The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage： One More for 2024

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00:00:27.420 Hey, Michael Knowles here.

00:00:28.560 The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage, one more for 2024, is available now.

00:00:33.900 Join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, the God King, Jeremy Boring,

00:00:37.520 as we discuss Dr. Jordan Peterson's new series, The Gospels, The Hunter Biden Pardon,

00:00:43.260 and our thoughts on the Christmas season, also known as Advent.

00:00:47.380 Enjoy.

00:00:58.560 Welcome to Daily Wire Backstage.

00:01:12.120 I'm Jeremy Boring, joined by Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, and Michael Knowles.

00:01:16.780 We're in for a good conversation tonight because a lot's happened since the last time we were with you.

00:01:21.400 Of course, on that occasion, we were celebrating the victory of Donald Trump over that other guy,

00:01:26.740 and that other guy was a woman.

00:01:29.440 I honest to goodness, I was thinking it was Jill Biden.

00:01:33.380 It's amazing how she just disappeared from all of our collective consciousnesses.

00:01:36.100 She started drinking early.

00:01:37.180 She never existed.

00:01:38.440 But not only that, there's been a lot that's happened in the news.

00:01:42.340 Obviously, the fastest appointments for a presidential cabinet, I think, that we've ever seen

00:01:46.820 in the history of the presidency.

00:01:48.980 But before we get to all that, we've released an incredibly important and, I think, special

00:01:53.600 piece of content at Daily Wire this week from our friend Jordan Peterson called The Gospels.

00:01:58.740 One of the amazing things about having Dr. Peterson on the platform has been being able to host

00:02:03.840 these now two incredible seminars, the first on the Book of Exodus, the second one,

00:02:08.440 is on a harmonization of the four Gospels where Dr. Peterson assembles intellectuals, people

00:02:15.380 from diverse backgrounds, people of faith, people not of faith, but all people with great

00:02:19.980 insight and intellect to discuss these biblical texts.

00:02:23.920 And one of the things that I read in the news this week is that Bible sales are like at

00:02:27.500 a 40-year high or something in the country.

00:02:30.440 People are very interested in the text of the Bible, and yet church attendance is in decline,

00:02:34.860 and the church in America seems to be following about a century behind the church in Europe

00:02:41.540 into a sort of post-Christian state.

00:02:44.300 The church is failing, but people's interest in these texts does not seem to be failing,

00:02:50.380 and they seem interested in pursuing the text not through traditional Christian sources,

00:02:57.120 but through thinkers like Jordan Peterson.

00:02:59.020 That's one of the things I want to talk to you guys about, having watched some of the show.

00:03:02.820 But first, Dr. Peterson himself wants to beam in here for a minute and tell you a little

00:03:07.100 bit about the series.

00:03:08.320 So here, Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:03:11.420 Hello, everyone.

00:03:12.820 It would have been good to join you for Backstage tonight, but I'm currently on my We Who Wrestle

00:03:18.200 With God tour.

00:03:19.840 Information about that and information on the book that it's based on is available at

00:03:24.160 jordanbpeterson.com.

00:03:25.840 In the meantime, I wanted to share an announcement of deep significance regarding my work through

00:03:31.600 the biblical corpus.

00:03:33.700 Yesterday marked the premiere of the first two episodes of the new series I did with The

00:03:40.140 Daily Wire, The Gospels.

00:03:42.400 This project constitutes some of the most meaningful work I've undertaken, and I'm very happy to

00:03:48.260 be able to share it with you.

00:03:49.380 The series is an exploration of the most profound and transformative texts in Western civilization.

00:03:56.520 The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

00:04:00.260 These remarkable ancient stories have shaped the moral, philosophical, and cultural foundation

00:04:06.060 of the free world we live in today.

00:04:08.960 I was joined in this endeavor by some of my closest friends and colleagues.

00:04:12.520 These are people that you'll recognize from the Exodus series.

00:04:15.340 These, intellectuals and spiritual leaders who brought along their insights and wisdom

00:04:19.220 for the journey, together we unpacked these sacred texts to the best of our ability, wrestled

00:04:25.920 with their meaning, and attempted to uncover and illustrate their continuing relevance to

00:04:31.400 our modern lives.

00:04:32.780 Episode 1 is available to everyone, free of charge.

00:04:36.380 I hope you'll watch it and see for yourself the value this series holds.

00:04:40.380 The remaining 9 episodes are available exclusively on Daily Wire+.

00:04:44.660 I encourage you to become a member and join us as we embark on our voyage through the text.

00:04:50.960 The stories in the Gospels are not mere tales of the past.

00:04:54.840 They're living accounts, narratives that continue to challenge, inspire, and guide us.

00:04:59.960 If we engage with them fully and in good faith, they can change how we see the world and how

00:05:05.940 we conduct ourselves within it.

00:05:08.120 Thank you all for your continued support of my work and of Daily Wire+.

00:05:12.320 Together, we have built something extraordinary, something that stands as a bulwark against

00:05:18.220 the chaos of our time.

00:05:19.900 I look forward very much to hearing your thoughts on the new series, The Gospels.

00:05:24.960 Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your evening.

00:05:27.580 As Dr. Peterson says, Episode 1 of The Gospels, absolutely free to watch, but new episodes

00:05:34.700 will be premiering every Sunday at dailywireplus.com.

00:05:38.480 I think we're still running our Cyber Monday sale as well, so head over there tonight and

00:05:41.940 you'll still get 50% off, biggest sale of the year at Daily Wire+.

00:05:45.200 Members get to watch not only Dr. Peterson's body of work that he's done with us, including

00:05:49.560 the Gospels and the Exodus series, but also hit films like Am I Racist from Matt Walsh.

00:05:55.200 And one of these days, something from Andrew Klavan.

00:05:59.800 A fellow can dream.

00:06:02.260 So I want to talk for a minute about this series, The Gospels.

00:06:05.540 You know, we usually, in our December episode, talk about things about which Ben knows very

00:06:09.900 little.

00:06:10.740 And so I say, why not make this December backstage in keeping with our holiday tradition?

00:06:16.420 But actually, you know, your views of the Gospels wouldn't be more heterodox than some

00:06:24.820 of the people in the show.

00:06:27.760 That's actually what's interesting about what Jordan does, is he approaches the text with

00:06:32.780 seriousness and with rigor and with even reverence.

00:06:37.340 But he doesn't approach it in a sort of traditional, from a traditional religious point of view.

00:06:43.340 And people seem to be hungry for that kind of perspective on this text.

00:06:47.760 What do you think that's about?

00:06:48.680 You know, it's funny.

00:06:49.640 I asked Jordan about this many years ago in an interview.

00:06:53.720 And, you know, basically was teasing him, saying, when are you going to plunk?

00:06:56.580 You know, faith is a virtue.

00:06:58.500 And he said then, I think people get a benefit from watching me struggle with this because

00:07:04.860 they're struggling with it.

00:07:06.480 And I really do believe that church attendance doesn't bother me.

00:07:11.260 The fallen church attendance doesn't bother me.

00:07:12.740 But I don't think we know how far we've fallen from simply approaching the Gospels as an authoritative

00:07:18.820 wisdom text.

00:07:20.320 Years ago, I was on this panel for Wedgwood, which does these things about the arts.

00:07:24.940 And they said, if you could have one wish that what the arts would accomplish, what would

00:07:31.140 it be?

00:07:31.440 And I said, well, at this point, I'd be happy if we could just convince people there's

00:07:33.940 such a thing as truth.

00:07:35.280 And the guy next to me, who was a religious, wrote religious young adult books, started

00:07:39.520 screaming at me on the stage, you know, you intellectuals, you know, you don't understand

00:07:43.500 that Jesus is the only truth.

00:07:46.040 And I said, hey, you know, I agree with you, but you don't realize how far we are from

00:07:50.120 understanding that there even is such a thing as the truth that we can find.

00:07:54.160 And so I guess this is important.

00:07:56.440 I think this is important.

00:07:57.420 As you say, this is a heterodox group.

00:07:59.200 I laugh to see my friend Greg Horowitz, who is a very fine thriller writer.

00:08:03.740 He's a colleague, you know, and we've known each other for a long time.

00:08:05.900 He introduced me to Jordan.

00:08:07.060 He's the guy who got me to interview Jordan.

00:08:09.240 But, you know, he wouldn't know Jesus if he died to save mankind, you know.

00:08:13.480 And he's a brilliant guy, and I'm always happy to hear his thoughts.

00:08:16.460 But I think that people need to hear this.

00:08:17.940 They need to hear just the fact that people are coming to a text and getting wisdom out of

00:08:22.240 it instead of imposing their worldview on it is revolutionary.

00:08:26.660 And I think that that's important.

00:08:28.020 I think that one of the reasons people like to hear what Jordan has to say about something

00:08:31.980 like the Gospels and Scripture generally is that he's really fascinated by the text.

00:08:38.060 And I think sometimes if you grew up Christian and you went to church every Sunday, you can

00:08:44.760 tend to take the Bible for granted and take the Gospels for granted.

00:08:49.200 And you lose sight of just how—it's like—the book itself is extraordinary.

00:08:53.740 The fact that we have these writings after 2,000 years is extraordinary.

00:08:57.840 The story behind how these things were written, how they came to us, how they were transcribed

00:09:03.300 by manuscripts, and then pieces of manuscripts were recovered and found over—it's miraculous

00:09:09.520 that we even have the books at all.

00:09:12.580 And then when you dive into the text, as they do in the Gospel series, to discover what each

00:09:17.640 Gospel writer is—they're actually trying to do different things with how they tell the

00:09:21.500 story and what parts of the story they tell.

00:09:23.500 And so I think sometimes people gravitate to people like Jordan because along with the

00:09:28.540 insight, he's just very fascinated.

00:09:30.360 He's kind of blown away by it.

00:09:32.060 And sometimes if you go to—like I said, you go to church every day or every week and

00:09:35.900 you hear people talk about it, kind of taking it for granted, not approaching it with not

00:09:41.140 just the reverence, but the fascination that I think these books deserve.

00:09:44.320 There also is this problem we have in modernity, which is we clearly took a wrong exit at some

00:09:49.880 point, and you see that all around us.

00:09:52.820 But if you take a wrong exit and you go 500 miles down the road, you don't just get to

00:09:58.040 teleport back, barring some miracle.

00:10:00.360 It's very difficult to teleport back.

00:10:02.060 You have to take another exit.

00:10:03.860 You have to drive all that way back.

00:10:05.740 And so when you see the problems that have come up in Western philosophy and especially

00:10:10.840 theology and religion and ecclesiology for the past 500 years, 700 years, 1,000 years,

00:10:16.400 whatever, what I love about the way Jordan speaks about this, and a lot of these other

00:10:21.380 guys here too, by the way, in the Gospels, is they give you a bridge back.

00:10:26.440 So I was an atheist for 10 years.

00:10:28.600 When I returned to religion, I did not jump headfirst into Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine.

00:10:35.360 I started—I read a little C.S. Lewis, a little Chesterton, a little Alistair MacIntyre to

00:10:41.460 find out that virtue even exists, and I became convinced that, okay, God in principle could

00:10:47.080 exist.

00:10:48.040 Okay, then I read the Gospels for the first time really seriously, and I thought, okay,

00:10:52.860 Jesus, I think, is who he says he is.

00:10:55.580 And then I read some of the early church writings.

00:10:57.980 I thought, okay, I think the church is kind of what she said she is.

00:11:01.040 And that was a process of years and years and years.

00:11:03.400 So if you have this culture now where people aren't going to church, they don't even believe

00:11:06.600 the truth exists, you need to give them a bridge.

00:11:10.100 You need to give them a way to get back to reality.

00:11:12.440 I think Jordan does it very well.

00:11:13.540 Yeah, I mean, I think that is the relevant point.

00:11:15.760 That's exactly the language that I would have used, is the bridge language.

00:11:19.000 I think that, you know, whether we took a wrong exit as a whole civilization or not,

00:11:24.740 I think the one thing that has happened is that there used to be, in the West, a cohesive

00:11:28.660 view that your secular life and your religious life were one, that to be a religious human

00:11:32.540 being—this is mostly how religious people still live, right?

00:11:34.720 Whether you're a religious Christian or a religious Jew.

00:11:36.600 It infuses your whole existence, right?

00:11:38.740 Everything that you do is infused with that value system.

00:11:40.860 And somewhere along the line, that was bifurcated.

00:11:43.340 That was bifurcated into sort of the secular side of you and then the religious side of you.

00:11:46.820 And you're religious at church, and you're secular when you're not at church.

00:11:49.680 And as people stopped going to church as much, there was a link that was now missing,

00:11:54.440 this sort of bridge from one to the other that went missing.

00:11:57.560 And when people hear, you know, a priest or a pastor or a rabbi talk to them about religion,

00:12:01.980 they feel like they have a vested interest.

00:12:03.720 My goal is to get you back in the pew.

00:12:05.100 My goal is to get you back in the church or the synagogue or whatever.

00:12:07.900 And so they're likely not to trust it because, after all, somebody—they do have a vested

00:12:11.600 interest.

00:12:12.020 I mean, it's not like a hidden secret or anything.

00:12:14.100 And meanwhile, no one in the secular world is talking about these values at all.

00:12:16.980 So when Jordan comes at it from an angle where he says, let's talk about the importance

00:12:20.520 of these things, right?

00:12:23.320 Jordan's angle, so far as I've heard, unless he changes it in the Gospels in one of the future

00:12:27.240 episodes that I haven't yet seen, I don't think he talks about much of the historicity,

00:12:32.340 or about his own personal belief in the absolute sort of historical veracity of what the Gospels

00:12:38.280 are saying, as much as it is about the deep, abiding importance of the Gospels.

00:12:42.600 And that's always the first step to why somebody embraces religion.

00:12:44.960 The reason that people embrace religion is because religion is important, and then they

00:12:48.740 embrace it because they think that it's true.

00:12:49.940 But first, they have to think that it's important.

00:12:51.620 It matters at all.

00:12:52.640 Yes, because there are lots of things in the world that are true, but you don't invest

00:12:55.480 your entire existence in the true thing.

00:12:58.620 You invest your entire existence in the important thing.

00:13:01.480 And very often, those important things that you invest your existence in are things that

00:13:05.860 are very hard to prove.

00:13:06.740 I mean, you invest your entire life in your marriage.

00:13:09.960 How do you prove that you love your wife?

00:13:11.920 I mean, how do you even define love?

00:13:14.700 A few kids doesn't hurt.

00:13:15.800 Right, I mean, for sure.

00:13:16.920 Listen, the Judaic perspective is, of course, exactly that, that the way that you define love

00:13:21.520 is all the things that you do for your spouse in the context of a marriage, and it's very

00:13:24.860 action-defined.

00:13:25.600 But the point that I'm making is that that's not a truth like two plus two equals four.

00:13:29.920 That's something that you invest in because it's important to you and it's important to

00:13:32.480 your life, and that's what Jordan is constantly talking about.

00:13:34.260 He'll talk about the importance of these stories, and even as a Jew, I'll agree that these stories

00:13:37.320 are incredibly important.

00:13:38.320 That's what Dennis says also, right?

00:13:39.780 That you can look at these stories.

00:13:40.940 You can say Western civilization was founded on these stories, and some people are going to

00:13:45.400 take that even further.

00:13:46.100 I hope Christians do take that further.

00:13:47.400 I hope that people who are Christian or who used to be Christian may have fallen away.

00:13:51.100 They take the importance, because I think that most people, when they discard religion,

00:13:54.940 they don't discard it because they think that it's false.

00:13:57.120 They discard it because they think that it's not important.

00:13:59.260 They discard it because they think that it's inhibiting to them.

00:14:02.040 It's unspeakable.

00:14:03.040 You know, therapists today, one of the things I really like about this is everybody sitting

00:14:07.520 at the table is very, very bright.

00:14:09.060 They're very bright, intellectual people with intellectual lives.

00:14:12.960 Therapists today won't use the word love in public because it's unscientific.

00:14:18.800 And I think that is at the heart of the problem that we face.

00:14:21.860 And a lot of therapists are women, and they won't use it because the men will tell them

00:14:25.280 that it's unscientific because men think that objectivity is a thing.

00:14:29.600 And so just to have people use the word God, it drives me nuts when people, I was just reading

00:14:34.720 a book about the poets and how they're connecting us to the cosmos.

00:14:38.120 And the guy said, connecting to something that I would call God.

00:14:41.260 And I was saying this to Spencer, and he said, apparently not.

00:14:43.580 Apparently, he wouldn't call God.

00:14:44.580 Or he would have just said, it's God.

00:14:46.740 And I think that just bringing that language back into intellectual life is huge.

00:14:51.640 It's hugely important.

00:14:52.320 You know, there's also something very important that Jordan does.

00:14:54.660 He does it at the beginning of the series, of episode one, which is he draws the parallel

00:14:59.340 between Exodus, which he says is the most important story of the Old Testament, and the Gospels.

00:15:04.060 And this is a very traditional and orthodox exegesis.

00:15:07.920 The notion that the Exodus is actually the typology of history.

00:15:11.580 All of history is contained in the story of the Exodus and is fulfilled, Christians believe,

00:15:16.900 in the person of Christ.

00:15:18.340 What's so interesting about Jordan reading the Gospels is that the Gospels are not exactly

00:15:22.960 poetry.

00:15:23.500 They're not exactly philosophy.

00:15:24.880 They're not, our Lord is not a philosopher.

00:15:27.180 He is the truth, Christians believe.

00:15:29.480 And so the Gospels are journalism.

00:15:32.160 They're accounts that differ from certain perspectives on, but, you know, they agree, you know.

00:15:37.120 I totally agree with you.

00:15:37.780 And so, you know, this is why C.S. Lewis calls Christianity, the Gospels, the true myth.

00:15:45.460 That for people who are watching this, who may be agnostic or atheistic even, they will

00:15:51.640 be lured in by just the myth, by the story, by the metaphor.

00:15:56.060 And the other thing that I think Jordan is very, very good at is part of the atheism of

00:16:00.680 our age comes from people's hubris and scientism.

00:16:04.560 They think that religion is for dumb people and atheism is for smart people.

00:16:09.220 And Jordan and everyone on that stage with him, they are smart people.

00:16:13.740 And if this happened to me in my atheism, I was a little punk who thought he was smarter

00:16:17.840 than he was.

00:16:18.920 And so I returned in a different way than other people do.

00:16:22.000 He says he was a little.

00:16:23.020 Yeah, now I'm the real thing, you know, I say with my cigar.

00:16:26.480 At the time, I needed permission to believe that smart people could be religious.

00:16:33.440 I think there's one other piece of this, which we've kind of hit around, but deserves

00:16:38.380 exploration.

00:16:39.040 And that's that Gen X and the millennials are coming into their own, right?

00:16:44.520 Gen X, in many ways, responsible for Donald Trump winning the election a month ago.

00:16:49.740 So our audience at Daily Wire is not the traditional conservative audience.

00:16:54.140 When you tell people you work for the Daily Wire, they go, oh, your audience is, they're

00:16:57.840 all boomers and they're in red states.

00:16:59.920 That's really not true with the Daily Wire.

00:17:01.540 Our audience is predominantly made up of Gen X and millennials, and it's predominantly urban

00:17:06.320 and predominantly coastal.

00:17:08.220 And so that group of people, which it shocks people when you say it because they think those

00:17:12.940 people don't exist.

00:17:13.660 This election proved that they exist, and the existence of the Daily Wire for the last

00:17:17.420 decade had already proven that they exist.

00:17:20.500 Gen X is defined by a belief that the greatest crime you can commit is to sell out.

00:17:25.740 The millennials are defined by a belief that the highest virtue is authenticity.

00:17:30.840 You can see then that both of those groups of people will despise partisans.

00:17:38.280 That's one thing that distinguishes Gen X and millennial conservatives, for example, from

00:17:43.420 baby boomer conservatives.

00:17:46.000 Baby boomer conservatives are far more likely to find appeal to partisan thinkers, partisan

00:17:52.640 hosts, which Gen X and millennials don't.

00:17:56.520 Gen X and millennials want to listen to shows like yours, which feel more personal.

00:17:59.940 They feel more perhaps honest because you will say what you believe, even if it goes against

00:18:06.940 sort of the party line.

00:18:08.560 That's why you're far more likely to find conservatives disagreeing with Republican

00:18:13.100 talking points on the internet than you are on cable news because you're speaking to a completely

00:18:17.820 different group of people with a different set of values.

00:18:21.320 Part of what, as a Gen Xer, part of what I believe is that ideology is important so far

00:18:28.420 as it goes, and doctrine is important so far as it goes, but they can also both be used to

00:18:34.600 obscure things that are true.

00:18:36.260 And so what I love about watching the Exodus series, I thought the Exodus series was the

00:18:41.300 best thing we'd ever put out as a company, and I think I've seen the first episode of

00:18:45.260 the Gospels and am already in love with it.

00:18:47.520 What I love about Jordan's approach and the other panelists is that they're not approaching

00:18:51.880 the text as doctrinaires.

00:18:54.360 They're not approaching the text as partisans.

00:18:57.160 It's good that they are outsiders.

00:18:59.240 They're not just telling you talking points about the text that they learned.

00:19:03.080 It kind of goes to your point a minute ago, Matt, they're not just telling you the things

00:19:05.940 that they learned in Sunday school that are sort of rote and that we perhaps take for

00:19:09.920 granted or that sound familiar to the point that they don't sound like anything at all.

00:19:14.760 Jordan says, the name of his book, which is number one on the New York Times bestseller

00:19:18.620 list right now, is We Who Wrestle with God, obviously an allusion to Jacob.

00:19:25.140 They wrestle with the text.

00:19:26.840 They're approaching the text as people who are earnest about it, inspired by it.

00:19:34.080 But haven't grown up in a tradition, some of them have, but most of them have not grown

00:19:38.020 up in a tradition.

00:19:39.440 And so you hear ideas that perhaps contain truth that you might not get to through simple

00:19:46.060 doctrine.

00:19:46.760 In the same way that in politics, there are things that are true that we don't get to

00:19:49.720 just through ideology.

00:19:51.440 And I think that that's important to this new audience to whom we speak, to whom Jordan

00:19:55.700 speaks.

00:19:56.180 Because you have to build the intellectual scaffolding that will permit you to pursue truth even further.

00:20:02.600 You don't want to just have it downloaded to your head.

00:20:05.020 That's right.

00:20:05.280 And so once you build that scaffolding, especially with religion, it's not enough just to know

00:20:09.080 the true things.

00:20:10.140 When it comes to virtue, it's not enough to know virtuous things.

00:20:12.880 You actually have to do it and put it into your body.

00:20:15.020 And that means if you want to be holy, you have to pray, which is why I'm so happy to

00:20:18.300 tell you about Hallow.

00:20:20.000 As Christmas approaches, there is a season that people don't talk about anymore.

00:20:23.860 But it's a beautiful season known as Advent.

00:20:26.220 We need to make America great again, make America healthy again, and make Advent solemn again.

00:20:30.060 You need to put God at the center of this season with Hallow, the number one prayer app.

00:20:34.900 They're launching a special Advent prayer challenge called For God So Loved the World that promises

00:20:40.660 a marvelous lineup of guides and wonderful prayers to help you in your spiritual life.

00:20:47.860 This challenge features an incredible lineup of people like Survivalist Bear Grylls.

00:20:52.640 It includes Jonathan Rumi from The Chosen, and they will lead you through a severe mercy,

00:20:59.800 a powerful story of faith and divine love.

00:21:02.700 You will join Pastor Francis Chan and Jeff Cavins for profound scripture reflections, while

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00:21:24.760 Drew, I believe you use Hallow.

00:21:26.480 I do use Hallow.

00:21:27.420 I use it to meditate on scripture, guided meditation through the scripture.

00:21:31.000 I use it, I've started to use it for rosaries, which I've been experimenting with.

00:21:35.960 And it's great.

00:21:37.160 And, you know, Liam Neeson is in it, so I'm afraid if I don't use it, he'll kill me.

00:21:40.020 You know, that's right.

00:21:41.640 That's a good inducement.

00:21:43.500 It's more than just daily prayer.

00:21:45.060 It's an invitation to experience God's love, mercy, and healing in a deeper way at a very

00:21:49.220 important time of the liturgical year.

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00:22:04.240 So one of the things that, as we were talking this morning about how to approach conversations

00:22:09.380 about the gospels, our producer Mathis brought me a sort of series of topics, and one of them

00:22:13.640 really stood out to me.

00:22:14.920 And it's in a world where doctrine isn't everyone's path to beginning to wrestle with the text of

00:22:22.400 scripture, we're sort of forced to reflect on what you might call cultural Christianity

00:22:29.420 or cultural, you know, the presence of these sort of religious traditions in our culture,

00:22:33.780 but detached from necessarily faith in them.

00:22:37.840 And because there are pretty pronounced distinctions between the theology of the five of us, I actually

00:22:44.740 thought it'd be kind of an interesting thing to explore for a minute.

00:22:47.300 This reminds me of the Chesterton line that we open our minds for the same reason that we

00:22:53.340 open our mouths, namely to close it on something solid, that skepticism has utility only when it

00:22:58.800 leads to conviction.

00:22:59.480 So this is what I love about the gospel series, and really everything that Jordan has done

00:23:04.680 on religion, which is that it gives people an opening, it gives them an entree, and then

00:23:09.800 they need to figure out what they're going to do with that.

00:23:12.240 And so, you know, it seems to me that if God exists, it's important to know that.

00:23:18.000 That seems like a big question.

00:23:19.460 And if God exists, then we want to know something about him and how we relate to him.

00:23:23.820 Well, this is, to me, this is everything.

00:23:25.640 If God exists and he wants us to know something about him and how to relate to him, then we

00:23:30.360 might want to come to some conclusions about that.

00:23:32.500 We might want to live that out in our lives.

00:23:34.500 And that will lead us to doctrines.

00:23:35.880 And that will lead us to sacraments.

00:23:37.380 And it will lead us to inform everything in our lives.

00:23:40.660 And you ignore that question at your peril and to your unhappiness.

00:23:44.660 I read the Bible from the age of, seriously, from the age of 15 on, and read it many, many

00:23:50.280 times before I became a believer in any kind of God whatsoever.

00:23:53.060 And the only time when I finally understood the Bible was when I started to believe there

00:23:58.740 was a God.

00:23:59.360 And I thought, and it came to me that I should be baptized.

00:24:02.020 And I was shocked.

00:24:02.920 I was shocked that this is the voice that was in my head.

00:24:05.860 You should be baptized.

00:24:06.980 And so I thought, I'm just going to go back and read it as if it were true and read it

00:24:10.440 as if it were history.

00:24:11.400 And I've come to a lot of radical and eccentric conclusions about that because I think that

00:24:15.560 if a man landed from outer space in the year zero and people wrote that down, certain

00:24:21.280 things would happen, there wouldn't be this magical thing where every single word could

00:24:24.800 be detached from every other word and phrases pulled out.

00:24:27.340 It would just be a report.

00:24:28.560 And there would be discrepancies between two people's reports.

00:24:31.560 But they would all have truth if you gathered them together rightly.

00:24:35.880 And to me, this is the reason to believe in God.

00:24:39.660 And for me, it's the reason to believe in Christ.

00:24:41.100 Because it all happened.

00:24:42.040 It's all real.

00:24:42.980 And otherwise, you lose me.

00:24:45.080 If you're just going for the meaning, if you're just going back to the fact that it's

00:24:48.360 foundational, I think what you said about this being journalism, that's the thing that

00:24:52.720 sings for me.

00:24:53.520 When I pick up the Bible, I am reading journalism.

00:24:55.960 And that means that sometimes I'll hear a guy say something and think, that's not what

00:24:59.340 I would have thought if I had seen what you saw.

00:25:01.240 But that's okay.

00:25:02.320 I wasn't there.

00:25:03.180 Yeah, I wasn't there.

00:25:04.040 And still, and this thing that you were talking about, about going to this literature for wisdom,

00:25:10.680 I can't tell you, as a person who reads a lot of literary criticism, which most people

00:25:15.300 don't read, I can't tell you how radical that is in this time.

00:25:18.820 The current literary criticism, and when I say current, for the last 50 years, has been

00:25:23.120 essentially to call writers into the dock for why they haven't lived up to your virtue.

00:25:29.560 So you read Jane Austen to see how she was polluted by being part of the imperial British

00:25:34.840 empire, you know?

00:25:35.780 And that's the kind of Edward Said idea, that this is polluted by imperialism and colonialism

00:25:42.680 and all this stuff.

00:25:43.740 Whereas my attitude toward literature is, no, these people are people of brilliance who

00:25:49.140 are coming to me through time to speak eternal verities that are captured in their moment.

00:25:54.780 And so I'm taking wisdom from them.

00:25:56.740 I'm not giving my wisdom to them.

00:25:58.540 And that, to me, is what's great about this.

00:26:00.620 And it's also what's good, I think, about going to church and having a tradition of possible

00:26:05.760 thousands of years of people doing that to relate to.

00:26:10.080 You know, you're going to the past for wisdom, not to scold it, not to impose your superior

00:26:16.900 views on it, but to get the things that are always true and are forever true.

00:26:20.140 I think another reason why maybe the Bible is becoming popular again in our society is

00:26:26.800 that there's the wisdom.

00:26:28.540 There's also just, maybe one thing we're missing is people live now in a culture where

00:26:35.260 nothing is permanent and we're just surrounded.

00:26:37.240 You know, we've got this constant stream of content on our phone and not everything lasts

00:26:40.820 for two seconds and nothing matters for more than two seconds.

00:26:43.940 And so there's a permanence to the Bible that I think is appealing to people.

00:26:48.480 The fact that it has existed and persisted for more than 2,000 years, something permanent

00:26:57.360 and deep and beautiful, something that feels sacred.

00:27:01.020 I think people are just longing and hungry for that.

00:27:02.740 It's one of the reasons why the Latin mass is growing at a rate much larger than these kind

00:27:09.840 of more liberal parishes are.

00:27:10.940 Well, you know, Shia LaBeouf.

00:27:11.680 Because of that, the sacredness.

00:27:13.900 And when Shia LaBeouf converted.

00:27:14.760 Mostly FBI agents.

00:27:15.760 Yeah, it's true.

00:27:18.400 There are a lot of federal agents, but that's all going to end when Trump gets into office.

00:27:21.880 When Shia LaBeouf converted, to your points, when you were talking about, you know, the

00:27:27.060 vested interest of prelates trying to sell things, one of the reasons Shia LaBeouf said

00:27:31.280 he loved the Latin mass and he told Bishop Barron, who's one of the stars of the Gospels,

00:27:34.780 is he said, I didn't feel like they were trying to sell me anything.

00:27:38.720 And that's very attractive to a lot of people.

00:27:41.100 I mean, the biggest factor in all this is something that you mentioned briefly, Michael,

00:27:44.700 which is that we're in a time when people are very hungry.

00:27:48.320 So the thing that they're hungry for is one element.

00:27:50.020 And then the fact that everybody is deeply hungry is the other big element.

00:27:53.280 So I made the mistake recently of going back and watching some Woody Allen films.

00:27:57.520 And there is one, and I'm sure Drew probably likes Woody Allen films better than I do.

00:28:01.300 No, I'm not a Woody Allen fan.

00:28:02.740 Okay, interesting.

00:28:03.100 I like his early writing.

00:28:04.040 So I think that his best film is a film that he made, I believe it was 91, called Crimes

00:28:09.540 and Misdemeanors.

00:28:10.540 Yeah, I agree.

00:28:11.480 And this film, for those who haven't seen it, it's no longer available on streaming.

00:28:15.260 You basically have to bootleg it or buy it on DVD or something.

00:28:18.800 And the film is about a character, Martin Landau, who is married, and he's having an affair with

00:28:24.220 some woman, and the woman starts bothering him.

00:28:26.580 She wants to come tell his wife.

00:28:27.660 She wants him to break up with his wife and all of this kind of stuff.

00:28:29.820 And so he goes to his brother, and his brother is kind of an underworld criminal, and the

00:28:34.740 question is, is he going to have his brother kill the girl?

00:28:36.960 And, you know, spoiler alert, he ends up having his brother kill the girl, and he goes through

00:28:41.260 this whole spiritual crisis afterward in which he thinks about, well, if there's a God, God's

00:28:46.560 going to be very angry with me for having done this.

00:28:48.060 I looked into her eyes.

00:28:48.740 I saw that something isn't there that used to be there.

00:28:51.840 And you think that maybe Woody Allen, for the first time in his life, is actually going

00:28:54.920 in kind of a religious direction.

00:28:55.940 And instead, he takes this wild left turn near the end where they fast forward about

00:28:59.720 a year.

00:29:00.320 And the end of the film is, Martin Landau is now hanging out with Woody Allen.

00:29:03.680 They haven't met the entire film.

00:29:05.120 And Martin Landau is telling the story of what happened to him.

00:29:08.120 And Woody Allen says, so what ended up happening?

00:29:10.080 He said, everything was fine.

00:29:11.240 He said, because it turns out that I thought there wasn't a God.

00:29:13.240 And if there wasn't a God, then what does it really matter what I did?

00:29:17.100 And I thought, you know, that is actually a baldly brave take on what it means for there

00:29:23.340 not to be a God.

00:29:23.740 Like, good for Woody Allen for actually just saying the quiet part out loud, which is that without

00:29:27.240 God—

00:29:27.760 This is his answer to crime and punishment.

00:29:28.620 I mean, that's crimes and misdemeanors, right?

00:29:31.640 Crime and punishment is the idea that you are going to repent because there's a loving

00:29:34.920 God waiting for you to repent, and you can still be a useful person after having done

00:29:38.960 something truly evil.

00:29:39.840 But evil does exist, and you have to repent of that evil.

00:29:41.740 But he makes a spectacular mistake, because this film and Matchpoint are both his war with

00:29:46.280 crime and punishment.

00:29:47.640 Matchpoint has the wonderful joke that he uses crime and punishment as his murder strategy.

00:29:54.060 He gets the idea for his murder from crime and punishment.

00:29:56.420 It's a great joke.

00:29:57.320 But it ends crimes and misdemeanor with the Jewish philosopher, I think, saying, there's

00:30:03.040 no fairness or goodness in life.

00:30:07.040 Is that one?

00:30:08.060 Yeah, I think it is that one.

00:30:09.220 He says, no fairness or goodness in life, so we have to bring—in creation.

00:30:13.100 Creation left out the goodness and the love, so we have to bring it as if we weren't part

00:30:16.820 of creation.

00:30:17.320 But I think the point is that he even undercuts his own point, because the philosopher kills

00:30:21.940 himself.

00:30:22.340 Yes.

00:30:22.920 Right?

00:30:23.500 No, everything goes wrong in that film.

00:30:24.800 Right, right.

00:30:25.120 No, no, but I think the point is that it's the best explication of nihilism that I think

00:30:30.380 has ever been put on film, and it's that nihilism that we're watching played out in real time

00:30:35.440 throughout the West right now.

00:30:36.800 I mean, I don't think that it's a coincidence that the same civilization that wants to engage

00:30:39.720 with Jordan is the civilization that's determining that it's time to greenlight euthanasia in the

00:30:44.340 UK, or that it's decided that abortion is not just—

00:30:47.320 something that should be, you know, say it's sad, but should be legal and rare.

00:30:51.100 It's actually something that you ought to cheer for.

00:30:53.380 When you're a civilization that has basically sold out your birthright for a mess of pottage,

00:30:57.060 and you've decided that what you're going to do instead is engage in essentially sex

00:31:03.300 consequence-free, and that the meaning of life is your hedonistic pursuit of pleasure

00:31:07.080 within it, that opens up this massive gap for somebody who says, wait a second, that's

00:31:11.020 not what a meaningful life looks like.

00:31:12.560 I mean, this is how Jordan became famous, he's talking about a meaningful life.

00:31:14.540 Well, it turns out that in the West, the key element of a meaningful life is engagement

00:31:18.540 with this tradition.

00:31:20.480 And so I think that that's why there's been this hunger for the Bible, because if you—everyone

00:31:24.820 tends to compare themselves to their parents, I mean, this is what we all do, and particularly

00:31:28.800 in an unhappy age, you compare yourself to your parents.

00:31:31.520 Well, the reality is that there are a lot of kids today who are not as happy as their

00:31:35.280 parents or certainly as their grandparents.

00:31:37.220 And so they're looking back even beyond.

00:31:38.360 They're looking at their grandparents and saying, you know, what did they have that I don't

00:31:42.180 have?

00:31:42.400 I have better technology, I have cooler stuff, I have more access to all of the forbidden

00:31:46.240 fruits that my grandparents weren't supposed to engage in, and yet here I am miserable.

00:31:51.120 What were they engaged with that maybe I'm not?

00:31:53.520 Maybe I ought to re-engage with the things that they were telling me when I was a kid.

00:31:58.560 And so I think that you're seeing a lot of that in what's happening.

00:32:01.080 And this is really the important point that, Drew, you touched on earlier, which is, you just

00:32:06.780 mentioned, Ben, that the euthanasia bill, so-called, a good death.

00:32:09.480 It's the worst kind of death imaginable, it's suicide.

00:32:11.820 And the UK just voted to kill off vulnerable people, and Canada's done it, and the whole

00:32:16.360 West is going that direction.

00:32:18.060 And Adrian Vermeule at Harvard made a very good point, which is that it is insufficient

00:32:22.560 to argue against assisted suicide on the basis that there's a slippery slope and hard cases,

00:32:28.780 and some people might actually have violations in their will and their consent as they're killed.

00:32:34.500 He said, that's not going to cut it, because if you accept the premise that life is fundamentally

00:32:41.240 one's own, and we have full autonomy over it, and death is just a matter of our own individual

00:32:47.380 will, and the whole point of life is to just seek hedonistic pleasure, then you've given

00:32:52.700 away the whole game.

00:32:53.680 You actually have to offer something different.

00:32:55.340 So when we talk, I love the introduction to say, why do these stories captivate us?

00:33:01.020 Why do they maybe have meaning?

00:33:02.180 Why have they maybe helped us live in civilization for millennia before?

00:33:06.860 You have to keep following that line of thought.

00:33:09.680 You have to say, why does it seem that they have meaning?

00:33:12.040 Is it possible that they're actually meaningful?

00:33:14.560 Is it possible that there actually is a truth there that is correct in principle, not just

00:33:19.100 as a matter of utilitarian convenience?

00:33:20.680 What does it even mean for a story to have meaning?

00:33:22.420 It means that somebody's telling it.

00:33:23.860 You know, if a story just appears, you know, if something just appears out of nowhere, it

00:33:27.060 has no meaning by definition.

00:33:28.560 But if I tell you a story, you know I'm telling you something.

00:33:31.220 I'm telling you about some thought that I have, some vision that I have.

00:33:34.340 And I think when you read, when you look at life and you start to see that it is a story,

00:33:38.180 it does have meaning.

00:33:38.980 You realize it's being told.

00:33:40.240 I mean, you realize you're not the subject.

00:33:42.740 You're not the object of life.

00:33:44.080 You're the subject.

00:33:44.740 So here's a challenging thought that I've been wrestling with the last few weeks.

00:33:49.540 And last night, I had this opportunity to go to a Presbyterian church here in Nashville.

00:33:55.320 I'm not Presbyterian, but I love this time of year.

00:33:59.260 Some call it the most wonderful time of the year.

00:34:02.020 Frank Sinatra, I think.

00:34:02.840 Yeah, and I was looking for things around Middle Tennessee to do sort of in the spirit

00:34:08.380 of the Christmas season.

00:34:10.460 And one of the most beautiful church campuses I've seen anywhere, but certainly in Middle

00:34:15.320 Tennessee, is this First Presbyterian church here in Nashville.

00:34:18.900 Beautiful, beautiful campus.

00:34:20.120 And they were having this Kaylee, which is a Scottish tree lighting ceremony.

00:34:26.780 And I thought, well, that'd be a wonderful thing to go to.

00:34:28.220 I want to go.

00:34:29.140 And I took my family, took some friends.

00:34:31.720 Our business partner, Caleb, and his family went with us.

00:34:34.580 And it was wonderful.

00:34:36.840 They had the, I won't get the name right, but the Pipes and Drums of Middle Tennessee,

00:34:42.280 this bagpipe and snare drum group who play, you know, they wear tartans and do traditional

00:34:47.500 Scottish music.

00:34:49.640 And they had the Highland dancers of Middle Tennessee who came out and did traditional

00:34:53.300 Scottish Highland dancing.

00:34:55.360 And they played traditional songs, but then also Christmas carols on the bagpipes.

00:35:00.420 It was a wonderful family sort of event.

00:35:02.060 And at one point, Caleb and I were talking about keeping the old ways alive.

00:35:10.260 Because here you're, we're many thousands of miles from Scotland and many centuries removed

00:35:15.260 from the time when the Highland dance was a real thing or the, or the pipe and drums

00:35:19.720 were a real thing, right?

00:35:21.220 But, but there are people who maintain those traditions, even in a place like Tennessee,

00:35:26.500 so far away.

00:35:27.600 Obviously in British military, there are people who still play the bagpipes and do the dance.

00:35:33.460 But you would never find something like this in, it would be very unlikely to find something

00:35:39.640 like this in a Baptist church happening as a form of a Christmas celebration.

00:35:44.400 But here in the Presbyterian church, you would experience it.

00:35:47.720 And that led me to a further thought, which is, I'm going to go to some lessons and carols,

00:35:54.100 which is the great Anglican way of approaching Christmas.

00:35:57.160 They have the nine lessons.

00:35:58.740 Yeah, it's lovely.

00:35:59.420 Yeah.

00:35:59.660 And it's one of my very favorite things to do.

00:36:01.560 I love it so much that I almost flew to Britain just to go to, to one this year and decided,

00:36:07.180 well, I found some in Middle Tennessee, so I'm going to this.

00:36:10.080 Probably just as good.

00:36:11.120 Yeah.

00:36:11.360 I'm going to this Episcopal church next week that has one here in Middle Tennessee, and

00:36:16.960 it's all, it's very musical, and there's these wonderful choirs.

00:36:19.800 And then a week later, I'm going to another Presbyterian church that also has one, a different

00:36:23.380 Presbyterian church.

00:36:24.680 And what I realized is all of these churches are keeping these old traditions alive.

00:36:30.040 Even the idea of the, of the sort of choir and, you know, it's not that churches don't

00:36:34.220 have choirs, but not many churches anymore have choirs.

00:36:36.820 And I thought, well, isn't it interesting that the more liberal denominations are more

00:36:43.320 likely to be keeping the old traditions alive?

00:36:47.080 And so the most liturgic, with the exception of Catholicism, in some ways, although not a

00:36:53.240 full exception, but I will grant that with the exception of-

00:36:55.960 At least the trads.

00:36:57.060 With the exception of the trads, the older high church liturgical churches are the most

00:37:06.020 left-wing, most liberal theologically churches in the country.

00:37:09.240 And yet they are keeping the old traditions alive the most of any of the, and in some

00:37:16.300 ways, isn't that a rebuke of something, there is something about the conservative, I know

00:37:21.380 all these words, we can argue about the meaning of all of these words, but it's interesting

00:37:25.600 that conservatives are less likely to engage in highland dance.

00:37:32.660 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:33.400 Well, conservatives, conservatives are less likely, but not just highland dance, because

00:37:36.980 you say, well, that's fruity, they dance on their tippy toes.

00:37:39.460 Well, okay.

00:37:40.020 I mean, better men, far better men than you engaged in highland dance.

00:37:43.940 And more skirts while doing it.

00:37:44.600 And more skirts while doing it.

00:37:45.560 But conservatives are far less likely to keep the old religious traditions, like the Lessons

00:37:51.980 Carol's alive.

00:37:55.320 What is, you would think, you would think in a sort of definitional way, that we would,

00:37:59.540 the conservatives would want to conserve those old traditions.

00:38:01.680 No, I'll tell you the difference.

00:38:02.540 That's actually not what happens.

00:38:03.460 I'm not sure the, I don't know about the premise.

00:38:05.880 I don't know if that's true.

00:38:06.740 No, I can clarify the premise.

00:38:09.260 I think the word you're looking for, which is often synonymous with conservatives, is the

00:38:13.820 fundamentalists.

00:38:14.860 People who are fundamentalists are the ones who don't want the highland dance, and they

00:38:18.380 don't want, because they say, no, I want to go back to the original.

00:38:20.460 I'm so conservative, I want to go back to the original.

00:38:22.500 But there is, paradoxically, something very conservative about accepting that time goes

00:38:27.440 on, and...

00:38:28.560 No, but I think, go ahead, because I think you're going to say something.

00:38:31.600 Well, I just, I'm not sure about the premise.

00:38:33.460 I mean, because I think one of the defining things about liberals as Christians, and also

00:38:40.200 just in the culture generally, is that they don't value tradition.

00:38:43.820 So they may keep some traditions alive, but they empty them of meaning, typically.

00:38:49.120 But the idea that liberals are more likely to maintain a tradition, I just...

00:38:55.620 Yeah, I went to, I think the leftists infiltrated some of these churches, and were wise enough

00:39:02.280 to keep the traditions there while they ate the meaning out of them.

00:39:05.320 Right, exactly.

00:39:05.780 They keep the form of it, maybe in some cases.

00:39:08.600 But I think that it's fair to say...

00:39:09.820 It's a cultural Christianity point from earlier that nobody ever answered, but I think that's

00:39:15.260 kind of the same idea.

00:39:16.060 Cultural Christianity, so-called, is keeping some of the forms of these things, putting

00:39:21.560 up the Christmas tree, et cetera, but emptying of all of its spiritual and also historical

00:39:27.680 meaning.

00:39:27.940 But at least in America, the answer to it seems to be, again, with the exception of the trad

00:39:32.360 Catholics, that the people who are most likely to say that they are religious conservatives,

00:39:39.320 the people who are the most likely to say that they believe that the Bible is literally

00:39:42.700 true.

00:39:43.280 And we can argue about what literally true even means.

00:39:45.620 That's not exactly the conversation I'm trying to have here.

00:39:48.620 Those people are the least likely, not only to engage in the Highland dance, but the least

00:39:54.380 likely to engage in liturgy, the least likely to know what Advent is, the least likely to

00:39:59.220 have a choir in their church.

00:40:00.860 And yet, they're the most likely to actually believe in the religion of their church.

00:40:03.720 Well, because part of that is because they're Protestants, though, and they decided that all

00:40:07.140 the things that the Catholics were doing were bad and got rid of them all, and that's

00:40:10.540 why...

00:40:10.640 Yeah, I guess because some of the Protestants would argue, and I totally disagree, but they

00:40:14.040 would argue that, well, they're going to reject some of that stuff because it's not

00:40:16.380 traditional enough, and that stuff was invented later, and so they want to go back to the

00:40:20.960 Bible.

00:40:21.280 There's no stare decisis, in other words.

00:40:23.380 It's an originalist argument about the Constitution, basically.

00:40:25.980 They're just saying, like, if you go back to the Gospel, there's no Highland dance in

00:40:28.000 the Gospel.

00:40:28.400 There's no reason we should be doing that.

00:40:29.480 Right.

00:40:29.900 Yeah.

00:40:30.060 And so, you know, I certainly hear that argument.

00:40:32.280 I think there's also a tendency...

00:40:33.880 But there's also no, like, e-sus-for in the first century church either, and it's in

00:40:40.600 every Protestant...

00:40:41.240 Have you listened to the Psalms of David, though?

00:40:42.720 Are you certain?

00:40:43.980 I mean, but I do think there may be a broader point.

00:40:46.380 Here, which is that, you know, in a culture that, as Matt says, has been infiltrated

00:40:50.420 in so many ways, where we're, you know, these sort of old rituals and old things have been

00:40:54.960 worn around like Hannibal Lecter's face mask, right?

00:40:57.880 Like, they've been emptied of meaning and then worn around as...

00:41:00.640 But what you've seen, and this is true in politics also, is there's a tendency on the

00:41:04.360 right to say, well, to hell with the whole thing.

00:41:06.140 We're just going to blow up this thing entirely.

00:41:07.840 That's not salvageable anymore.

00:41:09.460 It's not that we're going to seize it back or we're going to re-enter...

00:41:11.820 We're going to kind of re-infuse it with meaning.

00:41:14.140 We just have to blow the whole thing up.

00:41:15.300 Yeah.

00:41:15.800 And you get the tendency.

00:41:17.540 I mean, you understand it.

00:41:18.740 If you think, for example, that Christmas has been so commercialized that a Christmas

00:41:21.560 tree literally means nothing and has no bearing on Christmas anymore, you can see somebody

00:41:25.100 saying, okay, well, there's no Christmas tree in our house because, after all, all it means

00:41:28.380 is commercialism in Aces or something.

00:41:30.220 You can see why somebody would say that, whether you agree with it or disagree with it.

00:41:32.740 I mean, I went to a very liturgical church in LA, and my joke was it was the bottom of

00:41:38.320 the hill where I lived.

00:41:39.240 So I said, if a Muslim place was at the bottom of the hill, I'd gone there just to stay out

00:41:43.360 of traffic.

00:41:45.100 But it was deeply liturgical, deeply good choir, all the things you're talking about.

00:41:50.880 But I had to leave because the guy would then get up and give these sermons that were absolutely

00:41:55.860 corrupt.

00:41:56.720 You know, they were corrupt religiously.

00:41:58.240 They were corrupt logically.

00:41:59.120 They were corrupt spiritually.

00:41:59.820 And finally, I just thought, you know, I love this liturgy.

00:42:02.480 I love everything that's going on until this guy opens his mouth.

00:42:05.220 And then I just...

00:42:05.760 But I do want to be clear that I'm not suggesting anything about the First Presbyterian Church

00:42:11.040 of Nashville.

00:42:11.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:11.780 I didn't go to one of their sermons.

00:42:12.980 I'm only generally saying that the Presbyterian Church or the Episcopal Church, broadly speaking,

00:42:18.080 tend to be more progressive.

00:42:19.940 They are.

00:42:20.320 But this is why cultural Christianity is a doomed and offensive project.

00:42:25.520 And I appreciate the desire, at least the desire for beauty and tradition.

00:42:29.820 Might lead one in a good direction.

00:42:31.640 But it's just so hopeless and despairing and it will lead you nowhere.

00:42:35.160 It's just so sad because it has to be real.

00:42:37.440 And this gets to your point, Jeremy, on the distinction that I would put as being one

00:42:41.100 between conserving and tradition and fundamentalism, which is fundamentally revolutionary because

00:42:46.280 you're saying, forget about 2,000 years.

00:42:47.720 I want to go back to my image of what the first century was, is it has to be real.

00:42:52.720 You know, if the religion is real, as I believe it is, if our Lord really is who he says he

00:42:56.660 is, as I believe he is, then that is lived.

00:43:00.320 That's not just written on the pages of a book.

00:43:02.400 That is lived in the lives of men for 2,000 years.

00:43:05.060 More than 2,000 years.

00:43:05.960 Going back many, many thousands of years, actually.

00:43:07.840 That's got to be real and lived.

00:43:09.180 But if it's just like nice buildings or something, I don't know, Yale and Harvard.

00:43:13.740 I don't know.

00:43:14.280 I'm going to argue with you that I think cultural Christianity is really important, but not

00:43:17.160 as a final goal.

00:43:18.220 Yes.

00:43:18.560 Right?

00:43:18.680 As a stepping stone.

00:43:19.780 Right?

00:43:19.920 As a stepping stone, it is.

00:43:21.000 Because, again, you do need that bridge.

00:43:22.500 And I think that the fact that there are people, because, again, these sort of Laplace arguments

00:43:26.380 to Napoleon has been the winning argument for the last couple hundred years, even though

00:43:30.040 it's a really crappy argument, right?

00:43:31.100 There's this famous story that Napoleon is talking to Laplace, he's a mathematician, and he

00:43:34.420 says, where's God in your theories?

00:43:35.720 And Laplace says, he's unnecessary.

00:43:37.560 He's unnecessary to the theory.

00:43:39.180 And that's been sort of the scientific take on religion for a very long time.

00:43:43.060 And so the cultural Christian, you know, take Richard Dawkins, who's a fundamentalist

00:43:47.880 atheist, right?

00:43:48.400 He really does not believe in God, thinks the Bible is kind of bad, and all the rest of

00:43:52.860 this stuff.

00:43:53.440 When he says, but I'm going to acknowledge the civilization is built on this thing, that

00:43:56.940 is the first step toward the thing.

00:43:58.200 Now, I agree with you.

00:43:58.720 As an end point, it doesn't do anything.

00:43:59.780 It remains a cut flower in a vase, right?

00:44:01.540 It needs to be reconnected with its roots.

00:44:03.760 But is it actually a step forward?

00:44:06.160 I was just thinking of Dawkins, though.

00:44:08.240 Well, I think the answer for a secularist is yes.

00:44:11.500 Again, that goes back to the importance point.

00:44:13.220 Once you say that it's, once you say that it's important.

00:44:15.340 In a way, you're saying cultural Christianity might be bad in a nation full of Christians,

00:44:19.340 but cultural Christianity might be good in a culture of the world.

00:44:21.960 Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

00:44:24.300 It's a way station.

00:44:25.220 It's either a way station out or a way station in.

00:44:27.080 Because we're in a fundamentally secular age, I think it's more of a way station in than

00:44:30.260 a way station out.

00:44:30.900 I think there are very few Christians who are looking at cultural Christianity and going,

00:44:34.200 hey, this is cool.

00:44:34.720 I can just say it's important but not do anything Christianity says.

00:44:37.140 There are a lot of secularists who are looking at cultural Christianity and going, hey,

00:44:39.880 I never thought about Christianity as something even important in my life.

00:44:44.740 I mean, frankly, it's an argument that I've used myself with a lot with regard to religion.

00:44:48.840 You know, I say to people that, you know, when people say they believe in God, I don't

00:44:53.140 think that people believe in God the way they think they believe in God.

00:44:55.220 Meaning, it's not, maybe for Michael, you know, he approached it from an intellectual point of view.

00:44:59.020 I don't think most people, when they say they believe in God, it's because they're going

00:45:01.620 through the ontological argument.

00:45:02.960 It's not an intellectual engagement with God that makes you believe in God.

00:45:06.540 You believe in God because you live in God.

00:45:08.180 Because all the fundamental premises in your life are godly premises.

00:45:11.020 And you live in those premises.

00:45:12.220 And the truth is, a bunch of secular people also live in those premises.

00:45:15.300 And when you make clear to them they live in those premises, then maybe it's worthwhile

00:45:18.500 for them to start investigating sources.

00:45:20.180 But cultural Christianity, I agree, it's a way station in or out.

00:45:22.880 I think it's a good way of putting it.

00:45:23.880 But for us right now, we're in the way station out phase, I would argue.

00:45:28.780 So, that's why I would say cultural Christianity.

00:45:30.400 So, I'm saying I'm more pessimistic than you, as usual.

00:45:33.100 I think they were.

00:45:35.000 That's an ongoing argument.

00:45:36.220 I don't know about that.

00:45:37.580 As usual, maybe you're wrong.

00:45:38.840 But it's a way of saying that we were a Christian nation.

00:45:42.020 And then we were way stationed out to cultural aggression.

00:45:44.200 And then became secular.

00:45:45.120 And now we're coming back this way?

00:45:46.040 Yes.

00:45:46.980 So, that's, no, that's not more pessimistic.

00:45:49.260 I am the more pessimistic.

00:45:50.120 No, no, I'm kind of agreeing.

00:45:51.900 Well, okay, so you're more pessimistic about the future.

00:45:54.320 And I'm more pessimistic about the status quo.

00:45:55.780 Meaning, I think that there are so many people who are outside the religion that you need

00:45:59.440 a way station back in.

00:46:00.940 Whereas you're saying there are a lot of religious people who are looking for a way station.

00:46:04.320 Think how anti-intellectual Richard Dawkins is.

00:46:07.600 And I like Richard Dawkins as a science writer, actually.

00:46:10.100 But he never thinks through anything that he says.

00:46:12.900 And when you say, gee, I want to keep some of this cultural Christianity alive, as Dawkins

00:46:18.560 now does in his waning years, and don't think the next step that, why do I want to do that?

00:46:24.720 You know, Mary Harrington, this brilliant kind of former far left-wing feminist, Oxford student.

00:46:32.120 She has conversations with my son, Spencer.

00:46:33.720 I do not understand what either of them are saying.

00:46:35.740 They're so far away in this intellectual world.

00:46:38.300 She had a baby.

00:46:39.320 And she said, I like this baby.

00:46:41.260 I like taking care of this baby.

00:46:42.520 And she had the intellectual integrity to follow that thought into a new way of thinking.

00:46:49.520 And Dawkins never does that.

00:46:51.580 And it drives me crazy about it.

00:46:53.300 It just seems like so much of the cultural Christianity is a Christmas tree, which is

00:46:57.680 lots of fun and presents.

00:46:58.760 I mean, I wonder if maybe you should have more grace for Dawkins.

00:47:02.380 Not in the sense that you are wrong to ask him to go all the way.

00:47:05.680 I mean, I think that if you're a Christian, you want people to go all the way.

00:47:07.840 But I think that the point is that the fundamental assertion by him of the importance of even

00:47:15.260 Christianity to his project is going to lead some of his followers to say, hey, wait a

00:47:19.780 second.

00:47:19.980 Maybe I should take a look at this thing.

00:47:22.080 That's pretty optimistic.

00:47:23.520 When you have Jordan having that conversation with him, and Jordan is encouraging people,

00:47:29.140 okay, well, then maybe you should, maybe, like, because the next logical step that you

00:47:32.340 could say to him if you're having that conversation is, I totally agree with you that Christianity

00:47:36.520 lies at the heart of our civilization.

00:47:38.380 But the thing that you're celebrating, which is a beautiful building in the middle of Paris,

00:47:41.380 if you're looking at notes for a done, means nothing if there's not anybody in there

00:47:45.680 worshiping Christ, right?

00:47:46.660 I mean, it's just a big building.

00:47:47.860 And then that's the end of the building.

00:47:49.400 And, you know, a thousand years from now, it'll probably be knocked down.

00:47:52.000 And if it's not, it'll just be empty.

00:47:53.180 But it's still a practical thing.

00:47:56.540 Rome, right?

00:47:57.020 I mean, it won't mean anything.

00:47:58.260 It'll just, nobody's worshiping at the Roman gods in that building.

00:48:01.800 It's just a really nice building.

00:48:02.620 And so does that have any sort of interior meaning to the civilization?

00:48:05.720 Not really.

00:48:07.420 Yeah, you know, it's funny you bring up Notre Dame because part of what I've been thinking

00:48:10.600 about as I've been wrestling with this question of, you know, the liberal denominations tending

00:48:16.660 to keep certain kinds of tradition alive.

00:48:19.380 And I'm interested in your idea about fundamentalism versus conservatism.

00:48:23.880 I'll spend time on that in my thinking.

00:48:26.800 But I thought about Notre Dame because they rebuilt the building after the fire.

00:48:31.080 And to everyone's surprise, they seem to have really honored the building that was,

00:48:36.200 instead of trying to reimagine it as a building that could be.

00:48:38.320 Didn't put a pool on top right now.

00:48:39.140 Yeah, didn't put it, yeah.

00:48:40.840 But even that it did occur to me is only good in a post-Christian Europe.

00:48:48.960 And even, and I mentioned to Mathis that I may bring this up, and I said, Michael will

00:48:54.360 disagree with me, but I think if he thinks about this for a minute, he may not disagree

00:48:57.380 with me.

00:48:58.260 Which is, we romanticize the cathedrals of Europe.

00:49:02.920 I romanticize the cathedrals of Europe.

00:49:05.880 I'm to a point now where, listen, I go to a lovely Baptist church here in Middle Tennessee,

00:49:10.900 filled with wonderful people.

00:49:13.240 I love the pastor.

00:49:14.000 He has a real vision for his fellowship.

00:49:18.060 I don't agree completely with Baptist theology, but it's a very good place for me to have my

00:49:23.500 family right now, and I enjoy the church.

00:49:26.340 But every time I'm there, and it's a beautiful building, every time I'm there, my heart sort

00:49:31.120 of longs to be in the UK.

00:49:33.020 Like, I want to be at St. Albans, or I want to be at St. Paul's, I want to be in one of

00:49:37.180 these thousand-year-old cathedrals.

00:49:41.280 But I've begun to realize that even my view of those thousand-year-old cathedrals, I'm seeing

00:49:47.900 it through the flattening, you know, when we look at history, we tend to flatten it.

00:49:51.800 And we'll say things like, imagine starting a work that your great-grandchild would have

00:49:57.260 to finish, which is what people often say about the cathedrals.

00:50:01.120 And I think, well, first of all, you misunderstand time completely, because they didn't start a

00:50:05.620 work that their great-grandchildren would finish.

00:50:07.340 They started a work that their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren

00:50:12.260 would finish.

00:50:13.260 These buildings were started as wood structures, replaced by stone structures that then burned

00:50:19.220 down because the roof was thatched, replaced by another stone structure that then fell over

00:50:23.660 because they weren't very good at building stone structures.

00:50:25.700 And then they built a third stone structure, and that one stayed.

00:50:28.400 And then they expanded it.

00:50:30.260 And then they tore the roof down.

00:50:31.600 By the 1200s, they could build the, what do you call the arches?

00:50:36.720 The flying buttresses.

00:50:37.540 Yeah, the flying buttresses, yes.

00:50:39.180 And then they, spires, and then stained glass.

00:50:41.640 And this goes on and on and on and on until the Victorian era.

00:50:44.740 And then they were just all done.

00:50:45.820 And we now think of them as done, but they were never intended to be done.

00:50:53.360 Other than Sagrada Familia.

00:50:54.860 That's right.

00:50:55.700 Which is still not done.

00:50:56.760 Which is still not done, yeah.

00:50:57.900 But there is this idea that when the guy started it, his great-grandchild would finish it.

00:51:02.380 Not only did you leave out a bunch of greats, but you misunderstood the premise.

00:51:05.360 He started it thinking it would never be complete.

00:51:09.060 The tragedy is, we look at them now a hundred years or more past their completion.

00:51:14.520 And the thing that we long for isn't, I actually think.

00:51:18.920 I agree with this, John.

00:51:19.860 But here's the funny thing.

00:51:20.940 At every stage, the traditionalists hated what they did.

00:51:24.820 No, no flying buttresses.

00:51:26.040 It's been a thatched roof for 200 years.

00:51:28.560 We should maintain what was old.

00:51:30.600 But the religion was alive.

00:51:32.500 The truth is, when we look at the beautiful cathedrals at Europe, we're looking at proof that the religion died 120 years ago.

00:51:40.780 I would go further than that.

00:51:42.360 I agree with basically every point you've made.

00:51:44.000 Traditionalism, you know, as an ideology, is pretty recent.

00:51:48.960 And it's a reaction to modernity.

00:51:51.400 And it's a reaction to the cracking up of the faith.

00:51:53.500 Right.

00:51:53.800 But the truth is, if Christianity in Europe hadn't died, those cathedrals would have modernist components to it.

00:52:01.240 Because they would have kept building them.

00:52:03.160 Or would modernism even happen?

00:52:04.620 Modernism, yeah, is a problem right there.

00:52:07.840 But they would not look like they look.

00:52:09.700 I know.

00:52:10.160 There would be 120 years of modernity added to it.

00:52:12.240 It would look like Sagrada Familiar or something.

00:52:12.740 It's just that the buildings that modernism and its children produced are so hideous because the faith died.

00:52:20.200 The modern churches are built, I mean, the fundamental problem is they're built like they're embarrassed to be churches.

00:52:25.900 Yeah.

00:52:26.420 They don't want anyone to know that God's being worshipped.

00:52:28.920 As if we're back in the catacombs and we have to hide.

00:52:32.720 But, of course, that's not the case at all.

00:52:34.260 And that's the problem with those churches.

00:52:36.860 But I agree with your point.

00:52:37.600 But what we're actually longing for, we're not longing for that moment.

00:52:43.880 We're longing for the time before time stopped.

00:52:47.320 There was a great moment.

00:52:48.000 We're longing for the time when the faith was alive.

00:52:49.680 We're longing for the time when Bach could sit down and write a song like a minute.

00:52:55.800 You know, a song at the same time it would take you to make up a limerick, basically, that was explosively beautiful.

00:53:02.220 Like, beyond beauty.

00:53:03.140 Because that was what was in it.

00:53:04.740 You know, and I think that that's the problem.

00:53:06.200 If that's missing.

00:53:06.740 But America was never a part of that tradition.

00:53:09.580 True.

00:53:10.200 America has always been...

00:53:12.260 I'd say, yes, utilitarian, disposable.

00:53:16.180 In America, you start a church in a cafeteria at an elementary school that's closed.

00:53:21.180 And then you buy a small church that's been abandoned.

00:53:24.460 And then you build a church.

00:53:25.580 And then 20 years later, you build a bigger church.

00:53:27.680 And I'm not even knocking that.

00:53:29.160 Because at least, that's not European.

00:53:31.140 It doesn't result in these beautiful buildings.

00:53:33.200 But it is still alive.

00:53:34.440 Christianity has still been alive here.

00:53:35.820 And that's how, you know, we don't have family country homes like they do in England either.

00:53:39.900 Where your family lives in the same house for a thousand years.

00:53:42.840 We have a disposable approach to this.

00:53:44.740 An innovative approach to it.

00:53:45.860 Because people also like to be involved in the building.

00:53:48.780 Yeah.

00:53:49.080 Really.

00:53:49.380 I mean, if you're a part of a community, people like being involved in the building.

00:53:51.840 Like, we're dedicating...

00:53:52.680 Contributing to it.

00:53:53.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:53:54.320 Adding on to it.

00:53:55.380 Like, adding new rooms.

00:53:56.400 Changing the structure of it.

00:53:57.680 And growing the footprint of it.

00:53:59.360 And the minute that it stops growing, it's dying.

00:54:01.420 Then it just becomes a bunch of 70-year-olds who are in a fading church that's beautiful.

00:54:05.060 But it was finished 30 years ago.

00:54:06.240 And there's no young blood in there to actually make it, you know...

00:54:09.120 But this is...

00:54:09.780 I think this is also why I love Christmas music this time of year.

00:54:13.280 I know Michael won't listen to Christmas music for three more weeks.

00:54:15.440 Until 12.01 a.m. on Christmas.

00:54:18.000 No, it's when the Thanksgiving Day parade is over.

00:54:20.100 That's right.

00:54:20.340 But when I say I love Christmas music...

00:54:22.000 As Jesus said.

00:54:23.080 What I mean in particular is I love the Christmas music from the great American songbook era.

00:54:27.940 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:28.460 Because...

00:54:29.220 I knew there was something I liked about you.

00:54:31.160 I couldn't figure out...

00:54:31.780 Because that's when America was still alive.

00:54:34.380 Well, yes, that's what gives us this beautiful, wistful...

00:54:36.920 No, no, no.

00:54:37.540 We've talked about that before.

00:54:38.740 We've talked about this before.

00:54:40.020 I'm talking about something different.

00:54:41.940 That is Christmas music because that is when America was culturally still alive.

00:54:46.260 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:54:47.520 I listened to Taylor Swift.

00:54:49.420 And I'm not a Taylor Swift hater.

00:54:51.540 I think she's a genuine talent.

00:54:54.580 No, she sucks.

00:54:55.480 But go ahead.

00:54:55.880 But I listened to her Christmas song today.

00:54:58.620 And then I listened to a Christmas song by Ed Sheeran and Elton John.

00:55:01.180 I think Ed Sheeran's incredibly talented.

00:55:03.600 But they're beyond...

00:55:04.740 The culture is gone.

00:55:05.880 They're very talented people who live after the culture.

00:55:07.720 They don't feel like Christmas songs.

00:55:09.300 And they don't feel like Christmas.

00:55:10.880 Paul McCartney killed Christmas songs.

00:55:14.160 He murdered...

00:55:15.100 We cut to commercial.

00:55:16.000 He tortured them to death.

00:55:17.080 They died after Paul McCartney.

00:55:18.300 This man is not having a wonderful Christmas song.

00:55:21.180 Nor a wonderful...

00:55:22.060 The war is over.

00:55:22.820 That's right.

00:55:24.400 We're going to hear more from our sponsor, Halo, right now.

00:55:27.280 Halo?

00:55:27.720 Halo?

00:55:28.120 Halo.

00:55:28.540 Halo.

00:55:28.880 Oh, my God.

00:55:29.660 Halo's a video game.

00:55:30.780 I told them never let me read any ads.

00:55:32.720 They just put it right there.

00:55:34.380 We're going to hear from our wonderful sponsor, Halo, while I eat this cracker.

00:55:38.040 Bite with Matt about, well, everything but Paul McCartney in particular.

00:55:42.000 And then we'll be right back.

00:55:42.820 We'll be right back.

00:56:12.820 On Halo.

00:56:16.340 So, my premise in conclusion...

00:56:19.380 We actually were arguing about Paul McCartney.

00:56:21.520 Well, my premise in conclusion is that the things that we long for are actually civilizations

00:56:25.560 that are thriving.

00:56:26.900 Or civilizations in which the faith was thriving to maybe make it central to what we've been

00:56:32.500 talking about the whole time.

00:56:33.620 And I think it's even true for my friends, the Jews, too.

00:56:37.160 Because when you see Orthodox Jews who are wearing...

00:56:41.100 Sorry, whenever anyone uses my friends, the Jews...

00:56:43.000 Yeah, just before they kill you, right?

00:56:45.500 Hold on.

00:56:46.080 All of them?

00:56:46.300 In fairness, I've only got two.

00:56:47.340 But when you see Jewish people, traditional Jewish people, wearing the black hat and the

00:56:53.560 black suit, and you think, oh, man, they're the most traditionalist Jewish guys around.

00:56:58.140 And then you go, well, no, they have a 3,500-year-old religion, and they're wearing a 100-year-old

00:57:02.920 costume.

00:57:03.700 But they're doing the exact same thing as me wanting to be in a cathedral from the Victorian

00:57:09.160 era.

00:57:09.480 They're going back to the time when Judaism in Poland was thriving.

00:57:13.540 Right.

00:57:13.860 And they're longing...

00:57:15.020 They're not actually longing for their ancestral religion.

00:57:18.360 They're longing for their religion being alive in the culture.

00:57:21.540 That's right.

00:57:22.080 They're locking in amber a particular way of life, because that's exactly the time when

00:57:26.760 the Enlightenment started.

00:57:27.780 Yeah.

00:57:28.200 They're doing the same thing, right?

00:57:29.320 The Enlightenment started, and they said, okay, well, you know what?

00:57:31.140 What we've got right now, we've got to protect that.

00:57:32.660 Time to bubble it off.

00:57:33.460 And that's what we're going to do.

00:57:34.700 But there are, you know, obviously thriving wings of Judaism in the Orthodox community

00:57:38.240 that are very different and have evolved in a very different way.

00:57:40.680 Of course.

00:57:41.000 And you can see it when you go to Israel.

00:57:42.540 You can see all the different modes of dress, and you can see, you know, by actual yarmulke

00:57:45.880 type, you can identify exactly the ideology of the person who's wearing the yarmulke.

00:57:49.460 You really can't.

00:57:50.180 Like, it's an actual thing.

00:57:50.900 Like, if they're wearing a velvet yarmulke, they're probably of the ultra-Orthodox Haredi

00:57:54.420 black hat sect.

00:57:55.340 If they're wearing what's called a kippah suru gal, like a woven kippah, which is what I

00:57:59.140 wear, then they would be what's known as datilumi, which is sort of, you know,

00:58:02.980 a Zionist, modern Orthodox.

00:58:06.460 If they're...

00:58:06.980 I like the one that looks like a piece of matzah.

00:58:10.380 It's very whimsical.

00:58:11.560 Yeah, that's a great one.

00:58:12.840 I call it the Encino Reform Jewish...

00:58:16.640 Usually it's on a woman.

00:58:17.960 Yeah, exactly.

00:58:18.420 But it is interesting how these things develop.

00:58:22.640 But I think that one of the things that's interesting about the Christmas music of the 50s and the

00:58:26.320 40s is that there's a wistfulness about it because I think even then they can sense that

00:58:30.920 there's something happening in the culture, like kind of the glimmerings of something not

00:58:34.280 so great happening.

00:58:35.200 And even there, they're nostalgic about, like, being home, right?

00:58:38.740 They're going for a white Christmas.

00:58:39.760 Part of it is because of the war.

00:58:41.200 Yeah, yeah.

00:58:41.660 Some of it is because of war.

00:58:42.640 But a lot of it is also just because there's something they feel is calling them away from

00:58:46.400 sort of those ancestral roots.

00:58:48.360 And so they're, you know, feeling like they're sort of almost on the outside looking in.

00:58:52.200 Yeah.

00:58:52.380 And I think that's why those things are perennial.

00:58:53.960 I mean, you can listen to that stuff now and it's still...

00:58:55.520 And there's no irony.

00:58:57.460 There's no irony.

00:58:58.180 What you're saying?

00:58:58.720 You want an authentic period?

00:58:59.820 It's so funny.

00:59:00.260 We're such a...

00:59:01.120 Our society's dumb because we're obsessed with authenticity, but then we're ironic about

00:59:05.860 the actual authentic people.

00:59:07.180 It turns out people in the 30s, 40s, and 50s were actually pretty unironic.

00:59:09.640 But what you're getting at is that when Jesus said the thing that comes out of your mouth

00:59:14.340 is important because that's what's in your heart, that's what we're really talking about.

00:59:17.760 If the heart is empty, it doesn't matter what building you build.

00:59:20.040 And if the heart is full of God, you'll build a beautiful building ultimately.

00:59:23.520 There is a strange thing in that I really, really love cathedrals about it as much as

00:59:28.260 you do, I think.

00:59:28.940 But you really love cathedrals too.

00:59:30.300 And I really love them and I want to be...

00:59:33.040 I love high liturgy and I think it's not only beautiful but important.

00:59:36.160 And I think God wants to be worshipped in reverent, serious ways.

00:59:39.640 And maybe the most thriving parish I've ever been in, the mass takes place in a tiny little

00:59:45.720 room in the parish hall because the church was wrecked by a tornado.

00:59:48.500 And it takes place in this tiny little room and everyone's packed in and there's a thousand

00:59:51.120 kids and they're all sitting on top of each other and they're crying and screaming and

00:59:54.120 there's a small little altar up there.

00:59:55.920 And it is as unornamented as a church can be, but it's all real.

01:00:01.760 This is right.

01:00:02.160 And everyone thinks it's real.

01:00:03.400 The people inside a place of worship make it a place of worship.

01:00:06.020 I just came back from Israel and one of the places that we were in was a place where it's

01:00:11.120 called a Hester Yeshiva.

01:00:12.780 So this is like a place where kids study, like 18, 19 years old.

01:00:15.800 But in this particular place where they study, it's a joint program with the army.

01:00:18.900 So they study and they also all serve in the army.

01:00:20.680 So it's not like when you think of Yeshiva, you think of kids who are like avoiding the

01:00:23.160 army in Israel.

01:00:23.940 There's like a whole segment.

01:00:25.180 And so these people come in on Friday night and you know they're all going to be in Lebanon

01:00:28.600 like the next morning and they're all praying to God and they're singing these songs and

01:00:33.920 it's like, this is probably 400 kids.

01:00:36.640 And it's amazing.

01:00:38.100 I mean, the word in Hebrew is kavano, which means to, it means intent, but it really is,

01:00:42.660 it comes from Tvekas to like cling to God.

01:00:44.820 So it's about clinging to God.

01:00:46.020 When you feel that anywhere you are, that's going to be the mark of the religion.

01:00:49.240 And this place was, I mean, the Yeshiva itself wasn't anything special to look at.

01:00:52.000 It was basically a cafeteria of learning.

01:00:53.760 But I bet people, I'm thinking of two, one parish I was in in New York, one parish here.

01:00:58.900 It doesn't matter if it's unornamented or, you know, you're in circumstances, but I have

01:01:04.340 noticed people do naturally want then ornamented with themselves, with their art, with their

01:01:12.140 what, you know, it just, it comes, don't worry, if you get the essentials correct and

01:01:16.980 the interior life of the people correct, the cathedral will build itself.

01:01:21.300 That's it.

01:01:21.760 You know, I just have this strange thought, which I present to you without having thought

01:01:27.120 it through, but it's, you know, people are always accusing Ben of having dual loyalty,

01:01:30.360 accusing Jews, but Ben has been a king of the Jews.

01:01:35.820 Lowercase k.

01:01:36.660 Yeah, yeah, really.

01:01:38.380 It occurs to me that we should all have a dual loyalty to Israel because it is the place

01:01:42.360 that God hallowed with his presence.

01:01:43.860 And it is like still the living, the living presence is there.

01:01:47.640 If you've ever been there, you know it is.

01:01:49.420 And it's like, even St. Paul says that God is not done with the Jews.

01:01:54.440 God is not done with the Jews.

01:01:55.300 At least we should have dual loyalty to the papal states.

01:01:57.560 Do those still exist?

01:01:59.080 Are those still around?

01:02:00.580 A minute ago.

01:02:01.720 You ruined my brain thought.

01:02:03.380 But I don't mind.

01:02:04.460 A minute ago, I referred to my friends, the Jews, and said there were only two.

01:02:07.420 One of them has been.

01:02:08.800 And the other is our pal, Dennis Prager.

01:02:10.820 And we can't talk about Jordan Peterson's gospel series, which is available at Daily Wire Plus,

01:02:15.160 without talking about our friend Dennis.

01:02:16.960 The last time we, the five of us, sat here was one month ago, the day after the election

01:02:22.040 of Donald Trump to be our 47th president, or 48th, depending on how the next 55 days overall

01:02:28.260 go.

01:02:30.160 But Dennis was right here with us.

01:02:31.960 And as people at home probably are aware, only a few days later, after returning to

01:02:37.640 his home in L.A., Dennis had a terrible accident and has been in the hospital since that time.

01:02:44.220 Dennis is one of the major voices in this gospel series.

01:02:48.660 And during his time shooting it, I got to have dinner with he and his wife, Sue.

01:02:53.880 And Dennis talked about the making of this with Jordan and what he thought his role was

01:02:58.760 as, you know, sort of an outsider among outsiders.

01:03:02.060 I mean, if no one involved in the, well, not no one, but if many of the panelists here are

01:03:06.000 sort of heterodox in their thinking, you know, Jordan's not Christian at all.

01:03:11.360 I mean, he's one of the most famous Jewish figures probably in the world, certainly in the

01:03:16.480 country.

01:03:16.800 And what Dennis told me is that he thought, certainly he had things to offer about Christianity's

01:03:24.680 role in the world as an outsider, kind of like the writers of the Christmas songs.

01:03:29.100 He had ideas about the connection of the text back to things like Exodus, which he thought

01:03:34.660 were really valuable.

01:03:35.720 But he also thought that part of what he brought to it was levity.

01:03:39.320 He said, you know, you've got these great minds.

01:03:41.540 And Dennis is no slouch.

01:03:43.240 Dennis is a brilliant guy.

01:03:44.580 But Dennis has this real charm, which is that he's still very connected to the human in a

01:03:51.240 way that sometimes intellectuals are not.

01:03:53.560 And Dennis, as you watch this series, it's so wonderful to see him sort of grab these

01:03:59.300 big thinkers and pull them back to the human.

01:04:02.740 Because obviously, if the church isn't filled with people of faith, then it's a meaningless

01:04:08.440 body.

01:04:09.400 And if your theology isn't ultimately in service of humans, I mean, it's because God's

01:04:14.520 so loved the world that he sent his son, which is what the Gospels is all about.

01:04:19.260 And so here's a clip of Dennis on the first episode of the Gospels, which I think just

01:04:27.340 sort of perfectly captures his contribution to the work.

01:04:32.760 Here's Dennis.

01:04:33.140 The death of Christianity frightens me.

01:04:38.000 It is my nightmare.

01:04:41.060 And I ask people all the time, name me one ideology that has supplanted Christianity that

01:04:48.380 has done good for humanity.

01:04:50.140 And nobody can come up with an answer.

01:04:55.200 There is a quote attributed to G.K.

01:04:57.620 Chesterton, though it's not verifiable that he actually said it, but it's brilliant.

01:05:03.700 When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing.

01:05:08.160 They believe in anything.

01:05:09.280 And as I point out on my radio show each day, I probably say this once a week, only secular

01:05:18.080 people say men give birth.

01:05:20.660 Not all secular people say that, but only secular people say that.

01:05:26.340 We have entered a post-Christian or really post-Judeo-Christian world of the absurd.

01:05:32.740 I see Christianity as a divinely ordained vehicle to bring the world to the Torah.

01:05:43.300 So I have a very pro-Christian, Jewish-based view.

01:05:48.660 It hasn't always been done right.

01:05:51.800 But Christians are human, and human nature is awful, or at least not particularly good.

01:06:00.020 So people can screw up anything.

01:06:02.740 But when done properly, and I think America and Britain have been particularly good, it

01:06:09.120 was Christians who abolished slavery.

01:06:12.140 It's also Christians who made the Inquisition.

01:06:16.960 I'm well aware I wrote a book on anti-Semitism.

01:06:20.540 And I pray that Christians come forth now and speak out against a raging anti-Semitism that

01:06:28.680 I did not think I would see in my lifetime.

01:06:31.080 But nevertheless, this Jew, this Westerner, is very frightened of a post-Christian society.

01:06:42.200 That's our friend Dennis Prager in Jordan Peterson's new series, The Gospels at Daily Wire+.

01:06:48.800 And for those of you who have been following along with Dennis's ordeal and praying for

01:06:53.300 Dennis, we thank you for that.

01:06:54.820 Obviously, such a good friend to all of us on the panel and to Ben and I these last many

01:06:59.880 years in particular.

01:07:00.720 Dennis' situation is quite serious, but there is great hope.

01:07:05.260 And he's shown a lot of progress in the weeks since his accident.

01:07:10.840 And I know that it must be, what an amazing thing.

01:07:14.720 Dennis' worldview, central to his worldview, is the idea that happiness is a moral obligation.

01:07:19.780 And here he is in this very difficult moment.

01:07:21.920 And he's certainly sad, but he isn't depressed.

01:07:26.760 His worldview is being tested and he's standing up to the test, which is a beautiful thing,

01:07:31.160 even in a really tragic moment.

01:07:35.080 And I can't help but wonder what it must feel like to be him and know that millions of people

01:07:39.880 are praying for you.

01:07:40.560 Yeah, amazing.

01:07:41.200 What a powerful thing to experience.

01:07:43.000 You know, my daughter got very ill when she had her second child and her life was under

01:07:49.440 threat.

01:07:50.840 My wife was sitting there and she said she could feel the people outside praying for

01:07:54.460 him.

01:07:55.000 She knew they were and she felt it come into the room.

01:07:57.680 And my wife is not particularly a mystic or anything like that, but she said it was

01:08:00.840 there.

01:08:01.360 And I know Dennis has said this too, that the people who have spoken to him says he feels

01:08:06.480 it too.

01:08:06.900 Yeah, I said when we heard that Dennis had this accident, I said to Elisa,

01:08:13.000 that night, I said, you know, Dennis had this very serious accident and her reaction

01:08:17.320 was a very human reaction, basically my reaction when you came to tell me in my studio, which

01:08:22.120 is, she said, no, no, no, but we were just with him four days ago.

01:08:25.880 And he was so vivacious and he said on air, he said, this is the best day, this is the best

01:08:31.240 day of my life.

01:08:32.280 Get me a glass of alcohol for the first time in 75 years.

01:08:36.600 And that's a very human reaction because you say, no, no, no, whenever anything bad happens

01:08:40.880 to any of your friends, you say, no, no, no, that can't.

01:08:43.000 Possibly be true because yesterday it wasn't true.

01:08:45.880 But, you know, ain't that just how it goes?

01:08:48.000 And Dennis is well aware of that.

01:08:49.880 You know, Dennis is a wise guy.

01:08:51.400 He's not, he's quite clear on these things.

01:08:55.620 Dennis is a magnificent human being, as we all know.

01:08:57.400 And I think that one of the things that has to be of a special comfort to his family is

01:09:02.660 that so many of the people who are praying for him are people who didn't used to pray

01:09:06.620 and then started listening to his show and started listening to Dennis.

01:09:09.500 And now are people who actually believe in God and pray.

01:09:11.900 So many of the people who are now calling out to God on his behalf are people he brought

01:09:15.860 to God in the first place.

01:09:17.080 Yeah.

01:09:17.840 I have heard Dennis talk about many times, you know, being this, the interesting position

01:09:25.400 that he occupies, which is that his sort of mission in life has been to lead people back

01:09:31.500 back to Judaism, lead Jews who have fallen away from Judaism back to Judaism.

01:09:36.200 And yet along the way, he's probably led more Christians back to Christianity than most pastors

01:09:40.820 ever have because of the thing that is so special about Dennis, which is that he really does

01:09:46.060 remember the human.

01:09:47.660 He, you know, Dennis would rather talk to you about music than about the ultimate issues.

01:09:54.340 Then one of the most wonderful things about Dennis is that when you are in mixed company

01:09:58.480 with Dennis, he wants to talk about disposable diapers with the women at the table.

01:10:03.140 He just, whatever the most human thing that could be discussed, that's the thing that

01:10:07.320 fascinates him the most.

01:10:08.900 And for that reason, he's reached a lot of those humans that he cares so much about and

01:10:13.700 God willing will continue to in the future and certainly does in this gospel series.

01:10:19.060 I think that we're going to take a few questions from our Daily Wire Plus members who make it

01:10:23.680 possible for us to be here.

01:10:24.640 If you're not a member, head over to Daily Wire Plus.

01:10:26.540 We're offering 50% off our Cyber Monday sale, best sell of the year.

01:10:30.660 And if you are a subscriber, we thank you and we'll take some questions from you right now.

01:10:34.160 Question number one for the group, speaking of biblical texts, do you believe the New

01:10:38.320 Testament teachings outweigh the teachings of the Old Testament?

01:10:41.800 That means you all go first.

01:10:42.580 No.

01:10:43.840 Well, that is the correct answer.

01:10:47.140 Outweigh would certainly not be the way to phrase it.

01:10:49.340 Oh, the New Testament, if you're a Christian, you believe the New Testament is a fulfillment

01:10:52.220 of the Old Testament, but it's not like the two are in competition and one wins out.

01:10:57.740 And in fact, they can't be in competition.

01:10:59.540 Right, they can't be in competition.

01:11:00.300 That's the Marsean heresy, right?

01:11:01.780 Right.

01:11:02.360 So there aren't things in the Old Testament that are now negated or abolished or they don't

01:11:06.760 count anymore.

01:11:07.420 Not a jot or tittle.

01:11:08.240 Right, which is an important point when you get into even public policy things, issues

01:11:14.000 like, for example, the death penalty.

01:11:16.780 And some Christians believe that, well, because of what the New Testament says, we can't believe

01:11:21.720 in the Old Testament.

01:11:22.440 Well, in the Old Testament, God commands a death penalty, so we know that it can't be

01:11:26.500 an inherently evil act.

01:11:28.600 And the Old Testament has not been outweighed.

01:11:31.460 No, that's it.

01:11:31.940 St. Paul also defends the death penalty explicitly in the epistles.

01:11:34.980 But it's one book.

01:11:36.220 It's one book.

01:11:36.700 It doesn't make any sense any other way.

01:11:39.380 And the beauty, the beauty of the echoing themes in the New Testament that run through

01:11:45.480 the Old Testament is, it could not have been conceived by any mind.

01:11:50.680 Maybe Shakespeare could have come up with something.

01:11:52.400 Maybe he could have come up with something that intricately interwoven.

01:11:56.600 But you can't, pulling them apart, it's like pulling the bones out of a fish.

01:12:00.140 You just can't do it.

01:12:01.940 And it's also, not to belabor the point, the New Testament is inexplicable.

01:12:05.700 It is not possible to understand it, except through the lens of the Old Testament.

01:12:10.400 That's right.

01:12:10.820 And the Christian believes the Old Testament is inexplicable outside the lens of the New

01:12:14.640 Testament.

01:12:15.020 So they are, to your point, true.

01:12:16.220 It is one cohesive whole.

01:12:18.360 Another interesting thing about that is that even when Christ was walking among men, as recounted

01:12:25.940 in the Gospels, the connection between the Old Testament and the theology of Christ still

01:12:33.080 wasn't obvious.

01:12:34.600 So much so that we're told the resurrected Christ had to open the eyes of the apostles to the

01:12:41.460 intricate connections between the Old and the New.

01:12:43.800 And what does the resurrected Christ do on the road to Emmaus?

01:12:46.160 He opens the scriptures.

01:12:48.500 You know, one of the funniest things you ever said, you probably don't even remember, it

01:12:51.760 was in your home church.

01:12:54.360 You once said, if you took people back on a tour to show them Jesus, they would all say,

01:13:00.820 where is he?

01:13:01.360 Is he behind that Jewish guy over there?

01:13:02.680 That sounds like something I might have said.

01:13:08.080 You should say it.

01:13:09.120 Another question from a Daily Wire Plus member.

01:13:10.920 Are we on the brink of a spiritual awakening?

01:13:13.940 What will be said about our current time in 50 or 100 years?

01:13:17.040 Yes, we are.

01:13:17.960 We know this because I have been predicting it for about 15 years.

01:13:21.560 And you're a prophet.

01:13:22.920 Well, you at least lived at the time of the prophet.

01:13:25.260 Yes, well, I did live.

01:13:26.220 Somebody, a game we were playing over Thanksgiving was we went around the table and asked what our

01:13:30.180 superpower is.

01:13:30.920 And I said, my superpower is knowing what's going to happen five years too soon.

01:13:36.720 But no, there's absolutely, I mean, look, we could go down the drain, but I don't think

01:13:41.660 we are.

01:13:42.180 I think this is the moment when this will catch fire in the hearts of men.

01:13:46.720 You know, God's not going to let his church die.

01:13:48.640 And we can reject God.

01:13:50.740 You know, he gives us that absolute option.

01:13:52.800 So it's all contingent on what we do.

01:13:55.280 But I just feel already it's happening.

01:13:57.300 Already, you know, people of real thought, real intellection are finding this.

01:14:04.120 It's going to be like the new Oxford movement.

01:14:05.580 My prediction has always been that it's going to come down from above.

01:14:07.960 It's not going to be, it'll become a street thing.

01:14:09.880 It's not going to be like old awakenings where people get out in tents.

01:14:13.720 It's going to be in the universities where people go like, ah, wrong.

01:14:16.960 The comparison with the Oxford movement, that's a very apt comparison.

01:14:20.100 I will say that just on a general level, it does feel weirdly as though God is pulling

01:14:25.380 away a lot of veils in the last 10 years.

01:14:27.180 Yes, doesn't that?

01:14:27.920 It just feels like, you know, there's my favorite section of the Old Testament, the

01:14:32.580 book of Exodus, there's part where Moses is talking to God and he says to God, I want

01:14:36.060 to see your face.

01:14:36.680 And God says, you can't see my face and live, but I'll let you see my back.

01:14:40.220 And he puts him in the crevice in the rock.

01:14:41.640 And then God, it says God walks past him and he sees God's back.

01:14:44.700 And so what does that mean?

01:14:45.500 There are all sorts of commentaries in the Jewish tradition on what exactly that means.

01:14:48.560 My favorite commentary, which I had actually posited and then found that, obviously, always

01:14:54.560 there's a wiser mind than you who said it 500 years ago.

01:14:57.400 But the basic idea is that you can't see God when he's staring you right in the face, when

01:15:01.140 it's happening in your life, when the immediate is happening, because you're too involved in

01:15:04.160 the immediate.

01:15:04.600 You can only see God through the rear view mirror.

01:15:06.700 You can only see God as he walks away.

01:15:08.060 So you can see God as he's walking through history.

01:15:10.900 And that's why when you look back at your life, you can see all these terrible things that

01:15:13.740 happened in your life and how one thing led to another and all that wove the tapestry

01:15:17.400 of your life.

01:15:18.000 And that's true throughout civilizations as well.

01:15:20.280 It feels like God's writing has been incredibly obvious the last 10 years or so.

01:15:24.100 I mean, the amount of things that are happening right now that are just of almost biblical

01:15:28.920 proportions is truly kind of an astonishing thing.

01:15:32.880 I do want to say, though, that and this kind of goes back to Jeremy's point about the time

01:15:36.780 frame building cathedrals happened over, you know, it's your great, great, great, great

01:15:41.500 grandchild to finish it.

01:15:42.980 And so I think when we get it, anytime we get these questions of, are we in the middle

01:15:45.980 of a spiritual awakening is, you know, are things changing for the better?

01:15:50.400 My answer is always very unsatisfying because my answer is always, well, well, I don't actually

01:15:55.640 know the answer to that.

01:15:56.400 And I think that maybe my kids will know.

01:15:57.960 And hopefully my grandchildren will know the answer because this is, if there is a spiritual

01:16:01.960 awakening, that's a generational, it's going to happen over the course of generations.

01:16:05.400 And so if the question is, what will they say about the spiritual awakening 50 years from

01:16:09.620 now?

01:16:09.860 Well, hopefully if it's happening, they're going to be in the middle of it for 50 years

01:16:12.740 from now.

01:16:13.080 And so, so one thing for sure is if we want there to be a spiritual awakening, we have

01:16:18.700 to be spiritual and religious and have our children, have children and raise them up in

01:16:23.640 the faith.

01:16:24.540 And, and so we can, we can get the ball rolling that way, but we're not, we're not going to

01:16:28.240 live to see sort of the awakening complete.

01:16:31.620 I'm glad you said that.

01:16:32.280 And not be afraid to talk about it as if it were real.

01:16:34.180 That's the thing.

01:16:34.920 Yeah.

01:16:35.060 But I was going to say something similar, but, but from a slightly different angle, which

01:16:38.620 is I, I don't believe in the rapture, um, nor do I, yeah, Catholics tend to not believe

01:16:45.580 in the rapture, but, but I don't, uh, I don't much care because if I'm wrong, I'll grab, I'll

01:16:50.660 grab Drew's ankles.

01:16:54.700 What I know is that, uh, someone, God comes for someone every day and spiritual awakenings,

01:17:03.100 I think you have to approach it the same.

01:17:04.540 I don't know on a sort of global level or societal level, what's happening.

01:17:09.240 Maybe it is.

01:17:10.000 I hope so.

01:17:10.740 I'm hopeful.

01:17:11.820 Um, but today is someone's spiritual awakening and may it, may it be yours.

01:17:17.300 Like you, you can interact with God right now today.

01:17:22.640 If you have not interacted with God before, I remember all the way back in the long time

01:17:27.360 ago-y days, uh, when I was a fan of Andrew Klavan because I didn't know it.

01:17:31.700 Yeah.

01:17:32.420 The two things that you're hearing.

01:17:33.500 That happens in many such cases.

01:17:36.060 And, and Drew put out a video, uh, a whimsical, but serious video about how, if you, uh, were

01:17:43.100 wrestling with God, the thing that you should try doing, uh, is praying.

01:17:47.780 And he essentially said, you should pray for 10 minutes a day.

01:17:50.660 And he said, it doesn't matter if you believe in God or not.

01:17:52.940 Just assume you believe in God for a minute and talk to him.

01:17:56.100 Spend 10 minutes every day praying.

01:17:57.580 He said, and I, and I can't remember.

01:17:58.920 It was a kind of a sales pitch.

01:17:59.780 It was a very funny videos.

01:18:00.580 And I guarantee, you know, in 60 days, money back guarantee or whatever, uh, that you'll

01:18:04.560 find that you do believe in God if you start.

01:18:07.560 And, um.

01:18:10.180 His lines were open.

01:18:11.100 That was like.

01:18:11.640 Yeah.

01:18:11.840 His lines are always open.

01:18:13.100 That's right.

01:18:14.120 And that, and I see it that way.

01:18:15.720 It's like the rapture is coming for somebody today and spiritual awakening can also, it's

01:18:19.800 sort of the other side of that can also come for you today.

01:18:22.320 And to your point, there is no global spiritual awakening without a whole series of individual

01:18:27.440 spiritual awakenings.

01:18:28.720 So to whatever degree we play a part in that, now's a good time to do it.

01:18:33.080 For Drew, I don't know why for Drew.

01:18:36.180 Do you see the Gospels as four different news outlets or authors covering the same story or

01:18:41.240 biography?

01:18:42.040 And as much as each reporter interviews different witnesses and has a slightly different take

01:18:46.080 on the same news story.

01:18:47.160 I, if you, if you were a cop and you interviewed four people and they all told you the exact

01:18:52.420 same thing about what they saw, you would know that they had conspired and lied.

01:18:55.760 So I think what you have is four different people from four different points of view.

01:19:00.280 And it's, it's meant to be this way.

01:19:02.020 Obviously it wasn't an accident giving you their take on the story.

01:19:06.060 So it's why I never worry, for instance, if somebody says, well, this doesn't fit in

01:19:08.780 with that, that if it did all fit in, if it all just absolutely fit in, I would think,

01:19:14.280 no, this is a conspiracy.

01:19:15.420 Yeah.

01:19:15.520 But these are people who each saw the same thing in a different way.

01:19:19.480 And I think that that to me is part of the evidence of its truth.

01:19:23.580 Man, I'm glad they made that one for you.

01:19:26.080 Well, I know it wasn't for me, but I do want to add one thing that I think this, and you

01:19:30.700 said earlier that it's kind of like journalism reading the Gospels.

01:19:33.380 I think that's true of the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

01:19:38.240 I think for John, I think John's doing something different.

01:19:40.820 And I think that John's actually not journalism.

01:19:42.680 There's something, it's more of a spiritual biography of Christ.

01:19:50.100 But that's who he is, yeah.

01:19:51.360 Right, right.

01:19:53.000 There's another question in the teleprompter only seconds ago, and it was for Matt.

01:19:55.920 It was really good, but I think it's gone.

01:19:59.020 Matt and the thing's gone.

01:20:00.140 Yeah.

01:20:00.600 Ah, here it is.

01:20:02.180 Matt, I just wanted to say thank you for speaking.

01:20:04.100 Oh, wait.

01:20:05.140 Hold on.

01:20:06.040 Everybody else got a question, and he gets praised?

01:20:08.000 This is a great one.

01:20:08.920 I think that's the one.

01:20:09.980 Oh, man.

01:20:10.800 I just wanted to say thank you for speaking out about the new sexual abuse in schools.

01:20:15.020 I'm interested in looking into doing a documentary about sexual abuse in the schools.

01:20:18.720 As a documentary king, do you have any suggestions?

01:20:24.420 Just do it.

01:20:26.380 Just start doing it.

01:20:27.760 Wear us up as an abuser.

01:20:28.820 You're going to school.

01:20:31.040 Yeah, well, I'd stop short.

01:20:33.800 I guess for that, I'd stop short of some of our amiracist methods.

01:20:38.700 But I certainly hope that somebody makes that documentary, because this is a major crisis,

01:20:43.280 epidemic, like nobody talks about, and it's crazy.

01:20:48.860 What, if anything, can actually be done about the Hunter issue?

01:20:51.980 Is there any legal way to overturn a presidential policy?

01:20:55.980 Presidential policies, yes.

01:20:57.060 Yes, this is a presidential pardon, which is somewhat unique, and it brings us to the

01:21:00.180 political section of the show.

01:21:01.800 We've been lost in the sublime, and now we have to get down into the ridiculous.

01:21:06.120 The dirty.

01:21:07.560 The ridiculous, yeah.

01:21:10.620 Obviously, the big news story of the weekend, President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter,

01:21:16.140 of any crime that he may or may not have committed.

01:21:21.260 Or may yet commit.

01:21:22.020 Or may yet commit.

01:21:22.680 The best thing about that pardon was that it came down, and it went all the way until

01:21:26.380 midnight last night.

01:21:27.440 So there was like a four-hour period where Hunter could have done anything he wanted.

01:21:31.260 Legitimately anything.

01:21:32.020 As long as it's a federal crime and not a state-level crime.

01:21:33.820 He could have done anything.

01:21:35.820 He could have gone.

01:21:36.600 He could have, like, crossed interstate lines.

01:21:38.740 The processes.

01:21:39.340 Like, anything that he wanted.

01:21:40.340 Just really enjoyed himself.

01:21:41.340 Like, four hours right there had been totally clean.

01:21:43.240 It is the most sweeping pardon in modern presidential history, because it didn't pardon him just

01:21:48.300 for the offenses that he was convicted for or pled guilty, too.

01:21:51.180 It pardoned him for everything and anything that he—it was like a note from the Three

01:21:56.420 Musketeers.

01:21:57.000 The bearer of this note has done what has been done.

01:21:59.080 It began unshockingly January 1st, 2014.

01:22:06.280 He joined the Board of Burisma April of 2014, which is why it was dated this particular way.

01:22:11.140 They didn't make a boo-boo here, I will say.

01:22:12.780 If the goal here was to immunize Joe, which is more than likely at least part of the goal here,

01:22:18.280 they were afraid that Hunter was going to be flipped, that essentially the new Trump DOJ

01:22:23.280 was going to come in.

01:22:24.740 They were going to start looking through Hunter's finances.

01:22:26.520 They were going to find there were checks to the big guy.

01:22:27.980 And then they were going to try to flip Hunter on Joe.

01:22:30.280 Well, there is one problem.

01:22:31.440 He always could have pled the Fifth Amendment.

01:22:32.780 He can't do that anymore.

01:22:33.600 Once you've been pardoned, the Fifth Amendment goes away, legally speaking, because it's a

01:22:36.580 right against self-incrimination.

01:22:37.620 You can't incriminate yourself for a crime that you're not going to be convicted of and

01:22:41.480 that you can't be convicted of.

01:22:42.320 So theoretically, they could drag him before Congress or before a jury or in a subpoena,

01:22:46.140 and they could say, you can't plead the Fifth.

01:22:47.720 And so you'll just get a bunch of I don't remember, as I'm sure.

01:22:50.520 So the president has very broad pardoning authority for federal crimes.

01:22:54.760 Other than the Nixon pardon, are there examples of pardons for things that haven't?

01:23:02.520 Jimmy Carter pardoned the draft dodgers, didn't he?

01:23:05.000 Yes, he did.

01:23:05.500 Yeah.

01:23:05.780 And that was also quite broad.

01:23:08.160 This one, yeah.

01:23:09.180 That is broad, but it is for one particular thing.

01:23:12.560 Yeah.

01:23:12.880 It's for a ton of people, but for one particular thing.

01:23:14.760 Yeah.

01:23:15.040 I'm not sure I know about a part in this, like for any and all unspecified crimes during

01:23:20.260 this gigantic period.

01:23:20.660 That may or may not have been committed for 11 years.

01:23:22.460 It's actually hilarious in so many ways.

01:23:24.600 It's hilarious.

01:23:25.260 He has committed to searching the rest of his life for the big guy.

01:23:27.800 That's what I think.

01:23:29.720 I mean, it's also hilarious to watch as the entire narrative that they'd constructed.

01:23:34.700 Joe Biden is the president of norms and he's normality, and Donald Trump is a threat to

01:23:38.780 the system.

01:23:39.200 That's what I kind of like about it.

01:23:39.880 It's delightful.

01:23:40.700 It's delightful.

01:23:40.860 You know, I had a very unpopular take on this, that I disagreed on X with our esteemed

01:23:46.660 colleague, Mr. Walsh here, but really it began with, I was shocked that people were

01:23:51.680 shocked.

01:23:52.800 Yeah.

01:23:53.100 Were there seriously people who believed that this would not happen?

01:23:56.180 Yes.

01:23:56.520 No, I got this wonderful, wonderful email from a conservative friend in Hollywood, so he's

01:24:02.000 obviously undercover, who had dinner with a liberal friend, and before this happened,

01:24:08.040 and he said, obviously, my friend said, obviously, Biden's going to, you know, pardon

01:24:13.120 his son.

01:24:13.860 And the guy said, never happened.

01:24:15.000 Never happened.

01:24:15.600 So they bet a million, I said, I'll bet you a million dollars, and they shook on it.

01:24:19.780 And now the guy said, well, it was a joke, of course.

01:24:21.720 But I think it's incredibly touching to me that people really did believe that Joe Biden,

01:24:27.640 who is a weathervane, who is the most, one of the most routinely corrupt politicians of

01:24:32.480 our lifetime, was a man of honor who was going to abide by his word.

01:24:35.940 But they did, they did believe it.

01:24:37.560 It's kind of touching.

01:24:38.680 It's crazy to me.

01:24:39.580 I mean, in part, I think.

01:24:41.180 It's a wonderful testament to human gullibility.

01:24:42.240 To Ben's point, was he trying to protect himself?

01:24:44.420 Yeah, probably.

01:24:45.600 Does Joe ever do anything as a selfless matter?

01:24:48.160 No.

01:24:48.920 But I don't think Joe is a complete cynic.

01:24:51.600 Meaning, I think Joe really loves his kid.

01:24:54.020 I think that, I think most people in that position, if their kid were not just 18 years old and

01:25:00.680 you're going to let him sleep a crime off in jail, but, you know, a kid who's looking at

01:25:03.460 serious jail time, you're on the brink of death, he's your last living kid, I think most

01:25:08.420 people probably would pardon their kid or at least commute their kid's sentence unless

01:25:11.760 he were actually liable for lots of other crimes that are more serious.

01:25:15.900 I think that if he had commuted Hunter's sentence for the known crimes, for the crimes for which

01:25:21.540 he was actually convicted.

01:25:22.360 But he wasn't prosecuted for the serious crimes.

01:25:24.540 He was prosecuted for this nonsense gun and tax.

01:25:27.560 This to me is the interesting question with the, and it's probably irrelevant because he

01:25:30.980 did do it for his own sake, but just pretending that's not the case for a second.

01:25:33.900 The interesting question is, like, would you do this for your own kid?

01:25:36.980 And my answer is, hell no.

01:25:39.200 I would not do this for my own kids.

01:25:40.280 No, here's what I would do.

01:25:43.140 If my kids were convicted of some tax crime or a gun charge, absolutely, I would pardon

01:25:48.520 everyone ever convicted of a tax crime or a gun, or probably a gun crime.

01:25:53.280 Blanket pardon for the drink.

01:25:54.140 Right, but what I would not do is if I had a 54-year-old drug-addled loser of a son who's

01:26:02.580 been an absolute loser his whole life, I would not give him a blanket get-out-of-jail-free

01:26:07.440 card for any crime he may have committed, up to things like sex trafficking, federal

01:26:11.640 crime, for a period of 10 years.

01:26:13.720 Okay, let me ask you another question.

01:26:14.160 Because, hold on a second, your number one duty as a parent, and you know this, is to

01:26:18.100 lead your child to virtue and to heaven, ultimately.

01:26:21.500 This is Plato's argument in Gorgias.

01:26:22.920 Right, so by giving him that get-out-of-jail-free card, you have impeded his ability to develop

01:26:29.820 high-version.

01:26:29.840 This comes down to the selfishness of Joe Biden, though.

01:26:32.380 The thing that nobody has pointed out about his relationship with Hunter for years is that

01:26:36.800 he enabled this.

01:26:38.360 He did.

01:26:38.820 I mean, he enabled it.

01:26:40.320 He profited off.

01:26:40.900 He profited off of it.

01:26:41.920 He knew his son was a drug-addled mess.

01:26:44.080 Everyone knew his son was a drug-addled mess.

01:26:46.000 He knew his son was trafficking with prostitutes and smoking meth.

01:26:49.020 He knew all that stuff, and he sent him to get million-dollar jobs at Burisma so he could

01:26:52.820 bring home the bacon.

01:26:53.900 You know what you don't do with a kid who's in serious drug trouble?

01:26:56.700 Give him free access to large quantities of untraceable cash.

01:26:59.780 That is a thing that you don't do with a kid who has serious drug problems.

01:27:02.780 So then let me ask this question.

01:27:04.280 You take that kid, and you put him in rehab, and you dry him out, and you

01:27:06.800 chain him up so that he can't make bad decisions, at least until the time where he's capable

01:27:10.340 of making good decisions.

01:27:11.240 Instead, he decided he was going to trot him out as a bag man for the Biden family business

01:27:14.860 for full-on a decade.

01:27:15.860 That's the point, though.

01:27:16.600 And so this is the question for the table, and especially for Mr. Walsh here.

01:27:19.420 You say you would not, and I think this is a good point, you would not just give a blanket

01:27:23.880 pardon to your kid if he had all these serious drug problems, because you'd actually want

01:27:27.120 to help him and dry him out and all the rest.

01:27:29.220 Now, let's say instead you were not Mount Walsh, but Joe Biden, and you had profited,

01:27:34.060 allegedly, to the tune of, allegedly, lots and lots of money over many decades, and maybe

01:27:38.720 even sent your kid out to Ben's point to raise all that money.

01:27:42.740 In that instance, if you were a deeply corrupt president who had ordered your kid to do this

01:27:47.180 stuff, would you pardon him?

01:27:49.400 I mean, you're asking Matt if he's a different human.

01:27:51.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:27:51.720 I'm just saying.

01:27:52.780 I mean, I get your point, but I refuse to agree with you.

01:27:57.780 But yeah, I mean, if it's a guilt thing where he's like, well, this is actually all my fault.

01:28:02.280 He did it for my sake.

01:28:03.500 I'm not going to let him take the fall.

01:28:05.520 Of course, then the real courageous thing would be, and the real honorable thing would

01:28:09.720 be for Biden to admit all this, which he would never do.

01:28:12.780 But in that case, I guess I could see an argument.

01:28:15.480 The level of corruption here is truly astonishing, but it's really bad for the country.

01:28:21.120 And I have to say that now, when you go back and you look at American history, you have

01:28:25.080 to admit the Clinton presidency broke the country, truly broke the country.

01:28:28.600 I mean, between the corruption and the pardons and Lewinsky and the basic idea that virtue

01:28:31.900 no longer mattered in public life, that followed by the Iraq War, by the mishandling of COVID,

01:28:38.180 by all this stuff, every institution is broken.

01:28:40.420 And so now what you have is people who are sinning more than the last guy sinned in the

01:28:44.600 projection that the future guy will sin more than they have, right?

01:28:46.880 That's exactly what Joe Biden did here.

01:28:48.100 Well, that is the part of this that's interesting to me, is in the past, this pardon would have

01:28:53.720 been unnecessary.

01:28:55.240 And even when Biden was swearing he wouldn't do it, he probably thought it wouldn't be necessary.

01:29:01.560 Because had Kamala won the presidency, there'd be no need for the pardon.

01:29:06.220 And if Donald Trump weren't essentially promising to go back and punish people from the previous

01:29:13.320 administration, it also wouldn't be necessary.

01:29:15.940 Because generally speaking, we've had a don't look back, you can never look back approach

01:29:19.780 to presidential politics where, you know, we survived the Carter administration and we

01:29:25.440 just never talk about it again.

01:29:26.580 But because Donald Trump isn't doing that, he's basically run on the promise that he

01:29:31.340 is going to do something about this.

01:29:33.900 I'm not saying that.

01:29:34.920 And by the way, the only reason he's doing that is because Joe Biden did it to him.

01:29:37.360 Did it to him.

01:29:38.380 Yeah.

01:29:38.820 Right.

01:29:38.960 You remember the Joe, that Donald Trump ran in 2016 pledging to lock up Hillary.

01:29:41.980 And you know, it's the thing he didn't do.

01:29:43.020 He didn't lock up Hillary.

01:29:44.440 But you know who actually tried to lock up the other guy?

01:29:46.600 Joe Biden tried to lock that guy up.

01:29:48.260 100%.

01:29:48.540 So things have changed.

01:29:49.940 Yes.

01:29:50.500 To even make this a thing that one would.

01:29:53.320 Somehow our politics have gotten even worse.

01:29:54.660 Because now the way that it's going to work is legitimately, you are going to have to

01:29:58.440 pardon, every president is going to have to do this now.

01:29:59.800 You're going to have to pardon yourself of all blanket crimes on the last day of your

01:30:03.200 term.

01:30:03.740 You're going to have to.

01:30:04.380 Yeah.

01:30:04.580 Because the next guy is going to come in and find some excuse to prosecute the last guy.

01:30:08.740 So my question for what a lawyer is here.

01:30:10.020 Before you ask this, I have one response to what you say, though.

01:30:13.260 If Joe Biden had come out and said, I'm sorry.

01:30:16.440 I know I promise not to do this.

01:30:17.960 I'm broken.

01:30:18.660 I cannot let my son do time.

01:30:20.260 I may be wrong, but this is the way it is.

01:30:22.840 He's my son.

01:30:23.440 I love him.

01:30:23.780 I can't do it.

01:30:24.840 He wouldn't have damaged the country.

01:30:26.900 You would have seen it as his personal weakness.

01:30:28.680 We all would have sympathized with it.

01:30:29.980 But that's not what he did.

01:30:30.800 He lied even in pardoning him.

01:30:32.580 He was targeted.

01:30:33.840 He was targeted.

01:30:35.040 Well, he was treated by a different standard.

01:30:37.860 A much more lenient standard than anyone else would.

01:30:40.400 Did you see?

01:30:40.760 And then today, Kareem Jean-Pierre is out there attempting to explain why Joe Biden

01:30:44.500 suggesting that the DOJ was corruptly targeting his son was different than Donald Trump.

01:30:48.160 Yeah, of course.

01:30:48.660 The DOJ was corruptly targeting Donald Trump.

01:30:49.920 Again, this is the thing that really is amazing.

01:30:52.160 Joe Biden's line.

01:30:52.620 This is a point that Nate Silver was making.

01:30:55.480 He was saying that it's not that people are getting the normality argument wrong.

01:31:03.060 Things are not normal right now.

01:31:04.380 But the point is that Democrats were not normal either.

01:31:06.960 And they haven't been normal for a super long time.

01:31:08.560 And this was the reason why Donald Trump won the election.

01:31:10.920 It wasn't because people love January signal, like, and deeply.

01:31:13.100 It's because they don't believe that the other side is any better.

01:31:15.520 They believe the other side is exactly the same thing.

01:31:17.340 It's actually, go ahead, go ahead.

01:31:18.320 My only question for the Harvard lawyer, because what do I know?

01:31:20.340 I don't have a law school education.

01:31:22.300 But to your point, Jeremy, does this pardon hold?

01:31:26.080 Is this legit?

01:31:26.700 Yes.

01:31:27.340 It does.

01:31:27.840 There's no question, no challenge.

01:31:29.020 There are no restrictions on the pardon power in the Constitution itself.

01:31:31.680 It's very difficult to see a situation in which the Supreme Court overrules a presidential pardon.

01:31:37.540 The only interesting thing about it, to me, is that it's not for any specific crimes.

01:31:42.780 Right.

01:31:43.380 Which does create now the precedent of blanket pardons.

01:31:49.240 I'm going to do that.

01:31:49.940 If ever I'm elected, guys, get ready.

01:31:51.460 Y'all get blanket pardons for everything.

01:31:52.680 Well, I was about to say.

01:31:53.480 It's like the purge.

01:31:54.160 It's awesome.

01:31:54.840 I was about to say, why would Biden stop here?

01:31:57.220 Why wouldn't he, between now and leaving office, pardon all the most high-ranking members of his administration?

01:32:01.980 I want to see if people can start getting prospective pardons.

01:32:04.720 I really want prospective pardons.

01:32:05.360 He doesn't have to admit that they've done something.

01:32:06.260 Let's go all the way.

01:32:06.940 Like, you're partying for the next five years of activity.

01:32:09.380 Right?

01:32:09.500 Like, not just, like, stopping today.

01:32:10.960 Like, you can do anything you want until 2041.

01:32:14.200 Let's go.

01:32:14.600 Right?

01:32:14.700 Like, that's amazing.

01:32:15.540 If he did that, the Democratic Party would cease to exist, I think.

01:32:18.540 You think so?

01:32:19.120 Yes.

01:32:19.440 Because this is, because of the father-son thing.

01:32:22.100 You know, this has this kind of shroud of sympathy and all this.

01:32:24.980 But if he pardoned, like, Christopher Wray, you know, like, I don't think.

01:32:28.880 Don't you think this, to your point, Drew, wasn't this pardon also a little bit of a shiv to the Democrats who overthrew him?

01:32:35.300 A little bit of a, yeah, I lied.

01:32:37.520 I said I wasn't going to do it, but I'm not going to pay any kind of a cost.

01:32:40.900 You might in the midterms for my lies, but who cares?

01:32:43.700 I don't care about you guys anymore.

01:32:44.720 I mean, certainly now nothing Trump does with the pardon vis-a-vis, say, the January Sixers or maybe even pardoning himself.

01:32:51.740 Yeah.

01:32:51.940 I think if I were Joe Biden and I were going to do the wrong thing, because I think he did the wrong thing, obviously, I may have commuted Hunter's sentence, but the blanket pardon's too much.

01:33:00.040 But if you were going to do it, what I would have said is, I am pardoning my son, Hunter Biden, and I am pardoning Donald Trump for all the allegations related to classified documents and the federal charges against him.

01:33:14.320 The era of political persecution of your political enemies ends now.

01:33:19.320 By the way, I thought that Joe Biden should have done that during the race.

01:33:20.400 I think he would have gotten away with that.

01:33:21.640 I think they should have done that during the race.

01:33:23.220 I always thought that what would have been smart of him during the race would have been to say, listen, he may have committed crimes, Donald Trump, but you know what?

01:33:28.940 We're a bigger country than that.

01:33:30.160 And pardon Trump.

01:33:30.800 It would have pissed Trump off something fierce, right?

01:33:32.740 Yeah.

01:33:33.000 Pardon him for crimes that Trump said he didn't commit.

01:33:35.180 And it also would have been seen by the American public as something magnanimous.

01:33:38.980 But yeah, now it's a little bit late.

01:33:40.540 It is a wild story, though.

01:33:42.020 And again, it goes to just the complete decrepitude of our politics.

01:33:44.980 It's also the reason why Donald Trump is selecting people like Kash Patel to clean out these institutions, right?

01:33:49.640 These institutions are really, really corrupt.

01:33:52.420 And he's appointing people to clean out an enormous amount of dead wood inside these institutions.

01:33:57.260 Now, I may quibble with some of the strategery here just because he's going to lose an awful lot of steam trying to ram through some of the more controversial picks.

01:34:05.340 And I think there probably were people, not probably, I know there are people in positions who would have done exactly the same thing but without a lot of the controversy.

01:34:12.640 And I think that if it were me and I were trying to do the same thing, again, I like a lot of his picks.

01:34:17.320 But I think there are some of his picks where you could have gotten 99% of the juice with 0% the squeeze.

01:34:23.520 And that's going to be a problem.

01:34:24.980 There's going to be some resistance to Kash Patel.

01:34:26.500 There will probably be some resistance to Tulsi Gabbard.

01:34:28.380 Will the Speaker allow him to adjourn Congress so that he can push things through?

01:34:35.260 No, no.

01:34:35.640 You don't think the Senate would push back?

01:34:39.300 You don't think, though, that Mike Johnson would put pressure from the House?

01:34:43.680 No.

01:34:44.340 I think even some of his supporters like me would be very unhappy with that.

01:34:48.780 The Senate exists for a reason.

01:34:50.900 It's an advice and consent mechanism.

01:34:52.200 I tend to believe that you should be able to find people who 50 of your 53 senators can agree on.

01:34:58.820 And that's why most of these people are going to get through, including, I think, some of the more controversial picks.

01:35:02.460 I think Pete Hegseth is going to get through, for example, at SECDEF.

01:35:05.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:05.380 I think Patel is going to get through, actually.

01:35:06.740 I think Patel will probably get through as well.

01:35:08.180 I think that right now the two most controversial nominees are probably Gabbard and RMK at HHS.

01:35:13.940 You know those children's illustrated books that have trucks with eyes?

01:35:18.040 That's who I would promote at this point.

01:35:20.000 I would vote for, like, a bulldozer with eyes and just destroy every institution.

01:35:25.980 I think Tulsi gets through.

01:35:26.640 I don't—because you've got to remember, with Tulsi, some Republican senators might not like—she's a Democrat.

01:35:31.200 She disagrees with them on certain things.

01:35:32.940 Trump did not hide the ball on Tulsi Gabbard or Bobby Kennedy, for that matter.

01:35:36.560 He campaigned with them ceaselessly at the end of that campaign.

01:35:40.280 The American people did vote for that, and I think the Republican senators would get that message.

01:35:43.320 I mean, the question is going to be the math, right?

01:35:45.080 So if you look at, for example, Tulsi or RFK Jr., you're looking at a drop-off of three immediately, probably, right?

01:35:51.660 You're talking Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell.

01:35:53.740 So those are the three likely to drop out because McConnell is done after this term, and so he's figuring, who do I want to vote for?

01:36:00.000 What do I care?

01:36:00.760 Like, I'm just going to do what I want to do.

01:36:02.180 And so all you have to do at that point is peel off one more.

01:36:05.120 And so when it comes to, you know, RFK Jr., he's going to have to make some commitments.

01:36:09.420 And I think he should make some commitments, by the way, to, for example, reinstate the Mexico City policy.

01:36:13.640 Like, his pro-choice bona fides are going to definitely be on the table in these hearings, and they should be on the table.

01:36:17.660 And that's why I think it's good to have confirmation hearings and just not let the president roughshod over the recess appointment.

01:36:22.560 So I don't think that the president—I'm against the recess appointment thing.

01:36:26.080 We have a Senate for a reason.

01:36:27.360 And I understand the argument that the department heads aren't part of the checks and balances system.

01:36:32.080 And as long as you're not talking about violations of the Constitution, that's probably true.

01:36:37.100 But the Senate decidedly is an independent branch of government and is supposed to hold the president in check.

01:36:42.380 It is part of the checks and balances.

01:36:43.980 I think that it is a broken system, however, and has been for my entire adult life.

01:36:47.860 You know, by the time 9-11 happened, George W. Bush hadn't seated most of his cabinet.

01:36:54.160 It took two years to seat most of Donald Trump's cabinet in the first administration.

01:36:59.400 The advice and consent was never—if you had told the founders a president could get halfway through his term and not have a cabinet,

01:37:05.360 they would have told you, absolutely, that's not what this means.

01:37:08.080 But I also believe that the advice and consent clause, as pertains to executive department heads,

01:37:18.040 I would let Barack Obama appoint almost anyone he wants if I was in the Senate.

01:37:22.100 That's how it was for most of the history of the country.

01:37:24.220 I despise many of Trump's picks.

01:37:26.680 I wouldn't—I'm against putting left-wing Democrats in a Republican cabinet.

01:37:32.320 I think it's wrong.

01:37:33.200 But the president absolutely has the right to do that.

01:37:35.900 So I would—do I think Tulsi Gabbard should be in the cabinet?

01:37:38.760 No.

01:37:39.000 Do I think RFK Jr. should be in the cabinet?

01:37:40.820 No.

01:37:41.260 But if I were a senator, I would vote to confirm them because I think the president has the right.

01:37:44.800 I feel a little bit differently about judicial nominations.

01:37:47.580 I think that—

01:37:48.520 That's different.

01:37:48.840 They have, like, an actual nonpartisan job they're supposed to do.

01:37:51.360 That's right.

01:37:51.780 As opposed to working for the president, you can fire them at any time.

01:37:53.660 I'm against many of Trump's appointments.

01:37:56.140 I think it's kind of hilarious that, as I've been saying for the last eight years,

01:38:00.300 everyone who tries to build an intellectual framework around Trumpism is lying to themselves and others.

01:38:05.300 Michael Anton gets basically booted.

01:38:08.760 The whole Claremont Trumpism is meaningless.

01:38:11.440 Not a single member of their sphere is ascending.

01:38:14.400 The NatCons—who are the NatCons ascending?

01:38:16.700 No one.

01:38:17.500 Here's two complete intellectual schools.

01:38:19.400 J.D. Vance.

01:38:20.220 Maybe.

01:38:21.280 Here's—whatever J.D. Vance is is yet to be seen.

01:38:24.180 But whatever is—and also the vice president doesn't do anything.

01:38:27.660 Here's two intellectual frameworks invented to assure us what Trumpism is all about.

01:38:31.720 They got nothing.

01:38:32.660 They didn't ascend a single person.

01:38:33.820 There are more Democrats being ascended than NatCons or Claremont Cons in the Trump administration.

01:38:38.920 The only one who I would have voted against, though, as a senator is Matt Gaetz.

01:38:42.600 Yeah.

01:38:43.260 Because I think that's what the advice and consent clause is actually about.

01:38:46.800 It's not about, for partisan reasons, do I approve of this person?

01:38:49.880 I don't approve of—I think RFK Jr. is a great—by all accounts, a great guy.

01:38:54.320 I think he has some kind of fun ideas.

01:38:56.780 I'm a Republican.

01:38:57.560 I don't want Democrats in office.

01:38:59.220 But I would still vote for him because I don't—I think that's the problem.

01:39:01.600 Gates was a special case because clearly there was stuff that hasn't been released yet.

01:39:04.920 That's right.

01:39:05.360 That was really bad.

01:39:06.500 Gates is—I don't think he had to do with sex or drugs either.

01:39:09.500 There's also—I mean, with Gates—

01:39:10.940 Not just sex.

01:39:12.140 That dude practiced law for less time than I did.

01:39:14.320 I mean, really.

01:39:14.860 He was a lawyer for, like, two years.

01:39:17.020 And then they were like, what if we just make you attorney general?

01:39:19.020 I was like, well, I mean—again, that was one where it's like, I understand what I think Trump was trying to do there, but—

01:39:23.600 Yeah, don't you think that was part of the point?

01:39:25.320 No.

01:39:25.520 It was just—you don't think it was a brazen—

01:39:28.240 No, you know that it wasn't.

01:39:29.700 You're so folded.

01:39:30.000 Neither do you.

01:39:30.740 Neither do you.

01:39:31.140 You've literally told me off camera that you don't think it was strategic.

01:39:34.260 I think there was—

01:39:35.560 Donald Trump doesn't do strategy.

01:39:36.500 That's not a thing.

01:39:37.660 Unbelievable.

01:39:38.020 So I have heard that it was not strategic.

01:39:42.440 However, from whom—

01:39:44.240 A high-ranking source, shall we say?

01:39:45.440 A high-ranking source.

01:39:46.340 A high-ranking source told me that it was not strategic.

01:39:50.020 However, again, to your point on building intellectual strategies, and to your point, Drew,

01:39:55.860 Trump, I don't think, consciously writes out long white papers or anything like that.

01:39:59.560 I think he moves by his gut.

01:40:00.980 And I do think that there was a gut move with someone like Matt Gaetz.

01:40:04.280 The fact that he is a pugilist and not a long-practicing attorney is the point of nominating.

01:40:09.200 Of course, the only—this is why I've been so mad at you and Drew for eight years.

01:40:11.980 Me?

01:40:12.440 Yes, trying to tell me.

01:40:13.400 What did I do?

01:40:13.840 Henry Olsen says that what Donald Trump's really doing—screw you.

01:40:16.660 There is no intellectual framework that you can put around Trumpism.

01:40:18.960 The only thing that's true of Trump, and it's definitely represented in these picks,

01:40:23.400 is that Trumpism is an attitude.

01:40:25.460 Yes.

01:40:26.140 That I can completely agree with.

01:40:27.820 Yeah, but I've never said he had an intellectual—I've agreed with you about the intellectual structures.

01:40:31.580 The people trying to do what National Review did for Reagan have failed utterly because he's a gut politician.

01:40:37.300 I agree with that.

01:40:38.440 But gut politicians—

01:40:39.380 I mean, you can hate me for other reasons.

01:40:40.140 I mean, I've been mad at you for eight years about it, but I'll let it go.

01:40:41.620 No, I was going to say there are plenty of reasons to take it.

01:40:42.900 I'll let it go.

01:40:43.260 I guess my only point is gut politicians have a gut, you know, and the gut has a kind of good start of itself.

01:40:49.920 Oh, for sure.

01:40:50.840 I mean, his gut is doing wonderful things.

01:40:52.740 Yeah.

01:40:53.020 I mean, honestly, that's great.

01:40:54.640 He wants to disrupt the system.

01:40:56.000 Yeah.

01:40:56.480 And so you think—

01:40:57.420 Look, by the way, I do want to call out—Jeremy has a proposal that I think we should air right now.

01:41:00.480 I have mentioned this to people in very high places in power, and I think it's a good proposal, and we should get some momentum behind it.

01:41:06.040 So Democrats right now have decided they once again love the filibuster, right?

01:41:09.160 So they hated the filibuster until the last 30 seconds, and now they love the filibuster again.

01:41:13.840 So Jeremy has a proposal, and it's a very good proposal that I urgently recommend that the Republicans in the Senate take up,

01:41:19.620 and that is constitutional amendment to enshrine the filibuster in the Constitution of the United States must be done within the next 18 months,

01:41:25.680 or Donald Trump nukes it because the—

01:41:28.240 By the way, I would do it with the nine justices on the court, too.

01:41:31.100 Yeah.

01:41:31.420 Yes.

01:41:31.720 Fix the Supreme Court at nine justice.

01:41:33.340 We're all against court packing now.

01:41:34.940 Right.

01:41:35.180 So let's put it in the Constitution, and if you don't get it done within the next 18 months, I'm packing the court.

01:41:39.260 Excellent ideas.

01:41:40.040 I'm not just going to wait for you to do it.

01:41:41.720 Excellent.

01:41:41.980 We can either all agree not to do it.

01:41:43.440 Yep.

01:41:43.760 Because the trust is gone at this point.

01:41:45.020 The trust is gone.

01:41:45.420 I totally agree with Jeremy's point on this.

01:41:47.000 It's a great idea, so I think we should publicly air it and get behind it.

01:41:49.260 Well, on that note, I think we can go home.

01:41:51.860 I just got agreed with by Ben Shapiro.

01:41:54.260 Thank you for hanging out with us tonight at Daily Wire Backstage.

01:41:56.700 We still have a little bit of time left on our Cyber Monday deal, 50% off of Daily Wire Plus membership,

01:42:01.220 and you can get Jordan Peterson's great new series, The Gospels.

01:42:04.040 We'll be releasing new episodes every Sunday.

01:42:06.820 I think this is the last time we're all together until Christmas,

01:42:08.900 so I'd like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas.

01:42:11.840 And Ben?

01:42:12.340 Whatever you guys do.

01:42:13.260 Whatever you guys do.

01:42:13.900 Sponzo, you know?

01:42:17.080 Night, everybody.

01:42:17.680 We'll be right back.

The Michael Knowles Show - December 02, 2024

Daily Wire Backstage： One More for 2024

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