying okay can you know for for the good people we're going to move
02:10:58.540on um one of the things i think that's interesting um is with buckley in his story uh jack trotter
02:11:08.860brought this up right that he had out outside influence upon him ironically by some jewish
02:11:15.860people to get joe sober and fired so it seems like as wise christians one of the things we
02:11:21.580ought to do is also think through uh differing motivations we should think through okay could
02:11:28.980there be political mechanisms at play and this one i want to ask dan um but dan you mentioned
02:11:34.860something that i thought was really interesting uh james white and we'll get into the timeline by
02:11:40.220the way in just a minute uh but james white and doug wilson at the end of july july 22nd is the
02:11:45.640first may blog and then they're dividing line shortly after addressing the meme situation and
02:11:51.260anti-semitism and oh my gosh there's a huge problem and guess what doug just wrote a book
02:11:56.040and you know to to his statement i've defined it uh envy and then what do you know i go looking
02:12:01.840point, I find it. But think about the political situation that's going on in America in July.
02:12:10.940That's interesting. So I'm going to ask you about that in just a second.
02:12:13.860It's also interesting that this second wave of attacks publicly came, I mean,
02:12:19.440on the heels of the presidential election, November 2nd, right? And you would have to
02:12:27.220kind of at least wonder and say, are these politically motivated, these publicizing of
02:12:33.700these events? So talk to me first about July. No, those are really interesting questions.
02:12:38.200And maybe it's just giving someone too much credit. And it could just be that the timing
02:12:42.960was just happenstance. I don't really know. But what is interesting about the timing of this
02:12:47.600whole situation that we'll get into is that Joel Webin was made aware of this meme that was sent
02:12:54.180from his church member back in february yeah and so began working with his this church member uh
02:12:59.600towards repentance reconciliation you know i'm sure he was examining like where is he standard
02:13:05.100counseling protocol right you ask a lot of questions try to get down to the root of sin
02:13:10.080get the facts yeah make sure that you've got a right perspective before you start calling someone
02:13:13.960to repent or or put them under church discipline and things like that but then i don't know exactly
02:13:19.220when uh doug wilson and james white received the meme but it was around july i think it was july
02:13:26.56022nd when doug published his may blog and that just happened to be the day after it was announced
02:13:33.940that joe biden was stepping down uh from the presidential race it's a few short days after
02:13:39.440the assassination attempt yes that's right and so politically if you look at polling data which
02:13:45.000i pulled up on polymarket um you'll see that trump had somewhere around like a 68 chance of
02:13:51.660winning and that was you know uh kamala had had some percentage points there and joe biden had
02:13:57.200some percentage points there but it was just really interesting timing that right around the
02:14:02.840almost pinnacle of trump's lead in the presidential polls that that was published and and then like
02:14:11.640you said after the election trump wins and then the attacks resume and so and we know now doug
02:14:18.760has said publicly that one of his main concerns with this was whether or not pete hegseth a crac
02:14:24.180church member would get confirmed as sec def now i don't know if he was thinking about it back then
02:14:29.180you would have to ask but yeah certainly there's political thought going into it if it was
02:14:35.040politically motivated the timing would seem to fit with that theory simply because if you're
02:14:40.240trying to secure political power for yourself or for your friends or for someone then you would
02:14:46.120actually have to distance yourself from these problematic elements the fours like we said in
02:14:50.740our in our cold open the fours that are rabble rousers and speak most courageously to cultural
02:14:56.140issues you'd have to distance yourself for the sake of political platforming and so it it does
02:15:01.880make sense as far as the timeline but who knows doug would have to answer for that and that's why
02:15:07.280another point to clarify there this is why we're trying to be clear direct and offer a falsifiable
02:15:12.780claim that can be refuted because at that point it becomes really easy for doug to say actually
02:15:17.180that was just happenstance it was just just timing didn't think about it wasn't a motivation
02:15:23.180there's actually an easy out uh which is important for a righteous man to be able to defend himself
02:15:29.940but if it's an unfalsifiable charge then there's no escaping it so that's why just to reiterate
02:15:36.580it's very important to be direct the the one of the related something that comes to mind is that
02:15:42.140you can think about it the political dynamics it's not wrong to seek power for you and your
02:15:45.900friends and try to leverage that power well that's one of the things the right wing actually
02:15:49.520needs to recover yeah so that's not our criticism we we should be seeking power and leveraging it
02:15:54.920for righteous ends in the political sphere obviously um it's not obvious to everybody
02:16:00.280but obviously that's one of the great needs think about somebody though running for like
02:16:04.040SBC president, maybe in 2018 or whenever. And, um, that person, let's say that they liked Doug
02:16:11.200Wilson in the past and that Doug Wilson had talked positively about them before. Now that person's
02:16:16.340running for SBC president, that guy might have a political calculation where he goes, that's not
02:16:21.160going to help me. I need to denounce Doug Wilson because he's this radical crazy guy. Who's like
02:16:26.440federal visionist and heretic. And he's, you know, Steven Sittler and all this stuff. And he's got
02:16:31.560all this baggage so the sbc guy is previously friendly all of a sudden might go you know start
02:16:36.920criticizing doug um there's a similar temptation too i think for in in moscow this might be a new
02:16:43.520sensation for them honestly because they've been forced like throughout for a lot most of their
02:16:49.580lifespan and um but now there's like the embargo is lifted on moscow and they go oh we actually
02:16:56.060have mainstream like tucker has dug on amazing and and i'm i'm for it i want them to have
02:17:02.200mainstream influence and but there might be a calculation in there where they go ogden has
02:17:07.380said a lot of joel webben said a lot of good things about us and like signaled our way and
02:17:11.720like we shared their stuff maybe once or two there's been a signal you know so i need to make
02:17:16.100sure that like we put some distance just to say hey other people watching those guys like they're
02:17:23.720crazy we're not with them and i'm not saying that's their words i'm just saying look at the
02:17:28.240look at the pattern and just understand that this is this is a part of politics that the the right
02:17:34.320actually needs to figure out is that there's a reason politics is like you say people are being
02:17:41.240political it has a certain implication it's because the the art of politics really does
02:17:46.820include power calculus yeah and image and a image related to association it's important we make it's
02:17:55.380it's not whether but which you can't escape that that's you're going to have those calculations
02:17:59.260but we need to be careful that when they're doing them we're doing them righteously and that we're
02:18:04.260being accurate and i would also say like uh what would actually be helpful so we're sort of doing
02:18:09.920some post-mortem on a lot of this stuff again we'll get into the timeline in a minute but part
02:18:15.240of it if if you want to build coalition within your camp and on the right i absolutely think you
02:18:19.400should um we're not saying this seems to be a misunderstanding of netter where people think
02:18:26.160that we're saying or it's been doug is attributed to me or somebody else in our camp saying like
02:18:31.300well eric apparently is fine with all these really you know really actually sinful things
02:18:36.560happening on the right i'm not fine with them that is completely not what i'm saying but i am
02:18:42.560saying in a first Corinthians chapter six type way, we ought to prove the viability of our
02:18:47.360internal polity by proving that we can deal with these things internally in a way that doesn't
02:18:52.820destroy us in front of the left. Two things. One, I'm not going to give oxygen with 60,000
02:18:57.920Twitter followers to every passing Anon who says something edgy. That's what he wants me to do.
02:19:02.820Yes. That's what the Anon wants me to do. Two, when I have relationship with somebody who says
02:19:07.280something I think is off, first thing I'm going to try to do is actually talk to them.
02:37:14.180Kahn as pastors leading a racist and anti-Semitic movement in America. He elaborated that Eric had
02:37:21.140retweeted a quote about Aristotle, which said that multiculturalism was detrimental to a healthy
02:37:27.700democracy. Tobias said that Eric was supporting, quote, race segregation by retweeting the
02:37:33.900Aristotle reference. On October 2nd, Joel recorded and released a podcast about the situation.
02:37:40.580He did so because he was told by Eschatology Matters that they were releasing a podcast with
02:37:44.980Tobias in which he would be giving his narrative of the situation. Joel's intent was to get ahead
02:37:51.060of the narrative, which is why he recorded and released the episode. He wanted to reiterate that
02:37:55.800the church member had repented for past comments, was in good standing with the church, and that
02:38:00.660Tobias' calls for excommunication and or church discipline were unwarranted. On October 29th,
02:38:07.140Eschatology Matters posted a video response from Tobias about the whole situation.
02:38:12.280In the episode, Tobias claimed that he never called for church discipline or excommunication
02:38:17.300when talking to Joel. It's also important to note that before publishing this video and according
02:38:22.740to multiple sources close to the situation, Doug Wilson and James White had consulted on a Zoom
02:38:29.380call with Tobias about what he would be saying in his video recording. When this episode came out,
02:38:36.040Joe Boot, James White, and Doug Wilson helped promote it on X. The same day, October 29th,
02:38:42.480Chris Arnzen sent an email to a redacted recipient, and in that email, Chris shared the recent podcast episode from Eschatology Matters with Tobias, and said that he had been in contact with James White and Doug Wilson prior to the date of the email.
02:38:58.840He wrote, quote, I've been involved in a group discussion with fine men of God like Doug Wilson, James White, and others who all agree that this assessment of Joel Webin is completely accurate, end quote.
02:39:12.480The assessment, Arzin went on to say, was that, quote,
02:39:15.380Joel Webin has clearly adopted sinful anti-Semitic views that at best trivialize the Holocaust and at worst deny it completely and contain revisionist understanding of the depth of sin which Hitler and the Nazis were guilty, end quote.
02:39:31.440The next day, on October 30th, Joel sent the Zoom call recording to Eschatology Matters, who promptly removed Tobias' video.
02:39:40.580On November 1st, Eschatology Matters issued a full retraction of the video.
02:39:46.020The statement reads as follows, quote,
02:39:48.480Finding yourself caught in a conflict between two parties who have both benefited you is terrible.
02:39:53.640And that's the situation we created when we released a video regarding Tobias Riemenschneider and Joel Webin.
02:40:02.100Our regret isn't only due to the conflict that's brought to the body of Christ,
02:40:05.900but also because we didn't have all of the facts.
02:40:09.320There may still be more information needed to resolve it fully.
02:40:13.340We recognize that our actions led to the unnecessary slander and speculation against a fellow Christian pastor, Joel Webin, and Covenant Bible Church.
02:46:45.160But for some reason that wasn't satisfactory,
02:46:47.420And they're just going to use him to essentially show this underlying issue of this horrible envy that's underlining the entire reformed world and just use this poor church member as a spectacle.
02:47:01.560I mean, it's hard to actually imagine anybody that's been sinned against more than this church member who actually, by Joel's own mouth, saying that he's actually repented of whatever sins he committed.
02:47:15.480Well, it's interesting, too, because, Brian, one of the things that this whole situation has brought up is, number one, I think the danger of big platforms and a media platform.
02:47:25.620Obviously, if none of the parties involved had media platforms, we probably wouldn't know about this, and that's probably where it should stay.
02:47:32.300So one of the dangers could be that you, whether this was the motivation or not, it was certainly a prominent theme in No Quarter November.
02:50:30.900We think he's been flirting with Nazi stuff, and so here's our argument.
02:50:34.480Yeah, and maybe, A, we should have gone to him directly.
02:50:37.220Even if we addressed it publicly, we should have just said, hey, we're critiquing Joel.
02:50:41.440Yeah, we're critiquing Joel and Joel's views and Joel's—but the specific situation was so mishandled.
02:50:48.820It's like a pastoral one-on-one type of stuff that when a guy is allegedly sins and you bring him and like Tobias going to Joel and saying, I have a problem with your church member.
02:51:04.600And then when it was handled and the person repented of whatever and I'm, you know, whatever sin they said they had in their heart or something that should have been the end of it.
02:52:22.960And one of the things I think, Dan, to me that came out of the timeline was this looks like it was a concerted effort, meaning Doug and James White were involved from the beginning.
02:53:04.160But then you also have confirmation from Tobias who said in the zoom call that there's a coalition pastors that included James White, Doug Wilson, Jeff Durbin, Joe boot, and others that are being formed that in, in being formed against us.
02:53:23.900And I can't remember the exact quote, so I'm just going to stop there, but there was a coalition and they are opposed to Ogden.
02:53:31.200well specifically eric and brian so thankfully i'm in dan's clean dan is i am hey but i think
02:53:37.140the other comment that was made uh by tobias was joel you had the option to choose better men
02:53:42.300and instead you chose that's right you could have losers in ogden yeah that's right look i mean
02:53:48.900sympathetic yeah yeah look at us you could have partnered with doug wilson and with james white
02:53:54.400but instead you chose isker and wolf and the ogden guys so this seems like another potential danger
02:54:00.300though brian is uh like turf warfare yeah and all this we have uh been really clear i think in our
02:54:06.740intention with a lot of this uh as you said we've we've promoted moscow we've promoted a lot of other
02:54:12.760material from across the spectrum lots of people yeah we don't we have actively tried to fight
02:54:18.340this instinct to be ruthlessly territorial and instead to say hey it's a big pie christendom
02:54:25.560wins when we have multiple platforms and multiple voices doing let's be honest very different work
02:54:30.780like it's not a zero-sum game you know james white is doing apologist stuff with muslims that's very
02:54:36.020different than what we're engaged in doug has his sphere joel has his we tend to look at it as
02:54:42.940i'm not in competition with canon press absolutely not no we want to support them we've enjoyed a lot
02:54:49.620of the stuff that they put out but what could be the danger of seeing it as just a ruthless game
02:54:54.920of territorialism we need to not give in to the now i want to circle back to something in a minute
02:54:59.640but we need to get not give in to the the territorialism the zero-sum game the fixed
02:55:04.940pie of glory as we've put it before like that if right response gets a lot of youtube people
02:55:11.060and whatever then that means someone else can't succeed too like i actually want all of the
02:55:18.340churches involved to flourish i want lots of different publishing houses to arise guys that
02:55:24.980came to our conference even you know recently and they were like hey we're doing a a publishing
02:55:30.120house like a lot of what we're doing is basically we just looked at what you guys did and we're
02:55:34.300doing all that same stuff and we were actually happy to share a lot of trade secrets like here's
02:55:39.400how we've done it we want you to be successful yeah great let here's some here's some tips
02:55:43.000we've promoted everything from ezra institute to canon and all these things and and where i see
02:55:48.560people doing good work i'm my inclination is to go great job keep it up love it one thing i did
02:55:54.360want to circle back to yeah is i want to head off like because we're saying we're not saying
02:56:01.180but tobias claimed that there was this sort of conspiratorial we're going or just coalition of
02:56:07.280men behind the scenes who were saying we need to we need to address some of these things and with
02:56:11.180ogden and these guys okay what we're not saying is like with group chats gc's for me but not for
02:56:16.860thee yeah all of us are in group chats with guys where we talk about stuff happening in the reformed
02:56:22.420world or like what do you think about this thing james white said or what do you think about this
02:56:26.520thing canon did or what do you what you know i just saw your episode guys let's talk about it
02:56:31.660let's talk about john harris or like we're all in group chats with a lot of different men um from
02:56:36.920across the Reformed world, one of the main group chats I'm in, it's got Baptists, Presbyterians,
02:56:42.380it's got all sorts of guys, and we talk about stuff all the time. And if you were in it,
02:56:48.300you could tell based on posting in social media that we're all talking about something,
02:56:53.680and then all of us are posting our various thoughts on something. You can even coordinate
02:56:58.400things in a group chat where you say, we have this concern, how do we address it?
02:57:01.680all of that is licit feel totally free to do that i'm not saying that pastor wilson and james white
02:57:08.640and tobias reeman schneider and whom these guys can't have a group chat where they say hey do you
02:57:13.580think this issue is an issue too how should we address it the main thing i the problem i have
02:57:17.920is just coming back and saying someone in that chat should have said whoa whoa whoa whoa not this
02:57:24.780if we disagree with joel let's just go disagree with joel great do you guys have any evidence of
02:57:30.800like yeah here's a link to where joel said this or where brian and eric said this here's a tweet
02:57:35.300um let's analyze it i'm gonna do a podcast about it you write about it i actually don't care if
02:57:40.840people do that no gc's for me and not for thee no that's not what we're saying every gc's for
02:57:45.900all of the these you can all have gc's have fun talk be friends shape culture form coalitions
02:57:54.620totally great i just want to make sure we're arguing christianly yeah i think that's that's
02:57:59.120really good uh one of the other things that we promised we would answer and it's related i think
02:58:03.540to the timeline is the question of why we didn't why we're not going to sign the antioch declaration
02:58:08.720a lot of the people uh collaborate collaborators and then people around it have said things like
02:58:14.640well all this drama has nothing to do with the antioch declaration
02:58:18.120um so we'll start with dan do you think that's true and and how did it frame kind of how we're
02:58:23.640thinking about the document i think that the timeline and the antioch declaration are tangled
02:58:28.500together this is why we why we said in the cold open that we were not going to sign the anti-act
02:58:34.520declaration one of the points was that because you can't untangle it from the timeline because
02:58:39.940the contributors are the same just maybe by chance as the people who are in this supposed
02:58:47.020faction or or group that's coming against us and it's not a consensus document like they claim
02:58:54.700And so it's really hard to untangle it from the timeline.
02:58:58.180And so even some of the pressure that was received privately to sign it, maybe it was genuine from motives that were completely righteous.
02:59:08.080But within the timeline of events and with everything that's going around with the information that we've received, even that still feels like a coercion to actually participate in this, to just capitulate on our principles, quite honestly.
02:59:26.640Yeah, I refuse to treat Tobias as an authoritative voice as a result of all of this on a collaborator and a document that I would support, just on that level.
02:59:38.460On the content level, I thought the document, the statement was convoluted and unclear and included many non sequitur type of issues.
02:59:49.160Aristotle was a good example of that, the Aristotle stuff or whatever it was.
02:59:52.660uh i i read through it and i thought for a document that's aiming for clarity
02:59:56.920it really needed to be written in a more journalistic or a theological style instead
03:00:02.480of like a drunk chesterton and then lastly um i didn't mean that to be like that's genuinely
03:00:10.820what it came across it was like did a drunk chesterton write significant portions of this
03:00:15.220because that's kind of like it's trying to be quippy it's like that's not where you it's not
03:00:19.680where you go a quippy, you know? Well, I think, yeah. And to your point, I think in documents
03:00:23.540like this, you want more of that old Westminsterian, like almost dry systematic theology that's really
03:00:31.580crystal clear and, you know, footnoted and like, it's a space for systematized thought, not for
03:00:39.120right. And one of the criticisms that was responded to is like, oh, it's really hard
03:00:43.940to understand. And so one of the contributors said, well, you know, just because you don't
03:00:48.580have a good grasp of the english language doesn't mean that it's hard to understand it's like
03:00:52.500no actually it's it's not the words that i have a hard time with it's the way that they're arranged
03:00:57.960that makes things unclear yeah you need more stephen wolfian the way he he writes in case
03:01:04.140for class systematic it's systematic and the last problem i have um we we talked about it but just
03:01:10.520to make it very clear is that for a document like this that's aiming to bring people together
03:01:15.060lest it be a poison gas clouding of everybody else and saying flee to my exact position
03:01:20.020or you're an anti-semite it ought to have been a document that was collaborated on by multiple
03:01:26.300different views um because the whole point of a consensus document is to bring people together
03:01:33.160usually from disparate camps well and even doug said on that cross politic episode at the end of
03:01:39.060november was that it wasn't necessarily well this is reading between the lines he didn't say this
03:01:44.140he's uh if it was a consensus document then this wouldn't be true what he said which is
03:01:49.560this document was really like a line in the sand to figure out where people aligned totally so it's
03:01:54.760not a consensus document and if you want a line like again the clarity thing if you want a line
03:01:58.560in the sand then it needs to be a line and not a series of squiggles so so that's a lot of the
03:02:04.800the issue there there was another one later that was like the natural affection statement that was
03:02:08.640more clear but at that point it was like look we're just not going to play the whole statement
03:02:13.940game just gonna keep being positive about what we believe engage with these issues and also
03:02:19.260um like there's there's not there doesn't need to be a rush to like figure out every single thing
03:02:26.200to where everybody agrees all the time right away when there's dispute people can have different
03:02:32.160emphases one of the things that steven wolf said on the panel at our conference that was really
03:02:36.320i thought compelling and insightful um he was talking about the criticism that like some guys
03:02:42.460just seem obsessed with the jews and they seem obsessed with whatever and he basically just said
03:02:46.120look people are allowed to be interested in things stop jesus juking yeah like people could be
03:02:51.000interested in golf and talk a lot about that or they could be interested in like pol pot and talk
03:02:54.800a lot about that or they could be interested in some is whatever that's fine it doesn't mean
03:02:58.940they're idol idolaters about that thing that's a tgc coded argument right like you're if you love
03:03:05.740your wife and you think a lot about your kids and you're you're an idolater and it's like
03:03:09.700it just the whole thing came across to me as um a strong arm political play to attempt to force
03:03:18.140consensus draw a line in the sand that's fine if you want to draw a line and say this is what i
03:03:22.960believe and i don't want anybody um on my team who is not within this circle i've just drawn
03:03:28.880but again draw a circle not a series of squiggles yeah it does seem like it was really trying to
03:03:34.320solidify the tribe who's on my team who's not on my team in this zero-sum game that's just the
03:03:40.020appearance maybe it could be wrong but if that's the case one of the dangers of a zero-sum game
03:03:45.160philosophy as you enter into the especially the christian world is that when you fight then it's
03:03:51.380not actually to come to truth right it's actually not to come to truth it's it's to gain whatever
03:03:57.020it is you want and so james i think this is really apt as far as what could be going on
03:04:02.700James says, what causes fights and quarrels among you?
03:04:34.300And I think also one of the questions that would arise, the document, the timeline, and sort of the players involved, you mentioned the churchmen.
03:04:44.260One of the things that could be a real problem here is it seems like the distrust among pastors and their people could actually go up.
03:04:51.480I was in an exchange, which Doug screenshotted and put in a May blog, but I think he's from Canada.
03:04:57.600a young guy was, you know, arguing with me repeatedly on multiple posts, you know, a nuns
03:05:05.880need, they need to, in their handle, they need to have their pastor's contact information and they
03:05:11.960need to submit, you know, basically he needs to have complete oversight over. Even like access
03:05:19.220to the account with the password so that he can edit any tweets he doesn't like. Yeah. I mean,
03:05:23.240it's just gotten to this level and i called it like the last thing pastors need to be
03:05:28.080is social media hall monitors like we're busy we have a lot of real issues to care for and if a guy
03:05:36.020wants to go on x and talk about like flat earth or whatever it is um i'm like i don't have really
03:05:42.640time to actually monitor all of that so it seemed like kind of a ridiculous play but i'm just curious
03:05:48.280if you see the potential that this erodes trust even further between pastors and their people
03:05:54.600yeah you you have real real problems where like again the caricature is that well then people are
03:06:01.900just allowed to sin and you don't care about it right your flog is like well obviously not
03:06:05.460um you really do have guys who are sinning in their speech will give an account for every
03:06:11.020careless word we speak and that includes what we write online of course and so when it you know if
03:06:17.060if we had an issue with a church member and and they were sinful in their speech in whatever
03:06:21.620direction we would address it with them in a appropriate way pastorally and that sort of thing
03:06:27.700um the the this the hidden play though in the whole thing is like therefore if a non seem to
03:06:34.220be on your team and they're sinning um you you're then their position becomes a part of your
03:06:40.680position and you're responsible that's the play that i just we we need to reject out of hand and
03:06:44.540say no we've already talked about that um but i'm against people sinning i know this is going to be
03:06:50.340really strong i'm against people sinning and so i uh would would of course want to address sin
03:06:58.880wherever it lies but the thing is there's nothing special necessarily about social media that
03:07:04.720wouldn't apply to why wouldn't i as a pastor um want to monitor all their conversations at work
03:07:11.040or in private or with their friends because at that point i mean we're social media yeah is
03:07:17.260included but it's like do i need to go through every bank statement from all of our people and
03:07:21.400we talk to our people again like about all of these issues even just narrow it down to all
03:07:25.940these issues we talk to our guys all the time about this stuff i know where they all stand
03:07:30.420because shepherds ought to know the state of their flock and know their souls keep a watch over them
03:07:35.980Hebrews 13, seven and 17, just go see those passages. So we're doing that. We're shepherding
03:07:41.760our people. Um, we're trying to like, people can hide stuff, whatever, but we're doing that.
03:07:47.680And we're not doing it under a cloud of ignorance where we're just, well, if I ask them about their
03:07:52.380views on this stuff, then I'll have to find out what it is and maybe correct them. It's more that
03:07:57.160we're already having all these conversations with these folks. And the second thing is I do want to
03:08:02.420be careful about the scope of pastoral authority and say that it's to the flat earth thing it is
03:08:08.420not within the realm of my pastoral authority to discipline someone for holding a wrong view about
03:08:13.340the shape of the earth now if they were doing certain things like saying the bible flat earthers
03:08:20.260do this the bible demands that you be a flat earther and if you're not you're a heretic and
03:08:25.160they were starting to be schismatic in the church we would address that right if if somebody was
03:08:29.400saying like so you're saying if they laugh at the wrong meme you know like a flat earth meme
03:08:35.080then they're not even a christian that sort of thing yeah we don't have authority to say that
03:08:39.320you know if someone said all of a sudden they were spouting stuff about like i you know want to
03:08:45.880genocide jews or whatever then you know it's just like there's a there's a distinction that we need
03:08:51.440to make between people's views of lots of things and my pastoral authority yeah i think that that
03:08:58.520also is a repeated theme um with american milk and honey is that doug will refer to things like
03:09:04.860this is the christian position on your view of the holocaust um or going back to the antioch
03:09:10.860declaration um they said this isn't like a creedal document like you can be a christian and not
03:09:16.440believe these things maybe some of this is just being careful with speech but later toby had said
03:09:21.380well i mean i look at the document this is just boilerplate orthodoxy i'm like whoa whoa whoa
03:09:26.940whoa, whoa, whoa. Your view on Aristotle is a matter of orthodoxy. Well, I think that's actually
03:09:31.680missing the point on what this, to your point, the scope of pastoral authority.
03:09:37.020And the problem is that your view on Aristotle, that's not the claim of the document. It's that
03:09:42.700if you think that you would be contrary to the document, if you thought that Aristotle was the
03:09:47.640picture of the ideal man, not Jesus Christ. Now, of course you'd be outside Christian
03:09:52.960orthodoxy if you thought that. But the problem with that being included in a statement like this
03:09:56.680is again the implication is that there are people who are saying this and they happen to be all our
03:10:01.440opponents on all this stuff it's it's a subtle implication particularly eric khan well yeah
03:10:07.120i mean so that's the implication a lot of these people so the problem is that okay yeah when you
03:10:12.860when you take things totally out of their context as absolute truth statements yes aristotle is not
03:10:18.900surpassing the lord jesus christ as the model of the ideal man um of you know of course but nobody
03:10:25.880said that but no but don't but to say that in a statement implies that there's a widespread need
03:10:30.940to correct this erroneous view and what it does is it just in a very ham-fisted and rhetorically
03:10:36.780unsophisticated way it associates people who are positive about aristotle with that view that no
03:10:45.020one holds which ironically would end up refuting nsa since they've hosted talks about how to use
03:10:51.920aristotle and it was actually funny because it was right afterwards like colin redimer was at nsa
03:10:56.480talking about what christians can glean from aristotle so of course you could always retreat
03:11:00.780to like i wasn't saying that you can't like aristotle look we like aristotle but the point
03:11:05.240is if you include in your statement a refutation of a position nobody holds you're actually doing
03:11:11.240something you're saying something in a plausibly deniable way that is you know it's it's just it's
03:11:17.660not helpful. Yeah. That's the problem. Yeah, I think that's great. One of the other questions
03:11:22.420we wanted to answer is what kind of Christian nationalism, what brand of Christian nationalism
03:11:26.680are we promoting? And I guess just to kick us off, it would be the Canon Press published
03:11:34.300Stephen Wolfian kind of classical two kingdoms, reformed Christian nationalism. So Brian,
03:11:43.500I guess if you want to expand on that, first of all, do you agree with that?
03:11:46.100yeah yeah so this is one of the questions that in terms of like okay positively though ogden guys
03:11:52.060what are you actually promoting are you with all of the worst are you do you agree with the 10
03:11:56.840worst things i could find an onset on twitter we're like no let's just say positively here's
03:12:01.560what we would defend and the ideas that we're kicking around and thinking through and in
03:12:06.900debating and all this is like generally yeah what what dr wolf wrote in the case for classical
03:12:12.760Christian Nationalism, published by Canon Press. That's a pretty good summation of the kind of
03:12:17.980Christian nationalism that we are interested in promoting and discussing, and even expanding,
03:12:24.200which is why we invited Stephen to come out to our conference last June. And we were very careful
03:12:30.380about asking him, we would like you to give this talk addressing this question, the failure and
03:12:36.960danger of multicultural pluralism, this kind of thing, and what we should build instead,
03:12:40.660because we were interested in his ideas and we wanted him to expand them into another question,
03:12:46.580not just rehash the book, but give us. And he took an extraordinary amount of time and put
03:12:52.220together a very helpful lecture over an hour of, of well-reasoned discussion on this question.
03:13:00.120So what kind of Christian nationalism are we promoting? Well, one reason you shouldn't try
03:13:06.020to nuke Ogden is if you're Moscow is because it's the thing you published. That's the thing that we're,
03:13:10.660promoting. So, so maybe there are other wings of Christian nationalism that have other
03:13:15.780views and maybe they find some of those problematic or something, but it really does
03:13:20.580come back to like, if, if you end up denouncing us, what you're denouncing is Dr. Wolf.
03:13:25.400Yeah, I think that's helpful. And then, and then also I would say at the conference,
03:13:29.820what was a great benefit, at least to me, I mean, it probably was to you guys as well,
03:13:33.760but having steven wolf there and dr rigney being able to talk through uh some of these issues white
03:13:41.740boy summer we were talking about we talked about everything yeah and i hitler the nazis white boy
03:13:47.340summer i thought what was really helpful was when we were talking to dr rigney especially about this
03:13:53.140he was like oh well if that's what you believe like that's great that's cool i'm cool with white
03:13:57.400boy summer what you're saying yeah we we had you know probably hours of conversation with some
03:14:03.000combination of all those guys and all of them at different points including joel and uh we what
03:14:09.140was interesting is that as we discussed it it was pretty much like hey what what do you guys think
03:14:12.960about this like you know is hitler a christian prince no okay we don't think so either what
03:14:16.820about and we pretty much agreed on almost all of these there's probably nuances and different
03:14:22.160or undeveloped thoughts that develop more later but pretty much in those conversations it was like
03:14:27.860oh yeah cool same team yeah well that's that's cool like um i i joked to the to those guys at
03:14:35.600one point like you know that you're you've you've run into the like the far wall of the right wing
03:14:40.800when you're denying the holocaust happened but you think it should have you know like that that's the
03:14:45.200level but none of us have seriously ever promoted anything to that effect nobody there so um if if
03:14:52.680anybody needed clarity i don't think they really did i think we've been pretty clear on all this
03:14:57.040stuff from the beginning um but it's pretty like it's kind of a letdown of an answer because we're
03:15:04.320not like transgressive edgelords at the end of the day we're kind of like boring guys entering
03:15:12.060middle age who are interested in a lot of this stuff right yeah i think uh something from
03:15:18.700christian nationalism that i think's helpful steve it it was controversial because of how
03:15:23.500we've all been hardwired theologically to think about the pastor's role.
03:15:27.420But one thing Stephen said was, I'm not an expert on all things theological, systematic
03:16:40.660If you don't believe a certain historic narrative outside of the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, outside of King David and the events that happened, you know, surrounding King David or if Samson existed or, you know, Adam and Eve, like those things are, are, that is orthodoxy.
03:16:59.020The formation of Israel, World War II, like those things are not in the realm of orthodoxy.
03:17:06.460I mean, you could have something that's just an absolute, complete lie that there's evidence of, and you could be convinced, and somebody is believing a lie.
03:17:16.500That's a different thing than orthodoxy.
03:17:19.380I think it would be similar to Haunted Cosmos, where you could say, okay, yeah, we have genuine hobbies.
03:17:42.520You know, an example would be, you know, what if there's a lot of Christians in Palestine, Palestinian Christians.
03:17:47.060Imagine you were to make the position that no Palestinian Christians can be Christians, really, unless they agree with what Dennis Prager believes about the state of Israel.
03:17:58.160It would just be an a priori absurd position to take.
03:18:01.940and a lot of it when it's stated very positively and very confidently without people thinking
03:18:06.960through some of these issues like concretely you can go oh yeah that's right if you don't
03:18:11.280agree with that you know basically you're not a christian but then when you start like i i don't
03:18:16.980want i don't think we're the guys who are known for being like we need a ton of nuance all the
03:18:21.000time but you know like let's actually have some nuance when we're talking about whether someone
03:18:24.780is inside or outside of the faith i think that's a pretty important question yeah yeah i think so
03:18:29.880A final question that we'll address, what do we hope will be the result of an episode like this?
03:18:36.080Brian, you mentioned certain areas for repentance would be nice.
03:18:40.640I think for my money, just to start that off, I would say, you know, okay, we've addressed Tobias on this privately, but it would be nice to have a retraction and repentance on, you know, calling us leaders of an anti-Semitic racist movement in America.
03:19:44.380The other thing that I would love is out of this to just be able,
03:19:50.240Like, I think we're trying to lead the charge a little bit in this episode with just doing this.
03:19:56.560Let's bring all the stuff into the light.
03:19:58.620Let's talk about it directly so that everybody can stop sort of proxy warring and shadow warring and shadow boxing.
03:20:04.620We're just going to say all the stuff we've been thinking and talking about and have it open to correction or debate.
03:20:12.120I would love to see these kinds of debates continue in that spirit with a with a more surgical approach to who I am anathematizing on one edge to just disagreeing with on another like that sort of thing.
03:20:24.800Yeah, I think making careful distinction. I think also and we would love to be a part of this, but getting some of these guys together to debate positions rather than kind of the rhetoric, I think, that's lobbed from afar, the mischaracterization of positions.
03:20:40.940So, for example, I would love to see Dr. Boot and Stephen Wolf talk about theonomy versus the classical two kingdoms.
03:20:50.120Let's have a long-form thing where we actually go through the positions, relying less, I think, on instantaneous rhetorical devices on Twitter because these are actually important discussions.
03:26:46.800Every single one of them, I could list manifold areas of theological,
03:26:51.660cultural disagreement about significant things even.
03:26:55.800And yet there's nothing inconsistent with holding those and saying,
03:26:59.860Lord, please bless this church in this other state,
03:27:02.780Please bless this church near us that they would be strengthened in faith, that they would be refined by the Lord.
03:27:09.560Like, we can do that, and I want even people who are interested and invested in some of these things to be able to do that, to have permission from us.
03:32:42.880being excellent in your vocation and whatever you do,
03:32:45.760and being careful in guarding your mouth,
03:32:49.980whether that's digital or out loud, from sinning.
03:32:53.460We're all going to give an account for the words that we say, and that's a sobering thought for us.
03:32:59.020It should be a sobering thought for you.
03:33:01.200Make sure that one of the variables that you include in your calculation is Christian unity across disputes like this, because this isn't the first one.
03:33:10.280It's certainly not going to be the last one that all of us occasionally have to pull the sword from our scabbard and do some jousting, even with brothers and friends.
03:33:19.340So you don't joust with a sword, but you know what I'm talking about.
03:33:22.260So I'd encourage you guys, whatever you do, do it with all of your might for the glory of the Lord, for the sake of his people.
03:33:29.900Give your life for your brothers and for the Lord, and you won't go astray.