00:06:12.000or forms of socialism that exist, certainly.
00:06:14.740Okay, well, all right, that's a 50-50.
00:06:16.920We'll delve into some of the particulars of that
00:06:18.780in a second, but first, I just, I assume, Brian,
00:06:21.640you know, we seem to have a quorum here
00:06:23.660and there's consensus, so obviously you would agree
00:06:26.320that it is completely insane and anachronistic and absurd to call Christ a socialist, right?
00:06:34.280I would say that Jesus was not a socialist then, but he probably would be now. And I think that
00:06:39.980Christians now should be socialists because Jesus' message was the kingdom of God, which is not just0.87
00:06:45.360a message that puts a demand on individual hearts. It's a call to build the world that works for the0.97
00:06:50.880least of these. This is not just a spiritual message. It had material implications rooted
00:06:55.380in the Jubilee, which was a law that demanded the redistribution of wealth specifically provide for
00:07:01.480vulnerable people. And so based on that, I do believe that Jesus would be building the kind
00:07:05.940of community that today would have him labeled as a Marxist and kicked out of Doug's church.
00:07:10.880Okay. So that's a more, it's a subtler take than I was expecting from you, Brian, but it's a good
00:07:15.280one. So you say, no, it's absurd. It's anachronistic to call Jesus a socialist. He was
00:07:19.640not a socialist, but now he would be. Now, of course, using the conditional when we're talking
00:07:24.440about the resurrected son of God, the word eternally begotten of the father seems a little
00:07:30.220strange to me because he is, you know, God in the burning bush says, I am that I am. And Christ says
00:07:35.120before Abraham was, I am. But I guess it leads to this question, which is you say Jesus was one
00:07:40.960thing, but now he would be a different thing. So does God change? No, I was simply referring to
00:07:48.180the fact that socialism in many ways is a historical progression reacting to capitalism
00:07:52.780And capitalism did not exist at the time. What existed at the time were patron-client relationships and an empire under Caesar's control.
00:08:00.800And Jesus absolutely critiqued that empire and critiqued all domination systems and invited his followers to experience a countercultural, radically egalitarian community,
00:08:10.920which, again, would not have been labeled socialism then because socialism did not exist.
00:08:14.500But today in our world, I think socialism is a good approximation for the kind of thing that we should be striving for.
00:08:20.520A world that doesn't just work for the top 1%, does not just work for people that already have the power, does not just perpetuate the status quo, but actually works for the poor, the vulnerable, the people that are being cast out.
00:08:32.000Well, it's a fair point that capitalism even is a kind of a new thing.
00:08:37.040Capitalism is a term actually promoted by Karl Marx himself.
00:18:34.800But the Lord is not going to judge us by our words and our protestations.
00:18:38.520He's going to judge us by the actual impact that it has.
00:18:42.240and I'd like to just reinforce, I don't want my healthcare or the healthcare of any child in
00:18:47.960America to be run by the Department of Motor Vehicles. I don't want bureaucrats in charge
00:18:54.100of everybody's cancer treatment. I don't want bureaucrats saying, well, you can come in for
00:18:59.380your second checkup in six months. Basically, the issue is what is the quality? What is the
00:19:07.480standard of living? What is the life expectancy? How much good are you actually doing?
00:19:14.780But with that said, I think that we all need to be willing to surrender the whole thing,
00:19:21.200our political apparatus and our individual behavior, up to the Lord to have him judge
00:19:27.420and have him examine. I think we need to do better, but I don't think we need to do better
00:19:32.200than North Korea, because we already are. I don't think we need to do better than...0.55
00:19:38.560Colton, are you a North Korean? Are you on the side of North Korea or on the side of God?0.78
00:19:43.960No, sorry. I did not mean to interrupt Brother Doug here. I was moved with holy unction
00:19:48.160at something he said. We're doing a lot of interesting stuff. And I'm going to be honest,
00:19:52.900I expected some more sophisticated arguments here than what I was hearing from my sophomore
00:19:58.000conservative friends at Oral Roberts University in 2008. Of course, there are so many things to
00:20:04.620react to. Of course, there are a number of popes who have condemned socialism as such. But we have
00:20:11.760to discuss what we actually mean by socialism. Because like I said before, it's a broad tradition
00:20:16.700that entails a lot of different things. You get a group of socialists into the room, they're going
00:20:21.200to disagree with each other more vehemently than me and Doug are going to disagree with each other.
00:20:25.500But we also have Pope Paul VI saying that socialism travels under different names and Christians have to be able to make distinctions.
00:20:33.780We have Pope John Paul II who says that we have to allow for public and collective ownership and that the socialization of some means of production can't be outruled, right?
00:20:44.340Here's what I think we have to understand.
00:20:46.440Before Christianity ever had to consider anything like capitalism or socialism, it already had a way of thinking about economic life.
00:20:54.940The earth belongs to God, and what we possess is something that we are responsible for using rightly, and the needs of other people place real claims on us.
00:21:05.380So remind me, what does Acts 4 actually say, right?
00:21:09.400Does Luke say that the church protected its accumulated wealth and told the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?
00:21:15.940Or does it say that no one claimed private ownership of any possessions and that everything they owned was held in common?
00:21:22.740and that the proceeds were distributed to each as any need.
00:36:29.340Well, there's Somalis and they exclusively vote for Democrats and they defraud the government by a bunch of mansions.1.00
00:36:35.280So, yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense.1.00
00:36:37.360Explain this. When the government opens up an unlimited credit line and never checks on what's being taken out,
00:36:44.740that's when socialism realizes for these people their desire to get what they could never afford if they worked at their normal jobs.
00:36:51.560So they buy houses, they buy yachts and they go build houses overseas.
00:36:56.680Socialism leads to criminality. We know that.
00:36:59.020the government steals from the people than the people steal from the government.
00:37:03.700Yes. The social effect of socialism is very important, Brian.
00:37:07.640Well, I think a lot, the word theft is getting thrown around a lot. Doug brought up the 10
00:37:11.900commandments. He said that, oh, it presupposes just like adultery or adultery presupposes the
00:37:16.980reality of marriage. So the, the, the prohibition of theft presupposes personal property. I don't
00:37:21.780know a single socialist that thinks that people can't own things. There's a big difference between
00:37:26.620owning a toothbrush and owning the factory that makes the toothbrushes. This is a really
00:37:30.860elementary school version of theft that we're talking about that doesn't reckon with what the
00:37:35.560Bible actually says about theft or what Christian history has said. Colton has given a lot of great
00:37:40.440quotes. Well, let me just give another. Actually, you know what? I can use a specific example to
00:37:44.800clarify this if you like. On the point of toothbrushes, there's a state assemblyman in
00:37:49.300New York. She's a socialist. Her name escapes me. I was talking about her on the show today.
00:37:52.960She is running specifically on the supposed right of people to steal toothbrushes and toothpaste from CVS because this is a basic need.
00:38:02.900And you might point out that there is Medicaid, there are food pantries, there are myriad charitable organizations that would happily give these people toothbrushes.
00:38:11.440But instead, they go into CVS and Walgreens, which is why we can't get any of our products now because they're all behind plexiglass.
00:38:29.200I can't I can't speak to that specific example because I don't know what that person has said.
00:38:33.920But what I will say is that our meager welfare state puts so many barriers in between people and their basic human needs that I can understand why people might be unable to access those needs.
00:38:45.300The reality is, when somebody needs to access a basic human need, that is not theft.
00:38:49.800St. Basil the Great said, when someone strips a man out of his clothes, we call him a thief,
00:38:54.360the bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry, the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the
00:38:59.340naked, the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot, the money in your vaults belong
00:39:21.260I was ingrained with the belief that not just socialists, but Democrats were evil and demonic.
00:39:27.100But I became a socialist because of Jesus, much like other people.
00:39:31.500For instance, Tommy Douglas, who was a Christian socialist, and his socialism was downstream from his Christianity.
00:39:37.540And his desire to see Jesus have his way in people's life is what caused him to roll out North America's first universal health care system in Saskatchewan, which was so popular that it was ultimately established throughout Canada.
00:39:51.720And now Canada is killing five percent of its population every year through the medical system.
00:39:56.120Even the conservatives in Canada do not even the conservatives in Canada do not want to roll out back their single payer health care system.
00:40:03.740In fact, in 2004, Tommy Douglas was voted the most popular Canadian over every prime minister and even over Wayne Gretzky because of the success of his universal health care program, which is a socialized program.
00:40:15.980The reality is, and I'm done, one more sentence, socialist projects, and this is the truth, they have produced durable and popular outcomes when they have been implemented democratically.
00:40:25.100Neither of us are calling for violent revolution, but through democratic processes, people do deserve to have their basic human needs met.
00:40:32.800And that is the kind of socialism that we want.
00:43:56.640So the issue is, what is the most effective mechanism that ministers to them actually,
00:44:02.440and that doesn't trample all over the rights and the freedoms of the people who are the source of
00:44:08.780the wealth that is being given. So this is the thing. There's two kinds of rights. If I say,
00:44:16.780if I believe, as I do, that you have the right to free speech, the only thing I have to do
00:44:22.080to honor your right to free speech is leave you alone. Okay, that's the only thing I have to do
00:44:27.620is leave you alone. But if you have the right to free dental care, and I'm a dentist, what you
00:44:35.000have done, if you have the right, basically any right creates obligations on others. Your right
00:44:40.840to free speech creates an obligation on the part of others to let you say your piece. Your right
00:44:46.100to free dental care obligates dentists to work under coercion in order to supply you with that
00:44:53.740free debt. That's absurd. Why is it absurd? You would still love to be paid out of the common
00:44:57.560purse. It's ridiculous. Michael admitted earlier that people deserve to be fed and that it actually0.97
00:45:03.320would not be stealing for someone to steal a loaf of bread. Does that mean that a baker is then
00:45:07.820being stolen from and that his labor is demanded? I mean, it's the same argument. People deserve
00:45:11.940as human beings. The important context there, though, is yes, in very limited circumstances
00:45:16.800and circumstances of destitution, there is a precept of armsgiving. Absolutely. And citizens
00:45:22.080do have mutual obligations one to another. I totally agree with this, which is why I'm curious
00:45:27.180about Catholic social teaching, which I think Colton made a very good point, is not purely
00:45:32.280capitalistic, and it's certainly not socialistic. It has this kind of middle ground. Because even,
00:45:37.660Doug, to your point on free speech, it's true that your right to free speech mostly just requires me
00:45:42.380to not interrupt you. But there is a little more to it in the First Amendment, which is
00:45:46.180if someone's engaging in fraud, that requires a justice system to stop that, because fraud
00:45:51.840undermines free speech or obscenity, you know, that appeals to the prurient interest that
00:45:55.560undermines the rational basis of free speech. So I, I, I'm interested in, uh, this kind of third
00:46:01.920way beyond libertarianism and communism, which I guess does bring us to, to Catholic social
00:46:07.340teaching, uh, uh, with where the father, this has really come up in some conversations on the right
00:46:12.800on post-liberalism, on integralism, on this ism, on that ism, all these, uh, all of these obscure
00:46:20.200political moniker as being the right-wing version of gender pronouns. But I think to Colton's point,
00:46:26.140and to Doug's for that matter, but not to Brian's, but to Doug and Colton's, there is a kind of
00:46:31.560political implication from the gospel. We are told to do certain things. There's an interaction
00:46:37.520between the religious authority and the state. In the Catholic Church, that's been true going0.93
00:46:42.300back to at least Pope Gelasius I and Emperor Anastasius. So what is the way? Statistically,
00:46:49.000we can point out, as Doug is alluding to, Christians give way more to charity than
00:46:53.580socialists do. It's not even close. No one actually disputes that. So something about
00:46:58.520Christianity is impelling giving and charity. But what is the political role, the role of the state
00:47:05.120in securing those rights and that human dignity? Well, the gleaning laws, for example, in the Old
00:47:10.560Testament, the gleaning laws would be a good example of a political construct that allows
00:47:17.240the poor to go out into the fields and glean. Right. Well, the political responsibility
00:47:24.640in order to fulfill God's will is that there be just laws which are applied evenly, and that
00:47:32.040the right to private property is respected, and that we are conscious of our obligation to help
00:47:38.040those who are dependent. So parents have to take care of their children. They have to house, feed,
00:47:43.280and clothe them. People who are in equivalent situations, people who are ill can't take care
00:47:48.320of themselves. It's up to society to do that. So yeah, there's no absolute individuality expressed
00:47:55.680in Catholic social teaching. But what we don't have is a coercive system in which the government
00:48:01.980decides how much you can keep, how much you have to give away, and that you cannot be owning the
00:48:08.680means of production, that you're simply acting on behalf of the government. That's not the way
00:48:13.260it's conceived and you know again back to uh let's you know if i can go back to the toothbrush you
00:48:19.980know the objections made well you can own a toothbrush fine but you can't own a factory
00:48:23.900well there are no toothbrush factories there ain't going to be no toothbrushes and the people
00:48:28.300stealing toothbrushes by the way in new york it's not a guy who needs to brush his teeth it's a guy
00:48:33.580who wants to swipe a whole handful so he can go resell it at a bodega or a flea market yeah there's
00:48:39.260You know, if you read the New York Post, you can learn a lot about the application of social teaching in the real world, because what we have here is a criminal enterprise on the part of some to take money when they know there's no consequences to it.
00:48:53.600And that's, you know, the Catholic Church says you have to be law abiding.
00:49:04.660I did not expect Father Murray to make what I was about to say to strengthen my argument by giving me that data point I hadn't considered, that they're not just stealing the toothbrushes to use it, which would be less of an urgent need, but they're stealing it so that they can sell it at a bodega or a flea market and make money.
00:49:22.180I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this, but toothbrush resales from a handful of toothbrushes at Walgreens isn't going to buy you a whole lot.
00:49:29.560That sounds to me like somebody who's stealing to buy drugs, some toothbrushes to provide for a very present and urgent need.
00:49:37.020Probably hold on. Hold on. I'm going to let you finish.
00:49:39.460Colton, I'm going to let you finish, but I just have to.
00:49:41.840Do you think the guy who is going into Walgreens and swiping a bunch of toothbrushes and deodorant to resell at a bodega, you think he's doing that to buy some bread for his starving kid?0.84
00:49:51.800Or do you think he's doing that because he's a dirty, rotten criminal bum and he's going to go buy drugs with the 20 bucks that he gets from selling the toothbrush?0.71
00:49:58.300what do you think is more like hate on poor people man yeah what is that i don't hate on0.95
00:50:02.820anyone but i don't approve of criminals and i think we should prosecute them yeah when someone
00:50:06.940is absolutely desperate about them you need more proximity to the poor michael i i have a lot of
00:50:14.660or you you would hate them less if you're near to them i try not to have proximity to criminals but
00:50:20.020i i do have proximity to the poor and i love them very much that they're literally selling
00:50:23.500toothbrushes in the street is someone that we should draw near to and we can encounter the
00:50:27.260Sure. This is a simple question. And I think we should care for criminals too. But this is a
00:50:30.900simple question. It's a yes or no from both you guys on the left side of this panel. Do you think
00:50:35.400the guy who was stealing the toothbrushes from CVS and selling them to a bodega, do you think
00:50:40.660that guy is taking that money to go get bread to give to his wife and children? Or do you think
00:50:46.200he's doing it for less wholesome reasons and activities? What do you think? You had a gun to
00:50:51.080your head. You had to answer. No, you didn't, you didn't phrase it as a yes or no question,0.97
00:50:54.600but i'll say no he's not he's not doing it uh probably to go buy drugs as somebody who grew
00:51:00.180up in kensington not drug you think he's doing it to buy bread for his family come on probably
00:51:04.960and let me explain why i think that right as somebody who grew up in kensington one of the
00:51:08.840worst drug neighborhoods in the the country doing ministry uh my father and grandfather
00:51:13.940passed a church there for the last 67 years it burned down last year pray for them um uh there's
00:51:19.580a lot easier ways to make money if you want to go cop something real quick and i'm not going to
00:51:23.660mention what they are here rather than going and running a whole operation. Sounds a little
00:51:27.980different to me. Here's what I want to say. We are forgetting and drifting off course. We're
00:51:33.520talking about, is this specific socialist policy the best way to do this? John Chris Awesome tells
00:51:40.500us not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from whom? From them and deprive them
00:51:48.200of life. The goods we possess are what? Not ours, but theirs. And as you already said, Michael,
00:51:55.120St. Thomas Aquinas lays it out pretty clearly that in cases of need, and here's a direct quote,
00:52:00.440all things are common property so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property
00:52:06.480for need has made it common. It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use
00:52:12.500another's property in case of extreme need. And I think that we have a lot of extreme need.
00:52:16.940just one more point because this is probably my last time i get to talk so let me just finish
00:52:21.700this last point all right earlier somebody made made a point about you know i think it was uh
00:52:26.340father murray who i disrespectfully spoke over earlier and i genuinely when i was apologizing
00:52:30.540i wasn't being sarcastic um uh he made the point that if you want to look at a country that's
00:52:36.620thriving uh you look at america right where people aren't very poor and if you want to look he said
00:52:41.400north korea hilarious example but uh the the truth is if you want to look at the countries where the
00:52:46.200people are struggling the most. We live in the imperial core. So to compare the quality of the
00:52:52.360lives of people here, which is not as good as it could be, to the lives of the people in the
00:52:56.840resource-rich nations in the global South, that we are using brutal imperialist techniques to
00:53:02.640extract that money using soft power like the IMF and the World Bank to put them in handcuffs and
00:53:07.780shackles. By the way, we're actually creating religious persecution there by creating such
00:53:13.780insane scarcity that we're now pitting Muslims and Christians, and Christians are now being
00:53:19.020persecuted because of all of that? You know, Muslims and Christians have been,
00:53:22.200we've been fighting for a while. The Muslims have been persecuting us for about 1400 years.1.00
00:53:26.600I don't think that's the IMF story. Yeah, but nobody persecutes anybody out of some vague
00:53:29.480thing. There's always a specific materialist reason that we can track through and understand
00:53:33.700what's going on. Hold on. Well, that's a very interesting point. What was the material reason
00:53:38.400for which the Muslims invaded into Gaul and made it to Poitiers, 150 miles from Paris.
00:53:45.120What was the material reason that the Ottoman Turks tried to invade the Battle of Lepanto or
00:53:52.020once again at the siege of Vienna in 1683? Was this caused by the IMF?
00:53:56.980I'm very sorry. I'm very sorry, but I have a hard out. It's been great talking to y'all.
00:54:01.900Thanks. You know, whenever you bring up the Battle of Lepanto,
00:54:04.720the Protestant has to get out. Good to see you, Doug. Thank you very much.1.00
00:54:07.500I know. Thanks. Sorry. Good to see you on this point. Hold on. You say it's all driven by just
00:54:13.080material need. What is what? How do you explain the those great movements of history? You think
00:54:17.580it's because because Charlemagne or Charles Martel was a little too heavy handed with his
00:54:23.100economic policy in North Africa or something? Well, I'll have to get into the research on that.
00:54:28.340You're asking me to pull some historical analysis of something I'm not prepared to talk about.
00:54:32.940Light them up in the comments, ladies and gentlemen. You guys go do the research chat.
00:54:35.920Tell them what we think. But I can tell you why it's happening right now in countries like Nigeria, and I've already stated those reasons. But my point is to say that if the question is whether or not there are forms of socialism or aspects of socialism that are compatible with Christianity, certainly Acts 4 shows us that that is the case.
00:54:55.900And regardless of how the state decides to live, Christians are called to live in a way that we can't support policies that are contrary to how we're called to live as citizens of the colony of heaven on earth, who are here to establish and make known the kingdom of God.0.61
00:55:14.340I think every act of wealth redistribution wrought by Christians is a sacramental moment of healing.0.88
00:55:20.520It's a moment of the already, not yet, breaking into our reality.1.00
00:55:24.740Oh, please. Can I respond to that? Please. When Fidel Castro nationalized all foreign entities and took away people's bank accounts and caused the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, that was an example, according to you, of a Christian redistribution of wealth?
00:55:42.960uh no i didn't say that i said every example of christians redistributing wealth right out of our
00:55:49.880uh our commitments and beliefs i mean if if we want to debate those states on their own terms
00:55:55.260that doesn't answer the question that we're debating right we're not talking about this
00:55:59.080you brought you brought up cuba and how great cuba is and how it's got great health care and
00:56:02.540all the rest of it so i just brought up that they they produce the best doctors in the world which
00:56:06.140is uh they don't produce the best doctors in the world that's nonsense that's that's propaganda
00:56:11.000What they do is they produce slave doctors and they send they send to foreign countries and then the salaries are paid to the government and those doctors get a hand, you know, a little pittance.0.51
00:56:21.060Many of them try to defect, but they don't because their families are back in Cuba.
00:56:24.800That's part of the socialist mythology.
00:56:27.080Whenever you talk about socialism in reality and then you tell me, oh, by the way, that's not what I'm talking about.
00:56:32.320No, that's what I'm talking about.0.55