00:03:30.780Well, maybe we jump on board with this kind of conservatism,
00:03:34.280And we're going to say, no, Eric, it will not fix the problem.
00:03:38.900That's right. I think Doug Wilson was fond of saying that conservatism in general is a bit like a parachute without cords on it.
00:03:45.640So you pull the ripcord and then nothing.
00:03:48.500The Dabney quote, it's the shadow that follows radicalism.
00:03:52.100That's right. And in a lot of senses, conservatism ends up being sort of a parasitic thing on leftist ideology.
00:03:59.040So we're going to unpack that today. One of the places I wanted to start, gentlemen, was with a definition of what is conservatism, at least in the sense of political theory.
00:04:08.680What are we talking about? Well, generally in the past, especially the last 100, 150 years, conservatism has been thought to include things like limited government, the rule of law.
00:04:18.920Again, typically an emphasis on the U.S. Constitution. We have things like fiscal responsibility, free markets, strong families, local institutions.
00:04:29.040and promotion of traditional moral codes that have been a hallmark of Western Christendom.
00:04:34.440Now, one of the sort of godfathers of conservative ideology was Russell Kirk.
00:04:39.300And so I went to their website, the Kirk Center, to define, see what their definition for conservatism was.
00:05:37.760Number eight, conservatives favor voluntary community over forced collectivism.
00:05:43.900Number nine, the state exists to restrain evil.
00:05:47.080And number 10, change has its proper place within this realm of conserving things.
00:05:54.700But it's interesting as we look at this list, and this is kind of the first question I want to ask you guys, we wouldn't necessarily disagree with those, but they seem to be just stripped down Enlightenment-style ideas.
00:09:33.180So if you're a Christian business owner who wants to reach thousands of like-minded people and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you.
00:09:39.760Email us at advertising at newchristendompress.com.
00:10:30.320So we're going to unpack this in the show in a little bit. We'll talk about people like Ben Shapiro and some others who are prominent today. But these guys really fall at best in the camp of neoconservatism. Now, what Francis says about the movement is that its goals are not conceptually distinct from those of progressivism and liberalism.
00:10:49.520So the fundamental tenets of this neoconservatism, again, you'll notice are the same as leftist progressivism, maybe just addressed a little differently, but they're fundamentally the same.
00:11:00.320And this is the foundation problem that you were bringing up earlier.
00:11:04.100So he says these fundamental tenets are socially engineered equality.
00:11:08.440They'll talk about things like equality of economic opportunity.
00:11:18.180So even your Republican Party today is embracing globalism. George W. Bush was a huge proponent of globalism. Open borders, right? Anybody who doesn't believe in open borders is obviously a racist. They talk about jettisoning Christian morality.
00:11:34.460They talk about America as this giant melting pot. We all seem to be supporting either party, and I'm not including us individually, but conservative and liberal. Everyone seems to be supporting abortion on demand. Even today, people who you think wouldn't. Everybody seems to be supporting a bloated New Deal-style welfare state.
00:11:55.880Right. So even the conservatives have realized that to keep the hooks in middle America, we're going to keep ramping up what we do with health care, for example. We all, all parties are believing in rampant government spending and inflation. And then finally, material gratification as a central ideal for defining the good life.
00:12:16.760So this is Samuel Francis saying, look, neoconservatives are fundamentally the same as leftists.
00:12:45.400We represent you. And then they go and they do things in office that are completely contradictory to everything that middle America believes in.
00:12:53.600So, again, do you think that Samuel Francis is right in characterizing conservatives this way?
00:13:00.000Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And one of the best barometers that you can test this theory is just follow the money.
00:13:08.080So follow the money. If there's a surplus, say a program has been cut, there's a surplus in the budget. Do they say, you know what, let's give it back to the people? No, no, they're going to spend it. They're definitely going to spend it. Republicans, just like Democrats, when somebody's trying to pass a bill, they're jockeying to get their own pet projects done, you know, to attach their own fat pork to the bill, you know, just like anybody else.
00:13:35.220And so, you know, the inflation thing is a big tell, not giving back money or cutting taxes or actually having some sort of balanced budget.
00:13:43.440The continuing bloat of the government is just further evidence that they're actually all on the same team.
00:13:49.900Well, even somebody that we today tend to think of as like, oh, he was the, you know, sort of like the pillar of conservatism was Ronald Reagan.
00:13:56.400The federal government and spending in the U.S. I think increased under him more than like anybody since.
00:15:02.060It's the, you know, you pull the, you pull the blue lever, you pull the red lever. And I'm actually not saying, because I think there's, there's a way I could be misunderstood here. I'm actually not saying that, yeah, vote Democrat, vote Republican. It's exactly the same because tactically it's different. And there are real significant differences between the platform of the Democrats and Republicans.
00:15:22.680And so, for example, I think it'd be a church discipline issue for somebody to openly support vote for Democrats, I mean virtually without exception, whereas I think it's possible given our two-party state to vote Republican with a clean conscience.
00:15:40.120But we have to recognize as we do so that voting Republican isn't going to fix a dang thing, to put it mildly.
00:15:49.660I think it's important to understand the question. You know, we're comparing conservatism to authentic, robust building of Christendom, not to the Democratic Party.
00:15:59.940Right. So that that is a phenomenal point.
00:16:02.780Exactly. The other thing I want to ask as we compare these things, conservatism as it is today versus the building of Christendom, is just to ask the question, like, how would those things be different?
00:16:13.600So what we're espousing in this show for building Christendom, I think if people have listened to the show, I don't think you would walk away thinking, wow, these are your run-of-the-mill political conservatives like you would find at the Daily Wire.
00:16:26.540Yeah, you're in like the Young Republicans Club or whatever, you know, and now you're a leader in that. No, no, definitely not. So what are we saying is the solution? That's the question.
00:16:36.700Yeah. Part of it is the approach of politics, the approach to politics. And the churches has been obviously missing, but even just individual Christians, their approach and conservatives and the political ideology, the philosophy that people employ in order to make change is a top down mentality. Fundamentally, we got to get the right guy in office. That's the first thing that people think.
00:17:03.520and christendom this is a big project right it takes generations for this project one president
00:17:11.020in a you know two terms eight years isn't going to change like you said a dang thing
00:17:16.640getting the right local politicians can make some difference but that's not the solution
00:17:22.340the solution of building christendom is a bottom up strategy it starts with people repenting yeah
00:17:31.000It starts with people repenting. There's a reason that we have wicked rulers and wicked representation. It's because we are a wicked people. And it is a judgment on us. I'm also not saying don't be involved in the political process because it doesn't matter at all because it's not going to make any difference.
00:17:45.960And I can just say, recent memory, going to the gas pumps, things were different under Trump than they are under Joe Biden.
00:17:59.280Because one fundamentally hates you, absolutely hates you, and one probably is using you.
00:18:07.720And actually, to your point, it's funny because the left is actually, in some ways, a better picture of the kind of principles that conservatives should be operating under, meaning that they're playing for keeps and they're trying to enforce a totalizing worldview and ethical system upon everybody.
00:18:28.620right they're not saying this kind of libertarian fever dream where they're saying you you know like
00:18:35.360if you don't like abortion don't get one if you don't like gay marriage don't get one no as we've
00:18:39.680been demonstrating in this season and carl truman's book on the rise and triumph of the modern self
00:18:44.400is a great case in point for this with the sexuality that we talked about in a previous
00:18:48.460episode you know they are aiming not to tolerate you they're aiming to convert the world to their
00:18:55.380religion right they're playing a post-millennial sort of game and so in some ways the conservatives
00:19:00.560as the shadow that follows radicalism to perdition is just being this reactionary yippy nippy dog
00:19:07.080on the heels of this chad left that is that is basically saying you will love the gays
00:19:13.440you will you will love transgenderism you will love having your kids in public school learning0.67
00:19:18.520all this or we will put you in prison right you will get the the jab or else you can't buy and0.96
00:19:23.560sell. You must give a pinch of incense to the rainbow flag or you're going to get fired.0.64
00:19:28.340And in that sense, they get it. They get the way the world works is that it is winner take all. I1.00
00:19:34.220mean, that's the way the world works. And I mean, biblical realities would establish true freedom.
00:19:40.480I'm also not denying that, but I'm saying this play for keeps, even the freedom that a Christian0.90
00:19:45.180society would be aiming to deploy and protect would be a Christian freedom with Christian ends
00:19:51.720and Christian guardrails that would prevent demonic ideologies
00:19:56.940from infiltrating society and bringing death with them.0.62
00:28:10.680People are drawn to messages like that, and particularly you can look at the manosphere, the intellectual dark web, why is Jordan Peterson, even though he's saying a lot of things that seem pretty normal.
00:28:34.720But I think what we have to learn from it as conservatives is something that – actually, this is Rhett Koppel on Twitter had responded to something I said about conservatism.0.90
00:28:43.640Because I said the conservative urge to start think tanks, periodicals, and educational institutions is worthless if all it does over time is cede those entities to leftist progressives.
00:28:55.060And Rhett had this response, which I think was great.
00:28:56.680He said, which means we need institutions that are distinctively adversarial in nature to leftism.
00:29:46.100and totally win every square inch of human existence with his kingdom.
00:29:50.820That's what he came to do. And it was with the attitude of, if you are not on my side, then you are against me. There's no sort of cozy, neutral middle ground where you can just sort of exist. And you had to react to Jesus' program, either with rejection or acceptance.
00:30:12.480That's the point is that like Donald Trump, it's funny to look at him as an example because he did, he played for keeps. And it seems like I think my evaluation of his principle is that Donald Trump's principle, his like thing that he wanted to divide the world around was, I want people to love Donald Trump.
00:30:30.440that was what he was aiming to do right that's donald trump's greatest uh operating principle
00:30:37.860is he wants people to love him and think he's great i think that's his that's his principle
00:30:43.240and so because of that he's totally clear about that in almost everything he does
00:30:48.160yeah and so of course he you he will either wildly succeed in that or utterly and spectacularly fail
00:30:54.740but either one is a success for him because if people hate him he succeeded in getting them
00:31:00.340to react to him and treat him as important and give him this gravity and then all of a sudden
00:31:05.260like you remember the primaries nobody thought Trump was going to win everyone is laughing at
00:31:09.580it except Ann Coulter and why did he win because he got everybody including his opponents to be
00:31:16.560his advertisers well and this is a principle again in marketing we're talking about Colin
00:31:21.300Kaepernick it would be better you want to be loved or hated you don't want to be ignored exactly
00:31:26.200Right. And so even when he was being hated, he was drawing attention. The left cared significantly about Donald Trump. I mean, yeah, I think that Trump derangement syndrome, they really did become obsessed.
00:33:03.420One of the things I walked away with, great film, by the way,
00:33:05.880even James White is going to see it twice. He said he loved it. I'm with him. But it made me
00:33:11.220leave thinking, wow, media is so powerful. It's so powerful. So why, gentlemen, has the left been
00:33:18.600so good at this? And why do conservatives generally, they suck at telling stories?0.98
00:33:23.640Again, because the right has been, it's been reactionary. And when you're reactionary,0.88
00:33:30.020you tend to deal on the level of arguments and logic where, you know, the left says,
00:33:35.300we're going to do this. We're going to stop the farting cows. The farting cows are the problem.
00:33:39.300We got to get rid of the cows. They're farting too much. The earth is warming. We got stopping.0.74
00:33:44.320You will eat the bug. You will live in the pod. And the right all of a sudden devotes like
00:33:49.860six months to writing articles, analyzing methane production. And they're like, actually,
00:33:55.740volcanoes produce. And then they get out their actuarial tables and their Excel spreadsheets.
00:34:01.580And all they're doing is reactioning on a logical level to an argument that was never meant to be all that logical in the first place. Whereas the left understands, once again, it's going to always come back to this principle, that they are playing for a totalizing victory of every part of what it means to be a human being.
00:34:18.740And so they understand that one of the most potent things you can do to win culturally is to win people's hearts. And how do you win people's hearts? Well, it's not through actuarial tables and Excel spreadsheets.
00:34:32.960it's through stories it's through media it's through art it's through beauty it's through
00:34:37.900transcendence it's by associating your agenda in the hearts of people with beauty and glory0.97
00:34:43.940which is why uh you know they don't show fecal matter smeared all over somebody's uh genitalia0.86
00:34:51.140in promoting you know sodomy instead they will show you beautiful music behind a slightly slowed0.96
00:34:58.700down, you know, 4k video of two gay men holding hands with the sunset behind them. And, and0.73
00:35:06.380they'll tell a story on a sitcom where the, the, the gay couple overwhelms the odds of
00:35:12.400the conservative hating Bible bigots and, and, and, and, and play the clip, play the
00:35:20.000Exactly. Instead of saying, you know what I'm saying? So, so this is why I think about1.00
00:35:24.380something like um the the gay marriage photography issue like okay christian photographer you know
00:35:31.440take pictures of my wedding and some christians i've heard go like it's not a sin to photograph
00:35:36.580a gay wedding because you know it's a photography is not a sin seeing somebody who is gay is not a0.96
00:35:42.860sin we're trying to make something heinous look beautiful though that's the problem that's what
00:35:46.420we're not getting when we make those kind of arguments photographer is telling a story yeah
00:35:50.460and that's their whole task culturally is to display as beautiful hopefully what actually
00:35:56.700is beautiful yeah and i think that's part of the huge problem brian is that i think
00:36:01.120correct me if i'm wrong but you know republicans we we tend to this is why we start think tanks
00:36:06.280yeah and conservatives is because we're like you know what if we just had a few extra data points
00:36:11.280yeah we start think tanks not film studios yeah exactly so dan i want to ask you on the literature
00:36:16.480One more. And when we make music, it's usually some absolutely cringeworthy, cheesy rap response to the Let's Go Brandon thing with boomers making it go viral. Like, we got a rap. Have you heard the rap song about Let's Go Brandon?0.89
00:36:34.240there was two it's so good oh it's we stuck it to the libs and i'm like no you need to write love
00:36:40.080songs that are beautiful and demonstrate the beauty of christian marriage and child rearing
00:36:44.980and you need to make films that do that you need to make you know you need to paint paintings that
00:36:49.220do that and you need to like stop making cheesy knockoff counterfeit culture that is just all
00:36:56.680about the core argument where there's this you know thin veneer of plastic moralizing over a
00:37:02.580terrible story poorly poorly presented yeah that's why we're contending not like 1950s but
00:37:08.0601650s 1650s all the way back to 1650 let's art let's build architecture yes let's build
00:37:16.060nation based chad based right let's get some christian city fathers i'm fired up boys fired
00:37:21.300up so dan what i was going to ask you c.s lewis said that it's literature and stories that get
00:37:26.840past the watchful dragons of the heart i just want to ask you why why is as brian's been
00:37:33.760expanding why is that so important that we capture media entertainment art literature
00:37:38.900for expanding what we're trying to present as the good life which is christendom it's
00:37:45.020encompassed in covenantal christendom that's right man i love this question eric this is such a good
00:37:49.300question i know we were talking the other day about storytelling and especially around like
00:37:54.640world war ii we were talking about d-day recently and the invasion and how stories are often told
00:38:01.120is kind of like i'm going to download some information yeah you know and this is what
00:38:05.480you're talking about with conservatives is that they're okay so d-day happened on june 6 1944
00:38:10.740at 4 a.m the allied forces assembled and blah blah blah blah you know that's great you know
00:38:16.280it tells you it gives you information that's not a story though what you're doing is you're you're
00:38:20.620you're giving history historical data points yeah what i want to know and this is why stories are so
00:38:26.520powerful let me give you an example so you have to plug my our other work uh wilderness warrior
00:38:33.820yeah you can hear that d-day story yeah you can hear the d-day story but it's a it's a story of
00:38:38.560the man who is on the higgins boat which was a landing boat that had the door in the front of
00:38:43.520the boat that would drop down into a ramp and the soldiers could run on the iconic boat of every
00:38:48.940photo and you know the thing you're thinking of with d-day men coming off boats going on onto
00:38:53.960normandy exactly and so you're standing in this guy's shoes okay listening to this story you're
00:38:59.000standing in this guy's shoes hearing what he hears smelling what he smells the ocean spray
00:39:04.940these guys had to take their helmets off to bail out the boats because the seas were rough
00:39:09.380some of the guys were chatting like nervously chatting and laughing and joking some of the
00:39:14.640guys were really scared uh the the ships behind them lit up the skies one one guy said it was
00:39:21.300like the fourth of july but like a thousand fourth of july's and the ocean was a just on fire with
00:39:27.880all of the reflections of the explosions and wow and then the machine guns started and so you're
00:39:33.060in this guy's shoes and he's making the decision he's getting shot at the boat stops and he has
00:39:39.040to drop the door. Ordered to. Ordered to drop the door. Drop the door. And he stops for a second
00:39:45.220and realizes that the machine gun bullets that are rattling off the metal ramp. He can hear him
00:39:49.960hitting right in front of him. Right in front of him. When he drops that ramp, they're not going
00:39:53.780to be bouncing off the ramp. They're going to be hitting him and his men. And why is that a
00:39:58.820powerful thing? Yeah. Is because you are experiencing something. Getting past the
00:40:04.500watchful dragons you're standing in that man's shoes it's no longer data points that's lived
00:40:09.980experience yeah that is something that stirs you yeah stories are so powerful in changing people
00:40:17.060and in winning your hearts yeah that's something that sorry uh eugene peterson had said he said
00:40:21.780the point of a story like worship is to move you yeah like to trans physically maybe but otherwise
00:40:28.180just to move your soul so that you act and think and see the world differently yeah so if i want to
00:40:33.920win my boys to being courageous godly men that will stand in the face of danger and sacrifice
00:40:40.260everything for the cause am i gonna say boys you need to be courageous and sacrifice anything for
00:40:46.480the cause right no you're gonna say there once was a knight his name was saint george yeah and
00:40:51.400there was a dragon that's how i'm gonna tell them the story and that's why the liberals are winning
00:40:56.580and to me it's baffling because in a in a debate you've seen debates before presidential debates
00:41:01.920or whatever, you get the conservative up there and he's like, I'm going to, you know, drop your
00:41:05.760taxes. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. You know, we got to stop this. And then the
00:41:09.520Democrat gets up and says, Oh, there's a, there's a, there's a young lady. Could you please stand
00:41:14.500up? And this young lady, she experienced oppression from her white supremacist employer.0.99
00:41:20.080And, and you're like, this is all made up. I don't believe you for a second, but people do
00:41:25.160they're winning because of stories. That's why stories are important is because it's a lived
00:41:30.360experience. You're living with the people. They're alive in a way. And Jesus used them to win people
00:41:36.120and to drive people away. And yeah, to shut mouths, to mystify. And a lot of the time,
00:41:44.020conservatives try to tell stories sometimes, this kind of impotent conservatism. It tries to tell
00:41:51.740stories, but it tells stories for the sake of data points. So it's like, oh, I need to convince
00:41:58.500people of this argument about economics. So I'll reverse engineer a very obvious moral tale
00:42:05.860to demonstrate this very obvious moral point. And like it comes off super ham-fisted. It's so
00:42:11.980ham-fisted. And instead of that, what Christian should be doing is, Christian, and I'm talking0.99
00:42:17.540about real Christian conservatism here, we should recognize that the shape of reality is, well,
00:42:23.500that the story that we're aiming to tell is the true story. So it's not as if there are all of
00:42:29.820these competing fictions and whoever comes up with the best fiction wins. That's not the case.
00:42:36.740The liberal always has to tell a fiction. So what that means, this is actually profound. What it
00:42:42.480means is that Christians and conservatives, true conservatives, can actually just tell
00:42:48.380compelling stories about reality, and those will shape people towards the God of reality to live
00:42:55.900with the grain of that reality. Yeah, I know one thing that we've said before,
00:42:59.540and this kind of cheapens that beautiful statement that you just made, is that Christians have cheat1.00
00:43:04.040codes. Yeah, we have cheat codes. Why is that? Because we know the foundations of reality,
00:43:09.240the truth. That's why this cuckold conservatism falls apart in that list of 10 things, those 10
00:43:15.840principles of conservatism, they all fall apart because they are not founded in reality. They're
00:43:21.300founded in the ether somewhere, like I had said. And we as Christians actually know and are
00:43:27.500intimately aware of the great storyteller and how the world operates. We can look at a mountain,
00:43:34.320at a sunrise, at a courageous man, at a gloriously feminine woman, and we can tell a story about that
00:43:42.020that liberals have to lie about because they actually don't know the truth and the foundations
00:43:47.160of reality in the cosmos. It's why they have to tell superhero stories about ladies who can,1.00
00:43:53.220you know, who are really good at martial arts and can like beat up men. But those are your1.00
00:43:57.700favorite? Those are, yeah, those are actually my favorite movies. As you guys know, if you listen
00:44:02.580to Meets Capades, if you're a patron, I love Marvel movies, Marvel movies and have Marvel
00:44:08.280tattoos i think you know and your pajamas incredible bulk and yeah that was my nickname
00:44:13.680yeah yeah but christian that's one of the nicknames we don't have to cut from the episode
00:44:18.860yeah i love it the editing room floor is sometimes littered with mistakes you guys have no idea
00:44:24.940but you know christians because because of this uh a christian who is who makes it his life's
00:44:32.040goal, to tell good stories, to write good books, to make good music. It's like Luther said, he's
00:44:39.860the cobbler, the Christian cobbler, isn't a Christian cobbler by putting little crosses0.85
00:44:43.500on the shoes that he makes. You don't have to make movies and film and art and music and whatnot0.91
00:44:49.000that is explicitly, and that's a really bad category, but is about communicating some
00:44:54.760didactic theological parabolic sort of truth. Yeah, like on a one-to-one.
00:44:58.760Yeah. What you do is you tell beautiful stories about reality that demonstrates the beauty of virtue, of Christian virtue, and demonstrates the ugliness of sin in all of its ugliness even.0.93
00:45:13.520you can make films that are dark. You can make music that is dark and still be telling the truth0.93
00:45:20.200and you will still be discipling and shaping people and shaping their view of the world
00:45:24.220such that when anybody reads Lord of the Rings, they are being shaped towards a Christian view
00:45:31.600of the world in reality, whether they know it or like it or not. What's funny is in many ways,
00:45:36.120same thing's happening when you read Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. She basically ripped0.99
00:45:42.080off the entire plot of the seventh book from the gospels and read, you know, where death ends up
00:45:47.520killing death through self-sacrifice. You know, it's like where the hero becomes sin and is killed
00:45:53.820by the serpent figure willingly and lays down his life like a sheep who is silent before the shearers
00:45:59.620only to take his life up again. And death ends up killing itself. You know, it's like these stories
00:46:04.800that are great. The reason they're actually great is because they're telling the truth.
00:46:08.620telling the true myth. I think that's huge. And it gets to why I think Plato would say,
00:46:14.440you can have the politics, give me the storytellers, and I'll take it. So one of the
00:46:19.400things I want to transition to, some people may be listening and they say, okay, well,
00:46:23.320some on the right are doing a really good job with media. You might think of somebody like
00:46:27.060the Daily Wire and a lot of what's going on with conservatism in that camp. So you want to begin
00:46:32.640to unpack kind of where that movement has taken us. So we've got a variety of interesting forms
00:46:38.100along these lines there's the brash locker room fart joking of steven crowder louder with crowder0.67
00:46:43.860he's definitely on the louder emphasis there we've got the angry jewish am talk show host we've got0.51
00:46:49.800mark levin we've got michael savage and then of course as we've talked about we've got the much0.54
00:46:55.120nerdier and much faster talking ben shapiro right he argues with college students about
00:47:00.720transgenderism and everybody gets riled up right we've got dave rubin and his sodomy partner who
00:47:06.860kidnap small children together yeah all being celebrated by the folks at the daily wire0.92
00:47:12.120kidnapping's nicer than how i would have put it as human traffic that was actually oh okay
00:47:16.380there's actually a worse way of saying it wow i didn't actually know that i tried to use
00:47:21.340because the most harsh words there but the child so that's actually true
00:47:26.080we're making friends today right that's right so we've got jeremy boring making
00:47:32.500lewd shaving commercials horrible because brian honestly i actually thought about this one dan
00:47:37.120and i were talking offline before the show about this if you want to change the world and make it
00:47:41.320a better place shaving yeah shaving with hose shaving with hose now see i was actually thinking0.94
00:47:47.560grow your beard you effeminate man who is i mean literally it was just kind of a lewd video yeah0.92
00:47:52.880it was horrible in every way uh these guys are sort of shock jocks we've got other ones though0.98
00:47:57.880this will be a popular comment we've got candace owens and her well what is it that candace owens
00:48:04.440does so well well she's black and she's a woman was that a mic drop social credit deducted
00:48:14.540here's the thing eric this is actually a great point because what makes a lot of conservatives
00:48:20.360uncomfortable is often going to be those places in conservatism where it's actually liberal
00:48:24.620Yeah. So one of the things that conservatives do, it's utterly gay, that makes me want to hit the clip in real time when I'm going through my life is, you know, exactly. I see like conservatives set up these ladies to go fight our rhetorical battles.0.90
00:48:44.240and we say, let's get Allie Beth Stuckey and let's get Candace Owens. And instead of saying,1.00
00:48:49.600hey, go be a good mother and homemaker and Titus 2, be a worker at home and Proverbs 31. Instead,
00:48:56.820we're like, no, let's get the ladies to go out and fight our rhetorical battles and go fight win.0.98
00:49:03.360I mean, this is just a passing comment and probably not worth much, but I was watching
00:49:06.860Tucker Carlson online, a clip a while back. And the next recommended clip, I'm like, what is going
00:49:12.400on i clip on click on it and it's like the normal fox news show i don't i don't watch fox news i
00:49:18.100just i don't have tv and there are like five ladies and this is their normal program and it's
00:49:23.940like models they're like conservative white pretty models well and this i mean they've done this for0.92
00:49:29.660a long time it's because old men like to watch young pretty women talk yeah even if it's not
00:49:34.620intelligible feel free to jump in hey wow i disagree i disagree i don't think old men are
00:49:43.760perverts like that eric oh i think the the ladies are really nice yeah sure you're smart sure you
00:49:48.900do listen they're plenty smart no it doesn't have anything to do with their intelligence it has to0.75
00:49:52.600do with created order no but i yeah not even not even i agree with you created order but like when
00:49:58.660what my point is we're championing people of conservatism and then you look at the things
00:50:45.620As servants of Christ, we won't wear the yoke of the woke.
00:50:50.020Instead, we stand on the shoulders of Christianity's giants,
00:50:53.420not to stew in nostalgia, but to see through the culture war's fog,
00:50:57.300for the glorious days of a Christendom still to be built.
00:51:01.120Our exceptional faculty are committed to the historic, biblical foundations of our faith.
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00:51:19.640of our very own Dr. Frank J. Smith's new book, Race, Church, and Society.
00:51:24.800no it what's funny is you know you can we've we've made this point maybe before but you know
00:51:32.720barack obama in 2008 is is running and campaigning on a platform position of no gay marriage uh yeah
00:51:40.300like we're we don't we don't want to overturn doma was that what it was i can't remember it was
00:51:46.320but basically sit maybe some civil unions but like okay but saying conservatives i'm not trying
00:51:53.220to overturn gay marriage. And now there are conservatives who are actually running as
00:51:59.040conservatives who are like, no, gay marriage is fine. What we don't like is the trannies.1.00
00:52:04.700You're like, what is it going to be in 50 years? You're like, the trannies are fine,1.00
00:52:09.520but you know what we're really against? We're really against amputating salamander legs onto1.00
00:52:15.380the hands of children to function as weird salamander fingers so they can do weird0.99
00:52:22.680salamander sexy like i don't even know what the transhumanism is that going to be the next thing
00:52:27.180like well what the heck i think the point is what rl dabney was saying that it's fundamentally
00:52:32.600conservatism if all it is is the shadow chasing the beast yeah it's just going to keep moving
00:52:38.020and you're going to keep missing the mark it's worthless because it's the conservatism of
00:52:43.120expediency only yes and not of sturdy principle as he said you know so it's like and and again
00:52:49.620And even in the way the sturdy is important there because sturdy principle means principle that's properly founded on the Christian worldview.
00:52:56.700So it's not mere principles then cut off with their legs cut out from under them, pasted onto some Republican platform.
00:53:05.100Those principles are not true principles unless they're explicitly and overtly rooted in the godness of God, the identity of God as creator.
00:53:13.420Well, and because the world is ruled by a covenantal God, that's how he's structured the cosmos.
00:53:19.620I actually want to read just an interview question and answer from the Daily Wire to really drive home Brian's point that this has to be founded on a Christian worldview or else it's absolutely worthless.
00:53:33.600By the way, as a passing note, I think it's ironic that the Daily Wire, with their huge budgets, they're like, yeah, we're going to build something.0.72
00:53:41.760We're going to build something enduring.
00:53:43.240We're going to build Chinese razors.0.99
00:54:03.080Well, either way. So we have some co-belligerence because we actually do align on so many issues, but fundamentally, the issue that I want to drive home is that it's not on a Christian worldview. So this is an interview with Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh. Ben Shapiro is interviewing Matt Walsh. You guys might have seen this. CrossPolitik did a coverage of this a little while back, but this was on March 31st, 2019.
00:54:31.760So Ben Shapiro asks Matt Walsh, you write a lot about politics. How do you separate out from
00:54:38.560talking about religion to talking about politics? When should you speak in a religious moral sense
00:54:44.360and when should you speak in a secular sense when you make an argument? And so this is Matt's
00:54:51.160answer. I do not know that when it comes to these great moral arguments in our society,
00:54:58.000like abortion, marriage, and gender, that we have to be able to engage on these issues
00:55:03.300without throwing the Bible at people, especially if we're talking to people who don't believe the
00:55:08.720Bible. Because when you go the biblical route with someone that doesn't believe the Bible,
00:55:14.000you've just put an extra step in the way. Instead, you have to talk about these natural law issues,
00:55:19.960the fundamental moral truths and also logic and reason. I always cringe when transgenderism is1.00
00:55:29.040being discussed and someone brings up Genesis. You don't need to bring Genesis up. This is a very1.00
00:55:34.760basic, fundamental, logical distinction. You have men here and you have women here. Men have penises,0.92
00:55:41.580you should be able to explain that without quoting Genesis. And here's the irony. The very0.99
00:55:47.620next question ben shapiro asked matt walsh what is the biggest problem with the christian church
00:55:52.400and he says that secularism has invaded it i have two responses to matt walsh and here they are
00:56:00.340award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul i knew it everyone in this room
00:56:06.760is now dumber here's the thing for matt walsh and what he what he completely fails to understand
00:56:13.840is that why is he arbitrarily privileging logic as a layer that they have to submit to?0.98
00:56:21.300Yeah. Why logic? What are you building your logic on? Where did logic come from? Why do
00:56:26.320they have to submit to it? Because right now the play is from the liberals is because they
00:56:31.200recognize that they're factually wrong. And so instead of coming up with arguments to get around
00:56:35.940the wrongness, they've actually just thrown out logic as a tool of white supremacy. So now they're
00:56:41.080Like, if you make arguments from reason and logic, you're actually demonstrating their point that you are just an agent of white supremacy in their view.0.93
00:56:54.500And that's why it's so important to grasp this.
00:56:57.180Like, you may have one guy arguing against masks and one guy arguing for them, but this is why presuppositions matter.
00:57:03.800Because if they're both operating on the fundamental presupposition that science is the ultimate magisterium of truth, then you already failed.
00:57:10.620Yeah, you've already failed. And you've actually misunderstood what science is in the first place, which is not an authority. It's a methodology to evaluate claims that can be evaluated through the domain of science, which is not all claims.
00:57:27.960only claims that can be accessed through things like experimentation and observation can even be
00:57:33.620accessed by science in the first place science cannot be the arbitrary the arbiter or the
00:57:38.440magisterium of truth because it itself relies upon an entire you know world foundational world of
00:57:45.620other presuppositions that you can't even do science unless you have those yeah so i think
00:57:50.360you're absolutely right and i think what we're driving at here is this this kind of thinking
00:57:54.520Dan, that you've shared with Matt Walsh. This is not going to rebuild anything.
00:58:00.160We're not going to see the rebuilding of American culture under this shadow chasing the beast of
00:58:05.440leftist thought. So I'm going to continue to unpack this, but I also want to cover some ground
00:58:11.040with some other conservatives. So Daily Wire is one. They're kind of on the forefront. They may
00:58:16.500be some of the best that we have in terms of media. Yeah. I mean, what is a woman? Matt Walsh's
00:58:21.440documentary was is a fantastic piece of media not in changing anybody's mind but in demonstrating
00:58:28.160the absurdity and the and the complete irascibility of the opponent like that there you can't win them
00:58:33.540through argumentation he demonstrated that and i so what i want to say is i think with the daily
00:58:37.460wire they're good at media production and just surely looking at media production they do a
00:58:42.380phenomenal job they spend a lot of money and then number two i'm holding three fingers but number
01:02:09.740You guys just have a funny bone for the Judaism question.1.00
01:02:12.760We do because we always joke about it.0.99
01:02:14.600We always joke about how, like, this is another example of how, like, conservatives lose where they just, like, they collapse it all down to, like, some ethnic boogeyman to some, like, melanin issue where they're like, but the Jews control everything.0.96
01:05:33.900The term cuck comes from an older word, cuckold, which refers to the cuckoo bird.
01:05:39.700It was the practice that cuckoo birds had where one bird would lay its egg in another bird's nest and could trick the other male bird into raising that chick as its own.
01:05:49.820In a human world, a cuck is a man who is tricked by an adulterous wife into raising another man's child.
01:05:56.500Now, it can also, if you check out Urban Dictionary, maybe don't do that if you don't want to.
01:06:34.400Just don't look up Jack Murphy because the dude, he was one of these fake manosphere gurus that turned out to be a total fraud and an actually gross individual.
01:06:45.560So as we're talking about politically, a cuck-servative is a false conservative who is thrilled to raise the bastard children of leftist progressive ideology.0.98
01:06:55.520This is in fact what many conservatives today are doing.0.98
01:06:57.820They pretend not to do it, but that is what they're doing.
01:07:01.260Most of what passes for conservatism today is merely, quote, not as bad as the left,
01:07:06.780though it has embraced many of the same basic assumptions and presuppositions about the world.
01:07:47.740They don't have a positive vision for culture, and they most certainly do not have a positive vision for Christendom.
01:07:55.100Dan, I want to get your hottest of hot takes.
01:07:56.940Yeah. So here's my hot take. Okay. It actually might not be that hot, but it is a little spicy. So in some ways, I think that these conservatives, these, the cuck-servatives are even worse than liberals because they're lying. They're lying to themselves. And the name with the cuckoo bird, is that right?
01:08:16.360is is so fitting because who is having the children who has the families who we do who
01:08:23.820are the ones that are abandoning their children to be discipled by the leftists it's totally who0.91
01:08:30.480are the ones that are sending their wives into wage slavery yeah coxervatives coxervatives are
01:08:37.400doing that yeah and you know i think the reason that these guys are really attractive to younger
01:08:42.720men because that's who they're so attractive to younger men owning liberal tiers they see someone
01:08:47.580that's fighting somebody that's really aggressive see someone that has some sort of facade at least0.99
01:08:53.100of masculinity and what it really does is it exposes the father hunger of the bastard generation0.99
01:09:00.060michael foster talks about this a lot yeah but the bastard generation and so these guys are just0.99
01:09:04.940absolutely worshipped but the fruit that they're producing is terrible because they're abandoning0.98
01:09:10.480their kids to the liberals and sending their wives off to be wage slaves to build another man's house
01:09:15.580i think you're absolutely right and look a lot of these guys you look at them it's like dave rubin
01:09:19.120is that somebody that you want your son to grow up and be like absolutely not you you look at many
01:09:24.500of them it's like they don't have kids they're unmarried i think when you look at it michael
01:09:29.040foster's absolutely right here there's a father hunger but these guys are functional absalons
01:09:34.220yeah they're going and stealing the hearts of the children and those who are desperate to have
01:09:38.100father figures in their lives. They're desperate to see somebody fight, because let's be honest,
01:09:42.040I don't want to just knock the boomer generation, but from my experience watching it, it is painful1.00
01:09:47.440as a son to watch your world be given away by an older generation of men who are flat out0.93
01:09:52.920cowards and compromisers. They will risk nothing serious. They will risk nothing serious. They want0.74
01:09:58.080to live in a neutral world where they can be comfortable with their piles of stocks, nobody
01:10:02.300attacking them, and they are either willfully or ignorantly misreading the world that they live
01:10:08.080in. And so building no walls, putting up no protection and sending their children, not just
01:10:12.960to be raised by the enemy and become, but to be devoured by the enemy. And a lot of these guys
01:10:19.100are just, they're just mimicking these talk show hosts, these talking heads because their sins are
01:10:25.560so effeminate. They're just a bunch of whiny babies. They just complain. That's not exactly0.99
01:10:30.040the word I wanted to use, but we've had complaints about cursing. So they just complain, sit around
01:10:36.200like a bunch of old women and just they're catty and they just have stuff to complain about you're1.00
01:10:41.280talking about a lot of this conservative movement because the conservative movement so the talking1.00
01:10:44.920heads all the guys that you had mentioned yeah the whole like their whole platforms are just on
01:10:48.980complaining well and then you have you know the boomer generation that that's watching them
01:10:53.620and they just complain that's sort of the thing with like the whole fox news phenomenon so i grew
01:10:58.400up in homes where there was always older people uh watching fox news and it always struck me
01:11:03.780Because it's like, yeah, you want to sit here and whine about the way the world is.
01:11:07.900But first of all, don't say it's those kids out there.
01:11:12.440And second of all, it's like, but you're not doing anything.
01:11:15.400And functionally, what we've said in this show is we want to have a positive vision of culture to build.
01:11:22.040We don't just want to complain about the way things are.
01:11:24.440It brings me back, Brian, to a quote from G.K. Chesterton.
01:11:28.740He said, the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
01:11:33.420And one of the problems I have with the whole Daily Wire, Drink, Liberal, Tears, conservative movement today, it's functionally hating what's in front of you.
01:11:41.920And as it turns out, there's actually nothing behind them.
01:11:48.860No, that is at the heart of the problem.
01:11:52.320At the heart of the problem is, and it comes back to this positive vision, are you trying to win the world for Christ and his crown and his kingdom?
01:12:01.120Or are you trying to do something else?
01:12:03.180Because if you're trying to do something else, whatever that something else is, it will always be conquered by some god and his program of conquest.0.55
01:12:14.040So if you're a generation that has a lot of comfort, for example, like we've seen with baby boomer generation coming out of World War II,
01:12:24.120you have a lot of comfort, you have the bubble of everything going up through stocks and money printing happening and having its effect.
01:12:32.720It's like a temporary high because everything seems to be great.
01:12:37.600And it's just so easy to get lulled into this idea of reducing things down to like, yeah, mere limited government or mere economic policy or mere like, what is the Fed doing?
01:12:49.280Oh, I want my stocks to keep going up so they can have enough money to just do my thing.
01:12:53.300And instead of like, what is this all for?
01:13:01.940And if you don't answer that question, well, it's for the sake of Christ and his kingdom.
01:13:05.860If you answer it in any other way, you are in the process of being conquered and colonized by another God.
01:13:12.300And you're leaving your children defenseless because you're letting that God come and tear down the walls of the previous generations put up in the service of Christ and his kingdom.
01:15:13.400We play to win and provide a positive vision for human life and every part of what it means
01:15:18.200to be human under the kingship and rule of Christ and his lordship. Everything we do is for that
01:15:24.940and defined by that. And in any, you can't start with any other foundation or all you will be doing
01:15:30.960is again, being the shadow that follows radicalism to perdition. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. I'm
01:15:38.140going to say the same thing Brian said, but in my own way, which is we talked about this again
01:15:43.940and wilderness warrior. But the idea of courage and of fighting is really attractive, especially
01:15:50.080to younger guys who are zealous. They want something to fight for. And the conservative
01:15:55.640movement, especially with the media amounts to a lot of saber rattling. You know, I've explained
01:16:02.300it. Like there's, you have the two armies that are lined up. They're going to go to battle. And
01:16:06.260these, these conservative media guys are like, you know, marching out there and they like moon
01:16:10.880the enemy and everybody like cheers and they go back and but there's never actually any fighting
01:16:15.660yeah or to to use a different metaphor there's actually no building and it's because there is
01:16:20.500no positive message it is just a negative message so the important thing is not just like
01:16:26.020we need to be courageous we need to stand up we need to fight you know we need to do that but
01:16:31.080you have to have a positive vision a mission i exist to accomplish this i exist to build
01:16:37.460this. And it should be a thing that you would be willing to give everything for, for Christendom,
01:16:44.420to see the gospel go out, to see people saved and redeemed and discipled and changed, sanctified
01:16:52.160and glorified to one day. One thing we talked in an after hours, if you wanted to listen to that,
01:16:58.520you got to be a patron, is the desire to have a cemetery here. Because we have a sense of place.
01:17:05.360We have people we love. We are building here. We've burned the boats. We're here in Ogden, Utah. We want to be buried here. We want to be buried here together so that when Christ comes, we are going to be amongst the first resurrected saints in Utah, in the new world, in this new world that Christ builds and comes back to.