00:12:17.800So, Ben, why don't you give us your perspective on exactly where we are?
00:12:20.800Well, I mean, I think that it's hard not to feel frustrated and outraged at this point in American politics
00:12:26.800because if you go back a few weeks, it was clear exactly who the Republicans were running against.
00:12:30.800The current sitting president of the United States, who, despite all appearances, is still supposedly running the country.
00:12:35.800And Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party decided that they were going to throw him out as the nominee
00:12:39.800and then leave him as the president of the United States.
00:12:41.800And so he's asleep on a beach somewhere in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and the world continues to spin.
00:12:47.800And somehow the media have decided this is no longer important.
00:12:50.800They've decided it's not important to ask Kamala Harris any questions at all.
00:12:53.800As I've been saying on my show, we are now on day 25 of Kamala Harris becoming the de facto nominee for the Democrats
00:13:00.800without a single adversarial question.
00:13:02.800Not one. Not a single adversarial question.
00:13:05.800And what this means is that Donald Trump is not just running, of course, against Kamala Harris.
00:13:08.800He is, in fact, running against the legacy media.
00:13:10.800Yeah. For about three weeks there, there was this nice illusion that they were going to actually do their jobs.
00:13:14.800And it's when Joe Biden basically pants them all on national TV.
00:13:17.800They'd spent three years saying that he was not senile. He was totally fine.
00:13:21.800And then he went on national TV and he appeared to be a complete dullard, a senile Alzheimer's written old man, which is what he is.
00:13:28.800And it made them all look terrible. And for about three weeks they had to do their job.
00:13:31.800And then they forced him out and they went right back to the urine filled kiddie pool they really enjoy with the rest of the Democratic Party.
00:13:37.800And so they've been spending every day since Kamala Harris was put in place without a single primary vote as the nominee,
00:13:42.800just enjoying this kind of warm bath of adulation that they've been creating themselves from their own bodily orifices, perhaps, with Kamala Harris.
00:13:50.800And it is an amazing thing to watch them perform this incredible transformation of one of the worst candidates in presidential history into a candidate of joy and happiness and love and unity.
00:14:06.800And it's also frustrating, I think, because if you look back a few weeks, Donald Trump was going to win.
00:14:11.800And now if you look at the polls, Donald Trump is, in fact, down in the national polling anywhere from two to five points.
00:14:17.800He's down in many of the state polls in the real politics polling average.
00:14:20.800He's now trailing in the blue wall states that he needs in order to win.
00:14:23.800So what does that mean? It means that the path forward for Donald Trump is to do something that he actually has not had to do in quite a while.
00:14:29.800And that is define his opponent. Even in 2016, he didn't really have to define Hillary because we'd known Hillary for a full on 24 years before she actually ran for president in 2016.
00:14:38.800When he was running against Joe Biden, he didn't have to introduce us to Joe Biden.
00:14:41.800Joe Biden had been on the political stage since well before I was born and he was already president of the United States.
00:14:46.800I think those of us in the room, you know, we're all very politically active, politically interested.
00:14:50.800That's why we're here. But that means that we think that we know Kamala Harris.
00:14:54.800The American public does not know Kamala Harris from anyone.
00:14:57.800They really don't know her. They've never met her. They've never seen her, which means the only way that Donald Trump can change the trajectory of this election right now is to define Kamala Harris.
00:15:07.800And let's, first of all, we have to stop starting with Ben when we have these conversations.
00:15:13.800Because he, well, this is what, no, hold on. This is what Jeremy does. I don't mean to put, but he says, okay, Ben, let's get your take first.
00:15:22.800He says all the things it's possible to say on the subject in like 20 seconds.
00:15:27.800And the rest of them are like, well, there's, okay, let's just move on and not talk about it anymore.
00:15:31.800But if I could add one note on that, I think that when it comes to defining Kamala Harris, the advantage that she has right now, because people are acting like it's a big mystery.
00:15:41.800How did she go from 1% of the polls to being this popular? Well, it's because the media, they could pull any random person off the street and say, we're going to make a star out of you.
00:15:50.800Now it won't last, but they could get about, you know, two to three months. It's a fleeting thing, but they could do that with anyone.
00:15:56.800They could pull someone out of this room. They could make a star out of, out of one of us somehow, you know, if that's possible to do.
00:16:32.800I'm skeptical that that is all, you know, on the reintroduction point, I think you're totally right.
00:16:37.800Uh, but what's so crazy is time magazine. You probably didn't see it cause no one reads time anymore other than the liberals and the moderates.
00:16:46.800But there was this new cover and it's Kamala looking so admirable and noble.
00:16:54.800She's looking and it says reintroducing Kamala Harris.
00:16:58.800She is currently the vice president of the United States.
00:17:02.800Before that, she was a senator. Before that, she was the AG of California.
00:17:05.800And then if you read the article, which I don't recommend it, you'll find out that Kamala was asked to do an interview for the article and she said no.
00:17:14.800And she's still got all that positive coverage.
00:17:17.800So, the problem with defining Kamala Harris for us is, on the one hand, we want to point out she's the furthest left senator when she was in the Senate, to the left of Bernie Sanders, wants Medicare for all, for illegal aliens, totally open borders.
00:17:57.800The point I wanted to make before you people intervened was, now you seem like you got these two poles, the radical left and the establishment Dems.
00:20:57.800Because if it were on policy, there's no way in hell that a candidate who is the vice president of the most unsuccessful administration in modern American history could be running a winning campaign if this were on policy.
00:21:08.800What happened is that the American people were largely depressed because they didn't really like either of these candidates unless they were a Trump fan.
00:22:59.800He's lost a step on the labeling thing, as you point out.
00:23:02.800And the nickname, you know, this has become a personal project of mine.
00:23:05.800I have no influence and no power at all, but I'm trying to get some suggestions to the Trump camp because they're really flailing right now.
00:33:58.800So the thing that I think is going to happen, obviously, between now and September 10th, because that's still actually a fair bit of time, is the Democratic National Convention.
00:34:06.800And there are a few things that can go wrong here for Kamala Harris in a pretty serious way.
00:34:22.800He's not being cleaned by the night nurse or spoon fed by Dr. Jill when she's not with Doug Emhoff golfing when in any case, when I know he's doing it with the nanny.
00:34:34.800Anyway, when he is awake, he is ticked off.
00:34:38.800He's been doing interviews, more interviews than the actual current nominee for president of the United States.
00:34:42.800He's actually done more interviews now as the non nominee than she has done as the nominee.
00:34:46.800And he is clearly ticked off at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Kamala Harris because he believes that he was still going to win that election and that he was ousted unfairly and that his record is excellent.
00:34:55.800And so there have been rumors that he's going to show up for night one for his big tribute.
00:34:58.800They're going to give him a gold wash.
00:34:59.800They're going to shuffle him off to the hospice.
00:35:02.800And he's not going to show up for the rest of the DNC.
00:35:04.800So you could see a little bit of a rift open there and some negative media coverage.
00:35:08.800The place where you're going to see a very serious rift is there are going to be probably 10,000 protesters who show up for their buddies in Hamas.
00:35:14.800And they are very excited to be there.
00:35:17.800They're excited despite the fact that Kamala Harris kind of likes them and is very much pro them.
00:35:21.800Kamala Harris selected a vice presidential candidate who hobnobs with the pro Hamas crowd.
00:35:26.800Kamala Harris's only real public statement on policy since becoming the nominee was one where she was ripping into Israel for its supposed human rights violations.
00:35:35.800They're still protesting because they know that they've got the Democratic Party and they know that they can shove the Democratic Party even further left.
00:35:42.800And so that is going to be a good news cycle for Republicans because it turns out you know what Americans don't like watching people wave Hamas flags in the streets of Chicago while burning.
00:35:50.800People just generally don't like that.
00:35:52.800And so the one area this I think is a place where Donald Trump really needs to mine a place where Republicans historically the Republicans have only won one popular vote election really in my lifetime almost.
00:36:07.800I mean you have to go all the way back to 1988 before George W. Bush in 2004.
00:36:13.800Right. Other than that Republicans have not won a popular vote election in my lifetime.
00:36:16.800And so that being the case 2004 what made it different was that Americans felt a serious sense of insecurity.
00:36:22.800This administration is making Americans feel insecure, insecure economically, insecure in terms of foreign policy, insecure from things like terrorism.
00:36:30.800And that is where Donald Trump really needs to hone in because Kamala Harris is a weakling.
00:36:35.800She's a weakling and she's terrible and her party is radical and they are dangerous and they endanger you and they endanger your family.
00:36:40.800And Donald Trump he his world was a safer world. There is no way to argue that Donald Trump was the best foreign policy president of my lifetime bar none.
00:36:52.800By the way, we are absolutely going to see the return of the Democrat Intifada at the convention.
00:36:59.800And there's no question that'll happen this month, but it won't just be the convention.
00:37:02.800This is the moment that the schools open up again, you are going to see the same keffia clad, purple haired, half lesbian, leftist protesters going, waving not only the Palestine flag, but burning the American flag.
00:37:16.800And this is a case where I think, look, I want to make sure that all the students on the campuses are safe.
00:37:21.800I don't want Jewish students to be obstructed from going to class or anything, but short of that, let these people protest.
00:37:28.800You've got leftists protesting leftists, burning the American flag, turning off leftists.
00:37:34.800And the first rule, the most basic rule of politics is when your opponents are fighting amongst themselves, don't stop them.
00:37:41.800When they're showing the American people who they are, when they are lighting the symbol of the country on fire, that's a wonderful show.
00:37:48.800And I want that to be every YouTube ad that we see between now and November.
00:37:52.800Yeah, that's right. I'd say it's also a point of optimism, which is rare for me.
00:38:00.800But I think one of the good signs of this election that I'm kind of happy about, even though it's absurd to watch and it's infuriating to watch, is the fact that Kamala Harris is attempting right now to run to the right on immigration.
00:38:15.800Yeah. And she's attempting to present herself as all of a sudden a hardliner on immigration.
00:38:22.800Well, she's never been a border tar, but she would like to be them.
00:38:27.800But that that shows you something that shows you that when even Kamala Harris, the most radical left presidential candidate of all time, feels the need to present herself as law and order.
00:38:39.800You know, the the prosecutor type putting the bad guys away when she feels the need to present herself that way.
00:38:44.800That means that we are winning on that issue. And Donald Trump should embrace that.
00:38:48.800He should say, OK, if you want to have that competition, who's more right wing on immigration and crime?
00:38:53.800Let's have that. Let's have that conversation. Yeah. And Kamala hasn't got Obama's advantage. Obama lived a shadow life.
00:38:59.800He actually kept his politics pretty well buried. He didn't vote on a lot of issues.
00:39:03.800He, you know, kind of finagled answers to questions for a long time.
00:39:08.800Remember when he sat and told Rick Warren that marriage was between a man and a woman?
00:39:12.800And then the minute Obergefell was decided, he lit up the White House with a rainbow flag. She didn't have that.
00:39:17.800We've got all the receipts. I mean, we've got video going forever of her saying all the things that she believes.
00:39:22.800Banning fracking. I don't know. You know, this is a bad moment. This is a tense moment.
00:39:27.800I was one of the people who said, along with Nikki Haley, that the first person to dump one of these candidates, Biden or Trump, is going to win.
00:39:35.800I thought that that was something. Nobody wanted that election. Nobody wanted to see it.
00:39:39.800This this moment makes me nervous. I would be lying if I said it didn't.
00:39:42.800But I but I am kind of optimistic because I think that the onrush of lies, the wave of lies that hit the public staggered them back.
00:39:51.800You can't do that for 90 days. I'm sorry. I do not believe you can get away with that for 90 days.
00:39:55.800There's there's another thing I think the Democrats. Listen, Democrats are professionals at this. I mean, they really are.
00:40:00.800This is professional level criminal behavior. They took their president out back and they shot him like old yeller.
00:40:05.800And then they and then they supplanted him with Kamala Harris. And that's, by the way, what parties used to do.
00:40:10.800I mean, that that actually is what a powerful system does.
00:40:13.800And the Democrats just supplanted one member of the system with another member of the system.
00:40:17.800And they're running the exact same program, except in the new face on top of it.
00:40:20.800But they're doing something else that is that is quite clever, but it's a clue as to what they're afraid of.
00:40:24.800And that is they are campaigning on two specific words, weird and joy. Yeah. Right.
00:40:29.800They are filled with joy. So much happiness. Can you feel the joy?
00:40:33.800That weird cackle that Kamala Harris says, that's not a weird cackle. That's just what joy looks like when she's dancing all strange with those kids in the high school and then cackling about buses and Venn diagrams.
00:40:43.800That's not strange. That's joy. Right. And it turns out that it's not weird when she's hanging out with Tim Walls, who's busy transing the kids in Minnesota.
00:40:51.800It's not weird when they're inviting every strange haired person with a bizarre facial tick to the Democratic National Convention.
00:40:58.800You know, that's not weird at all. What's truly weird is J.D. Vance, who's married and has kids.
00:41:02.800That's what's really weird. And then he thinks that it's good for people to get married and have kids.
00:41:06.800That's the most weird thing of all is that he thinks that. And so I think what they think is that the best defense is a good offense.
00:41:13.800They know two things. Americans are actually quite depressed about this administration.
00:41:17.800Americans hate this administration. Americans are not optimistic about the state of the country or the future of the country under Biden-Harris.
00:41:24.800And so what they're doing is they're shifting that question. Are you better off now than you were four or five years ago?
00:41:29.800They're shifting that into can you see the joy on this one person's face?
00:41:33.800She's a person, right? It's about her. So it's about her joy, but not your lack of joy over 20% inflation over the course of the last four years.
00:41:40.800And on the weird thing, the thing they're afraid of is that the normies in America, you know, 80% of Americans might notice that these people are weird.
00:41:48.400They're weird. I'm sorry. It's a weird crew of people. I mean, they're all the people that Matt is making fun of.
00:41:53.220And what is a woman, right? Just by asking them simple questions.
00:41:56.180It's people who legitimately believe that if you cut the penis off a boy, he becomes a girl.
00:41:59.840I mean, that is what these people think. And that is all strange and weird.
00:42:04.300And so I think that this election could be, if Donald Trump has the, again, it's always if with President Trump.
00:42:12.260But if he actually has the discipline to point out that this election is the normies versus the actual weird.
00:42:20.200That this election is the people who want a joyous and optimistic country, not a fake, neutra-sweet joy candidate who's covering up an ugly policy agenda.
00:42:30.920That's where they're vulnerable because they are weird and they are not joyous.
00:42:34.320And I think your idea that it's a vibes election, it's dicey.
00:42:38.520It's a vibes election right now because the entire force of the media has been poured into creating the vibes.
00:42:43.940But if ever it should become an issues election, Kamala's finished.
00:42:47.300Well, and this is the key. It occurs to me now as we're talking about the weird, and Tim Walls was the guy who started that attack even before he was picked for VP.
00:42:55.100But don't the libs like weird? Haven't we spent the last 30 years keep Austin weird?
00:43:00.540The word queer means weird and they've appropriated that as one of their favorite identifiers.
00:43:04.980Well, but the word gay means joy too, right?
00:43:08.520You're right. They're weird and joyful.
00:43:11.340And so at a certain point, you know, we get into this fight, we degrade ourselves to their level of third grade.
00:43:18.680You know, you're weird. No, you're weird. No, you're gay. No, you're gay. I'm going to give you a swirly.
00:43:22.660But what's funny, to your point on the issues is, hey, hey, guys, the border's open and it's her fault.
00:45:26.060You know, Mike Anton at the Claremont Institute, he has a name for this.
00:45:29.500He calls it, a shout out for Mike Anton out there.
00:45:32.380He calls it the celebration parallax, which is it's happening if you're talking about it positively.
00:45:38.420But it's a crazy conspiracy theory if you're talking about it negatively.
00:45:41.980And, of course, we actually have Joe Biden in official White House transcript referring to Kamala Harris as the prime example of a diversity, equality, and inclusion hire for his administration.
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01:13:32.540I think it's no surprise that we're a fairly religious lot.
01:13:37.540Each of the five of us has a pretty pronounced religious point of view and very distinct religious points of view, one from another.
01:13:43.540And while people listen to our shows and they know that about us, we've never, like I don't actually know any of your stories other than Drew's because he wrote it in a book.
01:13:58.540And so, I thought it might be an interesting way to kick off the second act to be a little bit more personal and just kind of go around the horn and talk about, briefly talk about each one of our sort of religious journeys that brings us to where we are.
01:14:09.540And then have a discussion about how, you know, where's the commonality between our points of view and where are the distinctions between our points of view.
01:14:15.540Drew, tell us about the great good thing.
01:14:17.540Well, you know, it's been 20 years since I was baptized.
01:16:19.540And the deepest, most evil, most corrupt possible ways, the world is a corrupt, evil place.
01:16:26.540But we are in touch with the, the doorway out.
01:16:30.540You know, we're walking through the door and the doorway takes us out of history, out of corruption, out of, out of the world, as they say.
01:16:36.540And I got to tell you something guys every day.
01:16:39.540And obviously I'm about 10 minutes from leaving the world.
01:16:42.540In fact, but, but every day I am just more at peace with the world as it is and optimistic at a level that goes way beyond the next election.
01:16:54.540And I think that's a, it's a beautiful thing.
01:17:49.540You know, there's fancy ways to say it, but that's pretty much the, the argument.
01:17:52.540And, and the crazy part is I was 18 and it convinced me.
01:17:56.540And then I looked into more robust and I, I think really irrefutable arguments for the existence of God, St. Thomas' five ways and et cetera.
01:18:05.540And so then I came to the conclusion, as the first Vatican council did, that the existence of God can be known with certainty by natural reason from the created world.
01:18:14.540Not everything about God can be known from reason.
01:18:20.540And so I still thought, cause I was raised in a liberal New York and you know, if anyone even believed in God, they were considered weird, weird like J.D. Vance.
01:18:29.540That I was, I still believe that reason and faith were opposed.
01:18:34.540And actually there are many people who call themselves religious who think that.
01:18:37.540But then I, I just decided I might crack open a book one day.
01:18:41.540You know, I might read, I might, I might.
01:18:43.540And so this is all even before I really start praying.
01:18:48.540That really opens up your religious life.
01:18:50.540But even just reading, you know, it turns out that all these questions that perplex us today, it turns out that smarter people than we thought about them a long time ago.
01:19:01.540And they've debated them for millennia.
01:19:04.540And they've come to some pretty good answers that might be better than the ones that you've come to.
01:19:08.540So anyway, I, I, I broadly then agreed with Christianity.
01:19:13.540I read the gospels and I, I believe that Jesus is who he says he is.
01:19:16.540And, but I didn't know about Protestantism or Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.
01:19:20.540And anyway, I came to the conclusion that the historical claims of the church are true, of the Catholic church are true.
01:19:26.540And I, I also came to the, there we, I hear some mackerel snappers out there.
01:19:33.540And so I came to that conclusion and I came to the conclusion ecclesiologically that the claims about authority that are made by the Catholic church are true.
01:19:43.540So, so that authority has to rest in an incarnational real institution with real men.
01:19:49.540And this is the part that actually comes back to politics because I know there are a lot of people who say you can't legislate morality and you got to get religion out of politics or whatever.
01:19:59.540I suspect many of you are not, not those people.
01:20:01.540I, I came to understand that the, what separates Christianity from other religions, especially like the dharmic religions, the non-theistic religions, is that ours is a faith that is grounded, not just in poetry, not just in philosophy, not, but in journalism.
01:20:18.540In fact, you know, the claim of Christianity is God becomes man in a place in the fullness of time under the Roman Empire, which is actually significant.
01:20:27.540And he picks real people and he establishes a real church and he leaves us real sacraments because we're not just floating spirits.
01:20:34.540You know, in, in modernity, liberalism tells us that we're just kind of floating in the ether, man, there's no time, there's no body.
01:20:41.540I'm a man, but I could be a woman, you know, whatever.
01:20:57.540And so that then informs one's political views because it means that, you know, this is the moment that we're chosen for.
01:21:06.540This is the country we were meant to be born in.
01:21:08.540We have real bonds of kinship to people that, that points to something beyond the world.
01:21:13.540We have a dual nature, a corruptible flesh and an incorruptible soul.
01:21:16.540We have a mind that partakes of eternal and universal things, but we have a flesh that's contingent and dependent on all sorts of other things.
01:21:25.540St. Paul says, you know, if the resurrection is false, then we're all just a bunch of dopes, basically.
01:21:32.540You know, that's, it has to be historically true.
01:21:35.540And the final point I'll make on this that's important to politics is if all of that is the case, if the word is made flesh and dwells among us, and actually the second person of the Trinity, like, lives in time and is crucified by a legal authority with jurisdiction over the whole world, it means that history is not merely literal.
01:21:55.540It means that history has an allegorical meaning, that you, we interpret history, the political events that we're in, this very moment that we're all in right now, we can't understand the full meaning of this event in our lives as it happens.
01:22:57.540But, so I mean, the story of my family coming to religion, both of my parents grew up in non-religious homes.
01:23:03.540They became more religious when I was about eight years old.
01:23:07.540They started going to a synagogue pretty regularly.
01:23:09.540They were looking for a community to be a part of.
01:23:11.540They'd always been interested in more authentic forms of Judaism.
01:23:14.540For people who are Orthodox, reform and conservatism, like conservative Judaism, not political conservatism, are not authentic forms of Judaism.
01:23:21.540Authentic Judaism takes the Torah, meaning the five books of Moses, seriously, as well as literally,
01:23:26.540and takes it so seriously that we enact the commandments that are in the five books of Moses every day of our lives,
01:23:32.540from when we wake up to when we go to sleep at night, and also we wear these funny hats.
01:23:36.540And so my parents, when I was maybe eight or nine years old, they started going to a congregation down in Venice that was led by a guy named Daniel Lappin, who is friends with Jeremy as well.
01:24:17.540Anyway, the hash browns were really good.
01:24:19.540In any case, we became Orthodox, as I say, when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old.
01:24:24.540And then, like everybody else who's sort of, you know, religious, you go through a period of maturation in your religious viewpoint.
01:24:31.540And I think that one of the big mistakes that people make when they grow up religious is not actually going through that struggle
01:24:36.540and trying to come up with good answers to solid questions about the things that they believe.
01:24:41.540And the biggest step, I think, is there's an attempt when you are 11, 12, 15 years old to suggest that there are proofs for everything in life,
01:24:51.540that anything can simply be proved by talking about it enough or thinking about it enough.
01:24:56.540And me being a particularly rationalistic type of person who really enjoys the process of logic and reasoning,
01:25:01.540it's why I like debate, for example, it's why I love reading, it's why I love writing.
01:25:04.540But for me, that's a very sexy idea, this idea that you can sort of logic your way to the proper conclusions about the world.
01:25:10.540And you can, theoretically, but the reality is that, in the end, the choice to believe is, in fact, a choice.
01:25:17.540It is not merely a thing where logic compels.
01:25:20.540Because for every proof that Aquinas gives, there are, in fact, sophisticated ways that you can argue against them.
01:25:27.540I don't think they're fully convincing. I agree with Aquinas' proofs.
01:25:30.540But with that said, are they fully dispositive such that they demand that every person who reads them immediately convert to Catholicism
01:25:38.540or convert to belief in God at all? I don't think that's the case.
01:25:41.540I think that the best proof of God, and the thing that I've really settled on,
01:25:45.540is that we live in God whether we believe in God or not.
01:25:49.540And what I mean by that is we live by God's rules.
01:25:52.540The reality of the world is a godly world.
01:25:59.540So whenever we get up in the morning and we do a thing and we find that thing meaningful, that does not exist in a non-godly world.
01:26:04.540In a world where we're just meatballs wandering through space, none of that has any meaning, nor are you making any choices in the world.
01:26:08.540There's an argument that I had with Sam Harris where he was making the argument there is no such thing as free will, for example.
01:26:13.540And I was saying, well, then I don't understand why you find any of this discussion meaningful, interesting, or worthwhile.
01:26:19.540And you're using an awful lot of active verbs for a person who doesn't believe in free will.
01:26:26.540I mean, it's a bunch of synapses that are doing that for you as the result of millions of years of evolution.
01:26:30.540The reality is that if you believe that there is a relationship between the things that you do and the result that is obtained from those things, you are living in God's universe.
01:26:39.540If you believe that there is a moral logic to the universe, you are living in God's universe.
01:26:43.540And there's hardly a soul alive who doesn't believe those things deep down in the marrow of their bones.
01:26:48.540And that's not something that can be proved through logic.
01:26:51.540And that's why whenever we have discussions about what you believe, I think that no one really believes in God in the same way that you believe in a logical proposition.
01:26:59.540You believe in God in the same way that you believe you love your wife, for example.
01:27:03.540And the way that you believe that you love your wife is that you wake up every morning in the house with your wife and then you do things that are the love, right?
01:27:10.540And this is where Judaism really speaks to me on a personal level.
01:27:14.540Judaism is an action-oriented religion.
01:27:16.540It's a thing where you are reifying concepts in the world via what are in Hebrew called the mitzvot, via the commandments.
01:27:22.540And they are very complex and they're very abstruse.
01:27:27.540You try to understand as many of them as you can.
01:27:29.540But the reality is that any system that tries to bring the profound down to real life has to meet with reality.
01:27:36.540And that has to be done in a system of rules and laws that govern your behavior and help you achieve what Aristotle is trying to achieve, actually, when he suggests that you actually build virtue through repetition.
01:27:46.540That is what the commandments are for.
01:27:49.540And so, you know, when I think about my own Judaism, what I think about is the fact that I'm a link in a chain that carries back thousands of years into history.
01:27:56.540It's, as Brooke talked about, as far as what an actual social contract looks like, it's not just a contract between people who are living.
01:28:01.540It's a contract between the dead and those who have yet to live.
01:28:26.540That's Arnold Twainby's point, despite himself.
01:28:27.540You know, the reality is that the continuation of the Jews as a people who are keeping the same biblical religion that was brought by Moses on Mount Sinai, 1300 BCE or BC.
01:28:39.540You know, that is a testament to the fact that God does speak to humanity and speaks to humanity in the terms of history.
01:28:46.540How does this history play out in our own time?
01:28:48.540You know, when I think about October 7th, the meaning of October 7th to me is different because I'm a religious person than if I were a non-religious Jew.
01:28:55.540The fact that I'm a religious person means I look at October 7th and what I see is an age-old hatred that is directed against my people, against the people that I belong to on the basis of my religion.
01:29:23.540Understand, when I say Judeo-Christian, it's not me trying to water down Christianity in some way.
01:29:26.540That's me saying that Christianity is a wonderful outgrowth for the world that has its roots, obviously, in Judaism because Jesus was a Jew.
01:29:33.540And so, you know, that reality is what religion means to me.
01:29:36.540It's what I hope to pass down to my children.
01:29:38.540And it's how I find meaning in the morality that I think that we all, I hope, draw from the same wellspring.
01:29:43.540You know, there's a very beautiful point.
01:29:52.540I love when you said we reify something, meaning, you know, to make manifest, to make it real and tangible.
01:29:59.540Because this is a point that one of my main men, kind of my main man in all of literature is Dante.
01:30:41.540There is a literal meaning, which is the Israelites leave, you know, Old Testament Israelites are leaving Egypt, going to the promised land in Jerusalem.
01:30:50.540The allegorical meaning is the salvation won for us in Christ.
01:30:55.540The moral meaning is the turning from sin through grace into a good life.
01:31:03.540And then the anagogical meaning, meaning from the perspective of the end times, is the leave-taking of this corrupted world for heavenly glory.
01:31:12.540The four layers of meaning all in one line of Scripture.
01:31:15.540And so when you discuss this, you say, look, my people are a literal instantiation of this thing.
01:31:24.540There is something really beautiful about that idea because, you know, we write our stories in sounds and scribbles.
01:31:31.540We use words and sounds in writing, but God writes his story with us.
01:31:35.540Another writer, more eloquent than I, has said that we are the syllables in God's story.
01:32:35.540And because right before we walk on air, we have no idea what we're going to talk about.
01:32:40.540But in his head, he was planning that we go around in a circle and all talk about our faith journeys.
01:32:46.540And I would go after the guy who wrote a spiritual autobiography and two Ivy League people.
01:32:57.540So I'll just give a much more simplistic I'm a simple man story of my faith journey, which is actually, it is quite a simple thing because I was born into a very Catholic, very religious family.
01:33:08.540And I had the, yes, I had the blessing of, of not really, not having a conversion story per se, because I was brought up in the faith.
01:33:15.540And I, you know, I have five brothers and sisters.
01:33:17.540One of my sisters is now a cloistered nun.
01:33:27.540Just to give you an idea of how Catholic our family is.
01:33:29.540So we were brought up in the faith and we were, we were not just told to, you know, believe it because that's what we believe.
01:33:36.540We were, we were equipped with the intellectual tools to understand why we believe these things.
01:33:40.540And so for me, it was more a process of not so much learning the truth because that had been, because we did learn that.
01:33:49.540It was learning to stand in the truth boldly and proudly.
01:33:54.540And that was a process that I had to learn.
01:33:56.540You know, I was raised in a very liberal area, went to public school for all 13 years, K through 12.
01:34:03.540And, you know, going into an environment and it's much worse in public schools today than it, than it was even 20 years ago, but it still wasn't great back then.
01:34:12.540And you're going into an environment, a hostile environment of people who ridicule you for your faith.
01:34:18.540And I would go home, you know, and we would all sit around the dinner table as a family.
01:34:24.540And we would, I would sometimes talk about these experiences of talking about my religion in, in school and being made fun of.
01:34:31.540And, and the answer from my parents was always, Oh, people made fun of you for that.
01:34:38.540Like that's because you're, you're standing for the truth and that's what happens.
01:34:41.540That's how you know that you're standing in the truth.
01:34:43.540Um, in high school, we had a, I went to a high school that had an abortion clinic, not in the high school, but that would be extreme.
01:34:52.540Not quite. We weren't there. There was an abortion clinic that might as well have been because it was in a parking, it was practically in our parking lot.
01:35:00.540It was literally a stone's throw away was the abortion clinic.
01:35:04.540And my mom and my sisters used to go and pray outside this abortion clinic on Saturday mornings.
01:35:09.540And, uh, and I wouldn't, and I, at first I didn't go because I was, I was, you know, as a 14 year old boy, I was sort of embarrassed.
01:35:15.540And, uh, especially Saturday mornings, you know, you have buses of kids that were coming to school for practices and football players that were going to games and stuff on Saturdays.
01:35:25.540And, uh, there was one time in particular that some friends of mine happened to, they were going into school on a Saturday morning for something.
01:35:34.540And they saw my family standing outside of the abortion clinic, holding rosaries.
01:35:38.540And they asked me about it. They said, was that your family doing that? That was weird.
01:35:42.540And I kind of didn't respond because I was embarrassed.
01:35:46.540And then, um, I went back and I told my mom about this and she said, you, you were embarrassed that your family is there standing against the murder of babies.
01:35:56.540That's embarrassing to you. Why is that embarrassing?
01:36:00.540And it was sort of like from that moment on, I realized that this is, that if anyone should be embarrassed, it should be them for not understanding why that is wrong.
01:36:09.540Um, and that is also, that's also how I learned to enjoy being a contrarian.
01:36:21.540So, you know, I, I really want to hear Jeremy's religious journey, but first, because we're just getting all this religious talk out here.
01:36:33.540I, I want to bring the choir back out here. Can we get the choir back out?
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01:41:01.540My journey is a bit like yours, Matt, in that I don't have a conversion story.
01:41:07.540I didn't grow up in a church-going family, really, but I grew up in a faithful family.
01:41:13.540And I think we thought we went to church probably more than we did.
01:41:18.540But, you know, we were a Christian household.
01:41:22.540We read the Bible together and we, you know, all the sort of things that kids in the 80s and 90s had in America from Salty the Singing Songbook through...
01:41:37.540That guy loves Salty the Singing Songbook.
01:41:39.540It's a little creepy at this point, I have to say.
01:41:43.540But we always had religious conversation.
01:41:49.540My maternal grandfather was sort of a spiritual leader of our family.
01:41:55.540When I got to college, I would say that I started having somewhat more independent thought about theology.
01:42:02.540I have a friend, Jay Lemon, who was being paid to teach me piano.
01:42:07.540I'm not a very good piano player now, but I had very good religious conversations with him throughout college that became really sort of definitive for me.
01:43:05.540Like, you're going to have to say something on Sunday, so you better learn something between now and then.
01:43:11.540But my – the particulars of my journey, probably like all of you, the particulars of my beliefs just continue to evolve with time as you live in this world
01:43:24.540and you realize that everything is trying to kill you.
01:43:29.540Like, I had this great realization – I've been talking about it a little bit lately – that the sun kills you.
01:43:34.540That the one thing that all things on earth have in common – they don't have it in common measure,
01:43:39.540but they all have it in common, is that everything in the world is bad.
01:43:46.540That you can be the best parent possible.
01:43:48.540Like, you can look back and say, my parents traumatized me and I'm going to be the best parent possible.
01:43:52.540And yet you will traumatize your child.
01:43:54.540One of the things that your six children will have to overcome in their life is you.