The NXR Podcast - THE CONFERENCE - Panel 1 - Deace, Wolfe, Robinson, MacIntyre, Harris, and Webbon

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00:00:27.100 All right, we're going to kick off first.

00:00:28.820 there's a lot of topics that we're gonna do our best to get to but first we want

00:00:32.960 to start with some current events some political things that are going on right

00:00:37.880 now all six of us we love the GDP going up bottom line and we are against

00:00:47.140 tariffs not really we think the lot of the global economic stuff is a little 0.59

00:00:55.260 bit fake and gay, and we are America first, and so we're going to talk about tariffs a 0.72

00:01:02.120 little bit, and so I am going to tell you everything I know. 0.99

00:01:06.500 That was it, so now here's Orn.

00:01:10.820 You guys might have noticed there's a little bit of panic right now.

00:01:14.700 You know, things change slightly, and all of a sudden we're all doomed, and it's over.

00:01:19.180 Capitalism is done.

00:01:19.980 I'm sorry.

00:01:20.760 It was a good ride.

00:01:21.860 Glad everybody enjoyed it.

00:01:23.360 But no, it's really hilarious.

00:01:25.260 to watch the way that everyone has reacted to this.

00:01:28.100 Trump has been very clear about the fact

00:01:29.920 that he was going to use tariffs

00:01:31.680 in an attempt to reshore and re-industrialize

00:01:35.300 businesses in the United States.

00:01:37.560 I think we all recognized during COVID

00:01:39.660 when we found out that the very country 0.99

00:01:44.080 that had created a virus that was ravaging us 0.92

00:01:46.760 was also the only place that created antibiotics

00:01:49.660 that we could consume

00:01:50.840 that maybe having all of our production

00:01:53.180 in foreign countries, even if it's a little bit cheaper, isn't the smartest thing in the world.

00:01:57.480 That's a pretty common sense thing. That's pretty easy for people to grasp. But that doesn't show 0.84

00:02:01.960 up on your 401k. It doesn't show up in your stock portfolio. Your kid dying because you don't have

00:02:07.820 access to antibiotics doesn't show up in your retirement account. And so that's a very difficult

00:02:14.000 thing for people to quantify when all they're focused on is the line going up. Now, I don't

00:02:19.920 want to see anybody lose any money, and I don't think anyone likes seeing the stock

00:02:23.840 market not do well. But we all knew that at some point, if we were ever going to make

00:02:29.020 these things right, there was going to be some level of adjustment, some moment at which

00:02:34.520 we were not going to have the optimum number in our 401k as we made this transition. That

00:02:39.900 doesn't mean that every tariff is great. That doesn't mean that everything that Trump does

00:02:44.020 is, you know, you can't question it.

00:02:47.860 However, the people who are panicking right now

00:02:50.000 just a few days into this process,

00:02:51.840 I feel like have completely forgotten what's going on.

00:02:55.580 We were all living through the economy

00:02:57.020 where no one could afford a house as a young person, right?

00:03:00.440 We were all living through the economy

00:03:01.600 where people were talking about financing pizzas.

00:03:05.240 Like, what are we doing?

00:03:06.680 Who are we kidding?

00:03:07.560 Did we really think we had a great economy

00:03:09.380 just because we saw big numbers somewhere?

00:03:11.780 Like, it's nice, I own a house.

00:03:13.380 It's nice that my house has become more valuable.

00:03:15.780 But if I need to sell my house, guess what?

00:03:17.580 I have to buy another one.

00:03:19.280 And so the fact that the numbers have inflated does me no real good.

00:03:23.380 And all it ultimately does is hurt the next generation who cannot form families because

00:03:28.560 they cannot afford to move into a house of their own because they can't have a father 0.55

00:03:33.080 who works while a mother stays home and educates her children and loves her children. 0.64

00:03:37.600 When we build an economy like that, we are not servicing the American people. 0.54

00:03:42.160 we are servicing the economy, and that's not what economies are for. I like a good economy,

00:03:48.700 but I like a good economy because it benefits my people, my country. It grows families. It

00:03:55.360 allows people to do well, and so I understand the panic right now, but I think people need

00:04:00.640 to recognize that ultimately the real good is adjusting things back to economy that serves

00:04:05.880 the United States. Well said. That's good. Can I jump in on that? Steve.

00:04:12.160 Thoughts?

00:04:14.080 Well, I will tell you, I have re-evaluated in the last decade or so, and especially post-COVID, a lot of my pre-existing orthodoxies.

00:04:25.980 I mean, I was way more involved in politics and conservative causes long before I was converted.

00:04:35.060 You know, my wife is here with me in the front row when we first started dating.

00:04:39.460 I mean, she got two books to learn more about me, The Way Things Ought to Be, and See, I

00:04:44.720 Told You So, Rush Limbaugh's Two Best Selling Books.

00:04:47.420 All right?

00:04:47.700 And so, I mean, I was college Republicans.

00:04:50.020 I learned all the orthodoxies.

00:04:52.140 I read all the Thomas Sowell.

00:04:53.520 I knew all this stuff.

00:04:56.900 You know, I mock pastors who wear sweater vests now in July, and I used to wear the

00:05:02.340 Alex P. Keaton monogram sweater vest when I was a kid.

00:05:05.400 I wanted to be Alex P. Keaton when I grew up.

00:05:07.340 So, all the panicky talking points we're hearing now, this was my pre-existing orthodoxy before my spiritual conversion.

00:05:17.980 And, you know, the thing that a biblical worldview does is it puts things in a context that not even the most learned philosophies of any era.

00:05:29.160 As Paul says, where is the sage of this age who would dare stand against the word of God?

00:05:36.040 And I think when we forget some of the basic fundamental facts of existence that the word

00:05:42.440 reveals to us, our philosophies have a tendency to fall apart because they're operating in

00:05:48.560 the world as the philosophies want it to be and not necessarily the world as it is.

00:05:55.520 So I'm really big on honesty.

00:05:57.600 I'm really big on transparency.

00:05:58.880 And as long as it doesn't violate a third party confidence, I'll tell you guys pretty

00:06:04.200 much anything you ask me. All right. So let me be really open and honest. Two years ago,

00:06:12.560 we made more money. Amy and I did. She has a Christian therapy practice now as well. We made

00:06:21.120 more money combined than we've ever made as a family. We made 400K two years ago. We went out

00:06:27.120 and did Tim Pool's show two years ago. And Amy was like, we have got to do that for you. This

00:06:34.020 is like our dream, like a house big enough where we could put the studio, the staff can come in

00:06:39.400 and out all of the time and have their own access while we have privacy. So we looked at the

00:06:46.640 possibility of buying and owning that kind of home in Des Moines, Iowa. And I'm just going to tell

00:06:52.120 you, I mean, for what I could sell, just to what Oran said, it doesn't matter what they tell me my

00:06:59.840 house is worth on the market if no one can afford it? My current home, there's no buyer for it.

00:07:04.340 They're just numbers on a page. They don't matter. All right. And then with where interest rates

00:07:10.060 currently are, even with a massive down payment on that style of home, we were looking at a

00:07:16.580 mortgage payment in the Des Moines, Iowa suburbs of over $5,000 a month. Could we afford that?

00:07:23.880 Sure. But then we would just be house poor in a nicer home. And we're at a stage of life now

00:07:29.780 where we want to pass things on to our kids.

00:07:33.060 We're in a stage of life now that, you know,

00:07:35.780 when our daughter, our oldest daughter calls

00:07:38.500 and her oven stops working,

00:07:40.320 we can just buy them, her and her husband, 1.00

00:07:42.440 a stove and an oven for our granddaughter 0.86

00:07:44.740 and them to, you know, have warm food if we can do that. 1.00

00:07:47.820 Or we want to take the family on a vacation,

00:07:49.760 we can do that.

00:07:51.140 And because it's the quality of life things

00:07:53.340 that ultimately matter,

00:07:54.760 it's the relationships you make

00:07:56.160 and the connections you have that ultimately matter.

00:07:59.300 You know, when Amy's father, who served our country for 30 years in the 101st Airborne,

00:08:03.340 we buried him three years ago.

00:08:05.340 And we went through after that military funeral, and we walked that, I walked those, the funeral

00:08:10.660 grounds, there weren't any tombstones on there that said, had the best GDP, made the most

00:08:16.420 money.

00:08:18.320 Everything was about relationships, what they left behind, the legacy that they left.

00:08:23.660 And to me, I am concerned with technocratic utilitarian ethics on both the right and the left.

00:08:33.140 That on the left, we are mere constructs to serve their cog in the machine.

00:08:37.740 And on the right, you know, to quote the great prophet Bob Seger, we feel like a number.

00:08:41.880 Okay, we're just numbers on a page.

00:08:44.540 You know, and if we're making money, but who's making it and for what point and what purpose?

00:08:50.280 And I think that's the kind of context that a biblical worldview brings to the table.

00:08:54.940 That does not mean what Trump is trying is going to work.

00:08:58.960 It's not as if the rest of the nations on earth are like, that's just adorable that

00:09:02.740 they want to reassert their leverage in the global marketplace.

00:09:05.980 We're just going to go ahead and roll over and let them do it. 0.95

00:09:08.500 And for every Vietnam that will do it, there'll be a China that will say, well, we're going 0.96

00:09:11.560 to go ahead and quadruple down on those now. 0.91

00:09:13.320 This is going to be a fight.

00:09:14.720 They're not just going to say, you guys go ahead and reassert where you were as a country

00:09:18.340 in the 50s.

00:09:19.060 when your people worked in the meatpacking plants out of high school and your people worked in the

00:09:23.360 factories that no longer exist and made a really good living and could raise a family and mom could

00:09:28.560 stay home and you could send the kids to college or your son could follow you in that same mill or

00:09:32.920 in that same plant and do the same exact thing. We're not going to give you just automatically

00:09:36.940 give you that life back because you want it. This will cause some pain and it may not work

00:09:42.140 and this may be the thing ultimately to cost is 40, 50 house seats next year and ends the Trump

00:09:47.480 presidency and makes him a lame duck the morning after the midterm elections. That's the gamble

00:09:51.840 that is on the table right now. But even though it violates my pre-existing orthodoxies,

00:09:58.460 I am going to support what he's trying to do because I understand there's more to the law

00:10:06.460 than just the letter of the law. You can tithe in every ounce of dill, cumin, and spice, but if you

00:10:11.740 reject mercy and sacrifice the spirit of the law for the former, you've ultimately misunderstood

00:10:18.720 God's word and misapplied it. And I'll just close with this. The Sabbath was made for man,

00:10:25.300 not man for the Sabbath. As far as we know, we are the only beings in the cosmos that are the

00:10:31.560 image of the creator of the exact same cosmos. And so the quality of our lives matter more than

00:10:38.640 the quantity of our lives. Our lives are a qualitative study, not a quantitative one.

00:10:44.980 Well said. Let's shift. If you have thoughts about that, anybody else on the panel, feel

00:10:56.360 free to work that into your next answer. But let's start over here with John now, and let's

00:11:01.320 just go that route. You said, I'm concerned, which is the most frequent comment that I

00:11:07.400 get in my threads. I'm concerned and troubled, but also concerned and troubled. But let's talk

00:11:15.960 about that. What are some of our biggest concerns? Broadening out now, it can include

00:11:19.820 terrorists, but all these kinds of things. We've had some victory. We praise God for it.

00:11:25.800 The fight's not over. There are some victories create new potential threats. So I want to start

00:11:31.640 with you, John. Start over there. What are some of your biggest concerns looking for? What are

00:11:35.460 some of the things that we need to focus on. Well, thanks, Joel. I'll start with myself

00:11:41.360 personally, something I've been thinking over the last week or so about my own life. One of the

00:11:47.560 concerns I have, and I think this is broader than just me, is I really want to love Jesus. And that

00:11:53.800 sounds very cliche and simple, but it's so profound and true. I don't want to love the things that

00:11:59.360 Jesus gives me and just pursue the blessings that Jesus can afford me. I want to love Jesus. And it's

00:12:04.200 the same with my wife, right? Like, I love my wife, and there's all these great blessings that

00:12:08.960 my wife brings to my life, but ultimately, it's her that I want. It's her that I want to be close

00:12:15.680 to, and I want to know, and all of these other things are just ways in which that we facilitate

00:12:21.380 that enjoyment of each other, and that passion that exists within a marriage, and I want the

00:12:27.440 same thing with Jesus, and I think for any conservative movement to be successful, an

00:12:32.920 American Christian conservative movement, that needs to be centered. It's a relationship with

00:12:38.120 Christ. It's knowing our Lord who laid down his life for us. And he gave us some rules. He gave

00:12:43.380 us a law. He gave us an order. And he wants us to conform ourselves to it. And the motivation in

00:12:48.460 conforming ourselves to that order is not because necessarily all the blessings we'll get. We love

00:12:54.720 that. That's good. That's great. But it's because we love Jesus, ultimately. And so, and I think we

00:13:01.900 may get on this a little later, so maybe I'll preempt it, but conservatism in the American

00:13:07.140 tradition at a basic level, what I see is there's a created order. We're supposed to conform ourselves

00:13:12.800 to it. This order is mediated through tradition, applied to our specific context, and so we have a

00:13:18.360 very positive vision. And for Christians, Christ is at the center of that vision. And what we've

00:13:25.100 been dealing with over really my whole life, and which we're still dealing with, are people who

00:13:30.000 want to reduce it to simplistic principles, ideologies. It's not really so much a tradition

00:13:37.160 as it is a firm, fixed, scientific way to approach the world. And then we live and die by these

00:13:44.180 ideologies and excise, cut off anyone who disagrees slightly. So we, I think really ultimately at the

00:13:52.320 end of the day, for us as Christian conservatives, we need to center Christ, look to Christ,

00:13:57.080 and then root ourselves deeply into this rich heritage that he's given us in this country.

00:14:02.120 And I know many of us are cut off from that.

00:14:03.840 We're deracinated.

00:14:05.120 We don't know what even that looks like.

00:14:06.600 And it's part of the reason I wrote the book I did, Against the Waves,

00:14:09.260 is to try to get back to that positive standard.

00:14:11.880 Because we need a positive vision.

00:14:12.980 It can't just be transgressing liberalism.

00:14:15.360 It's got to be coming back to something firm and fixed.

00:14:18.380 And in Christ Jesus, we have that stability.

00:14:21.660 Amen.

00:14:25.460 Dr. Wolfe.

00:14:26.260 what do you think yeah I want to I guess respond and follow from what Stephen

00:14:33.020 John said so about the tariff policy so I can't give an expert you know defense

00:14:39.580 of tariff policy all I can say is that someone I respect Pat Buchanan always

00:14:44.260 supported tariffs and so I support tariffs so that's that's really the best

00:14:49.140 I could do but I will say that that it represents like even if tariff policy

00:14:55.220 does not succeed in its aims in their current iteration,

00:15:00.340 I think it does represent a move to America first. 0.60

00:15:03.820 So even if these ideas don't succeed,

00:15:06.740 they still represent an underlying idea that is recovering,

00:15:10.640 that is America first, that should be reflected

00:15:13.200 within our immigration policy, our economic policies,

00:15:16.680 social policy, all that.

00:15:18.560 And then combined with that, with what John said,

00:15:21.400 one of my concerns is a lot of people, 1.00

00:15:24.020 particularly young people, young millennials and Zoomers, 1.00

00:15:27.400 they're not tied to the American tradition. 1.00

00:15:30.460 They're not tied to any tradition.

00:15:31.900 They're tied to sort of transgressive attitudes,

00:15:36.800 and they tend to latch onto things,

00:15:38.540 whether it's medieval knights or World War II revisionism,

00:15:43.240 something other than American.

00:15:45.480 And I think that as Americans, 0.81

00:15:47.440 and I think one concern we should have

00:15:49.340 and something we should work towards

00:15:51.340 is actually reestablishing something

00:15:53.780 I think a lot of millennials still feel, partly from influence from the boomers and that generation,

00:15:59.940 this feel of love for your country, which is America. And when we hear America first,

00:16:06.020 but it actually means Vatican first, or if it actually means let's return to monarchy,

00:16:11.940 or if it's something to sort of dump the constitution, I think we should reject that

00:16:17.940 is actually un-American and so we should do is kind of rekindle within the hearts of young people

00:16:25.220 a love for their particular country and not try to find meaning outside of that country

00:16:31.300 in another place in a different history a different people it's certainly fine to have

00:16:36.500 hobbies such as you know you want to look into world war ii and say actually that's not true

00:16:40.180 or this is true whatever but in the end your desire should be to have a connection to a people

00:16:45.860 in place that are actually your people in place so that's my kind of central concern and it's

00:16:51.700 something that i know john and i are very interested in pursuing could i add one thing to

00:16:56.260 that real quick and this is i guess a heuristic here but if you and i don't mean to like make

00:17:01.620 anyone feel guilty but something to assess in yourself if you know more about a fantasy world

00:17:06.180 if you know more about middle earth or if you know more about anime world or the marvel universe

00:17:10.420 than you do your own country's history it's time to get to work it's time to reconnect yourself

00:17:15.540 to your own christian heritage that exists here in this wonderful country we call america

00:17:25.780 stephen said that it's fine as a hobby to maybe explore world war ii revisionism

00:17:31.460 i just want to remind the audience it's not fine you will be excommunicated so

00:17:37.700 so check with your pastor first in some churches it may be fine and others not um calvin you've

00:17:44.180 been here what do you see what are you concerned by what are maybe some things 0.97

00:17:49.760 that we might be missing well as the token foreigner I think America first 1.00

00:17:57.080 is a great policy I think the tariffs are a great idea I was celebrating them 1.00

00:18:01.420 yesterday because Britain got a 10% tariff but the European Union got a 20%

00:18:06.420 tariff so so it justified our decision to leave the European Union and get our

00:18:11.600 sovereignty back as a nation which is always a good thing but then also your

00:18:20.720 president said he's going to use his soft power he said to the UK there is

00:18:23.720 no free trade without free speech in the UK and as a Brit that really hits home

00:18:28.520 because we have no free speech our Prime Minister was in your Oval Office just a

00:18:32.600 couple of weeks ago and he sat there and said we've had a long history of free

00:18:36.440 speech in the UK and we're very proud of it but your vice president pushed back

00:18:40.040 on that thankfully because we do have as i mentioned earlier people being arrested for

00:18:44.680 thought crime never mind what they're saying so it's good to see that america first does also

00:18:48.920 extend out um but in terms of the gdp part that we alluded to earlier we have that in the uk too

00:18:56.440 we see this problem of we have to get the numbers up we have to get the numbers up more numbers more

00:18:59.960 numbers and that's an argument to be made and if you want to go down that route fine but if you're

00:19:04.360 pumping the numbers up the question is from where and in the uk we have the issue that most of our

00:19:09.880 immigrants are from islamic countries and what we're doing is we're ignoring our christian duties 0.58

00:19:15.320 to south syria northern nigeria artsac places where there are christians being persecuted by 1.00

00:19:23.400 mohammedans we don't let them in but for some reason there are more albanians in the uk than 0.99

00:19:27.080 there are in albania and so we've got it back to front and i think america might want to ask the 0.99

00:19:31.240 question soon is well the christians left in the uk would we want them coming to america instead of

00:19:38.680 x y and z and certain you know hundreds of thousands of indians that elon musk wants coming

00:19:42.980 over so you've got to look at the people that you're inviting and the values that they have

00:19:46.320 and do they align with your values but in terms i think the wider question to the to all of us is

00:19:51.580 well to you guys from the foreigner is what does it mean to be an american because i look at i look

00:19:57.020 around america and many people say things like you know it's an idea it's it's it's america is

00:20:02.820 is whatever you want it to be anyone could be an american but america is now what i would say

00:20:08.200 250 years old someone else earlier said 400 years old it's time now that America can settle on who

00:20:15.360 and what it is it's time now to identify the ethnic group the cultural group the the faith

00:20:21.260 group that makes an American an American and be bold with that be unashamedly proud of that and

00:20:27.380 patriotic in that and not let other people tell you you're not allowed an ethnicity a culture or

00:20:31.720 faith you're not allowed to be a people because you're so new you're not that new anymore that's

00:20:35.820 the truth of the matter. And to push back a little bit on what Stephen was saying, because we agree

00:20:40.440 on much, but I think there's some nuances there. There is no one single solution, in my humble

00:20:46.180 opinion, of American Christian nationalism, because there's no one solution for American

00:20:50.900 conservatism. There's no one solution for American anything, because America is the United States.

00:20:57.040 And yes, many of those states will have been reformed. Some of those states were certainly

00:21:01.260 anglican in their constitution one of those states was catholic so there is um certain different

00:21:06.840 christian traditions for different parts of america it's important i believe to hold on to

00:21:10.500 them too don't let them tell you like the unionists did back in the day that there's just one america

00:21:14.700 you're one nation one country one p one idea one faith because there are different expressions of

00:21:19.400 different traditions and people are searching for tradition left right and center and we had a little

00:21:23.820 chat in the green room you know people are looking at eastern orthodoxy and foreign traditions eastern

00:21:27.500 traditions. There are many Western traditions that have a birthplace in this very nation that

00:21:32.940 people could be looking to if you signpost them and let people know that this is also American.

00:21:38.140 Well said. Stephen, I'm going to give you a chance to respond, but real quick, I want to get back to

00:21:43.240 Oren. So same question, but let's maybe, so what are you concerned about? But since Calvin broached

00:21:50.860 the subject, and it's a good subject, we need to get into it. Let's say, what is maybe one of your

00:21:55.000 biggest concerns? And also, can you try to somewhat concisely answer for what is an American?

00:22:02.100 Can you do that real quick, Warren? And then I'll give it to Stephen to respond to Calvin.

00:22:07.620 So, sorry. So there's this center-left Harvard professor named Samuel Huntington. And he wrote

00:22:16.580 a couple books, one you might have heard of, Clash of Civilizations, which was an answer to

00:22:21.520 what happened after the Cold War and how nations should understand themselves. He pointed out that

00:22:27.440 when you had the Cold War going, you basically had the communists versus the Western liberal

00:22:32.960 democracies. And this became a very ideological conflict. The entire world had to sign up with

00:22:38.880 one side or the other. There was just no way to avoid either aligning yourself with the United

00:22:43.260 States and its allies or the Soviet Union and its allies. And because it was so ideological,

00:22:48.360 a lot of people's national identities got subsumed by these ideologies that capitalism

00:22:54.320 or communism became the only thing that they understood themselves as. This defined who they

00:22:59.060 were as people. But as the Cold War ended and this need for these two poles to stop pulling each 1.00

00:23:06.620 other apart, we had this moment where national identity had to reassert itself. The ideology 0.76

00:23:12.860 that had dominated the globe one way or another

00:23:15.240 was fading away and nations had to re-understand who they are.

00:23:19.720 And so Huntington wrote a second book called Who Are We?

00:23:23.660 He said this is going to be the defining question of our times.

00:23:27.440 And the conclusion he comes to ultimately 0.55

00:23:29.400 is that the United States is an Anglo-Protestant nation,

00:23:33.520 that that is the core of who we are as a people.

00:23:36.520 Now, Huntington was a center-left guy.

00:23:39.160 He was a Harvard professor.

00:23:40.080 He's not going to come out and say that you have to be Anglo or you have to be Protestant to be inside the United States.

00:23:46.720 But he said this had to be the baseline for everything that we do.

00:23:50.600 We have to have a culture for people to assimilate to if they're going to assimilate at all.

00:23:55.700 And so if you come into the United States, if you are gifted the gracious ability to join this amazing country, then you need to conform to that.

00:24:03.920 You may not immediately convert to Protestantism and magically become Anglo, but you do need to shift your way of understanding your way of being and recognize that that is what you're assimilating into.

00:24:15.280 And ultimately, I think that is what defines the United States.

00:24:17.680 Even if you have Catholics or others inside the United States, even if you have people from outside joining you, ultimately, the Anglo-Protestant nature of the United States is what defines who's an American. 0.78

00:24:29.900 And if you're unwilling to conform to that, if you're unwilling to assimilate to that, then there's just really no reason for you to be here. 0.94

00:24:37.560 Well said.

00:24:39.840 Well said.

00:24:41.580 Real quick, he did not ask me to do it, but I want to honor our very own Michael Belch.

00:24:46.360 He's been helping a ton with the conference, and he's on the podcast with us with Right Response.

00:24:51.240 And he did just publish his first book where he does his very best to answer that question, what is a nation?

00:24:59.560 And so this is from him and not myself, so I want to give him credit.

00:25:03.300 But he gives six elves, land, legacy, language, laws, loves,

00:25:11.320 and kind of in hindsight added a sixth, liturgy.

00:25:14.920 So that would be the Christian aspect in the case of these United States.

00:25:20.140 So land, lineage, language, laws, loves, that's traditions, and liturgy, worship.

00:25:28.720 And basically, in a nutshell, I think it's important for us to remember that a nation,

00:25:34.260 so land and lineage, soil, place, lineage, blood, people, ooh, I bet they even drink water there, too.

00:25:48.180 The point is, though, what Michael did well, and I think everyone on this panel would agree with,

00:25:52.500 is Michael was saying it's not just those two things, it's more.

00:25:56.120 a nation is more, but it's not less. And I think we have to keep that in mind. If it's actually a

00:26:02.920 home, even J.D. Vance recently, you know, he said people don't die for an idea, they die for

00:26:08.380 home. And a home includes people and place. And so a nation is not limited to that. A nation is

00:26:15.080 more complex and includes more than people in place, but it can't include less than people in

00:26:20.560 place. Right now, when you look at the globe as a whole, there are two kinds of people. There are

00:26:25.320 Americans, and potential Americans, right? 0.71

00:26:29.680 Who lives in India?

00:26:30.720 1.3 billion potential Americans.

00:26:34.720 That's not going to work.

00:26:35.740 That's going to be a gnaw from me, dog.

00:26:37.600 No, that's not going to work.

00:26:39.180 You're going to have to figure that out.

00:26:40.760 And those are the conversations that need to be had.

00:26:43.300 Stephen, do you have thoughts on this,

00:26:45.840 but then also in relation to what Calvin said?

00:26:47.760 I want to give you an opportunity.

00:26:48.700 Yeah, first of all, the Vatican first comment

00:26:51.660 wasn't directed towards you.

00:26:53.840 I'm not a Roman Catholic.

00:26:55.320 Other sorts of people.

00:26:58.240 I guess, well, yeah, I don't know if this is a response,

00:27:01.020 but just a thought. 0.89

00:27:02.300 When I say that America is a Protestant country,

00:27:05.220 what I mean is that the founding documents,

00:27:08.360 the founding ideas were products of Protestant experience.

00:27:13.020 They certainly, Roman Catholics developed political theory

00:27:15.740 in the early modern period, early 17th century.

00:27:18.560 They were very influential, even to Protestants.

00:27:20.960 But in terms of the sort of rights and our language

00:27:23.380 that we enjoy from freedom of speech, freedom of religion, order of liberty, those are all

00:27:27.860 products of Protestant experience. And I actually think they're in their principled Protestant

00:27:33.400 positions. And that's because Protestants very early on affirmed the sacred right of

00:27:39.400 conscience. Even Calvin did. And everyone, not this Calvin. Well, I'm sure you do as

00:27:44.340 well. But the John Calvin and others, of course, affirmed the liberty of conscience.

00:27:49.160 They still thought that you could act upon erroneous religion in an outward sense,

00:27:56.280 but you always protect the conscience. 0.72

00:27:58.720 And eventually, Protestants, over time, through various forms of violence and other things,

00:28:03.120 but also thinking through, can we live together and can we form a civil society together

00:28:08.340 with different views amongst brethren?

00:28:11.440 And so this is why Presbyterians and Baptists and Congregationalists and Anglicans

00:28:15.620 could form a civil society under a sort of pan-Protestantism

00:28:20.280 or a principle of Protestant liberty, have their differences,

00:28:25.020 and yet still be equal members of a society.

00:28:28.420 And so I think the culmination of Protestant experience was in the founding,

00:28:32.160 and it's reflected in our documents, particularly in the Bill of Rights as well.

00:28:36.720 So that heritage then is a product of Protestantism,

00:28:40.120 of various Protestants, from the continental Protestants

00:28:43.980 to Britain, to Ireland, elsewhere, some of the Protestants, Irish,

00:28:51.180 and an American experience as well.

00:28:54.140 And so for that reason, what defines us,

00:28:56.200 I mean, I tend to bash the idea of a propositional nation,

00:29:00.360 but there is something to that.

00:29:01.880 When there is a founding of a people,

00:29:05.480 which occurred at the American founding,

00:29:07.960 There is a recognition of certain ideas that come to define that people.

00:29:13.940 It shapes the language, the rhetoric, the policy, how we relate to each other.

00:29:18.720 And those, I want to say, were thoroughly Protestant and continue to be that to this day.

00:29:24.040 Now, with Roman Catholics, this actually kind of had to happen by papal dictum. 0.73

00:29:30.100 I mean, this is where the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of religion was actually denied in the 19th century by popes.

00:29:38.480 And it wasn't until the early 20th century and then culminated in Vatican II in the 60s where those were formally recognized.

00:29:45.320 And so now, in a way, Roman Catholics have become Protestant, at least in that sense.

00:29:50.680 And for that reason, that's why I say that I think as going forward, American Protestants can actually join with Roman Catholics in forming and having a Christian America.

00:30:07.080 At the same time, recognizing that foundationally, those ideas and that way of life was thoroughly Protestant.

00:30:18.860 So I'm going to get back to Steve and John,

00:30:21.160 but it would be unfair if I didn't let you, Calvin,

00:30:24.240 if you have a response.

00:30:25.720 Anything you're thinking?

00:30:26.580 No, no, that's fine.

00:30:27.120 I don't want to make it Protestantism versus Roman Catholicism,

00:30:29.820 but that was fine.

00:30:31.160 Okay, just in case you wanted to respond,

00:30:32.740 I wanted to make sure you had a chance.

00:30:34.100 Okay, so Steve, you can stay in that lane,

00:30:36.220 or you can go back to just big concerns,

00:30:38.660 looking forward, whatever you want.

00:30:41.060 I think the big concern that I have,

00:30:45.140 and you're seeing this,

00:30:46.460 if you guys, I don't know how many of you guys follow our show, but we are, we are emphasizing

00:30:52.940 a couple of themes right now. I mean, I, we recently took the extraordinary step of moving

00:30:58.700 the category our show is listed at on iTunes, and that's the, the biggest contact point for our

00:31:07.700 long form content, content at the blaze. More of you have iPhones than any other form of device.

00:31:14.280 And so even though Spotify seems poised to surpass iTunes as the largest podcast platform in America, maybe as soon as later this year, for what Oran and I do for a living, you guys still own way more iPhones and still utilize the native app within Apple to access us more than any other platform.

00:31:37.740 And so for us to switch categories is a big deal.

00:31:41.340 And we made the decision a few weeks ago, we switched our show into the religion and spirituality category.

00:31:49.320 And it was in the news category from the beginning.

00:31:53.300 And that's its more logical home, frankly.

00:31:55.740 But the reason we did that is when I first got into this business,

00:32:01.420 I always had a goal of I wanted God to use the talents and abilities and opportunities that he gave me.

00:32:10.780 to do for a biblical worldview what Rush's talents and abilities did for conservatism as a political

00:32:19.260 construct. That his talents and abilities allowed conservatism to get back into the mainstream of

00:32:25.560 the American conversation all over again. And I wanted to use our show as an inflection point,

00:32:33.140 an entry point for a biblical worldview. Let the lion out of its cage. We've attributed that from

00:32:38.360 everybody to Spurgeon, to Augustine. They probably all have used this reference, but let the lion out

00:32:42.960 of its cage. Let's get back into the arena of where the back to the city gate, you know, and

00:32:48.680 it's these devices in our pocket. That's the city gate nowadays, but bring the biblical worldview

00:32:53.520 back to the city gate and it'll defend itself just fine. And so I thought the path to do that

00:33:00.280 was the fact that I was converted late in life. I, you know, all the pop culture minutia that

00:33:07.660 John was rightly putting in its proper context. I know a waste. I know so much about that stuff,

00:33:13.080 guys. My wife would tell you, she's sitting there in the front row and she would tell you that if

00:33:17.200 she had not had my three kids, she'd swear I'm still a virgin. Okay. I mean, I, I can still nerd

00:33:22.700 out with the best of them on this kind of stuff, you know? And so, um, I, I thought that those,

00:33:28.440 those, um, uh, my knowledge of that nothingness would maybe help me broaden with the, with the

00:33:37.640 platform, whatever God did with it, would help me broaden the appeal of a biblical worldview.

00:33:44.060 And in the last couple of years, I started to change my thinking, and my paradigm began

00:33:49.820 to shift, and this last election cemented it for me, that we have to actually disciple

00:33:55.980 the church.

00:33:59.100 And one of the things I've said to candidates and causes I've worked with and for over the

00:34:05.380 years is you cannot win in politics without a base. And one of the classic mistakes a lot of

00:34:12.180 candidates make, and very good ones, is they immediately try to broaden their appeal before

00:34:16.660 they've established a base. And you have to also understand who you are and be self-aware and who

00:34:22.660 your base could actually be, not who you want it to be. And I realized I was actually violating my

00:34:30.940 own orthodoxy, that I'm trying to reach a broader culture with some of the expressions and the way

00:34:36.420 that I communicate that could be at times borderline crude, but would be understandable

00:34:42.140 like that scene in the movie Father Stew where the classic priest gets up to try to talk to the

00:34:48.280 prisoners there in the cells and they don't understand anything he's saying. And Mark Wahlberg's

00:34:52.900 priest gets up and he comes from the streets so he knows their language and their curse words and

00:34:57.220 suddenly they completely understand what it is he's trying to communicate. That's kind of a

00:35:00.920 crude metaphor for my methodology up until this point. But this last election now, for the first

00:35:08.440 time, the broader culture, MAGA in particular, whatever you think of it as a movement, as a

00:35:14.220 brand, MAGA in particular is ahead of the Christian church collectively in engaging the moral fights

00:35:21.660 of this age. That is both a credit to MAGA and a shame to the church. And I can promise you 0.76

00:35:27.960 That is not a long-standing path to victory.

00:35:32.980 No political philosophy can withstand the spirit of the age.

00:35:37.320 Cannot happen.

00:35:38.780 All right, we are fighting a spiritual war here.

00:35:41.520 And so, you know, to have young men who are not here today,

00:35:46.440 they're roughing somewhere or they're pouring concrete somewhere, okay,

00:35:50.660 and they don't understand why something has gone wrong,

00:35:54.840 but they know something has gone wrong.

00:35:56.540 or that young hispanic men trump won hispanic men outright by 10 points a lot of those young

00:36:02.660 hispanic men frankly are the are the kids we that you we we once called dreamers that their illegal

00:36:08.680 parents brought with them when they were here or they were pregnant with them and had them when 0.93

00:36:11.900 they were here well they're now embedded in america they're second generation americans now 0.97

00:36:16.560 and and they're like i don't want to go back to honduras and i don't want whatever the sam hell 0.95

00:36:21.280 is going on in honduras i don't want to bring that here so build a wall secure the border 0.54

00:36:25.980 right they don't kind of really know what we're talking about up here but instinctively they kind

00:36:32.180 of get it way more than your sweater vested khaki you know pleated khaki pastor Hawaiian shirt in

00:36:39.100 January wearing pastor gets it and and and we've got the church has got to catch up here and if it

00:36:46.680 does not systemically catch up here what happened in this last election is not a movement we call

00:36:51.620 we got a TO baby like Dickie V used to tell us to do when we're down by 20. We got a timeout.

00:36:57.300 We stopped their momentum, but we didn't actually start putting points on the board. And I looked

00:37:01.680 at the scoreboard after the timeout, we're still down by 20. We're going to need the church to have

00:37:06.440 a long standing movement. And I just don't think much of the church is equipped. And again, just

00:37:14.180 being brutally honest, I probably had a dozen people reach out to me that I know and tell me

00:37:20.240 not to come here today and not to do this event. And I'm going to tell you what I told every single

00:37:26.500 one of them. After spending 20 years in this business, trying to get the church to rise up

00:37:34.360 and be tougher, I'm not really in much of a mood to suddenly say, but not like that,

00:37:39.980 not quite like that. Now that does not mean necessarily that we don't have standards

00:37:45.220 ourselves that we have to uphold and God will not hold us to. And that's, if we want to win,

00:37:50.400 we have to live by kingdom rules, not by worldly rules of engagement. And I'll talk about that

00:37:57.300 in my talk later this afternoon. But the church has to catch up because what we're trying to do

00:38:04.020 here is rerun the American revolution, not the French revolution. And, you know,

00:38:10.060 those people are still totally depraved sinners too, even if their instincts aren't correct.

00:38:15.480 Give them power.

00:38:16.540 They won't do any different than the aristocracy.

00:38:18.960 They'll just put a different group of people in prison.

00:38:21.500 They won't do any differently, right?

00:38:23.640 We're just going to swing the pendulum from one, the whole thing about, well, today it's about being based.

00:38:29.340 Well, really, what are you based in?

00:38:31.820 Who are you based upon?

00:38:33.660 Based on what, right?

00:38:36.500 And I think this is where real discipleship and catechesis that can only come from the church,

00:38:42.440 It's the only transcendent institution God ever gave mankind.

00:38:46.120 And if it doesn't take discipleship seriously again, all the stuff that we're up here,

00:38:51.160 the back and forth with different sects and movements that people try to drag me into on X all the time,

00:38:57.620 and I try to stay away from the plague because I've got enough of my own enemies when I open my own mouth, frankly.

00:39:02.460 But all those things that we have the luxury of discussing and debating ourselves right now,

00:39:07.440 they're going to be all irrelevant in the next midterm election.

00:39:10.100 if the church doesn't catch up and quick.

00:39:13.320 And that's what I am concerned about.

00:39:15.380 The church has spent the last 20 years

00:39:17.960 trying to reach Karen in the suburbs,

00:39:20.200 your Christian music station uplifting and hope-filled.

00:39:23.600 It's always about reaching Karen and Mildred in the suburbs

00:39:27.220 and Betamaxing her husband.

00:39:29.640 And it's done nothing.

00:39:30.620 It's lost the culture completely.

00:39:33.040 and you know headship means if you get the husband you get the whole family too all right

00:39:43.740 and that's what we have to do we've got to reach the men before it is too late i have lots of

00:39:49.960 friends high-ranking people in moms for liberty some of them have been guests in my home i love

00:39:54.680 them to death but frankly to some degree it is a shame to the men that such an organization was

00:40:00.880 even necessary in the first place. And I want to grab those men who scroll their phones

00:40:06.300 while they spend all those years driving their daughters to all those soccer practices and swim

00:40:11.920 practices and track meets, only then just sit there and scroll their phones in the stands 0.79

00:40:16.260 while men with gender dysphoria and demonic oppression in their lives go out there and steal 0.75

00:40:23.620 their valor and the hard work that they did, and they cannot be bothered. And so mama bear has to 0.99

00:40:29.240 show up again. It is time for the men to show up, all right? And we have to have the men. That's my 0.72

00:40:35.880 concern. But the church doesn't want to reach the men. And the reason why it doesn't want to reach

00:40:40.780 the men, and this is where men and women are different, all right? If you have a vibrant

00:40:45.080 men's ministry and you go after the men, what'll happen is the men will come together once or twice, 0.56

00:40:51.380 disclose their sins, seek forgiveness, restoration. But then if all we're going to do here is just

00:40:56.920 talk every time. We're not women. We don't necessarily gain a constant, you know, reinforcement 1.00

00:41:03.240 from just dialoguing like women do. We're not as relational as creatures. We're more bottom line 0.99

00:41:07.960 oriented than they are. And so for us, we're going to be like, after week three, we're like, okay,

00:41:13.060 I got a lawn to mow. I've got a business to run. I've got stuff to do. So are we going to go to

00:41:17.900 war or not? And most of your pastors don't want to go to war. And that's why they don't want to

00:41:22.620 engage the men okay so to me i think we have to disciple the church and the church has to catch up

00:41:29.540 at least in the next couple of years has to be where maga is at least okay and if it's not all

00:41:36.680 the stuff that we came out of this last election excited about it's going to be very fleeting in

00:41:42.080 my opinion. Well said.

00:41:46.960 I have a couple men that follow me, Steve. What's that? I have a couple men that follow

00:41:54.600 me. Yeah, I've noticed. See, the church wants the men until they

00:42:02.280 get them and then they don't. Right. Because men are rowdy and men don't always play nice 0.93

00:42:10.580 And there are things that need to be discussed,

00:42:13.520 but there's a difference in correcting men

00:42:15.320 versus trying to longhouse them

00:42:17.040 and turn them into women. 0.99

00:42:19.080 Spiritual transgenderism from the church is a thing. 1.00

00:42:22.220 And I refuse to do it. 1.00

00:42:24.120 I agree, but let me add this, Joel.

00:42:27.880 But we also, and I don't say this passive aggressively.

00:42:33.560 If I wanted to accuse somebody of something specifically,

00:42:35.960 I would just do it directly.

00:42:37.100 That's just how I roll, all right?

00:42:39.080 But as a general rule, here's what we also must remember, all right?

00:42:44.120 As men, we are beholden to the kingdom of God as well, all right?

00:42:49.020 The standards and what God, the expectations placed on us.

00:42:53.420 And we must remember that ultimately headship is responsibility.

00:42:57.480 It's responsibility that comes with authority.

00:43:00.440 But ultimately, it is responsibility.

00:43:03.240 When the home goes wrong, God is coming to you first.

00:43:06.440 When the church goes bad, he's coming to the pastor and the elders first.

00:43:09.900 That's what comes with headship, is that level of responsibility.

00:43:14.720 And inherent to responsibility is accountability.

00:43:18.300 And we're being watched all of the time.

00:43:21.100 Let me give you just one for my own life,

00:43:25.160 and then I'm going to shut up and let everybody else talk, okay?

00:43:28.000 We are in the midst of, we have taken the momentum.

00:43:32.040 I'm on the cruise campaign.

00:43:33.220 I'm one of the strategists on the cruise campaign in 2016.

00:43:35.680 And we have taken the momentum away from Trump. We have won five straight states.

00:43:40.880 And there's a presidential, the last debate where all the candidates were on the stage together.

00:43:47.180 And, you know, the week before there had been a debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

00:43:53.620 And I was following that debate for the campaign as well.

00:43:56.760 And I saw Maggie Haberman at the Federalist when Hillary Clinton played the woman card on her very first answer. 0.52

00:44:03.180 Maggie Haberman at The Federalist tweeted out, 1.00

00:44:06.160 Hillary Clinton's gone full vagina five minutes into the debate. 1.00

00:44:09.600 All right? 0.99

00:44:10.160 And I did what you guys did.

00:44:11.300 I laughed out loud and I said, I'm going to use that one later.

00:44:14.100 Okay?

00:44:14.900 Yeah, I shouldn't have done that.

00:44:16.020 All right?

00:44:16.540 And so the last debate we have where all the candidates are on the stage. 0.79

00:44:22.220 And Carly Fiorina, you guys remember, she started every debate talking about

00:44:25.320 she was the only woman on the stage.

00:44:26.680 She's going to call her good friend, Bibi Netanyahu.

00:44:28.400 She had it memorized.

00:44:29.960 Every debate she did, she had the same opening statement, no matter what the question was, right?

00:44:34.840 And little did I know that our campaign in a couple of weeks was going to make her our running mate.

00:44:40.440 So, yeah, joke was on me, all right?

00:44:42.520 But I, my, you know, my brain kicked in.

00:44:47.540 And sometimes your brain's ahead of your conscience or your self-awareness.

00:44:51.260 And I'm like, I really like that Maggie Haberman line.

00:44:53.860 So I jumped on X, well, it was Twitter back then. 1.00

00:44:56.940 And I tweeted out, Carly Fiorina, she's gone full vagina already. 0.99

00:45:02.620 And I was very proud. 0.99

00:45:03.880 I sent that around to several of my friends.

00:45:05.640 I texted it out to them.

00:45:06.560 I thought it was great, you know.

00:45:08.080 I go back to the rest of the debate.

00:45:10.120 My phone starts blowing up.

00:45:11.420 Literally all hell has broken loose.

00:45:13.620 Over the course of the next 24 hours, Fox News, which has pretended most of my career,

00:45:19.060 it doesn't know who I am.

00:45:20.260 The only person who ever put me on Fox was Tucker or that my last name was Dece and not

00:45:25.300 Dace.

00:45:25.640 I was Fox News' programming every hourly block

00:45:30.020 for the next 12 hours

00:45:31.780 as they were clearly aligned with Trump at the time

00:45:34.940 and they were using my

00:45:36.660 they finally figured out who I was

00:45:38.440 and they were trying to use my comments

00:45:40.360 to essentially drive Ted Cruz out of the race 0.99

00:45:42.420 and it was a dumb comment 0.96

00:45:44.680 it didn't have to be made 0.96

00:45:45.940 I mean it was funny

00:45:47.120 at least I thought so

00:45:48.200 it was true

00:45:49.660 but it also wasn't constructive in any way

00:45:52.300 and it played right into our enemies

00:45:55.320 opponents' hands. And I mean, I actually called the senator up and offered my resignation. He

00:45:59.960 should have taken it, frankly. But Ted's too nice of a guy. That's probably why he didn't beat Trump,

00:46:04.160 frankly, okay? He should have taken it and blamed the whole thing on me. And I would have, you know,

00:46:09.380 walked away and, you know, done the honorable thing and taken the political hemlock at the end.

00:46:13.020 And yes, it was me. I was the fool, all right? But he didn't do that because he's too nice of a guy. 0.99

00:46:16.720 But my point being is we do, we're going to need, the culture's not used to patriarchy

00:46:23.760 and masculinity and so we are going to have to make sure we have accountability amongst ourselves

00:46:31.380 otherwise we're going to fulfill every stereotype that the broader culture has of us and they're

00:46:37.820 going to stillborn us before we actually get started that is a concern that i have

00:46:41.460 all right john concerns i almost i just want you to keep talking to be honest it was great

00:46:48.980 if i keep talking i don't remember that i have to pee really bad so go ahead

00:46:54.720 i told them the story in the green room i said you know i was there on january 6th and my dad

00:47:00.240 who's obviously older than me was there and he said of course they stormed the capital there

00:47:04.420 were no bathrooms anywhere anyway uh stability identity virtue stability identity virtue three

00:47:16.720 things that we need. I want to tell you three brief stories. So stability, the first one.

00:47:20.820 One of the questions I ask millennials sometimes when I'm talking with them as a millennial myself

00:47:25.500 is, how many generations off the family farm are you? And it's interesting to hear the answer. So

00:47:30.580 I'm three generations off the family farm. The reason I ask is, I had never been to the family

00:47:34.760 farm. I had never been to the old homestead. My grandpa's from Mississippi. He was, you know,

00:47:40.540 Great Depression, World War II, just amazing life story that he had. He died last year at 101. I was

00:47:46.160 very close to him. And for people who want to know why I have Southern, you know, interests

00:47:52.540 and things, I mean, it's really him. It's his legacy. That was my grandpa. Anyway, I

00:47:57.300 went to the family farm with him probably about 15 years ago, and he gave me a tour.

00:48:01.500 I had never been there before, and it was almost like I had. And I can't explain it

00:48:06.580 to you. I'm getting tingles just thinking about it. I said, I belong here. I knew that

00:48:10.960 I belong there. And there was something stable about it. There was something deep and rooted

00:48:15.680 in it that I can't quite explain. And this is one of the things that I think especially Zoomers are 1.00

00:48:20.360 very detached from. And I understand not everyone has the same experience I have, and we're all 1.00

00:48:26.900 coming from different places. I mean, Steve just talked about migrants who have come here who are

00:48:31.400 second generation, and they don't want to go back to Honduras or wherever it is. But each of us has

00:48:36.340 a story that God has written, and he's brought us to a point, and hopefully it's faith in Jesus

00:48:41.220 Christ. And by the way, if none of you, if some of you in here don't know Jesus Christ, please talk

00:48:45.020 to me. Please talk to someone who knows Jesus Christ. We'd love to introduce you. I mean,

00:48:48.960 that's the first place to go to find stability. But one of the things that he has offered us too

00:48:54.680 is this story that he's woven into our lives. And we're meant to understand that and tap into that

00:49:01.880 and not ignore that and not run from that. And, you know, as a grandpa who's a World War II

00:49:06.620 veteran, I mean, I talked about this in an article in American Reformer. I call it the plane test.

00:49:11.220 I see World War II airplanes. I'm going to want to salute right then because that's who we are.

00:49:17.880 That's what this country is about. There was a generation that showed valor and character,

00:49:22.780 and that's the kind of thing we got to get back to. So I would just encourage you to stir up those

00:49:27.880 things. Get involved in veterans groups, voluntary organizations, civic groups, things that help men

00:49:32.840 in coming of age. You know, now it's not Boy Scouts. I was in Boy Scouts. Man, have they

00:49:37.060 departed. Go to trail life, I think, is the alternative. Now, get involved in something

00:49:40.860 like that. Men need that. They need examples. They need that kind of stability. They need to 1.00

00:49:45.900 be tapped into something that's bigger than them. So, stability. The other thing is, what would I

00:49:53.060 say, heritage? But I had a conversation. Was that? Oh, identity. Yeah, identity, heritage. So, I had a

00:49:59.720 conversation with someone recently who wanted me to come speak in Florida. And this was more of

00:50:05.280 like your establishment Republican type. I don't know why they're talking to me, but yeah, I'll

00:50:11.740 come speak. And so she said, like, you know, tell me a little bit about your book. And so I'm telling

00:50:17.260 her, and the Anglo-Protestant thing comes up, which we've already talked about. And she goes,

00:50:21.500 that sounds kind of racist. You know, Anglo-Protestant? Why not just Christian? Why can't

00:50:26.180 we just have Christian? And so this is what I told her. I said, look, Christianity teaches

00:50:30.660 that churches should meet.

00:50:33.600 That's kind of a baseline, right?

00:50:35.060 We should get together and meet with believers.

00:50:37.560 My Anglo tradition tells me at the county level,

00:50:40.420 a sheriff can tell the government no

00:50:42.360 when they say my church should shut down. 1.00

00:50:44.800 That's Anglo-Protestant. 1.00

00:50:46.260 And she got it right away.

00:50:47.680 We have a heritage that's very deep.

00:50:50.060 And this is part of our identity.

00:50:51.980 It's part of what Stephen was talking about here. 0.79

00:50:53.500 I reject the proposition nation too.

00:50:55.820 But we would be wrong if we said

00:50:59.220 that there aren't these amazing ideas that were in the minds of our founders, that they put

00:51:03.880 some places on paper, but they're certainly woven into the fabric of our identity. And we still

00:51:08.840 operate by some of these things without even thinking about them. And so that's something

00:51:12.960 else I think that any conservative movement we have, any Christian conservative movement is

00:51:16.860 going to have to have. And then the last thing I'll say, the last story here, and this really 0.59

00:51:22.720 gets back to Christianity and to Christ specifically. I was in seminary at Southeastern

00:51:27.220 Baptist a few years ago. Some of you know me from those days, and I kind of whistle blew on the

00:51:33.100 seminary, and the Southern Baptists don't tend to like me that much since then for whatever reason.

00:51:38.380 But I was in a class. I remember I went to the professor of the class because they had just

00:51:42.960 changed the curriculum around, and they were, I call them fluff courses. They dropped hermeneutics

00:51:47.240 as a requirement. They dropped a theology course. They softened everything. It was a joke. I felt

00:51:52.480 like I was in high school. I'm reading like Radical by David Platt from Missions. I'm like, what is

00:51:56.580 this? Like, we're going to be pastors? What are we doing? So I go to the professor, I say, what's up

00:52:01.720 with this? Why are we dropping the requirements and replacing them with these fluff courses like

00:52:07.180 discipleship and like leadership? You know, I go to leadership class, sit there for three hours.

00:52:12.420 I get out of leadership class and I'm like, I guess I know how to make my church more diverse.

00:52:17.280 You know, I go to discipleship class three hours, I get out, I guess I should pray. I mean, that

00:52:21.580 would be good. I mean, these are basic, basic things. And he told me, he goes, look, there's

00:52:26.180 a problem at the seminary. They are fielding guys out there leading churches and they are breaking

00:52:33.180 these churches apart because they have moral failures in their lives. They're addicted to

00:52:37.800 porn and they didn't tell anyone about it. There's moral indiscretions. They're immature.

00:52:42.260 They get into the church, they destroy it. And they need to know Jesus. So we have to put in 0.96

00:52:46.960 courses on discipleship, on leadership, on the basics they should have had before they even

00:52:50.820 enter this program and we have to take something has to fall off the back of the cart so we're

00:52:55.500 going to take off hermeneutics we're going to take off theology so that we can at least have people

00:53:01.260 that love Jesus this has been a problem for years and it continues to be a problem and this is

00:53:06.340 something that I've been evaluating in my own platform we have spent many of us up here too

00:53:11.080 have spent time discrediting these legacy institutions because they need to be discredited

00:53:16.420 and they have managerial elites who don't have virtue. They have an allegiance to themselves,

00:53:22.380 but we desperately need something to fill that vacuum. And this is the moment we're in now.

00:53:27.560 We are in that sweet moment where it's time for men to rise up and to be virtuous. And that means

00:53:34.620 that we're going to have to guard our tongues at times. That means that we have to see ourselves

00:53:39.920 as sometimes, especially pursuing the pastoral role, we are called to a higher standard.

00:53:46.420 And that mountaintop experience of being with God, alone with your creator, wrestling with him, finding the purpose for our lives and then going and doing it and not letting the forces of hell tell us to stop at any point, no matter how hard it gets.

00:54:00.320 That's the kind of man we need and we need more of them.

00:54:03.060 And I know some of them are sitting in this room and thank you for your faithfulness.

00:54:06.640 And there's some of you who are considering filling these roles.

00:54:09.600 And I would just encourage you, stand up, step up.

00:54:12.620 we need virtuous men at the helm and we need men that are going to help establish the stability

00:54:17.580 and the identity that we've lost for so long. We got about a half an hour and I've done this

00:54:31.080 a couple of times where you do a series of podcasts or maybe it's a single show or maybe

00:54:37.860 it's a panel like today, and you spend 90% of the time talking about the problem, you

00:54:45.040 know, and then just kind of like wrap it up with 10% on the very end with solutions or

00:54:51.180 hopes, and so I want to shift gears before it's just 10 minutes till.

00:54:58.540 We've got about 30 minutes to go, and shift to hopefulness.

00:55:03.400 So we've talked about concerns.

00:55:05.480 I want to start to my left.

00:55:07.740 We'll start with Calvin.

00:55:08.600 We'll work our way down.

00:55:10.320 I'm actually going to cheat and go first.

00:55:12.640 So then we'll start to the left and skip me.

00:55:15.060 But hopefulness.

00:55:16.280 What are some things that you're hopeful for?

00:55:18.440 I've got one that I wasn't even going to mention

00:55:22.120 because I was not aware of it until this panel.

00:55:26.880 But I've just discovered...

00:55:29.480 Because I'm a distinguished man who appreciates diversity in its own right. 0.97

00:55:35.960 I like to be diversely hated.

00:55:40.040 I don't want to be hated for one thing.

00:55:42.460 I mean, you don't want to pigeonhole yourself.

00:55:45.980 You want to be despised for a variety of different issues.

00:55:50.140 And so I'm hopeful in the sense that I thought maybe Steve might have just gotten flack for some of the things 0.98

00:55:58.080 that I have said about Israel.

00:56:01.280 But it sounds like, Steve,

00:56:02.160 you might have gotten just as much flack

00:56:03.720 because you mentioned women and patriarchy.

00:56:08.340 So I was like, hey,

00:56:09.260 that's some diversity of opposition

00:56:11.920 where it's not just one issue

00:56:13.420 but the patriarchy thing as well.

00:56:14.800 So I'm glad that I'm getting out there,

00:56:17.400 sewing in some different fields.

00:56:20.400 That's a joke.

00:56:21.960 It's a little serious, but it's a joke.

00:56:24.040 In a real sense,

00:56:25.080 I am hopeful because of young men.

00:56:29.460 I do agree.

00:56:30.820 I think what Steve said is a good word.

00:56:32.500 And I think, you know, John in many ways just confirmed it because he had similar things to say.

00:56:37.180 So I do agree that young men, if it's just raw power, like you guys have probably heard it, maybe it's a cliche,

00:56:42.560 but the illustration of the elephants, have you heard the story about the elephants where they took the young male elephants

00:56:47.740 and they were like tearing everything up, you know, they grew their tusk and, you know,

00:56:51.600 and they're like, I'm an elephant, I'm big and I'm powerful.

00:56:54.280 And they're like, you know, bullying all the other animals and scratching up, you know, uprooting trees and all these things.

00:56:59.940 And they're like, and they, you know, how are you going to control an elephant?

00:57:02.560 You know, so that like the people couldn't do anything about it.

00:57:05.040 So what they ended up doing was they took two bull elephants, old male elephants, and they put them in there with them.

00:57:11.480 And all these young male elephants, you know, started to, you know, they, you know, they, they shaped up.

00:57:17.220 They shaved up real quick because the older male elephants had more strength, more power, but it was harnessed.

00:57:25.140 It wasn't long-housed.

00:57:26.660 It was controlled.

00:57:28.460 It was power.

00:57:29.600 It was harnessed, and it was controlled.

00:57:31.620 And I think that's, you know, on the concern side, and I'll get to the hope, but on the concern side, that is one of my concerns.

00:57:39.420 And I don't, you know, I say this sometimes.

00:57:41.140 I say it as a blanket statement.

00:57:42.360 So I want to be careful today because I don't want to disparage. 0.77

00:57:45.720 the same way that I feel like older men have

00:57:47.900 disparaged younger men I don't want to just turn around

00:57:49.980 and do the same thing in the opposite direction

00:57:51.860 so hear me there's a little bit of nuance

00:57:54.000 here

00:57:54.400 we do have some incredible

00:57:57.820 old men older men 0.99

00:57:59.680 so I'm not speaking to everyone 1.00

00:58:01.840 but I do think that that is part of the problem

00:58:04.180 is that all of a sudden you have young

00:58:05.980 men who are strong

00:58:07.120 because there's a strength you know sometimes

00:58:09.860 I feel like my role is like

00:58:11.500 like when you're watching movies and every time

00:58:13.860 you find yourself rooting for the bad guys you know like what happened to me um but you know

00:58:19.060 like if i'm watching star wars you know and anakin is seething with rage you know and emperor

00:58:24.700 palpatine good that's how i feel you know i'm like you know young men are getting angry and i'm like

00:58:29.660 good but um because you should be angry and honestly there is a strength that comes from anger

00:58:36.500 but there's also sin that comes from anger if you're not careful in your anger do not sin

00:58:42.840 So there's something to be said for strength harnessed, and there's something to be said for strength that's fueled by anger, but it has to be a righteous indignation.

00:58:53.480 It has to be a holy anger.

00:58:55.740 Jesus got angry, but in his anger, he didn't sin.

00:58:59.460 And I think that those are things that have to be taught and shaped and formed. 0.51

00:59:04.820 And ideally and ordinarily, they would be shaped and formed by older men.

00:59:09.680 and we have some, I gave the nuance, I gave the disclaimer, it's not like every man over the age

00:59:16.660 of 50, you know, that they've all failed without exception, that's not true, but it is true to say

00:59:22.840 that in a general sense, right, we can speak of group dynamics, and we understand, like, is there

00:59:27.360 one woman who could out bench press, you know, one man, no, yet maybe, you know, but, so there, you

00:59:33.880 know, like, it's so funny, I saw an ex, even just the other day, you know, somebody said something

00:59:38.860 about group dynamics, and he said, well, you know, men are generally taller than women.

00:59:44.220 And immediately a woman was like, well, I'm this tall. You're not taller than me. And it's like,

00:59:48.360 there's my point. Thank you for making the point for me. So there are exceptions. There are some

00:59:54.420 wise and strong, courageous older men. But in general, in general, part of the difficulty,

01:00:05.480 This is my concern and hope wrapped up together.

01:00:07.900 Part of the difficulty is that there aren't a lot of them.

01:00:12.320 And in a group sense, in a general sense, older men have fallen asleep at the wheel.

01:00:20.060 And part of the problems that we're having to fix are problems that they caused either directly or indirectly by apathy.

01:00:29.120 So that's the concern, is where are the older men?

01:00:32.920 the hope though is that we've got a whole lot of younger men we do and the younger

01:00:39.280 men are angry and they're strong but they do need direction but there is a

01:00:45.880 fine line between direction and disparaging there's a fine line between

01:00:52.660 the two and that's I think that's the challenge right now and because younger

01:00:57.540 men have been so disparaged. If you're a young man under the age of 45 and you're a Christian

01:01:05.140 and you're not gay and, you know, throw a cherry on top, you also happen to be white, 0.97

01:01:12.980 then you were hated before you were born. And you felt that. You don't have to be told that. 0.96

01:01:21.160 You know that. All these Fortune 500 companies that told us that they were going to, you know,

01:01:26.440 emphasize over the last four years, the actual dark ages, 2020 through 2024. And they told us

01:01:32.280 what they were going to do, right? That they were going to hire, you know, minorities and they were

01:01:35.600 going to, you know, put forward, you know, diversity and equity. They did it. The studies

01:01:39.900 came back. They did it. Have you seen the study where it says that over the course, I think it

01:01:44.720 was in the year 2022, that, that, that, that like top, like few thousand companies in America

01:01:51.800 hired 3% straight, single, white men.

01:01:57.480 3%.

01:01:57.960 Which means a bunch of you couldn't get a job.

01:02:02.060 You couldn't get a job.

01:02:03.940 And so you've been hated from birth,

01:02:05.740 and you've been disparaged instead of encouraged.

01:02:11.160 And I guess the hope is that the young men are present.

01:02:15.560 The concern, the need,

01:02:17.740 is that we do need the older men. 0.95

01:02:19.320 And I know it sounds funny coming from me.

01:02:22.760 But, you know, I say funny.

01:02:24.600 Maybe you'll listen if it comes from me.

01:02:27.600 Because I haven't disparaged you.

01:02:30.380 I'm the guy who stood up for a member of my church who's here.

01:02:33.780 He's a bigger celebrity than I am.

01:02:35.720 And said, you cannot have him.

01:02:38.400 You cannot have him.

01:02:39.780 Pound sand.

01:02:41.840 So I don't disparage men.

01:02:44.220 And I hope you believe that.

01:02:45.220 I hope I've earned my stripes in this category.

01:02:47.460 So you'll listen when I say what I'm about to say.

01:02:50.480 There are some older men.

01:02:52.600 They're fewer and further between than we would like.

01:02:55.240 But there are some older men who are trying to direct.

01:02:59.560 And because many have disparaged,

01:03:03.080 you cannot universally categorize all direction

01:03:08.200 and every attempt at direction from older men

01:03:12.520 as though it's disparagement.

01:03:14.600 Sometimes it really is direction.

01:03:16.640 and they're really not trying to disparage you.

01:03:19.460 They really are trying to direct you

01:03:21.540 and we all need some of those older men in our lives.

01:03:25.260 And here's the deal.

01:03:26.700 They're probably not celebrities.

01:03:29.920 The older men in my life that I'm able to go,

01:03:32.720 nobody knows their name,

01:03:34.720 but they're older men.

01:03:35.960 They're strong.

01:03:36.600 They're wise.

01:03:37.260 They're not long housed

01:03:38.240 and they're not disparaging me.

01:03:40.060 They're trying to direct me.

01:03:41.680 It's like Gandalf with a Bilbo.

01:03:45.900 He's like, I'm trying to help you.

01:03:49.440 I'm trying to help you.

01:03:51.460 And not trying to rob you. 0.60

01:03:53.400 There's a lot of older men, they're trying to rob you. 0.95

01:03:56.100 They are. 0.99

01:03:57.340 But some are trying to help you.

01:03:59.620 And doing whatever you can to find them.

01:04:01.860 And that's why local flesh and blood relationships matter so much.

01:04:07.200 If you haven't found one of those older men,

01:04:10.460 then you've got to do whatever it takes.

01:04:12.660 You've got to move.

01:04:13.400 It's not like they didn't go and tell all these young male elephants.

01:04:17.260 There's a concept somewhere in the ether out there.

01:04:20.100 There's such a thing as a older bull male elephant.

01:04:23.620 And then the younger elephants got.

01:04:24.760 No, they had to put them in the same pen.

01:04:27.460 And once they were in the same pen physically, then all of a sudden the younger elephants were able to get in line.

01:04:33.840 And you need that.

01:04:34.800 And if it means you have to move your family across the country to be in a church that has those older men who do not disparage, but they do direct, it's worth it.

01:04:46.620 So I'm hopeful because of the young men.

01:04:49.040 We have the need for the older men.

01:04:51.480 It does exist. 0.98

01:04:52.700 We don't have it in spades, but it does exist.

01:04:55.440 And you do what you got to do in order to find it.

01:04:57.960 So let's go ahead with hopefulness.

01:04:59.920 Let's start with Calvin.

01:05:01.160 That's my speech.

01:05:02.460 so obviously we're a faith of hope but after my last speech people have been coming up to me to

01:05:08.700 say it sounds like your country is dead where is your hope and yes i think it is i think it is the

01:05:15.300 end of the united kingdom as we know it as we've known it but the message there is that god's

01:05:20.560 picture is broader than ours and we've taken western civilization for granted and we we kind

01:05:26.540 of because we are narcissistic, egotistical beings, we kind of expect it to always be

01:05:32.340 the case. What we see around us now, we take it for granted and we think it will always

01:05:36.680 be. But I think the message is that every single empire has risen and fallen. We happen

01:05:41.960 to be fortunate enough to have lived through Western civilization. But I think for the

01:05:46.420 last hundred years, it's been on a downward trajectory. So where do I get the hope in

01:05:49.960 seeing my country implode? Well, the hope is in what's to come. If we've just lived

01:05:55.180 through a great Christian society and we're seeing it crumble. The hope for me is what rises 1.00

01:06:02.020 from those ashes. What do we build next around Christ, for Christ, in Christ? We've got to

01:06:07.760 rebuild this earthly kingdom in his image. And so we've learned many, many good and bad examples and

01:06:13.980 things we can take with us in that. That's on the big level. On the local level, I get hope from

01:06:18.620 this. This fills me with hope. Things like this event, thank you for organizing this and inviting

01:06:23.580 me every time i speak at a conference like this i'm filled with hope from as you were just talking

01:06:28.920 about the young men who are out here but also not just the young men the old men the young women

01:06:33.020 and the old women everyone who is out here thinking there's something wrong with our society

01:06:37.460 i want to make an active difference and it's that shift from passivity to being active

01:06:43.120 participants in creation that's what makes a difference just listening to to john and steve

01:06:50.080 saying very similar things

01:06:52.080 when John talks about virtues

01:06:54.400 and Steve talks about accountability.

01:06:56.220 I think the same message

01:06:58.280 in modeling best practice

01:07:00.220 and this is what I see

01:07:01.480 that fills me with hope as well.

01:07:03.400 I've just learned this lesson myself.

01:07:05.640 When you were talking about, you know,

01:07:07.300 basically prudence, isn't it?

01:07:09.460 Your joke was funny.

01:07:11.380 I think it was funny.

01:07:12.300 But was it prudent?

01:07:13.220 Probably not.

01:07:16.740 When I spend 10 minutes

01:07:18.500 speaking about the importance

01:07:19.640 of the sanctity of life and then end with

01:07:21.400 my heart goes out to you. I think it was cheeky.

01:07:23.740 I think it was funny.

01:07:25.460 But was it prudent? Probably not.

01:07:27.440 Did I need to do it? Probably not.

01:07:29.820 Undermine my message? Probably did

01:07:31.600 in the end. And so the lesson there is

01:07:33.680 repenting of that.

01:07:36.240 Learning from that and then

01:07:37.600 sharing it. And I'm appreciative

01:07:39.040 for my brothers on the stage for sharing their

01:07:41.220 messages and their testimonies as well.

01:07:43.660 And that's how we learn together as men. 1.00

01:07:45.420 You're right, we don't sit around gab like women do. 1.00

01:07:47.500 We all have our different strengths and weaknesses. 1.00

01:07:49.100 but men we share through our experience

01:07:51.560 and so that prudence is important

01:07:53.240 but also just off the back of that

01:07:54.640 humour is important

01:07:56.100 it's important to make funny jokes

01:07:57.620 just in the right context

01:07:59.380 and we can't let them take our humour away

01:08:01.200 because that's what they want to do

01:08:02.500 and so fighting back with humour

01:08:04.760 in a prudential way

01:08:06.400 on a local level

01:08:07.940 being active participants

01:08:09.260 and taking from the ashes of western civilisation

01:08:12.680 something to rebuild it

01:08:14.220 like a phoenix around Christ

01:08:16.120 is where I get my hope

01:08:17.080 thank you

01:08:18.120 One of the things that I think really gives me hope is the fact that so many people in my generation

01:08:30.900 and the generations that are coming behind are rejecting the consensus mainstream conservative ideology.

01:08:39.560 And the reason I think that's so important is Russell Kirk said that ultimately conservatism is never ideological.

01:08:47.740 Conservatism is about protecting a tradition, protecting a people.

01:08:52.380 It is specific. It is particular.

01:08:55.040 It understands that its real role is to continue to fight

01:08:59.080 for the continuance of those traditions and that way of life.

01:09:02.900 And I think more and more people are looking around

01:09:05.380 at all of the assumptions that were built in

01:09:08.060 to the popular conservative politics

01:09:10.820 and say, does this really protect my homeland?

01:09:14.720 Does it really protect my faith?

01:09:16.060 Does it really protect my family and my community?

01:09:18.820 Or is it serving someone else's interest?

01:09:21.740 And we've talked a lot about ideology on this panel.

01:09:25.900 And as Dr. Wolf and John both pointed out, that traditions have ideas in them.

01:09:31.340 They have very important ideas in them.

01:09:33.200 And so you might be saying, well, what's the difference between an ideology and a tradition?

01:09:36.940 And the difference is that an ideology is abstractly designed from the top down to try to bring about a result.

01:09:44.120 As where a tradition is built, it is grounded in experience and success.

01:09:49.640 It is continuing a way of life that, yes, is incorporating important ideas and understandings

01:09:54.560 of the way that God has made the world and the way that we should live.

01:09:57.820 But it is also working them and weaving them through the way that we live our daily lives.

01:10:03.660 And one of the things I want to reinforce, as Steve pointed out, is that we want to be careful.

01:10:09.560 because in this moment, and all of us have done this,

01:10:12.840 we have all said controversial things,

01:10:15.000 because controversial things need to be said.

01:10:17.560 However, we should not say things just to be controversial.

01:10:22.220 We are not revolutionaries.

01:10:23.940 We are not here to tear down the system or the way of life.

01:10:28.000 We are here to revivify the tradition and the way of life

01:10:31.520 of our ancestors, our people, our faith, our God.

01:10:35.440 And so ultimately, if we say something controversial,

01:10:38.980 We should only say it because it's true and because it needs to be said.

01:10:43.600 We should not inhabit the form of our enemies, the one that they want to fight.

01:10:48.540 They know what they want to fight, and they want you to be it.

01:10:52.540 And that doesn't mean you shouldn't transgress.

01:10:54.380 It doesn't mean that you shouldn't do things that make them angry.

01:10:57.120 You will, and you should.

01:10:59.340 But ultimately, you should do them because they are true and they are right, and you

01:11:03.000 are following God's word, and you are following what is best for your family, for your homeland,

01:11:07.500 for your faith. That is why you should say those things. That's why you should take those stands.

01:11:12.480 That's why you should take those actions. Not to be edgy, not to be punk rock, not to be the

01:11:17.020 coolest guy who is doing all of the stuff that will get you all the most likes on Twitter or

01:11:22.400 social media, but because ultimately these things have to be protected. They have to be said. They

01:11:28.500 have to be lived. And that's what gives me hope is I see more and more young people especially

01:11:33.580 reaching out for a lived

01:11:35.660 tradition. Not just looking at the

01:11:37.580 ideology, but ultimately

01:11:39.440 looking for a way that they can live a

01:11:41.580 meaningful life, they can have

01:11:43.440 a family, they can have a faith,

01:11:45.460 they can have a real national identity

01:11:47.540 and I think that is ultimately what is

01:11:49.440 going to restore what's best about the United States.

01:11:56.740 You guys are getting likes?

01:11:58.440 You guys are getting likes on social media?

01:12:00.480 Every now and again.

01:12:01.360 I didn't know we were going for that.

01:12:04.320 Steven.

01:12:05.620 Yeah, I'm hopeful because it seems to me that the central question of our time now is, what is a nation?

01:12:14.880 And that's being asked not only by us, of course we're asking that question, but it's across the political spectrum.

01:12:21.980 People are having to address the question, what is a nation?

01:12:25.440 And so that gives me a lot of hope.

01:12:26.880 I think the other thing to kind of like what Warren's saying is that like it there's like we were talking about this before that more than any time in my life like right now the the ideas that you that are that are surfacing that are being enacted in policy especially by you know conservatives I've never seen anything like this before.

01:12:48.340 It's probably akin to maybe the Reagan revolution of the early 80s.

01:12:52.720 But things are, like right now, in a way, the political ideas of our time are up for grabs, in a way.

01:12:59.720 So you're living in, I think, a strange moment, at least in my lifetime,

01:13:04.060 where people are asking questions that really, under neoconservatism for decades, we were not allowed to ask.

01:13:11.380 And there wasn't a medium in which to ask them.

01:13:13.680 So I think we're in this great time and a time where we can assert our ideas and actually people can listen and access it and dialogue on that.

01:13:24.660 So that's really great.

01:13:26.140 One of the things that I've encountered just by a couple days here is people telling me that they appreciate my work because, and to put it in my words,

01:13:37.480 I've tried to reconcile a universal religion with a particular people to say that there are particular Christian nations.

01:13:45.680 And I think we, both in a Christian theology for a long time and also within just modern ideas in general,

01:13:53.200 that idea of reconciling that universal with a particular was not on the table.

01:13:58.260 It wasn't addressed.

01:13:59.760 At best, it was conflated or not asked at all.

01:14:03.320 And so that gives me a lot of hope that now people are thinking about that.

01:14:06.000 okay, Christianity is a universal religion, what does it mean to have my country be a

01:14:10.940 particular nation that is Christian? And so, it's really great when people say that to

01:14:16.940 me. It's like, yeah, that's what I'm doing. So, thank you.

01:14:28.160 Well, my concern earlier was that the workers are few, but my optimism is that the harvest

01:14:33.660 is plenty right now.

01:14:35.740 I mean, first of all, on a personal level,

01:14:38.920 one of the main reasons I came over some other objections

01:14:41.540 because I just wanted to know what it felt like

01:14:43.240 to not be the most radical person in a room for once.

01:14:46.600 All right?

01:14:47.020 So as I get older, I'm in my grandpa era,

01:14:50.160 and I'm realizing as I get older, you know,

01:14:52.280 not only do I have to pee more,

01:14:53.480 but I kind of like being liked for a change,

01:14:55.840 and many years went by that I was not, you know?

01:14:58.560 But in all seriousness, I am actually,

01:15:02.420 I've actually flirted, maybe that's the right word, I have flirted with optimism in my career

01:15:07.820 for the first time ever. And you know, here's why though, even though I have deep, deep concerns

01:15:17.520 about what the state of the church is right now. But I was becoming convinced, and this is why I

01:15:25.660 was going Vantablack, I was becoming convinced that there was no common grace left in the culture.

01:15:32.420 we were Romans 1 now to the core,

01:15:35.740 that there was not going to be any amount of vile

01:15:38.640 that some instinctive natural pushback

01:15:41.420 would occur in the broader populace.

01:15:45.340 And therefore, the whole debate which we're having right now,

01:15:49.140 what is a nation?

01:15:50.160 Are they propositional?

01:15:52.380 Is it something else?

01:15:54.200 Is it something more directly attached to the land itself?

01:15:58.620 What is nationalism?

01:15:59.860 does Christianity transcend those things

01:16:04.160 to think otherwise

01:16:05.960 that it's more embraced

01:16:07.440 does that make you another form

01:16:10.500 of some kind of xenophobe

01:16:12.260 or racist

01:16:12.900 and all these debates

01:16:13.840 that we're having right now

01:16:14.940 the reality is that

01:16:16.600 if there's no common grace

01:16:18.220 left in the culture

01:16:19.120 to just basically say

01:16:20.500 watching a guy

01:16:22.760 that 0.87

01:16:24.900 and his hairy nether regions

01:16:27.040 with almost nothing on

01:16:28.500 twerk in front of our children at the public library

01:16:32.400 and call it story time is absolutely vile 0.95

01:16:35.700 and what every previous generation of American did

01:16:38.520 regardless of their socioeconomic status

01:16:41.080 or the melon level in their skin

01:16:42.620 or what religious tradition they had,

01:16:44.760 the ways they would have reacted to seeing that

01:16:46.860 would get everybody banned off of social media today

01:16:49.300 for saying that out loud, all right?

01:16:51.340 If that's gone, if that level of common grace is gone,

01:16:56.200 And this meta conversation we're trying to have up here is never going to take place.

01:17:00.920 And we're ripping each other's spleens out over nothing.

01:17:03.380 These are dry bones, Ezekiel, and they ain't coming back to life.

01:17:06.560 This is a carcass, not a country.

01:17:08.920 And so I'm optimistic, actually, that the normies struck back.

01:17:14.720 Common grace, there is still, you know, I'm saying there's a chance.

01:17:21.080 The common grace is still there.

01:17:23.460 That light there, it's flickering,

01:17:25.900 but we found the country's disgust button.

01:17:30.240 And now, I didn't know who Theo Vaughn was

01:17:32.600 until Trump went on his show.

01:17:33.880 I'm 50, I live in another America than he does, okay?

01:17:36.780 I didn't know who he was.

01:17:38.360 Two weeks ago, I'm on YouTube,

01:17:39.760 I watched an entire 30-minute interview he did

01:17:42.020 about why we have to ban pornography, all right?

01:17:45.860 And I thought, this is a way better argument

01:17:48.040 than I've seen from most of America's pastors.

01:17:50.000 and and to me that harvest is plenty man I mean though that those seeds are taking root one plants

01:18:00.160 another waters and God gives the increase right the church needs to water that ground I am

01:18:06.360 concerned about that but I am optimistic that the Lord has not done with us yet that there is that

01:18:13.720 the last election demonstrated a level of common grace, a level of providence. And I will say this

01:18:20.480 is much of my career, I have pushed back on the whole Trump is God's anointed stuff. I find it

01:18:25.620 creepy. And it reminds me of TV networks were hosted by the chick who lost the whose hair lost

01:18:31.080 the fight with the paintball gun kind of stuff. All right. And I'm just not my thing. Okay. But

01:18:36.380 I, and that's why I went out and put a sign in my yard on July 13th for Trump for the first time

01:18:41.960 ever. Because I cannot deny what I saw with my own eyes when a bullet, the spirit of the age,

01:18:48.320 meant for his face, missed a kill shot by literally millimeters. And chance is what

01:18:55.100 the world would call it. I would call it providence. And the Lord chooses his vehicles

01:18:59.960 and vessels. Lord knows if you've known me, my wife again is here. We almost got divorced five

01:19:05.180 years ago. Now we do nothing apart from one another. All right. So the Lord chooses his

01:19:09.680 vehicles. He chooses his vessels, right? And you can see by the fruit on the tree whether or not

01:19:15.460 that choosing, that anointing is on that person. Clearly, there is some level of anointing on

01:19:20.860 Donald Trump. And I say that still with some trepidation, all right? But it's clear for

01:19:26.760 whatever reason, he is a vehicle for this moment. And the question is now, are we going to take

01:19:32.880 advantage of this moment? But I'm optimistic that we even are having this challenge because I have

01:19:38.720 to tell you, after the last few years, I was thinking no such moments existed anymore. There

01:19:43.440 was nothing the spirit of the age could do that there would be not some natural instinctive

01:19:48.100 disgust and pushback against. People finally went full Jean-Luc Picard. They drew the line in the

01:19:53.280 sand and said, here, no further, finally. Okay. That is a good starting point. So I'm optimistic

01:19:59.680 about that. John, you get the final word. Go ahead and close this out. What do you got to say?

01:20:10.240 I'm very optimistic when I look at a God who uses the weak things to shame the strong.

01:20:14.600 And we have a whole book that's filled with stories of him doing just that. I'm optimistic

01:20:20.040 when I look at my daughter and I see that he still has a plan for people, that people are being born,

01:20:26.660 that people are being raised, that, you know, the sun comes up every morning.

01:20:31.480 I take a lot of hope in the stories of my own Christian ancestors,

01:20:36.700 men and women in the Bible, of course.

01:20:39.180 You know, you study history and you start seeing times when,

01:20:42.820 there's this book, Last Stands, or these times where you think it's all over,

01:20:46.520 it's all done, and then all of a sudden, you know, the winged hussars arrive,

01:20:50.660 and you can ask Aaron about that later.

01:20:52.660 He'll play you the Sabaton song.

01:20:54.560 That's right.

01:20:56.660 That's right. But, you know, those are the kinds of things that inspire me. It's looking back at

01:21:02.060 the past and seeing God's hand. It's the recovery of tradition that we're experiencing, and maybe

01:21:07.880 we're at the early stages of this, and wanting and a desire to adhere to God's order. And some

01:21:14.420 of the stories I've even heard here with some of you in the local level, just stories of people

01:21:18.060 that are faithfully standing up, couples who are giving their time to the local Republicans and

01:21:24.240 going to meetings of the town or the school board and standing up for the truth. I think some of the

01:21:31.340 things on the local level that I see that maybe we're in the beginning stages of that I think

01:21:34.980 are really good too is letting the chat group become something real, right? Like the Ridge

01:21:40.760 Runner project is a great example of this. Like people who have a similar vision, they want to

01:21:46.160 see some tradition, they want to see some prudent Christian America retained somewhere, and so

01:21:52.140 they're starting at the local level and and that's what we need you know um chat groups online just

01:21:57.880 though this is like a little addendum but it's like online dating right like it's the purpose

01:22:01.860 isn't to to have the chat group and to have just to form an in-group preference for these people

01:22:05.860 you don't really know it's to actually do something in the real physical world to take

01:22:10.120 institutions to um and and to wield that power whatever influence or power you have for the good

01:22:14.980 of the people you love um i'm inspired when i see the zoomer potential the zoomer power out there

01:22:20.520 There's some of it in this room, but a lot of the Zoomers that I know in my local area are interested in things like going to the gym and making sure that they have standards in their lives.

01:22:32.280 And older people can talk all day about the problems or the standards that aren't being upheld that need to be upheld, and we should listen to that. 0.97

01:22:40.660 We should be self-reflective, but the point is there is a desire for stability and standards, and this creates a great opportunity for us.

01:22:48.480 I think of young guys who are, you know, it's kind of random, like people that, you know, I'm like, you're 18.

01:22:55.680 And they're like, oh, yeah, I just was reading Edmund Burke the other day.

01:22:58.420 I'm like, well, you're like, well, why?

01:23:00.300 Why are you reading him?

01:23:02.040 And so these stories are inspiring to me.

01:23:05.800 Obviously, there's bad actors that are out there that want to kind of woo people to ideology.

01:23:10.760 And that's something that we have to, like, avoid.

01:23:13.060 We're going to need gates and stuff.

01:23:14.280 but like the fact that people are looking for something real and they know that they've been

01:23:18.620 given something so fake their whole lives, that is a starting point. And I think that, you know,

01:23:24.740 I want to see God work in that way. And then finally, on the national level, I'm inspired by

01:23:28.420 J.D. Vance. I mean, the order, literally, I have a chapter in my book against the waves

01:23:34.340 that I purposely, I did not use the word order Amaris because I'm like, no one's going to know,

01:23:39.600 Like, that's Latin.

01:23:40.920 I'm just going to say love and the preferences of love.

01:23:45.040 And so I use these other terms.

01:23:46.320 The Vice President of the United States, after I write it and I have it, you know, ready to be published, he's like, oh, Ordo Amaris.

01:23:52.340 And, like, the whole country now knows what that is.

01:23:54.740 Can I just interject for a second on behalf of Calvin?

01:23:58.160 Have you noticed all these guys up here want us to follow J.D. Vance and Pat Buchanan?

01:24:04.920 Which, I believe they were Catholic, correct?

01:24:07.120 All right.

01:24:07.620 Just saying.

01:24:08.360 Just saying.

01:24:09.000 All right.

01:24:09.180 Just, someone's got to stick up for Calvin a little bit.

01:24:11.580 My bad, go ahead.

01:24:13.440 You should also be reading Mel Bradford and Richard Weaver

01:24:15.940 and good Protestants.

01:24:16.720 I do love that the concern of me coming was that I'm too Catholic

01:24:21.860 and Steve gets up and says, become Catholic.

01:24:25.920 Small c. 0.50

01:24:34.780 I'll say this in closing, though.

01:24:36.740 People know evil exists right now.

01:24:38.340 they know they may not know what good is they know though that evil exists and because of that

01:24:43.880 there's an opportunity to show them and introduce them to the lord jesus christ who is the standard

01:24:49.680 of goodness and who died for our sins and um and that's the hope that we can give to people amen

The NXR Podcast - April 26, 2025

THE CONFERENCE - Panel 1 - Deace, Wolfe, Robinson, MacIntyre, Harris, and Webbon

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