The King's Hall - Pope Urban II and the Call for the First Crusade

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00:00:56.600 Just months after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001,

00:01:10.780 former President Bill Clinton spoke to an audience at Georgetown University. In his talk,

00:01:16.800 he said that those of us who come from various European lineages are not blameless because of

00:01:23.500 West's involvement in the Crusades, which he called a crime against Islam. He then summarized

00:01:29.380 an account of all the blood that was spilled when Duke Godfrey and his forces conquered Jerusalem

00:01:34.680 in 1099. Similarly, the New York Times said in 1999 that the Crusades were comparable to

00:01:42.620 Hitler's atrocities and the ethnic cleansing that occurred in Kosovo. That same year,

00:01:48.460 a former nun, Karen Armstrong, shared her opinion on the Crusades.

00:01:53.280 Crusading answered a deep need in the Christians of Europe, yet today most of us would unhesitantly

00:01:59.800 condemn the Crusades as unchristian. After all, Jesus told his followers to love their enemies,

00:02:05.820 not to exterminate them. He was a pacifist and had more in common with Gandhi perhaps than Pope

00:02:11.700 Urban, end quote. She also echoed a modern liberal sentiment that holy war cannot jive with

00:02:18.120 the pacifism of Jesus. One former priest, James Carroll, agreed saying that the Crusades

00:02:24.120 left a trail of violence that scars the earth and human memory even to this day.

00:02:30.880 Such claims date back to the Enlightenment, a time period in which British and French

00:02:36.040 intellectuals invented the term Dark Ages to vilify the Catholic Church and elevate themselves

00:02:42.180 in its place. David Hume, for example, said that the Crusades were the most signal and most

00:02:47.860 durable monument to human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation, end quote.

00:02:54.640 German Lutheran church historian Johann Lures von Möncheng, who lived from 1693 to 1755,

00:03:01.900 was probably the origin of the Crusaders as Western imperialists' false narrative.

00:03:07.560 He said the motivations for crusading should be ascribed to a mixture of superstition

00:03:12.500 and fanaticism. Later, Edward Gibbon said that the Crusaders went,

00:03:17.860 in pursuit of mines of treasure, gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper,

00:03:24.640 and of odiferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense.

00:03:27.680 By the 1980s, the anti-Western narrative had picked up steam.

00:03:32.600 One scholar said,

00:03:34.040 Our verdict on the Crusades is that it amounted to a colonial exploitation.

00:03:39.400 Cairn Armstrong said,

00:03:41.260 These were our first colonies.

00:03:44.040 Rodney Stark summarizes the modern, popular consensus on the Crusades in this way.

00:03:49.540 During the Crusades, an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalized, looted, and colonized a tolerant, peaceful Islam.

00:04:00.620 This narrative is patently false, as even a growing number of secular historians like Rodney Stark have long pointed out.

00:04:08.120 We'll get to the real story in just a moment, but first we wanted to ask a pivotal question.

00:04:13.180 Why is the progressive, secular Marxist left so hell-bent on destroying the true history

00:04:19.940 of Christendom and its heroes? To answer this question, we want to turn now to the cultural

00:04:25.980 prophet Patrick J. Buchanan, who wrote the following words in 2002, long before critical

00:04:32.700 race theory or wokeness had swallowed up the discourse of everyday American lives. Buchanan

00:04:39.080 writes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was right when he said, to destroy a people, you must first

00:04:45.780 sever their roots. How does one sever a people's roots? Answer, destroy its memory. Deny people

00:04:52.680 the knowledge of who they are and where they came from. If we forget what we did, we won't know who

00:04:58.540 we are, said Ronald Reagan in his farewell address to the American people. I am warning of the

00:05:03.900 eradication of the American memory that could result ultimately in an erosion of the American

00:05:10.440 spirit, end quote. In the Middle Ages, Ottoman Turks imposed on Balkan Christians a blood tax.

00:05:18.020 One boy out of every five, taken from their parents, the boys were raised as strict Muslims

00:05:22.800 to become the fanatic elite soldiers of the sultan, the Janissaries, who were then sent back

00:05:28.900 to occupy and oppress the peoples who had born them. For a modern state, the formula for erasing

00:05:35.680 memory was given to us by Orwell in the party slogan of Big Brother. Who controls the past

00:05:41.840 controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. Destroy the record of a

00:05:47.680 people's past. Leave it in ignorance of who its ancestors were and what they did, and one can fill

00:05:54.420 the empty vessels of their soul with a new history, as in George Orwell's book, 1984.

00:06:00.960 Dishonor or disgrace a nation's heroes and you can demoralize its people. The cause of Irish

00:06:06.980 independence was crippled by the revelation that the great Charles Stuart Parnell was living in

00:06:12.960 adultery with the wife of Captain O'Shea. Baseball almost did not survive the Black Sox scandal of

00:06:19.280 1919, when the popular hero Shoeless Joe Jackson was found to have taken money from gamblers and

00:06:26.120 his team had thrown the World Series. The loss of faith was caught in the kid's lament. Say it ain't

00:06:32.860 so, Joe. Richard Nixon's new majority was shattered by Watergate and the resignation of a resident

00:06:39.400 and vice president who had carried 49 states. The success of Nixon's enemies and outing from

00:06:46.220 office, a hated adversary became the archetype for the politics of personal destruction,

00:06:52.700 the defeat of causes by disgracing their flawed champions. It had become standard

00:06:58.100 operating procedure in American politics. Cultural Marxists understood this. Their

00:07:04.320 critical theory was a prototype of the politics of personal destruction. What the latter does

00:07:09.340 to popular leaders, critical theory does to an entire nation through repeated assaults on its

00:07:14.920 past. It is the moral equivalent of vandalizing the graves and desecrating the corpses of its

00:07:20.760 ancestors. Many of the institutions that now have custody of America's past operate on the

00:07:27.100 principles of Big Brother's Ministry of Truth, drop down the memory hole, the patriotic stories

00:07:33.200 of America's greatness and glory, and produce new warts-and-all histories that play up her crimes

00:07:39.000 and sins, revealing what we have loved to be loathsome and those we have revered to be

00:07:44.820 disreputable, even despicable. Many old heroes have not survived the killing fields of the new

00:07:51.340 history. Ultimate goal, destroy patriotism, kill the love of country, demoralize the people,

00:07:59.200 deconstruct America. History then will no longer unite and inspire us, but depress and divide us

00:08:06.380 into the children of victims and the children of the villains of America's past. A child's love

00:08:13.000 of its mother grows naturally, but love of country must be taught. Only by learning can a child know

00:08:19.000 of the people and nation to which he or she belongs. For those born before World War II,

00:08:26.380 love of country came easy. Radio, movies, newspapers, comic books, and conversations

00:08:32.600 conveyed the same message. We are good and rising people, attacked without warning at Pearl Harbor.

00:08:39.600 Many brave Americans had died there. Others were bayoneted on the death march in a place called

00:08:45.000 Bataan. Now we were paying Japan back. There was a spirit of solidarity and unity, then unlike any

00:08:52.360 we have known since. We were truly one nation, indivisible, and one people. But after the

00:08:59.220 assassination of President Kennedy, an adversary culture arose that set about dynamiting America's

00:09:05.620 legends. Demythologizing her history and demolishing her heroes, with its media collaborators,

00:09:12.180 this counterculture has left scarcely an institution unscarred or a hero unsullied.

00:09:18.520 We grew up in an era of belief. We grow old in an era of disbelief, feebly fending off the

00:09:25.320 relentless pounding of the artillery of an adversary culture that accepts no armistice.

00:09:32.120 Poignant words. To destroy a people, you must sever their roots from the historical past.

00:09:37.980 The true histories of our Christian forefathers have to be sent down the memory hole.

00:09:42.880 Nowhere is this instinct more obvious or openly hostile among today's ruling class

00:09:47.440 and institutional educators than with the Crusades. Which brings us to a pivotal question.

00:09:53.240 What really happened in the Crusades?

00:09:55.260 What motivated them?

00:09:57.460 In short, after centuries of bloody conquests by the Muslims into lands once held by Christendom,

00:10:02.900 the West finally fought back.

00:10:06.080 As we covered in a previous episode, Heraclius and the Byzantine Empire suffered a serious

00:10:10.420 defeat at Yarmouk in 636 after the Muslim invasion.

00:10:15.060 Huge percentages of once-Christian lands were consumed by invading Muslim forces.

00:10:20.580 Muhammad's upstart religion was notoriously bloodthirsty and violent,

00:10:24.840 and the following centuries were therefore marked by continuous Muslim incursions into Christian territory.

00:10:31.460 As a result, Christian heroes like El Cid and Charles Martel would engage in defensive campaigns to reconquer Christian lands

00:10:38.780 and to free their people from the tyranny, rape, and forced slavery imposed by Islamic peoples.

00:10:44.420 It was a brutal and intolerant age, and so, as Rodney Stark points out,

00:10:49.140 efforts to portray Muslims as enlightened supporters of multiculturalism are, at best,

00:10:55.160 ignorant. In November of 1095, at the height of the Muslim invasion, Pope Urban II spoke from a

00:11:03.020 platform outside the French city of Claremont, surrounded by an enormous crowd. At 53 years of

00:11:09.500 age, Urban retained his vigor and was blessed with an unusually powerful voice that reached across

00:11:15.140 to the very edges of the assembled crowd in an era that didn't have electronic amplification.

00:11:21.120 There he gave a speech that would change history forever. Urban speech was sparked by a dispatch

00:11:27.260 that had arrived sometime earlier from Count Robert of Flanders, containing within it a letter

00:11:32.700 from Alexius Commemnus, ruler of the Byzantine Empire. In the letter, Emperor Commemnus begged

00:11:38.760 the Pope for aid. The Seljuk Turks, newly converted to Islam, had been radicalized and

00:11:44.020 militarily mobilized by their new religion. They had begun a fanatical invasion to Christian

00:11:49.040 territory. In their surprise invasion, they had routed Christian army after Christian army.

00:11:54.580 They had devoured the city of Jerusalem and all the cities surrounding it. Tens of thousands of

00:12:00.320 men strong, the Turks now made camp just 100 miles from the great city of Constantinople,

00:12:05.960 the eastern bulwark of Christianity for the last thousand years. Constantinople seemed to be on

00:12:12.140 the verge of defeat. The Byzantine emperor swore that if Constantinople fell, then all of Europe

00:12:17.360 would follow with it. Alexius had started his letter by pleading and begging, and then ended

00:12:22.800 it by promising the wrath of God on Urban if he should fail to help the Greeks. Alexius wrote,

00:12:29.400 Therefore, in the name of God, we implore you to bring to this city all the faithful soldiers of

00:12:35.000 Christ. In your coming you will find your reward in heaven, and if you do not come, God will

00:12:40.460 condemn you, end quote. Despite the long-standing rift between the Church of the Latin West and

00:12:46.680 Eastern Byzantium, Pope Urban quickly grasped the severity of the situation. He rightly judged that

00:12:53.700 if Constantinople fell, the rest of Europe and Christendom would be next. And so he went about

00:13:00.040 preaching all across Europe to kings, knights, and farmers alike. At Claremont, Urban implored

00:13:05.620 the leading men of Europe to rise to the defense of Jerusalem and all of Christendom. Speaking in

00:13:11.840 French, he said, quote, The Muslims destroy the altars after having defiled them with their

00:13:17.600 uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of circumcision they either pour on the

00:13:22.860 altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture a people by

00:13:28.880 a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines,

00:13:34.180 they bind it to a stake. Then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having

00:13:39.820 gushed forth the victim falls prostrate on the ground. What shall I say to the abominable rape

00:13:45.740 of women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging

00:13:52.100 these wrongs and recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? Pope Urban went on,

00:13:59.580 Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way

00:14:04.020 against the barbarians.

00:14:06.160 Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay

00:14:09.640 now obtain the eternal reward.

00:14:12.300 Let those who have been wearing themselves out

00:14:14.240 in both body and soul now work for a double honor.

00:14:17.900 Behold, on this side will be the sorrowful and the poor,

00:14:21.580 on that the rich.

00:14:23.260 On this side the enemies of the Lord,

00:14:25.000 on that his friends.

00:14:27.040 Let those who go not put off the journey,

00:14:29.840 but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses.

00:14:33.080 And as soon as winter is over and spring comes,

00:14:35.900 let them eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide."

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00:15:21.120 In response to Urban's oration, the Knights Presence began to cut pieces of clothing into strips,

00:15:27.160 fashioning them into crosses and sewing them to their chests.

00:15:30.680 This act was known as Taking the Cross. Hundreds of knights present partook of the action,

00:15:36.080 effectively swearing their oaths to relieve their eastern brethren of the oppression

00:15:39.900 of the Islamic religion and military force. It was not lowly knights that swore oaths that day,

00:15:45.940 but predominantly powerful members of the nobility, such as Count Raymond of Toulouse.

00:15:51.620 As the crosses were made, cries of Dieu le Volte rang out in French. The saying,

00:15:57.020 translated in Latin as deus volt, means the Lord wills it. It would become the rallying cry of the

00:16:03.340 Crusades, which are conventionally defined as the conflicts between Christendom and Islam for

00:16:08.620 control of the Holy Land that occurred between 1095 and 1291. Pope Urban's speech concluded,

00:16:15.280 according to Baldrick, by his turning to the bishops and enlisting them to go preach the

00:16:19.960 Crusades elsewhere. This was significant and necessary because despite the will of the

00:16:25.940 impassioned knights at Clermont, many thousands more would be needed to fight in a crusade against

00:16:31.060 Islam. It's perhaps hard for modern American Christians, who have been leavened by the

00:16:36.420 teachings of pietism and pacifism, to comprehend. But it was a deep sense of piety that caused

00:16:42.980 Christian knights to respond to the call for a crusade. They enlisted in the cause because

00:16:48.340 the world was a bloody mess, and they saw it as their job to defend Christendom in its cities.

00:16:54.780 They heard the stories of Christian pilgrims being slaughtered and nuns being raped.

00:16:59.900 It moved them to take action.

00:17:02.200 Likewise, knights of that era were trained for, and expected to be engaged in, warfare.

00:17:07.940 As Rodney Stark puts it, a knight was raised to regard fighting as his chief function,

00:17:13.760 and throughout his life the knight spent most of his time in practicing with his arms or actually fighting.

00:17:19.300 Dull periods of peace were largely devoted to hunting on horseback such savage animals as the wild boar, end quote.

00:17:28.000 Understanding the knight's motivation, Urban couched his offer to join in a crusade in terms of joining a monastic order.

00:17:35.440 For the knight, there would be an imparting of a special holiness, a purging from sin, and a certainty of salvation for those who took part.

00:17:43.620 Hubert of Nogent recalled Urban's words at Claremont, which were as follows.

00:17:48.560 God has instituted in our time holy wars, so that the order of knights, who have been

00:17:54.020 slaughtering one another, might find a new way of gaining salvation, and so they are

00:17:58.640 not forced to abandon secular affairs completely, but can attain some measure of God's grace

00:18:04.140 while pursuing their own careers, with the liberty and dress to which they are accustomed.

00:18:10.240 As Stark writes, tens of thousands of dedicated pacifists could do nothing to liberate the

00:18:15.640 Holy Land. It was going to take an army of belligerent knights who were motivated,

00:18:20.640 but not transformed by the promise of salvation. Thus, the invention of penitential warfare.

00:18:27.180 End quote. As for who actually went on the First Crusade, it was largely groups of closely related

00:18:34.100 families who already had wealth and status. They were mostly from the ruling class and went at

00:18:39.880 great personal cost to themselves. There, of course, was a people's crusade led by Peter the

00:18:45.180 hermit, but it was largely ineffective and was annihilated upon its arrival. More on that later.

00:18:50.720 Stark writes, consider the family headed by Count William Tethardy of Burgundy. He had five sons.

00:18:58.320 Of these, three went on the first crusade and the fourth became a priest who, as Pope Calixtus II,

00:19:04.720 inaugurated an extension of the crusade to attack Damascus in 1122. Count William also had four

00:19:11.040 daughters. Three were married to men who joined their brothers-in-law and went on the first crusade,

00:19:16.280 and the fourth was a mother of a first crusader. As for the second crusade, this family sent 10

00:19:21.920 crusaders in 1147. Crusading was largely a family rather than individual enterprise,

00:19:28.700 because substantial sums of money had to be raised to supply the journey. Often, men were forced to

00:19:35.160 mortgage entire estates to cover the cost of crusading. Crusading was a ridiculously expensive

00:19:41.320 endeavor, which is why mainly nobility signed up. Knights needed armor, arms, preferably two or three

00:19:48.020 warhorses, a riding horse, many pack horses and mules, and various other supplies. For example,

00:19:54.620 Guy of Tiers paid 10 pounds for a warhorse, which was equal to more than two years of salary for a

00:20:00.960 captain. Knights also needed servants, clothing, tenting, and cash for the journey. By Rodney

00:20:09.080 Stark's estimate, the typical crusader needed to raise at least four or five times his annual

00:20:14.860 income before he could set out. Likewise, it must be noted that roughly 10% responded to Urban's

00:20:21.680 call, which means 90% did not. The reality was that crusading was expensive. Most would die on

00:20:28.760 the way or in the fighting, and it was more likely to bring destitution, not financial gain.

00:20:35.040 Likewise, far from establishing an imperial colony that would bring riches to Europe,

00:20:40.060 the Crusades frequently became contentious because they drained resources and sent some

00:20:45.700 of Christendom's best heroes to die in the Holy Land far from home.

00:20:49.880 In the First Crusade, there were largely two camps, the People's Crusade and the Prince's

00:20:54.920 Crusade. The People's Crusade was organized by Peter the Hermit, who'd gathered an impressive

00:21:01.000 group in size thanks to his remarkable preaching. The People's Crusade, which also included Walter

00:21:07.020 the Penniless, grew as large as 100,000 strong. It was composed of lowly knights, peasants,

00:21:13.880 and even women and children. Because it lacked leadership, the People's Crusade often got

00:21:19.740 sidetracked with pillaging along the way. In Bulgaria, for example, Peter's contingent could

00:21:25.880 not be controlled, and after looting nearby towns, got into a heated conflict with the Bulgarians.

00:21:32.340 Quote, as many as a third of Peter's contingent were killed, writes Rodney Stark, and many of

00:21:37.460 their wagons were lost to the Bulgarians, including Peter's treasure wagon, end quote.

00:21:42.860 The first to arrive in Constantinople in August of 1096, Peter's contingent was sent by the

00:21:49.180 emperor to cross the Sea of Marmara and establish a camp at Helenopolis. He was joined there by

00:21:55.300 Walter and his knights. After two months there and a few successful pillaging runs in the direction

00:22:00.840 of Nicaea, war fever broke out amongst the people's crusade. Foolishly, they marched out

00:22:06.700 against the Turks and were promptly and tragically slaughtered. Only a few knights, rescued by a

00:22:12.940 Byzantine relief force, survived. All of the non-combatants, including women and children,

00:22:18.420 were killed or enslaved. In the end, a lack of discipline and authoritative leadership

00:22:24.120 doomed the people's crusade. Alexius' daughter, Anna, wrote this about the slaughter.

00:22:30.640 So great a multitude of Celts and Normans died by the Ishmaelite sword, that when they gathered

00:22:36.260 the remains of the fallen lying on every side, they heaped up, I will not say a mighty ridge

00:22:42.080 or hill or peak, but a mountain of considerable height and depth and width. So huge was the mass

00:22:48.040 of bones. Of those who survived, most were decapitated, according to Raymond Ibrahim.

00:22:53.440 Those who survived suffered an even worse fate. Of the survivors, it was written.

00:22:58.500 The Turks divided up amongst themselves some of the captives, whose lives they had spared,

00:23:03.540 or rather reserved for a more painful death, and submitted them to dismal servitude at the hands

00:23:08.560 of cruel masters. Some were exposed in public, like targets, and were pierced by arrows.

00:23:14.220 Others were given away as gifts, while others were sold outright and taken to Coruscant and

00:23:18.960 Antioch, where they would endure wretched slavery under the worst masters imaginable.

00:23:24.760 They underwent a torture much longer than that endured by those whose heads were severed swiftly

00:23:29.480 by the sword." End quote. The second group, known as the Prince's Crusade,

00:23:36.000 was led by men of remarkable leadership abilities and would find a great deal of

00:23:40.880 hard-fought success. Greatest among them was Godfrey of Bouillon. Hugh of Vamendois was one

00:23:47.280 of the five leaders of the First Crusade, albeit not one of its best. Though he was largely an

00:23:53.400 ineffectual commander, he contributed much by the way of his ability to recruit a very select group

00:23:59.720 of noble knights from the area around Paris. Hugh's contingent left in August, per the Pope's

00:24:05.660 request. When he left, Hugh sent a message to Alexius. Needless to say, Alexius was hardly

00:24:27.320 impressed by this message. Hugh would quickly be humbled. Setting sail, Hugh's ships were all sunk,

00:24:34.020 many of his men died, and he was forced ashore where Byzantine officials found him

00:24:39.120 quote, bewildered and bedraggled, end quote. Hugh would partake of the capture of Antioch in 1098,

00:24:47.340 then retreat to France. He was then shamed by the new pope, Pascal II, and threatened with

00:24:53.120 excommunication for his refusal to fight. As a result, he went back to Palestine in 1101 and

00:25:00.000 died there from wounds sustained in battle. Hugh was the brother of King Philip of France,

00:25:06.380 who was ineligible for the Crusades because he had been excommunicated from the church.

00:25:12.180 Hugh was encouraged to approach Philip and Philip provided Hugh with men and money.

00:25:17.460 Due to a copyist error, Hugh is known as Hugh Magnus or Hugh the Great. His title was originally

00:25:24.600 meant to be Hugh Minus or Hugh the Younger. Indeed, there was nothing great about Hugh's

00:25:30.360 character. He was extremely proud and arrogant, considered by Mauss to be a completely ineffectual

00:25:36.220 leader and a poor military strategist. The only reason he was allowed to embark on the crusade

00:25:42.080 in the first place was because he was wealthy and had a surplus of military soldiers.

00:25:48.240 Godfrey of Bouillon, who was known as the Duke, was a much better leader and a much better man

00:25:53.600 than Hugh. You can hear more about him in our latest Patreon-exclusive episode of The Day Who's

00:25:59.200 Fault. Godfrey was tall, blonde, and known for his exceptional piety and good character. By far

00:26:06.460 the most spiritual of all the leaders from the First Crusade, the conquest of Jerusalem would

00:26:12.100 have proved impossible without Godfrey. His exploits in the Holy Land were legendary. Godfrey's

00:26:18.760 large army reached Constantinople in December 23, 1096. Next, Bohemond of Toronto was a massive

00:26:28.220 Norman man who brought an elite Norman fighting force with him to Constantinople. Bohemond's

00:26:33.880 arrival in Constantinople caused a considerable amount of friction. This was because Bohemond

00:26:39.920 and his father had led a successful campaign into southern Italy in Sicily about a decade

00:26:45.540 beforehand. Bohemond had personally defeated Alexius Cumnenus several times in battle.

00:26:52.880 Needless to say, the emperor was surprised to find Bohemond and a large Norman army at its doorstep.

00:26:59.300 Bohemond arrived in April of 1097. Of Bohemond, Alexius' daughter Anna later wrote,

00:27:06.680 The sight of him inspired admiration, the mention of his name Terror. His stature was such that he

00:27:14.440 towered almost a full cubit, about 12 inches, over the tallest man. In fact, his real name was Mark.

00:27:22.620 But his father had nicknamed him Bohemond after the mythical giant because of his great size,

00:27:28.620 even as an infant. Anna also wrote, he was slender of waist, perfectly proportioned. His skin was

00:27:36.560 very white, his hair was lightish brown, and not so long as that of other barbarians. There was a

00:27:42.700 certain charm about him, but it was somewhat dimmed by the alarm his whole person inspired.

00:27:48.600 There was a hard, savage quality in his whole aspect. Due, I suppose, to his great stature

00:27:54.760 and his eyes, even his laugh sounded like a threat to others. His arrogance was everywhere

00:28:00.980 manifest. He was cunning, too. As the emperor would observe, Boemon was the most experienced,

00:28:07.240 talented, and politically astute commander among the crusaders, having learned his skills the hard

00:28:13.280 way. Bohemond, Hugh, and Godfrey were soon joined by Raymond of Toulouse and Duke Robert of Normandy.

00:28:21.860 They quickly reconquered the area surrounding Constantinople for Lexius, who then promptly

00:28:27.540 abandoned them. He told them that Jerusalem was of no concern to the Byzantines, and the crusaders

00:28:33.360 were free to retake the city if they so wished. Disgusted, the leaders of the First Crusade

00:28:39.380 pushed on without the help of the emperor. They would refer to the emperor as that wretched

00:28:44.760 emperor, and such hostilities would ultimately lead to the sacking of Constantinople during

00:28:50.340 the Fourth Crusade. It is hard to say exactly how many crusaders arrived in Constantinople.

00:28:56.820 According to Stark, roughly 130,000 set out in 1096, but 90,000 did not take part in the siege

00:29:05.200 of Nicaea in 1097. That is a loss rate of roughly 35 per mile who died or turned back.

00:29:13.380 By the time Jerusalem was taken, perhaps as many as 115,000 or 88% of the original crusaders had

00:29:21.340 been lost. The total number of those who died probably totaled about 120,000. Of these grave

00:29:30.400 losses of life, Stark writes, it was not until the upper class sons of Europe were slaughtered

00:29:36.800 during World War I that Europe suffered the loss of a generation of leaders equal to that which

00:29:43.000 took place during the First Crusade. Those who marched east were among the best and the brightest

00:29:48.780 of their time. When they died, the responsibilities for managing many major estates and dealing with

00:29:55.480 many important concerns fell upon widows and minor sons, and on those who failed to serve,

00:30:02.400 just as it did in England, France, and Germany in the 1920s. Even so, commitment to crusading

00:30:09.340 remained high for many more years as the families involved in the First Crusade continued to send

00:30:15.380 their subsequent generations to defend the Holy Land. Indeed, when Europe began to sour on

00:30:22.000 crusading, it appears that it was not the families who had given the most who lost heart. Rather,

00:30:27.960 it was the families who had never sent a crusader who opposed continuing to pay the taxes required

00:30:34.020 to sustain the crusader kingdoms." The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men

00:30:42.340 who rule well and win the world.

00:30:45.380 well gentlemen welcome to this episode of the king's hall podcast i am eric con i'm one of

00:30:55.360 your hosts joined today by dan the penniless dan the penniless what we gotta have names like that

00:31:01.180 for that's that's not one i have though would you be oh excuse me dan magnus i would rather be the

00:31:07.280 great dan the great dan sid or something like that dan do you know l sid so i was thinking

00:31:13.240 about trimming my beard down a little bit he had such a substantial beard that people thought it

00:31:18.380 was a point of arrogance for the guy they thought he was me wow that's crazy no no no no because he

00:31:23.280 would throw it over his shoulder to do battle like well you know what's crazy is uh the next

00:31:27.660 day his vault is actually on el sid you know which means real name is what rodrigo diaz de

00:31:34.520 vivar what a king is it i thought it was just el sid spanish for the sid the sid the sid is

00:31:40.620 Spanish for the Nino.

00:31:43.560 The Sid actually comes from the Muslims and it means the Lord.

00:31:48.720 No.

00:31:49.400 Yeah.

00:31:49.820 So the Muslims were like, I don't know who that guy is.

00:31:51.740 Probably a God.

00:31:52.580 El Cid.

00:31:53.660 Yeah.

00:31:53.980 They hated him because he killed so many of them.

00:31:56.600 Man.

00:31:56.860 I mean, that's a good reason to be hated.

00:31:58.640 What a king.

00:31:59.420 We also have, speaking of kings, Brian Sauvé, the handsomest Frenchman that we could find.

00:32:05.560 You know, while we were recording that cold open.

00:32:07.240 The only one we could find.

00:32:08.460 First of all, thank you.

00:32:09.360 one of the things i texted to my wife while we were recording that was

00:32:13.280 we have we we are having another son at whatever it takes and i'm naming him godfrey

00:32:19.400 because i'm french are you gonna he's probably the like among the greatest that guy humble

00:32:26.720 courageous i just want a little godfrey to go with my alfred you know what a name that is can

00:32:32.900 you imagine having a call like hey godfrey golly so i'm just letting you know that's gonna happen

00:32:39.100 let's go uh speaking of great names dan you had the opportunity in the cold open to read

00:32:44.940 solzhenitsyn pepper a few times salts and peppers yeah i did yeah uh how do you pronounce that now

00:32:52.040 now that you know oh solzhenitsyn oh yeah everybody knows that yeah obviously i was

00:32:56.900 pronouncing it solzhenitsyn like forever was that actually right who knows you say it with

00:33:02.840 confidence oh okay you just own it uh gentlemen it's good to have you on this episode uh brian

00:33:09.660 before we jump in we're going to be talking about the crusades obviously uh it's kind of been a

00:33:14.160 point of anticipation for us getting to this moment very excited to jump in but one other

00:33:18.960 thing i'm excited about is a little bit like a crusade it's a conference it's a conference

00:33:23.920 they both start with c yep and uh it's in christians involved in ogden utah so brian

00:33:30.360 sell me pitch me guys you got to get out here um i mean when this episode comes out there's only

00:33:36.400 gonna be a few days left on our uh lower pricing so our our discounted rate ends like april 15th

00:33:43.620 which is a monday i think this is going to come out april 12th yeah so i'm like april 12th so

00:33:47.940 you guys got a couple more days sign up we've got hundreds of people coming out brothers and

00:33:53.580 sisters from across the nation and really to me i mean i think the conference is going to be great

00:33:58.580 But my favorite part about this kind of thing is getting to just hang out with like several hundred like minded brothers from across the nation when most of us exist in little bands of merry men like Robin Hood's outlaws in various Sherwood forests across the nation, hoping that the feds don't discover the GC.

00:34:22.900 and we're going to get to get together and we're going to get going to get going to get together

00:34:27.320 in an amazing building sounded like an owen strand rap that was almost like one two three four i

00:34:33.380 declare the quicker the flick of the quicker the trigger digging a dish is whatever anyway uh it's

00:34:39.420 going to be on the east bench the mountain side of ogden at historic ogden high school right up

00:34:44.900 the street from our church we are going to have uh dr stephen wolf out dr joe rigney uh there's

00:34:51.360 going to be psalm singing. There's going to be a singles mixer. There's going to be all sorts of

00:34:56.880 great opportunities to meet and hang out with brothers and sisters talking about King Alfred

00:35:01.600 and the model that he gave us for establishing a really thick, strong Christian communities

00:35:09.240 that have defensive and offensive capability. So come join us. New Christian and press.com

00:35:16.060 slash conference you can get that discounted rate and like we've been saying if the ticket

00:35:21.520 cost is an issue like guys we can't fly you all out we can't i can't like make your bed for you

00:35:26.240 but if cost is an issue on a ticket email us um you can email who should they email they should

00:35:32.280 email uh well they can do cassie yeah so c-a-s-s-i-e at new christendompress.com yeah um dan is

00:35:40.380 actually providing free lodging for everyone is he really no i'm kidding that's why they call him

00:35:44.940 dan magnus dan magnus because he's great and that's why people love you what dan will do is

00:35:51.000 he'll provide you with the addresses of all the local parks where you can camp with the homeless

00:35:55.560 because the homeless do uh no but email us if cost is an issue on the ticket and just tell us

00:35:59.920 what you can what you can do and we'd love to have you we want us we want as many people as

00:36:03.820 possible to come and hang out and benefit yeah i think it's going to be great uh i think so far

00:36:07.760 brian you said there's like 600 ish souls that are yeah so far signed up uh one thing i do want

00:36:13.480 to encourage people maybe you already signed up maybe you haven't yet but be sure to get a ticket

00:36:17.560 to the brian silvey imagine dragons concert yeah crossover um imagine dragons is now going to send

00:36:23.900 us a cease and desist letter so thanks for that yeah well so a couple things i'm going to be

00:36:28.760 playing some live original songs and psalm settings some that you guys have heard on my

00:36:33.040 releases some that are not yet released and um we're trying actually to record a live album

00:36:38.520 uh not just of that portion but also i'm hoping that we're going to be able to produce a couple

00:36:44.340 of live songs singing the sea shanty as a huge group uh singing some psalms so if you want to

00:36:50.760 if you want to go down in history and say i was there that was me singing really loud and off key

00:36:57.000 right there at that moment that you hear in the live recording that i own that okay come hang out

00:37:03.320 come hang out it's gonna be great do you want to encourage people to like scream off key i mean

00:37:08.120 key points most of the time it's not that they think they're off key is that they they confidently

00:37:11.960 think they're on the note okay i'm always on we do have a rule at refuge church here in ogden

00:37:17.380 when we're doing psalm syncs the rule is look if possible know your part and sing it excellently

00:37:23.080 but the second option is not to be quiet if you don't know it it's to pick a note and sing it

00:37:28.200 with confidence done even if it's the wrong note so and the kids man they take me up on that every

00:37:34.900 time i say it every single time it's gonna be great it's gonna be great gentlemen let's jump

00:37:39.540 now into this episode crusades one the first crusade dan i just kind of want to get your

00:37:45.500 impression you did a lot of the reading for the cold open what is sort of the uh what would c.s

00:37:52.200 lewis say the environment created in your mind that you kind of step into as you're thinking

00:37:59.140 about the crusades what kind of frame of mind does it put you in well yeah i mean obviously

00:38:03.220 not having a lot of my education steeped in crusades history middle ages history you coming

00:38:10.460 at it with fresh eyes to a degree uh other than uh still dismantling the presuppositions that the

00:38:16.520 crusades were generally bad or unwarranted you know uh and then you start to read some of the

00:38:22.140 accounts from like alexius's was it daughter anna yeah who talks about like it i wouldn't even say

00:38:28.700 it's a hill of bones but it's a mountain yeah of bones of the slain you know it's just it's

00:38:35.340 unbelievable the atrocities that were committed by the muslims towards christian people and then

00:38:42.100 the just utter disgust that i have like bile in my mouth at the modern secularists who have then

00:38:51.040 twisted it to say it was actually the christians who are invading a multicultural peaceful islamic

00:38:59.200 people not the other way around i mean it it's it it just infuriates me i'm upset and so i'm also

00:39:08.720 glad though that uh the christians they they won first crusade yeah yeah i don't know i mean we'll

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00:43:58.000 notes but the the defender of the holy sepulchre sepulchre and my my future son godfrey

00:44:07.760 we're gonna get there this this quote from the cold open but to what to your point yeah from

00:44:14.520 buchanan when he said many old heroes have not survived the killing fields of the new history

00:44:20.620 ultimate goal destroy patriotism kill the love of country demoralize the people deconstruct

00:44:26.600 america history then will no longer unite and inspire us but depress and divide us into the

00:44:33.280 children of victims and the children of the villains of america's past wow what us i mean

00:44:39.400 in two or three sentences i think buchanan captures he wasn't talking about the crusades

00:44:44.380 he was talking about american history it's the same thing that they did the christian american

00:44:49.040 history same play that's what they did they turned the muslims into the victims and so you're the

00:44:55.380 children of the victims muslims and if you're christians if you're white if you're european

00:45:00.040 if you're on this camp if you're at all proud of the heritage of the christian west and even the

00:45:05.460 christian east before that then you are the sons of villains what kind of world will that produce

00:45:11.780 yeah and and definitely cuts the heart out of the people i love that first part of the quote

00:45:16.300 to Solzhenitsyn said, to destroy a people, you must first sever their roots. And so I think

00:45:21.420 gentlemen, one of the things we have to realize is that this is malicious. There's wicked intent

00:45:25.860 in this. And this is why I think as we've pushed back and we've fought and said, no,

00:45:30.600 these are our heroes. These are our fathers in the faith. I think that it's inspired a lot of

00:45:35.640 men in the reverse direction, sort of that white pill moment. Brian, I want to ask you as I've

00:45:41.740 been you guys don't know this yet but i've been narnia maxing oh man i didn't notice i didn't even

00:45:47.880 notice uh one of the books that i fell in love with because it's the marshall book is prince

00:45:53.020 caspian oh yes and one of the things i noticed in there was the parallels with what we're dealing

00:45:57.360 with in this season which is that you have the old narnia which is you know hundreds of years

00:46:02.080 in the past at the point that you pick the story up and all the teachers in miras and basically

00:46:09.120 the Turks in that story. They are, uh, they have clouded the history. And so, uh, it's

00:46:16.200 Caspian's nurse who sent away because she was teaching him the true history of a magical

00:46:22.260 Narnia. She was canceled. She, she was. Um, and then of course you have the, it was Dr.

00:46:29.060 Cornelius professor who is secretly teaching these things on the top of the tower to Caspian.

00:46:35.400 And so in a sort of way, it seems like that's really the work that we're trying to do is say, no, the old things are true.

00:46:41.000 Yeah, they're not evil.

00:46:42.460 And we have to sort of resurrect this old Narnia.

00:46:45.280 I also think it's interesting in Caspian because the way that they win is by using the horn to call back the kings of old.

00:46:52.520 Yes.

00:46:53.260 And those kings and queens of old come back and help them with the victory.

00:46:57.280 So in a way, we're sort of doing that symbolically, metaphorically, but we're calling back these kings.

00:47:02.820 Yes.

00:47:03.260 To our day.

00:47:04.020 yeah let's pick up susan's horn let's give it a great blast and remember the heroes of the first

00:47:11.000 narnia so that we can oust the villains of this modern narnia that is deracinated it's cut off

00:47:19.320 from its roots it is a conquer it is it is a narnia of conquerors who have come to destroy

00:47:25.860 that which is good and beautiful so i thought that was really like i'm here for it eric has

00:47:31.460 gone from saying every day like you know brian and eric or brian and dan it's kind of like

00:47:36.660 indian need and then and then a couple months later it was you know in good to great or in

00:47:42.700 the chicago bulls with phil jack jacks phil jack phil jackson that's right uh and now it's like

00:47:47.940 you guys this really reminds me of a line from reaper cheap when he said shall i draw my sword

00:47:53.120 and run them through my king caspian and uh i think eric has found his avatar in the person

00:48:00.640 of reaper cheap no question like when eustace turns into a dragon and reaper cheap says

00:48:07.220 your majesty if i may and he says no reaper cheap you may not challenge him to single combat

00:48:12.780 that's he knew before he said in our last episode it really cut deep when i said everybody's read

00:48:18.300 this except eric oh and so now he understands eric's now read yeah he understands by the way

00:48:26.180 through, through, through tears, you know, this is powerful stuff. And I think especially, uh,

00:48:31.680 as we are going through the season, it's a lot of the same feelings Lewis seemed to really capture

00:48:36.560 as did Buchanan, the importance of history. My question for you guys is this has been the

00:48:42.860 cultural Marxist push for over 50 years. My question to you is why do you think it was so

00:48:49.020 successful? Is it that Christians didn't fight it hard enough? Uh, but, but how did it get this deep

00:48:55.820 in the culture. I think that one of the things we've come at this from multiple angles in this

00:49:01.460 season so far. And one that I really want people to understand is the play that the enemy, the

00:49:07.560 conquering enemies will run on you where they, they try to take your principles and then weaponize

00:49:14.840 them against you because the Christian faith, think about Alfred the great and who was his

00:49:22.060 Guthrum, right? Mercy, where he's got this wicked, evil enemy. And Alfred the Great,

00:49:29.480 part of the greatness of him was the greatness of mercy. He didn't always kill. He didn't always

00:49:34.380 run through with the sword. He could forgive. He could make peace. He wasn't just a warrior. He

00:49:39.480 was also a peacemaker. And so what the enemies will do, what Islam will do, because it is not

00:49:44.920 a religion of peace, it's actually fundamentally a religion of total conquest and enslavement.

00:49:50.880 That's what it is. Fundamentally, in its essence, not perverted by an extremist fringe, but in its essence, that's what it is, is jihadist. It's jihadist. The struggle against all other peoples until they've been subjugated into the name of their demon God and their false prophet. And so what they will do is they'll take the mercy of Christianity, which is true.

00:50:12.680 It's a mercy that's true as steel.

00:50:14.660 And they will attempt to make it into a weaponized fake mercy of empathy and of essentially softness,

00:50:23.780 where they say, you know, but you really need to reckon with some of the foibles of your ancestors.

00:50:31.040 And they weren't sinless now, were they?

00:50:33.580 And that little crack in the door, because it's true, of course they weren't sinless.

00:50:37.960 We're Christians.

00:50:38.920 Only Christ is sinless, right?

00:50:41.140 They will take that crack in the door and they will drive a wedge into it until they have undone, like Buchanan points out, and they've dimmed and tarnished all of the glories and they've replaced them with this.

00:50:54.960 This is a thing to be repented of Christian greatness, Christian civilization, Christian rule, Christian conquest, Christian colonization is a thing to be repented of.

00:51:05.740 Not a thing that though it was suffused with weakness and sin, as all human endeavors are under the sun, it was fundamentally great.

00:51:13.860 It was fundamentally, in its essence, a good thing.

00:51:16.600 It was glorious.

00:51:17.720 So they remove all the glory.

00:51:19.380 And to me, I think that's the play that we have to reckon with and understand because they're going to keep doing it.

00:51:26.280 They're not going to stop with the Crusades.

00:51:28.360 They're not going to stop at any point.

00:51:29.940 They're going to, with their universal asset of cynicism and demonic worship, they're going to dissolve all greatness of Christian faith until they conquer and call.

00:51:38.780 And then, of course, secular conquest or Islamic conquest.

00:51:41.900 Oh, that's fine.

00:51:43.080 Any conquest but Christ conquest.

00:51:44.980 And that fundamentally reveals the reality that it really only is two sides.

00:51:50.060 It's the kingdom of darkness and it's the kingdom of light at war with different proxy

00:51:55.280 armies and different names and faces.

00:51:57.200 But that's what you're seeing.

00:51:58.460 Yeah.

00:51:58.560 The thing that you're highlighting, Saul Alinsky points out in his book Rules for Radicals.

00:52:03.220 It's rule number four.

00:52:04.660 It says, make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

00:52:08.380 Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

00:52:10.560 And so you see this weaponized Christian sympathy and, you know, Christian standards back in history.

00:52:19.120 We're seeing that happen continually.

00:52:21.380 So it's not just the Crusades, the Crusades that happened a long time ago.

00:52:24.520 Yeah.

00:52:25.020 But more recently, you see that with the destruction of statues to Confederate commanders and to monuments to men of the South, great godly men of the South.

00:52:36.660 Yeah. And you can see that they're using this weaponized empathy against Christians by making them live up to their own book of rules.

00:52:45.480 And quite honestly, a Christian that has a good theological foundation should be able to combat this fairly easily.

00:52:52.740 Like you cannot manipulate me. I know my rules better than you know my rules.

00:52:56.920 And in fact, you're not the lawgiver. You're not the one that should decree morality on me.

00:53:02.620 Pink haired LGBTQ plus transgender person.

00:53:06.120 I have a different rule giver. But instead, because of the degradation of the church and of the leadership of the church, it becomes much easier to manipulate people because it becomes more emotive instead of grounded in theology or grounded in the law of God and in the standards laid out in the scriptures and by our forefathers.

00:53:30.940 instead now it's just emotive uh principles and emotive pressure that is being put on us because

00:53:37.940 at this point we are ignorant of our history we're ignorant of our theology well that's ignorant of

00:53:43.840 our church fathers yeah i totally agree with you dan i want to ask you though what happens to a

00:53:48.220 people who have no proud history or heroes like what and the reason i ask this is because i was

00:53:53.340 thinking back to caspian again right that he c.s lewis does such a phenomenal job of showing how

00:54:00.240 miserable and enslaved the people are who have no heroes and part of what happens is that aslin

00:54:07.100 comes and the kings and queens come back and then people start that like the air changes yeah and

00:54:12.580 they start to act differently and they start to be heroic again and act courageously but as you look

00:54:16.840 at our culture our society what does it produce when you have no proud history or heroes and it's

00:54:23.220 even just like specifically in what the talmarines did in in killing old narnia it's that they

00:54:30.060 They reduced Narnia to materialist world.

00:54:34.420 Yes.

00:54:34.740 And they killed its soul.

00:54:36.280 And so the reawakening is a spiritual reawakening to the true faith.

00:54:40.800 Yeah.

00:54:40.980 And it's interesting because it's like they had to kill the magic.

00:54:44.880 They're like, of course, there's no lion.

00:54:46.220 Are you dumb?

00:54:47.040 And then, you know, of course, Aslan comes back.

00:54:50.840 Spoiler alert.

00:54:51.740 But yeah, Dan, just curious, like what?

00:54:54.440 Well, yeah, I think you see this in different different story narratives such as Narnia and

00:54:59.260 some others.

00:55:00.060 is that when you have a group of people, they have a shared mission and vision and cultural

00:55:04.660 foundation. People, essentially, it's kind of like a hive where everybody is working together.

00:55:11.240 They know their mission. Like a honeybee knows what he has to do. Some are getting pollen,

00:55:16.040 some are guarding, some are tending brood, like everybody is working together. As soon as the

00:55:21.320 mission and the vision and the culture of the people is chopped off at the roots,

00:55:25.160 essentially the history, the fathers, the Kings, um, great men, you, you have a people that like

00:55:33.400 Brian said, have lost their soul. Yeah. They, they don't exist for any purpose. So imagine with

00:55:39.360 me for a moment, if you have a group of people that had a Christian foundation that had great

00:55:45.660 leaders, great fathers in the faith, great Kings and rulers and men, and they decided that they

00:55:52.180 were going to cut off their past or have their past allow their past to be cut off what would

00:55:57.920 you actually get in place of that well you get a people that not only have lost their soul but the

00:56:02.120 result of that is that they actually hate themselves not just their fathers because that's

00:56:07.260 what it's going to lead to i despise my fathers i despise my past i'm ashamed of it well what does

00:56:13.500 guilt manipulation leave a person feeling guilty and manipulated and horrible and shamed it makes

00:56:20.140 you despise yourself not just your fathers but you despise yourself and you despise your neighbors

00:56:25.800 as well and so it leads to absolutely it's a hell why would you have children and replicate

00:56:33.740 the villains well why would you do that yeah why would you defend institutions you see this even on

00:56:40.720 twitter among christians though it's like i'll post something on one of the christian heroes like

00:56:45.820 you know richard the lionheart was one recently yeah and inevitably christians will start posting

00:56:51.180 things on there like well you know he did these things wrong and he's not as great as you think

00:56:55.960 he was and of course and if that is your framework for evaluating history it it doesn't really as

00:57:02.940 brian's saying doesn't really cause you to live up with hope to the future because you're just

00:57:07.420 it's all going to be terrible bad disenchanted nobody is going to be able to actually accomplish

00:57:14.560 anything great it doesn't inspire i wonder in some ways is it because of disbelief that

00:57:20.740 men like richard the lionheart actually existed because could you imagine richard the lionheart

00:57:26.900 we didn't talk about him in this episode but also deo's vault check that out richard the

00:57:31.420 lionheart is live oh nice yes could you imagine him existing today right one of the greatest men

00:57:38.680 in history. I mean, I have a hard time conceptualizing what would a man like that

00:57:45.200 planted in our time and place today look like? It's almost unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Partly

00:57:52.240 because one of the things that goes with the soul of the people and that comes in the door

00:57:59.320 with self-hatred is the willingness to do violence. It's the willingness to wield the

00:58:05.460 sword or in the sword literally, but also the sort of political power for its own self-interest.

00:58:12.020 And this is the problem is that Christians in generally in America, particularly in the West,

00:58:17.940 more generally have lost the will to wield political power for their own good. They think

00:58:23.820 it's wrong to even do that. I think it's wrong to do that. I think it's unchristian to, to Saul

00:58:27.440 and Linsky's make them play by their own rules. Well, even get them to think that some of their

00:58:30.960 rules are contrary to their actual rules. This is the problem with thinking in America, what

00:58:36.520 percentage of the Senate claims Christian faith? I think it's over 70. What percentage of America

00:58:41.240 claims Christian faith? I think it's over 60 or 70. So right there, if Christians just whatever

00:58:46.960 cultural Christianity, every type of Christianity, like everyone said, we're going to wield

00:58:52.480 political power for our own self-interest. They had any kind of unified culture and love for the

00:58:57.240 past and a continuity with what had come before. America would be the greatest nation in the

00:59:03.760 history of the world tomorrow. It just genuinely would. But we will not do that. Yeah, I think one

00:59:11.160 of the other sides to this is education and children and media. So, you know, talking about

00:59:19.040 really what you could call from a status level propaganda, but fundamentally what's happening in

00:59:25.080 a culture, counterculture, you know, one punch is the other counter punches.

00:59:29.400 This is really functionally what we're doing is sort of like a a truth war and a propaganda

00:59:35.860 war.

00:59:36.760 And it interests me, Dan, because in we talk about critical race theory, one of the key

00:59:42.080 guys who came over from Germany in the Frankfurt School was Herbert Marcuse.

00:59:46.620 And what did he do?

00:59:48.260 So critical race theorists, you know, what we now would call wokeness, all that stuff.

00:59:52.820 What did he do when he first came to America?

00:59:55.080 He worked for the early CIA in propaganda.

00:59:59.660 And then after that, he went into the university system and began teaching the new left or the left at that time, which became the new left, teaching them progressive leftist tactics.

01:00:10.120 Saul Alinsky and other things would be parallel.

01:00:13.640 So my question is, as you look out, we're talking about crusades.

01:00:17.360 Is Islam a greater enemy right now or is cultural propaganda by those in our own midst?

01:00:23.040 I have two competing ideas here.

01:00:26.560 Yeah.

01:00:27.140 One of the theories, and I've heard this before from others, is the idea.

01:00:31.740 It's somewhat conspiratorial.

01:00:33.240 So that's why I say I'm not as confident about it as I am already more confident.

01:00:38.540 I believe it with no any qualifications or evidence.

01:00:43.280 And this idea is that Islam is merely a sword in the hand of a globalist elite.

01:00:49.160 that is Islam is used as a sword to destroy Christianity and that it's a power. It's

01:00:55.740 basically a weapon because Islam will go out and it will destroy everything in its wake. That's

01:01:01.140 just what it does. It destroys history, culture, it destroys monuments, everything. It will

01:01:05.820 totally, it is, um, what's the word Christians argued about, um, the destruction of icons,

01:01:12.000 iconoclastic it's iconoclastic. It destroys everything everywhere. However, it doesn't

01:01:17.580 It doesn't do that well when it's in charge.

01:01:20.860 It doesn't create great empires.

01:01:23.660 So you're saying for the for the masses, certain players, cabals have weaponized Islam.

01:01:30.700 Yeah, that they've intentionally one purpose.

01:01:32.560 And that's the destruction of Christian civilization.

01:01:36.060 And so they will you think you think about all the different ways this can happen.

01:01:39.680 It's proxy war via immigration policy.

01:01:42.840 Just look at France today.

01:01:44.500 Yeah, they do this in Europe.

01:01:45.960 You'll see this in America growingly, is that the left seems intent upon the globalist elite, whatever you want to call it, seems intent upon allowing in anything that will do two things, secure its own power and to destroy Christian civilization.

01:02:02.820 So the one theory is that Islam is not the greater threat because of that.

01:02:06.680 It's just a weapon.

01:02:07.900 It's like saying, which is the greater threat, the nuclear weapon or the finger on the button that launches it?

01:02:13.280 well the finger on the button that launches it right the weapon is just a weapon so i think

01:02:18.700 that's on the other hand you could say well maybe it's not that direct maybe there's aspects of that

01:02:24.120 and it's more complicated than that that truth probably lies somewhere you know not quite that

01:02:29.040 neat and tidy as history typically is but there's some of that and there's also other forces so my

01:02:34.760 answer at the end of the at the end of all of that is that the cultural propagandists the global

01:02:41.280 elite, the people who hate

01:02:43.340 Christian civilization and want to

01:02:45.220 secure their own globalist power

01:02:46.920 and steal all

01:02:49.140 power and rule to themselves in a

01:02:51.440 statist,

01:02:53.280 wicked,

01:02:54.160 omnipresent empire. I think those are the greatest

01:02:57.320 enemies and cultural propaganda

01:02:59.160 and Islam are weapons in their hands.

01:03:01.240 Wait a minute.

01:03:03.420 If that's true, then

01:03:05.220 people like us would be

01:03:06.700 like enemies of

01:03:09.220 this cabal

01:03:10.800 yeah uh definitely who's the who is the cabal it's i think why are they jewish

01:03:16.600 i personally am offended i can't believe you'd say that i don't think it's universal no no that's

01:03:24.440 true i actually don't think again i it's never that simple no it's never like oh yeah it's just

01:03:30.320 the blanks it's just this one little no because here's the thing there are really fundamentally

01:03:36.720 two warring factions not just in america or the western history but in the cosmos yes it is the

01:03:43.420 forces of demonic satanic darkness that hates god and his image bearers and will do will do anything

01:03:49.280 to secure its own worship and the destruction of god and his image bears that wears a million

01:03:55.420 different faces through history sometimes it's the vikings sometimes it's the jews wait sometimes

01:04:01.560 it's the romans sometimes it's the you know the you go down the line the communists sometimes it's

01:04:08.400 and they they have a similar playbook and they have alliances and there's all sorts of different

01:04:13.960 it's the pornographers it's the you know the central bankers it's the you you can look all

01:04:18.640 the way through the the fabric of the cosmos and its history and what you will find is a cosmic

01:04:24.640 war between Satanism and the living God,

01:04:29.060 the Calermans.

01:04:30.000 Yeah.

01:04:30.520 And it plays,

01:04:31.180 it's a great example because the Telmarines and the Calermans are a

01:04:34.580 different people,

01:04:35.200 but they're both function in the story in similar roles.

01:04:39.760 They're allies in a sense because of that.

01:04:41.700 So you get strange bedfellows in the globalist elite cabal that definitely

01:04:45.600 rules the entire world.

01:04:47.200 Strange bedfellows like communists and Muslims who are,

01:04:50.960 should be on paper diametrically opposed to one another.

01:04:53.500 Yeah.

01:04:53.620 And yet clearly the one hand serves the other when it comes to the destruction of the Christian

01:05:00.140 West for, for certain.

01:05:02.120 So that's my convoluted, controversial, conspiratorial answer to your question, Eric.

01:05:08.320 Agree.

01:05:08.880 Disagree, Dan.

01:05:09.600 All of it's true.

01:05:10.300 100%.

01:05:10.980 I was going to say, Brian, like when you finished, I was like, I believe it with all my heart.

01:05:15.640 No question.

01:05:15.980 I mean, it is now part of my identity.

01:05:17.900 I will now I will now begin counter propaganda, you know, of the the sword of Islam in the hand of the globalist elite cabal.

01:05:27.080 That's right. But I do want to ask the question, like we've done this with the Crusades.

01:05:31.800 It seems like one of the most effective strategies is not even like the arguments are important.

01:05:38.980 The history reading, the history is important.

01:05:40.860 I think it's the way that like sort of the Chad King energy,

01:05:45.440 you sort of have to just believe these things and assert them publicly and

01:05:49.100 proudly. There's something about that.

01:05:51.660 We've seen movements that do that well and they're unapologetic.

01:05:56.060 Like we could say the same things and we're like,

01:05:58.020 what if we did what typical evangelicals did?

01:06:00.960 And we went in the public space and we're like, now I know that there,

01:06:03.980 you know, a lot of people said a lot of bad things.

01:06:05.880 And now I know this is hard for you. And, but, but hear me out, you know,

01:06:10.720 here's some of the history. And I think that maybe you could, you know,

01:06:13.240 be won over to these points and yeah, but we don't do that.

01:06:16.260 Well, George W. Bush did that. He was, he was a Christian supposedly.

01:06:21.020 And he was the one apologizing. Well,

01:06:24.180 some of the blame for nine 11 certainly on the Muslims.

01:06:27.900 It's interesting that he would say some of the blame was anyway,

01:06:30.920 I'm not going to go down the nine 11 conspiratorial threat that I just,

01:06:35.640 I'm talking about cabals that use when I,

01:06:38.100 When I started reading the cold open and I was like, we're really going to towers.

01:06:41.760 That's where this is going.

01:06:43.480 Well, they, you know, some people went to towers.

01:06:48.020 That's right.

01:06:48.920 Yeah.

01:06:49.160 Wow.

01:06:49.360 Who is actually in charge of that?

01:06:50.460 Yeah, that's right.

01:06:50.960 Yeah.

01:06:51.620 Anyway, sorry to derail you, but.

01:06:53.940 Yeah.

01:06:54.140 So I think when you look at things like white boy summer and you look at movements like

01:06:58.580 that, I think to the extent that they're effective, they're sort of this unapologetic.

01:07:03.120 We're proud of who we are as, you know, Western civilization.

01:07:08.220 And, you know, there's an ethos about it.

01:07:11.280 Yeah.

01:07:11.500 My question to you, Dan, is why is that important specifically juxtaposed against a church that is even when it'll defend the Crusades, which it probably mostly doesn't, it's still kind of embarrassed or sheepish.

01:07:25.760 Why is that ethos so important?

01:07:27.380 Well, yeah, I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier with Brian saying that the enemy will make you live up to your own rules.

01:07:33.120 is that you see in these tentative churches or in like big evil land if you communicate in a way

01:07:39.780 that's like well yeah i know you know you know robert e lee yes he fought for the south whatever

01:07:45.840 but hear me out whatever uh you're allowing yourself to be manipulated and actually you're

01:07:50.920 inviting attack you're inviting attack it's it's almost like uh i don't know if eric you've

01:07:56.560 experienced this in turkey hunting sometimes you get multiple turkeys that come in and you shoot

01:08:01.620 one and turkey's not very smart the one is flopping on the ground that you've just shot

01:08:07.560 and the others are like they're puffed up and they start attacking the one that just got shot

01:08:12.280 they should run away but anyway that's that's kind of what happens i think to your big eva

01:08:18.140 emotionally manipulated kind of effeminate churches is that they're flopping on the ground

01:08:24.780 and they're inviting attack because they're weak and so you need to stand on the principles of god

01:08:32.000 you need to stand confidently on the history of uh your fathers in the faith and you need to assert

01:08:38.780 that it's important to be righteous and it's important that it has to be true but if you're

01:08:45.020 convinced that something is true why would you not proclaim it brow but proudly yeah why would you

01:08:50.860 you know ascend to the to the emotional manipulation of cultural marxists and feel

01:08:57.520 bad because your forefathers were great some of them made mistakes great so do i yeah you and me

01:09:05.240 both we're saying fundamentally we will not uh let you um determine the rules no you don't set

01:09:12.740 the terms by weaponizing what you think are our rules they don't really think they're our rules

01:09:16.880 but they're weaponizing a false version of our rules.

01:09:19.480 And so when they say you must hate,

01:09:21.420 for example,

01:09:21.860 we've talked about this in previous seasons,

01:09:23.660 whiteness.

01:09:25.240 Well,

01:09:25.700 that's just a proxy war on,

01:09:27.140 on the Christian empire,

01:09:29.380 Christian West,

01:09:30.220 which is a lot of European is like a lot of European countries.

01:09:33.460 It's in America,

01:09:34.800 largely white.

01:09:35.480 So they're,

01:09:35.900 they're not going to say hate Christians because that wouldn't be

01:09:39.000 particularly effective as the say the quiet part out loud all the time.

01:09:43.000 So instead they say hate whiteness because it's oppressive.

01:09:46.880 And something like White Boy Summer, what it's doing, and not everybody gets this, is that it's not actually answering one kind of partiality with a sinful partiality, because not all partiality is sinful.

01:09:58.560 It's not answering one kind of sinful partiality with another.

01:10:01.940 It's not saying, like, for example, therefore, Christians ought to hate any non-white people.

01:10:08.260 Or white people are intrinsically better.

01:10:10.340 What it's saying is I reject the notion that whiteness is not a positive good to be celebrated in God's world and the story he wrote and to celebrate its achievements and to preserve it as a good cultural thing in the same way that like, I mean, we're going to talk about Christian Spain at some point in this history.

01:10:31.740 And I would like to recover and promote Christian Spain and Spaniardism, Spaniardness, Spanishness as a positive good in the world.

01:10:44.540 That's a that's a Donagality.

01:10:46.100 It should exist.

01:10:47.040 Right.

01:10:47.540 Spanishness.

01:10:48.100 Because Chris, Spanish Christianity that reclaimed its land from Muslim conquest has its own Donagality.

01:10:55.940 And it's something that is good and glorious.

01:10:58.000 And and if it if it rose to a sentence, the left would be doing the same thing about Spanishness that they're doing about whiteness.

01:11:04.760 So white boy summer, this kind of thing, it's basically saying not only are we not going to be ashamed, we're actually going to loudly proclaim that we are the opposite of ashamed.

01:11:13.500 We're quite pleased to be what God made us to be white Christians descended from white Christian Europeans, even though it's funny that the chief white boy summer propagandist is Mexican or whatever.

01:11:25.320 he's not actually mexican but he's brown for sure he's definitely not white you know yeah which is

01:11:31.220 it's fun like people don't sometimes get zoomer humor well so they don't get what they don't get

01:11:37.500 the conversations that that's happening at all times and they're reading it through the lens

01:11:42.100 of previous eras discourse so they're reading it through gen x and boomer discourse and they're

01:11:48.200 thinking well this actually would greatly flagrantly violate the rules of boomer and

01:11:52.180 gen x discourse which so therefore they must mean what we would have meant if we said that but it's

01:11:56.640 super funny yeah right they would they're thinking oh they're saying what we would have been saying

01:12:01.860 had we said the same thing but they're not that gen z is not saying the same thing that the boomers

01:12:07.060 would have been saying with the same words because it's a different rules of discourse yeah i think

01:12:12.000 one of the connection points uh this was our friend santiago pliego uh was recently on tucker

01:12:17.500 carlson which is insane uh but he was talking about a vibe shift and this is why i think something

01:12:22.620 like a vibe is so important yeah and the vibe that we cultivate even that just comes out of a

01:12:28.860 friendship or friendships in the basement here uh but encouraging other people to be audacious and

01:12:34.360 bold and have sort of this similar uh it's it's an ethos of going on the offensive and being yeah

01:12:41.520 Yeah. Well, I think one key to that, you talk about the vibe shift. So when people try to

01:12:47.700 manipulate you into feeling guilty, they're actually trying to make sure that there's no

01:12:51.640 real progress. Right. Other than other than immorality. Well, and I think, Dan, that's why

01:12:57.220 the well, you know, he wasn't really great or, you know, they killed a lot of, you know, the wrong

01:13:01.920 people or whatever. That's all meant so that you won't actually do anything. That's right. That's

01:13:06.720 right. Because the important part of the vibe shift is to have a positive vision for the future

01:13:10.440 Yes. And actually do something about it. And they don't want you to do that. They don't want they're killing your tea, your testosterone. They don't want you to have kids. They are trying to end your generations. They are trying to make you be ashamed of your history. They don't want you to evangelize. They don't want you to have healthy churches. They don't want you to educate your kids because they don't want you to do anything. They don't want you to do anything. And so when you look back at these great men, what do they do? They risked everything.

01:13:37.560 it was so expensive to go crusading they would definitely die probably on the way not even to

01:13:45.100 the fight well if you follow those numbers from rodney stark it's like 10 000 people made a whole

01:13:50.440 chance of success certainty of death what are we waiting for what did it say like 35 people died

01:13:57.680 per mile yeah and it's a lot of miles it's a lot of miles they would travel all this way

01:14:02.700 and they're exhausted and half starved

01:14:06.200 when they get to the battle

01:14:07.180 and then they're like, let's fight.

01:14:08.840 And like what inspired those men to action?

01:14:12.080 Why did they fight?

01:14:14.340 And we can't even fight against the arena of ideas.

01:14:18.580 They wanted Muslims to stop enslaving,

01:14:20.720 raping and murdering Christians.

01:14:23.020 They didn't want to make a bunch of money

01:14:24.980 because they all lost their wealth.

01:14:27.500 They all lost estates.

01:14:28.820 And they're during the Templar era.

01:14:30.420 I mean, they mortgaged their whole estate and irreversibly, in many cases, damaged the intergenerational wealth building of their entire noble house.

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01:16:53.160 information well that the comment stark makes about it until world war one that wasn't as great

01:17:05.660 a loss of european life in leadership in the next generation that that was poured out for the sake

01:17:10.940 of the crusades so you know we we have this this is part of the history that we have to unearth

01:17:18.000 and tell the true story of, right, is that these were defensive campaigns, first and foremost.

01:17:22.860 Some of the stories, I didn't include all of them. We'll get to some more later in the episode. But

01:17:27.660 I mean, the raping of nuns, what's going on? It's actually brutal to even think about that story

01:17:34.180 that was told about tying them to a post and having them march around while their intestines

01:17:39.140 are slowly dragged out of them. But then I think, wow, that's horrible. And then I think

01:17:44.440 uh recently there's even a vibe shift among some of the media elites and here's what i mean dr

01:17:51.380 phil did an episode with a whistleblower from i think it was in the middle america a clinic like

01:17:56.680 st louis or kansas city where he talked to a whistleblower at a trans clinic about what

01:18:01.460 they're doing to these kids and it's every bit as barbaric as tying somebody to a post and having

01:18:07.880 them walk around until their guts fall out and i think about that and i think we have real fights

01:18:14.140 to fight today but it's important how you um you come to this dan of like just war theory i don't

01:18:21.980 it it boggles my mind i guess i want to ask you about this today the church doesn't have a just

01:18:29.360 war theory unless it's israel or ukraine yeah we're not allowed to protect our own border

01:18:34.160 we're not allowed to fight for anything we can fight for ethno-nationalism even in israel right

01:18:39.280 but not even just broad Christian nationalism.

01:18:43.100 You've got Ben Shapiro calling for the extermination of an entire people group.

01:18:47.740 And everybody's like golf clapping, you know, and you're like, wait a minute.

01:18:53.100 Why is that the case?

01:18:54.300 So my question is, what's the importance of a need for the church to recover?

01:18:58.680 Not just war theory, but just war theory.

01:19:01.200 Well, yeah, I think I think this is one of the things I've been really thinking through a lot recently,

01:19:06.100 the last two years, probably.

01:19:07.960 And I'm sure you guys are sick of hearing about it in some degrees, but is recovering or actually having a philosophy of Christian violence.

01:19:16.820 Yeah.

01:19:17.120 Like what areas are Christians permittable to, uh, is it permittable for Christians to, to be violent?

01:19:25.360 That's really one of the core questions when you're looking at the crusades is because it's easy for the pietists to say, you know, like, or the pacifists to say like the, the crusades universally wicked because Christians should not commit violence at all.

01:19:41.000 Well, you hear Christians today say violence is never the answer.

01:19:43.780 Right.

01:19:44.360 Right.

01:19:44.700 And seems like it was a lot.

01:19:46.360 Seems like it was.

01:19:47.120 And God would say it is like, especially for the state.

01:19:50.640 I think that's really one of the issues that, that we're facing though in our time is that

01:19:56.560 the state has swallowed so much that it's become very difficult for, for us to execute

01:20:06.760 justice because they don't, they refuse justice.

01:20:09.520 And, and so we're not in the state sphere of authority.

01:20:12.440 We're in the church sphere of authority as pastors of the church of refuge church, not the church, but refuge church.

01:20:20.140 And so we continually encounter issues that are anomalies in history because the state refuses to execute justice.

01:20:30.060 And so likewise, in these areas where, you know, they're castrating kids, they're pulling babies apart because the state isn't doing their job in upholding God's law and justice.

01:20:41.560 I think the other important thing about the crusades, I think you're right, is that you have leaders like Pope Urban and you have leaders of countries and kings and nobles who are like, yes, we will band together and do this.

01:20:55.740 So this ties into a kind of a final round of questions or question I want to ask.

01:21:00.720 We'll get into another story about the crusade here in a moment.

01:21:03.600 But you see the people's crusade and it's it's sort of like populism today.

01:21:08.960 Yeah. Right.

01:21:09.680 The People's Crusade failed where the Prince's Crusade succeeded, and it seems like a lot of the reason is because the populist movements lack leadership.

01:21:20.000 They lack nobility, and then you see somebody like Godfrey comes on the scene, and in Third Crusade, we'll see Richard the Lionheart, and because of that great leadership, because of their wealth, because of their ability to recruit people from different kingdoms, they succeeded.

01:21:34.580 So I want to ask you if you kind of see a parallel with populism today versus I don't see the Prince's crusade happening.

01:21:46.880 I don't see the best that I can think of is like, who are leaders who are shaking things up today?

01:21:52.040 The best I can think of is like an Elon Musk or a Donald Trump.

01:21:55.900 And they're like, honestly, not that great.

01:21:58.580 They're definitely not Godfrey or Richard.

01:22:00.600 so well because they have the courage without the moral fabric correct right they don't have

01:22:07.520 the foundations so talk to me about the importance of leadership and an elite class that is actually

01:22:14.140 doing righteous well yeah so no matter leadership oh that is actually currently doing leadership

01:22:19.520 right now no no no in the in so if you're looking at the princess crusade yeah specifically right

01:22:24.040 why is it so important that it's just not it's not just a populist movement yeah well i i think

01:22:29.480 you could just look at our the temp take the temperature of our current culture right now

01:22:33.440 where we have a populist movement right we don't have royalty we don't have nobility well we still

01:22:39.900 do but it's just not they're not noble they're corrupt yeah they're corrupt and so what happens

01:22:45.060 when you have a culture that doesn't celebrate uh noble nobles but instead you have celebrity

01:22:52.200 you know you have taylor swift's you have um kanye's you have people like this uh that are

01:23:00.480 actually leading the people even if they don't want it most of them are mouthpieces for um the

01:23:06.420 cabal public figures for less public powers yeah yeah yeah i would i think i unironically believe

01:23:11.880 well this is and the interesting thing here on leadership just to throw this in this c.s lewis

01:23:16.740 he said where men are forbidden to honor a king they will honor millionaires athletes or film

01:23:21.500 stars instead even famous prostitutes or gangsters for spiritual nature like bodily nature will be

01:23:28.200 served deny it food and it will gobble poison yeah first of all yeah great i mean that's amazing

01:23:34.340 and true but what ends up happening is you have a populist movement that doesn't amount to a hill

01:23:38.900 of beans they're not worth anything and i think that it lacks leadership yeah absolutely it lacks

01:23:43.600 leadership what is leader what do good leaders do eric you're the leadership guy you're the

01:23:47.800 leadership guru. What, why is it so much more effective when you have good leaders than when

01:23:54.820 you have a populist movement? Yeah, I think fundamentally, and this is one of the reasons

01:23:59.300 that, you know, in the, in the course of my lifetime, I've become more and more disillusioned

01:24:03.980 with this idea of liberal democracy is because you see these great movements across history

01:24:09.220 and Christendom. And it is a guy with power, righteously taking the reins and not straw

01:24:14.900 pulling people, but saying this is what God's word says. This is what we're doing. And I'm not

01:24:21.020 talking about pastors merely. I'm talking about kings, people in the office of civil magistrate

01:24:27.020 who have the power to do something and then they go and they do it. And that's what's instituted

01:24:33.520 in the land. And I think when you look at guys like Godfrey, you look at, I mean, to the lesser

01:24:39.880 extent, you had some other good leaders, Robert of Flanders and Bohemond, the Norman is a phenomenal

01:24:46.300 military leader. As an inspirational military figure and leader. And here's what I love about

01:24:51.160 them. They, they, they sort of have it all is how I would describe it. So they, they have the Riz,

01:24:56.740 they've got the charisma. Anna Commemnis, when she's talking about Bohemond, this is like the

01:25:03.160 way teenage girls today talk about ryan gosling at times a hundred right she's like his aura his

01:25:11.600 presence within his competence on the battlefield his ability to lead men and what's interesting

01:25:18.260 when you read a lot of the accounts of the emirs right about richard the lionheart they called a

01:25:24.340 lot of these men's sons of giants nephilim we'll get into that in a little bit but it's like

01:25:29.580 they were heroic this is what the the greco-roman concept of a hero was right the whole point was

01:25:37.260 that aeneas isn't just every other guy it's that to create a people and found a people

01:25:42.920 and to sail across seas and to do this work is it takes heroic effort and so i think when you

01:25:49.340 have those things and you have great leaders uh who inspire their men around around a vision

01:25:54.880 around a mission and then they go and show competence it really is the glue it's the

01:26:01.820 heartbeat of any of these movements if there's no god free they never take jerusalem yeah this

01:26:08.060 is why the christian nationalism conversation is so important for christians to wrap their heads

01:26:12.180 around because what you have right now in a lot of the um like christianity with testicles kind

01:26:18.480 of world is a lot of ecclesiocentrism, which views the church as essentially this institution

01:26:27.500 that swallows up everything.

01:26:29.140 It's the first kingdom of God.

01:26:30.460 It's all like it's the first and only kind of realm and it kind of swallows everything

01:26:35.760 up instead of what I think is a more biblical and historical view of powers where you also

01:26:43.740 So you do have the ecclesiastical sphere and government, and it has its own very particular

01:26:50.500 ends and concerns in the greatest heavenly good for the members of the church.

01:26:55.640 It operates by rules within that government with its own keys and powers for discipline.

01:27:02.200 And you could read like chapter 30 of the Westminster Confession on Church Centures,

01:27:06.680 where the churches, it discusses the powers within the government of the church, which

01:27:12.020 include, it's not Erastianism, it's not subservient to the state within these roles, it has genuine

01:27:20.260 independent authority to exercise the keys of excommunication and discipline.

01:27:24.360 Even to counsel kings.

01:27:25.780 Correct.

01:27:26.780 But then where we're really weak right now is we try to actually sum up everything within

01:27:32.380 that realm.

01:27:33.320 The church.

01:27:34.120 Instead of recognizing that there's also this other authority that is directly instituted

01:27:39.640 by God and it has different concerns.

01:27:42.540 And when God gives authority or when God gives responsibility, he also gives corresponding

01:27:46.800 authority.

01:27:47.600 So when the civil magistrate is given the responsibility of enforcing earthly good and

01:27:54.480 justice, it comes with the authority with that responsibility in the wielding of the

01:28:01.220 sword to carry out that earthly good.

01:28:03.060 When you're operating within the sphere of the polis of the earthly good in the political

01:28:08.960 realm, you can't import the rules of the ecclesiastical sphere and play by those rules

01:28:15.180 in the political sphere. It doesn't work because it's not intended to work that way. All right.

01:28:19.600 And you also can't import the political rules and authority and weaponry into the governance of the

01:28:26.980 church, right? It's not the same thing. So you're going to have states of affairs where nations

01:28:31.980 ought to defend their borders from people. And someone can't just come and say, you must let me

01:28:37.320 in. Why? Because I'm a Christian. Well, no, the state doesn't operate by those same rules. It has

01:28:42.560 different set of rules in a different, in a similar way, the church can't say, well, you're

01:28:47.920 not allowed in because you're Italian and this is a Polish church. Well, no, no, the church operates

01:28:53.460 by a different set of governing authority, governing principles because of the nature of

01:28:59.200 its, the nature of its being and what it rules over. This was labyrinthine, but the whole point

01:29:04.940 I'm trying to make is that what Christians are really bad at right now is understanding a category

01:29:09.840 of Christian governance where Christians wield all of the, not just, don't just take up the

01:29:15.080 responsibilities of rule in the sphere of the polis, but they also wield the tools and authority

01:29:21.540 that God gave to Kings and to rulers and city fathers all the way up and all the way down.

01:29:26.180 So Christian nationalism is really important because nations ought to actually govern for

01:29:32.460 their own earthly good and self interest. And what's happening right now in Saul Alinsky style

01:29:37.220 is that any Christian who's attempting to wield political power for its own self interest is

01:29:41.800 being called proud and arrogant and self interested. And they're attempting to make

01:29:46.040 the polis play by the rules of the church. It's that this incoherent, it results in absurdity.

01:29:51.620 Every time you try to live it out, it can't be done, which is why going back to the way that

01:29:56.240 Christians governed during Christendom in the, like I say, the classical two kingdoms with what

01:30:00.720 Stephen Wolf is talking about a lot in this book.

01:30:02.640 And you go back and you think they figured this stuff out.

01:30:05.640 You don't have to reinvent a new 20th century version of all of this.

01:30:09.060 That's probably going to be influenced by all of the errors of the 20th century and globalism anyway.

01:30:14.320 And so people think that Christian nationalists are just being like really stubborn and like mule headed and annoying and they're picking fights and they're doing all this stuff.

01:30:26.360 What they're actually trying to say is Christians in all these nations where we're supposedly

01:30:30.420 Christians, you need to actually wield the power of the polis that God instituted righteously.

01:30:37.480 And if you don't do it, you're sinning.

01:30:41.260 You're not being patient and merciful and kind and all these things.

01:30:45.520 You're being a dupe.

01:30:46.940 You're getting played.

01:30:48.620 You need to wield right.

01:30:49.680 So to me, it's a perfect picture.

01:30:51.700 The Prince's Crusade versus the People's Crusade.

01:30:53.540 We actually need the Prince's Crusade.

01:30:56.360 We need a recovery of a theology that could allow for a princess crusade.

01:31:00.200 Yeah.

01:31:00.920 The state of affairs that would,

01:31:02.740 because right now we don't even have the state of affairs where a princess

01:31:05.240 crusade could happen.

01:31:06.400 We're three steps prior to that,

01:31:08.340 which is why talking about like,

01:31:10.140 oh yeah,

01:31:10.440 let's form a militia brother and let's go do all this.

01:31:12.440 It's actually not going to be helpful.

01:31:14.340 It's not going to be helpful because population by itself is,

01:31:17.200 is just going to lead to warlordism and all kinds of other problems and

01:31:20.540 probably be destroyed by the,

01:31:21.740 the globalist state anyway,

01:31:23.520 you know,

01:31:23.820 50 years before they ever get to that.

01:31:25.400 What we need is to labor for the conditions in the political realm of the nation where we could have Christian princes.

01:31:34.560 Yeah.

01:31:34.880 Christian rulers.

01:31:36.140 Well, it was funny.

01:31:36.720 You were talking about spheres.

01:31:38.200 I was thinking of a story, again, to plug for the Dave's Vault that's out this week.

01:31:43.220 But Richard the Lionheart, he's going to Cyprus and he's attempting to do battle with another commemnus, Isaac, this time.

01:31:52.880 and the priest comes to him who's with him and is like 200 ship armada and he says you know this

01:31:58.780 there's too many of them this is foolish and richard tells him he says priest mind your

01:32:05.220 books and your prayers i will do the fighting which is the correct response and then he went

01:32:11.000 and he he captures cyprus again this is your one little spoiler for this episode but isaac said i

01:32:19.260 I will surrender if you promise not to put me in iron chains.

01:32:23.060 And he said, fine, I won't put you in iron chains.

01:32:25.240 So he has his smithy work up some silver chains.

01:32:29.160 And he puts those on him.

01:32:30.880 It's called a loophole.

01:32:31.940 It's called a loophole.

01:32:32.840 It's called a loophole.

01:32:33.720 So, yeah, Dan, your thoughts on that?

01:32:34.960 People versus Princess Crusades.

01:32:36.560 Any other closing?

01:32:38.000 I mean, we could talk about this to ad nauseum.

01:32:40.780 I think this is a really important part to get.

01:32:44.040 I really liked your, Brian, your point about militias.

01:32:48.300 because the instinct is going to be no the instinct is going to be well the state's not

01:32:54.200 doing their job they are sinning they are totally allowing rampant wickedness and harming my people

01:33:01.200 and so my job then is to become the state is to do this what the state's not doing yeah and

01:33:08.740 there may be a time for that in the future but it's definitely not now i don't think it's now

01:33:13.020 And so having a militia, what, what will that actually accomplish?

01:33:18.440 I mean, I think we have rights laid out in the constitution for a well-organized militia,

01:33:22.920 depending on what you think that means.

01:33:24.640 But I think it has to be organized by a state in order to be considered a true militia.

01:33:30.340 It's not that you couldn't form a militia, like, and you're not saying this, you could

01:33:33.840 form militias and train and be prepared for any situation that might arise.

01:33:38.820 Yes.

01:33:39.120 But what I'm and what we're specifically saying is the time isn't now for Christians to form rogue armies.

01:33:45.280 Right.

01:33:45.560 To go like take over the Salt Lake City Capitol building.

01:33:49.760 And part of the reason.

01:33:51.000 I'm not saying that, by the way.

01:33:52.420 No, that's that's not.

01:33:53.760 Well, I'm I'm thinking about this episode and like how cancelable everything we've said for the last hour and a half basically is.

01:34:00.100 But I actually don't think in in prudence that that's the play right now.

01:34:05.700 No, I don't think so.

01:34:06.740 um and there's lots of reasons in our area too is because we're two percent well of the population

01:34:12.800 i think part of it too though is you look at what's been effective in the last couple years

01:34:17.180 however it shakes out however he turns out to be as a as a player in the bigger power structures

01:34:23.620 but elon musk uh somebody with power and money bought twitter which is now x and because of that

01:34:30.760 many many people on the right now have a voice that voice gets through to people i mean guys

01:34:36.780 we were talking about this uh recently but the number of people that we've talked to in high

01:34:41.500 places who listen to one of our shows is actually quite remarkable so i i see a lot of the work that

01:34:48.420 we're doing is um this counter propaganda is important because it's mustard seeds that are

01:34:54.140 planted in the hearts of men who maybe it's a william wolf who is one day going to rule in

01:34:59.840 washington yeah maybe it's other guys in in similar type locations when i hear of like senators

01:35:06.460 u.s senators are like oh yeah i've i've heard your podcast and you're like wait what you're like

01:35:09.960 you've heard wait say that again say that again yeah so that's where i jokes and all yeah and

01:35:14.920 they were like they were some funny gay jokes you guys made michael don't tell anybody i said

01:35:18.360 michael knows has a segment on the why are you gay the uh where where are we here i'm not gay

01:35:26.620 no more different oh that's the wrong one where's my what you are gay there we go there you go but

01:35:32.120 michael knoll is talking about that um you you see sort of the conversation and the vibe shift

01:35:37.360 over just simple things like that so that would be my encouragement i think to people is because

01:35:41.720 a lot of people are saying like well we don't have those princes right now here's what you do

01:35:45.540 you find susan's horn blow it have you seen you recall have you have you seen national treasure

01:35:53.000 okay okay this took a die no you nice templar susan's horn we find the treasure we find the

01:35:58.120 horn no yeah what is susan horns i think what we're doing now susan horns sounds like a woman's

01:36:04.140 name it is it is english is my second language i don't know if anyone knew that guys this is

01:36:12.880 this is actually Susan's horn is words yes it's words this is why you can't despise words words

01:36:20.480 have far more power than swords over time because the words direct the swords over time yeah that's

01:36:27.020 why words are so important that is susan's horn and that's why christians need to not be cowardly

01:36:31.900 around these subjects and actually need to just blow on susan's horn and do it loudly well dan

01:36:37.760 you shouldn't have laughed at that because you made me laugh you sullied my serious point one

01:36:43.760 of the things we'll close with this as we jump into uh the battle of nicaea but one of the things

01:36:49.440 I think where you see this is St. Brandon's Academy and we're doing Christian education.

01:36:55.620 We've got a new podcast. Kevin Love is hosting. Yeah. Encourage people to check that out. We'll

01:37:00.840 have links in the show notes. But I look at our kids. Even today, I have times where I go out in

01:37:06.920 public and, you know, you kind of dance around conversation when you're among normies. And,

01:37:13.820 you know, recently in public with my sons, teenagers, and somebody asked him, like,

01:37:19.240 oh are you in high school and they're like yeah kind of they're like oh do you know do you do to

01:37:23.820 go to ogden high school and they're like no we go to saint brennan's classical christian academy

01:37:27.500 they're like oh that sounds interesting and they're like yeah do you want to hear about the

01:37:31.100 crusades and they are just unashamed yeah and i think what we have to do is the way that we as

01:37:37.160 fathers tell history and we teach our sons you have to raise a generation of john the baptist

01:37:42.920 who everybody thinks is weird and they don't care you know someone was tweeting about this i think

01:37:48.240 this morning or last night and they said you think i'm abrasive in telling the truth just wait till

01:37:54.180 my son becomes an adult yeah he has no filter you know and there's an entire generation of people

01:38:00.600 that have no filters that are very bold it's what i mean you break the spell of the propaganda of

01:38:06.600 making us live by a false version of our rules is you you commit blasphemy the not the real

01:38:12.260 blasphemy but you commit what they think cultural cultural blasphemy

01:38:18.240 Well, thanks again for listening to this episode of the King's Hall podcast.

01:38:27.160 We are going to stop the episode for now.

01:38:29.160 We'll pick this up next episode.

01:38:31.920 We're going to be talking about the Battle of Nicaea.

01:38:34.700 We're going to be talking about the march toward Jerusalem and Godfrey's exploits there.

01:38:41.260 So stay tuned for that.

01:38:43.020 Be sure as well, if you're not yet a Patreon supporter, sign up on Patreon today for as

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01:39:01.140 wonderful content there for you and again we would just encourage you to check the link in the show

01:39:07.580 notes we would love to see you guys in ogden utah june 6 through 8 for the new christendom press

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The King's Hall - April 12, 2024

Pope Urban II and the Call for the First Crusade

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