The NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Why There’s No Going Back To The US Constitution with Auron MacIntyre

00:00:00.000 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel

00:00:04.260 Webin with Right Response Ministries, and in this episode, I am welcoming for the very first time

00:00:09.420 to the show, Oren McIntyre. He's a contributor with The Blaze. He's got a podcast. It's really

00:00:15.340 good. You should check it out. And what we're discussing in this episode is why we should

00:00:19.580 constitution even harder. Classical liberalism. Just kidding. Oren is a realist, and by God's

00:00:27.400 grace, so am I. And so we're not talking about that. What we're talking about instead is how

00:00:32.200 America has not been a constitutional republic for a very long time. And if you think we are

00:00:37.020 currently still a constitutional republic in terms of how we actually function, then I've got some

00:00:42.180 oceanfront property in Kansas that I would love to sell to you. It's time to wake up. It's time

00:00:47.940 to grow up. A constitutional republic is wonderful, but we don't have it because that was designed for

00:00:54.540 a moral and religious people. And currently, all we have are a bunch of degenerates. So can we get 0.97

00:01:00.900 back to the Constitution? And if so, how? Or is this a storm that we just have to go through?

00:01:06.400 And if so, what's on the other side? And are we prepared for that? That's the episode. I think

00:01:12.060 you're going to like it. Tune in now. Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology

00:01:18.880 Applied.

00:01:24.540 All right. Welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin

00:01:30.040 with Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I'm privileged to welcome to the show

00:01:34.000 for the first time, Oren McIntyre. He is a contributor with The Blaze. He has great

00:01:39.620 political commentary. He is a Protestant Southern Baptist. Oren, thanks for coming on the show.

00:01:44.680 Thank you so much for having me, man.

00:01:46.520 All right. So you've got a new book coming out. Let's go ahead and plug that first and give us

00:01:51.260 a brief synopsis for the listener of why did you write the book? What's it about?

00:01:56.320 Sure. I think like a lot of people who probably watch this, I grew up as a talk radio conservative

00:02:01.540 standard GOP, neoconservative type of guy. And I went to school for politics. I ended up being

00:02:08.860 a political reporter, worked a little bit in politics. And then 2016 and 2020 happened.

00:02:14.300 And like a lot of people, I just learned that politics doesn't work at all the way that I

00:02:19.120 thought it was power in the united states actually does not conform to the constitution it doesn't

00:02:23.780 restrict any of the things that i thought it did and this kind of threw me for a loop and so i kind

00:02:29.360 of went on a journey of exploring political theory trying to understand what had happened why we were

00:02:35.740 in the situation we were in and how power really works here and as i did that i started to kind of

00:02:42.400 collect all of that and put it into youtube essays and eventually that turned into the book and so

00:02:47.460 The Total State is really my journey to understand how the land of the free suddenly transformed into this place where lockdowns and cancellations and the end of free speech seem to be everywhere.

00:03:01.580 That's really what the book's about.

00:03:03.200 Right.

00:03:03.440 So the title of the book is The Total State.

00:03:06.260 Its release date is?

00:03:08.440 May 7th.

00:03:09.460 May 7th.

00:03:10.720 And basically what you're, you're just pulling back the veil that God and his providence pulled

00:03:17.040 back for you, you know, at a personal level over 2016 and 2020 and just realizing, I think, you

00:03:23.220 know, like, you know, one mutual that you obviously know and that I've had the pleasure of getting to

00:03:28.280 know Steve Dace. How does he say it? We're not a nation of laws and never will be. We are a nation

00:03:33.960 of political will or do you know what I'm referencing? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And he's

00:03:38.400 exactly right about that. That's a deeper insight that I think a lot of people realize of what a

00:03:43.480 nation really is at the end of the day. It's not a constitution. It's not a piece of paper. It's a

00:03:48.700 people with a particular way of being. And that's certainly something that I learned on my journey

00:03:53.420 when writing that book. Right. The people and their political and moral, religious will. I

00:04:00.060 think back to COVID, the restrictions and the lockdowns and the mask mandates and all those

00:04:06.360 things um it ended precisely at the moment that the american people said we're done

00:04:12.780 that's that's when it wasn't the science did not change the political science changed

00:04:18.580 and what changed the political science was um the critical mass of the american people saying okay

00:04:24.500 that's enough we're done and then it just was over yeah it was the elites realizing that there

00:04:30.000 was a limit to how far they could push people how far they could manipulate people and they

00:04:34.600 got away with too much and they pushed them too far but there was a natural limit and you're

00:04:38.360 exactly right well all of a sudden we got a scaling down oh you don't have to be six feet

00:04:42.180 away you could be three feet away actually you can be right next to each other maybe you need a

00:04:45.700 mask well maybe you don't need it at all maybe it doesn't really do anything yeah how many vaccines

00:04:50.300 we kind of lost count we're not sure it really was just commiserate with people saying we're done

00:04:56.140 yeah when people said we're done all of a sudden the rules changed um yeah so let's let's talk

00:05:02.380 about the constitution briefly. So I, I, you know, um, um, uh, I'm one of the guys who's, you know,

00:05:10.640 willing to wear the label Christian nationalists. Like I wouldn't have, you know, Doug Wilson says,

00:05:16.020 I wouldn't have chosen that label for myself. I wouldn't have picked it, you know, out of a hat.

00:05:19.580 Um, but there's, uh, lots of pejoratives that will be thrown at, uh, the conservative Christian

00:05:25.920 right. And, uh, and it's somewhat rare that they, uh, they pick a pejorative that you can actually

00:05:32.820 work with. Um, it's like, well, yeah, I can, I could work with that. Um, I know that some of

00:05:37.860 your, um, hesitancy with that label is, uh, and I think you're right about this is recognizing that

00:05:43.220 Christian nationalists is really just a placeholder for white Christian nationalists. Um, that's what

00:05:48.440 they mean. That's what the left means that this ethnocentric, you're a racist. When they say you're 0.98

00:05:52.980 a Christian nationalist, they mean you're a racist, right? Exactly. Yeah. It's a way for them

00:05:58.520 to go ahead and link Christianity to their anti-fascist crusade, which is the animating

00:06:03.120 ideology of our current regime. To be very clear, people are confused about what ideology binds this

00:06:09.980 very diverse coalition of the left together. And it's really that they think they're putting Red

00:06:14.820 America through denazification. That's insane, of course, when you look at Red America and its

00:06:20.180 beliefs and its level of tolerance but they don't care that that's what animates them that's what 0.96

00:06:24.560 puts them together and so when they tried to coin the phrase christian nationalist of course it had

00:06:29.500 existed before them it was not something created wholly by the media however it was certainly

00:06:34.960 thrust on to people who want to see uh christians take a more active role in the government do you

00:06:42.020 want to see a return to the idea that biblical values should be reflected and that there's

00:06:45.300 no problem with basing your law on the law of God, that these things are in no way mutually

00:06:51.100 exclusive. They went ahead and thrust that title on them for a reason, because they knew for better

00:06:57.200 or for worse that white evangelicals are one of the largest and most powerful forces in the United

00:07:03.140 States, and one of those that are most likely to continue to have Christian values. And so they

00:07:07.940 wanted to single them out, they wanted to demonize them, and they wanted an easy catchphrase to go

00:07:12.200 ahead and sweep them into this crusade against hate racism all these things right right uh so

00:07:19.820 within the christian nationalist banner there there are lots of variations and lots of different

00:07:25.760 definitions lots of you know um but i think you know that that's part of the difficulty

00:07:29.620 but that's also i think part of the um one of the pros is that it's uh it's meant to be a big tent

00:07:36.460 where guys of different persuasions can partner together and work towards, you know, a common

00:07:42.540 cause. But one of the, if I think of, you know, well, what's the lowest common denominator

00:07:47.640 that pretty much every Christian nationalist would agree with? I think one is that, you know, 0.68

00:07:55.840 most of the Christian nationalists that I speak to believe that God could change the nation,

00:08:02.260 not just in one way, but in one of two ways. And the two ways being he could send revival,

00:08:10.520 there could be a mass move of his spirit across the land and through preachers and churches and

00:08:15.400 gospel heralding that people are born again and that there's mass conversion and regeneration

00:08:22.840 and we just have more Christians and that these Christians then exercise their political will.

00:08:30.480 And, you know, if we have numbers on our side, then, you know, things start to get better.

00:08:34.060 And I absolutely think that that's something God can do.

00:08:36.980 I see as a drawback there, though, I think, you know, some would say, well, we've never had the numbers on our side.

00:08:43.620 You know, the Southern Baptists, you know, boast of, you know, 14 million or whatever, you know, but you can only find six or seven million on a Sunday in the pews.

00:08:52.060 You know, so we've never really had the numbers on our side.

00:08:54.580 And even if the numbers are there in terms of church attendance at, you know, Protestant

00:08:58.260 evangelical churches, you know, half of the people aren't truly born again.

00:09:02.520 They're not really regenerate.

00:09:03.680 And I'm more of the persuasion where I actually think we have had the numbers.

00:09:07.240 I think that we have had many Christians, truly born again Christians, but that there's

00:09:12.320 just been so much theological and cultural and political ignorance that the numbers,

00:09:19.300 even with the numbers, it wasn't enough.

00:09:21.220 So I think God could change the nation bottom up, mass move of the spirit, revival, whatever

00:09:26.800 you want to call it, renewal.

00:09:28.360 But I also think that the Christian nationalists are unique from other evangelicals who are

00:09:34.080 having aversion towards the Christian nationalists label in the sense that Christian nationalists

00:09:39.600 seem to be comfortable with not only a bottom up change, but also if God chooses a top down

00:09:46.780 change.

00:09:47.220 And when I look at scripture, I look at Israel, bad king, bad king, good king, and it's not because he was elected. It's not because God sent revival and there was 50% of the population of Israel now with regenerate hearts plus one, and they voted in Josiah.

00:10:03.940 No, it's just in the province of God. You get a Josiah. Josiah begins to legislate and enforce

00:10:10.580 righteous laws and tear down the high places. And that functions as a tutor that begins to

00:10:16.460 righteous laws enforced with power begins to disciple the people and the hearts of the people

00:10:23.220 change. And then, you know, that's Old Testament, but then over the last 2000 years of church

00:10:27.480 history, not just the history of Israel under the old covenant, but you look at whether it's King

00:10:32.240 Alfred or Constantine or Charlemagne or all these different examples, I feel as though, yes, God has

00:10:40.820 sent revival, but often if we're looking at the chronological order, it does seem as though in

00:10:46.300 the province of God, it's a small percentage of the population that's strategic and organized

00:10:52.480 and that accrues power, which power is not inherently evil. It depends how you wield it.

00:11:00.440 It's a tool, like a sword, and they accrue power, and then they use it righteously, and then that righteous legislation and enforcement of God's laws then begins to tutor and disciple and shape a people, and even if the people are unregenerate, righteous laws, one thing that they do is they reveal to the people that they're lawless, and therefore in need of a Savior who fulfilled the law in their place, and that becomes the backdrop, the context.

00:11:26.880 It doesn't save people, but it becomes a context for gospel preaching, which does save people.

00:11:31.840 And so I think that one thing that I appreciate about the Christian nationalists is it seems like all of them, one common denominator, are perfectly comfortable in saying, well, the Homo Jihad with less than 3% of the population over the course of 40 years replaced the American flag with a rainbow. 0.77

00:11:50.020 Why can't we do that? 0.90

00:11:51.940 What do you think?

00:11:52.540 I think that this is a huge shift and an important shift. I think that it's important for people to realize, as you're saying, that civilizations are usually led by organized minorities. I tend to focus on the political Italian elite school off the Machiavellian strain.

00:12:11.320 This is also known as political realism, and it recognizes the fact that all culture tends to be derived from elite attitudes and elite preferences that actually it doesn't tend to come from the bottom of up.

00:12:25.840 But as you said, from the top down, I think it's really easy to observe, as you say, if we just look at the changes for, say, gay marriage and trans ideology.

00:12:34.220 These things were wildly unpopular not very long ago.

00:12:38.000 the gay marriage was voted down in california in proposition eight not that long ago barack obama

00:12:44.960 and hillary clinton had to disavow it in their presidential runs had to say no i'm for the

00:12:49.860 traditional definition of a man and a woman that's how unpopular this was just a few decades ago and

00:12:55.720 now you get fired for disagreeing with it now you're you're completely unable to be uh even

00:13:00.900 employed at a large company if you happen to disagree with this if you have a basic biblical

00:13:06.220 view a natural view of what marriage has been for its entire existence and somehow people still

00:13:11.440 think that this is all about some kind of marketplace of ideas or popular opinions that

00:13:15.880 will rise from the bottom no this is top down again look at look at the speed at which it's

00:13:21.020 become normalized to feed puberty blockers to eight-year-olds try telling anyone that 10 years

00:13:25.960 ago they'll think you're insane the westboro baptist church wouldn't have warned you against

00:13:29.620 this kind of stuff right they would have said no that sounds a little extreme man like i know

00:13:33.200 things are bad but it's not going to get that bad and now this is just the reality we live in

00:13:37.380 so i think there has to be a real awakening i think a lot of people on the right had what i

00:13:42.900 like to call boomer eschatology which is just well america is a christian culture and it'll

00:13:48.340 always be a christian culture and if you know the the christian culture ends it can only be because

00:13:52.860 it's the end of the world you know that they tied uh american institutions and biblical truth

00:13:58.320 one to one and assumed that they would exist side by side in perpetuity and the only thing

00:14:02.700 that could possibly rend them apart would be the literal end of all existence. And so they never

00:14:09.460 thought that they needed to impose that. They never thought that they needed to maintain

00:14:12.940 Christendom. Christendom was just an assumption that would always exist. It was not something

00:14:17.440 that we needed to go ahead and maintain. It wasn't just assumed. I think Christendom was

00:14:23.500 despised. And when you talk about boomer eschatology, we call that dispensational 0.95

00:14:28.800 pre-millennialism, because that's what it is. The idea that Jesus is going to come back next 0.93

00:14:34.140 Thursday and that God has destined. It's written in the stars that things will progressively

00:14:39.820 be worse and worse until he does. And then you look back to a Christendom of yesteryear

00:14:46.660 and you look back at it with shame, regret, even hatred, despising it, thinking that the thought,

00:14:58.660 I think for a lot of evangelical kind of boomer theology is that Christendom lends towards weaker

00:15:05.460 pulpits, weaker doctrine, weaker gospel preaching, and false conversions. Because everybody will think

00:15:11.180 that they're, you know, culturally Christian. They'll just assume that the nation is Christian,

00:15:15.980 the culture is Christian, and therefore that they, as an individual, are Christian in the

00:15:19.480 proper sense, capital C Christian, that they're regenerate and born again and going to heaven when

00:15:24.320 they die. And therefore, you know, it's going to be a net loss. Christian culture is a net loss 0.97

00:15:30.380 because you don't have transient kids, but you have millions, you know, people by the millions 1.00

00:15:35.820 going, you know, bound for hell while thinking that they're bound for heaven, which I just,

00:15:42.840 I think that that's a false dichotomy. I completely reject the notion. I forget who it is,

00:15:47.680 but some major atheist, one of his main right-hand guys, you know, during COVID, you know,

00:15:52.680 was trying to escape all the lockdowns and things like that,

00:15:55.200 moved to some tiny little rule, red dot on the map.

00:15:58.640 And after being there for six months, he and his wife,

00:16:01.360 you know, they had no friends.

00:16:02.280 They wanted community.

00:16:03.060 They asked around the town, you know,

00:16:04.500 where do we find relationships and friendships?

00:16:06.240 So they, oh, well, we do that at church.

00:16:07.480 So they started going to a cowboy church.

00:16:10.220 And then, you know, this cowboy church just had a simple,

00:16:13.680 you know, gospel proclamation and they got saved.

00:16:17.820 And now he, you know, identifies as a Christian

00:16:20.640 and tells his testimony.

00:16:21.660 And the point being that you get him, this guy who's a radical atheist and hates God, get him into a conservative Christian context, and it doesn't make him further averse to Christianity.

00:16:38.180 It makes him Christian.

00:16:40.960 And so will there be false conversion? 0.90

00:16:43.000 Sure.

00:16:43.300 Will there be people with false assurance?

00:16:45.600 Sure. 0.71

00:16:46.240 but I think that Baptists especially, sadly, and I am a Baptist, but Baptists have this weird

00:16:53.700 relationship with persecution. They're deathly afraid of it. So they think that if we were a

00:16:57.620 Christian nation, that the Presbyterians would drown the Baptists. And then at the same time,

00:17:02.740 they're afraid of persecution, and they also are secretly wishing for it because they think that

00:17:08.180 persecution is the only tool in God's arsenal to purify the church.

00:17:14.740 The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.

00:17:19.220 As Americans, we hate the word king.

00:17:22.820 Civilian ownership of body armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals.

00:17:31.360 And so Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ

00:17:37.800 because he is the king of kings, and he governs kings, and he will judge them.

00:17:42.120 this is armored republic and in a republic there is no king but christ

00:17:48.500 we are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor spread of choice

00:17:54.900 yeah there tends to be this idea that at some point if things get really hard for

00:18:11.720 christians will will have real christianity right and that just obviously is not the case i think

00:18:17.640 when we look around this we see that the you know culture is falling apart for a reason and you can't

00:18:23.800 just pretend that if you retreat as christians that you know well as long as my kids are fine

00:18:29.880 you know as long as my my kids are watching the right things or listening to the right things

00:18:33.720 they're they're in the church when the doors are open everything will be okay it's like no your

00:18:37.640 your kids have to go to school or at the very least even if you homeschool they have to like

00:18:41.720 meet people they have to live in this world and they will be they will follow incentives the

00:18:47.020 average person will follow incentives and so there is the the culture that you had was hard fought

00:18:53.200 for by your ancestors you are the posterity that is benefiting from the trees they planted that

00:18:58.380 they did not get to sit under and then you sit around saying well it'll be best best for my

00:19:02.540 children to bake in the sun it's like no you just you just were born on third base and you assumed

00:19:07.120 that it would always be the case and that that's a terrible way to live it's it's incredibly

00:19:11.680 entitled and it's it's beneath people who should know better so talk to us about the constitution

00:19:18.200 are we a constitutional republic no we we couldn't keep it uh and then that that that's a hard thing

00:19:27.360 for a lot of people uh when we look at the united states i think that most christians have gone

00:19:33.700 ahead and substituted the Constitution for American identity. They said, well, we don't

00:19:39.260 really know what to base our identity in anymore. We've had so many waves of immigration and

00:19:44.420 transformation religiously and culturally and all these things. The only thing that can bind us

00:19:48.700 together is the Constitution. So they've kind of deified the Constitution and the founders

00:19:53.380 to make that the political theology that goes ahead and drives us as a nation. And because of

00:20:00.820 that they've made this kind of legal positivism the core of their belief in kind of who we are

00:20:07.440 as a people. And so they've lost this understanding. Joseph de Maistre is a guy I like to pull from a

00:20:13.200 lot. He was a French political theorist, and he talked a lot about what makes a constitution.

00:20:19.680 And he explained that all constitutions are written by God. There's never been a constitution

00:20:24.340 that's been written by men, because constitutions are only the reflections of the way of being

00:20:30.520 of a people. The Constitution does not create people. People create the Constitution. It is

00:20:36.920 simply an instantiation of what has already been written onto the hearts of people by generations

00:20:43.020 and generations of traditions that God has placed amongst them. And so we never actually are defined

00:20:49.940 by a Constitution. It's only the words on the paper that are kind of formalizing what we are

00:20:56.800 already doing as a people. And so the Constitution can never bind us together because it's just a

00:21:03.480 shadow of the people we are and the people we have to continue to be. And while we don't seem

00:21:10.960 to know this in the modern world, the Founding Fathers totally did. They were very explicit

00:21:15.280 about what the Constitution was. It was a document that was only capable of ruling a

00:21:19.900 virtuous and religious people. And if we ever walked away from that identity, if we ever walked 0.75

00:21:25.320 away from that kind of shared protestant christian understanding of what the nation was then we would

00:21:31.240 not be governed by the constitution and we no longer are those people and so therefore we are

00:21:35.640 necessarily not governed by the document made for them right yeah adams right was a moral and

00:21:42.180 religious people um yeah we're we're degenerates we're not even close to we're degenerates the

00:21:49.340 constitution is not um it's not suited for governing degenerates uh for governing governing

00:21:58.720 degenerates and i'm curious your thoughts on this if you agree disagree um but i i think

00:22:05.620 for our population that is degraded uh morally and culturally as far and religiously as far as we have

00:22:13.780 um you need power um men must be governed you need you need a caesar type you know uh so so for me

00:22:25.380 i i would say if if we're talking about you know does the bible prescribe a certain form of

00:22:30.040 government um there are guys in the theonomist camp and and i would be a general equity theonomist

00:22:37.080 theonomy just means you know god you know theos and and uh it's just god's law that's that's all

00:22:43.020 it means. And so I am of that persuasion. That's, I believe, the confessional position, both in the

00:22:46.960 Westminster and in the 1689, a general equity theonomy, which means the moral law endures

00:22:52.200 forever. Think 10 commandments, Decalogue, Exodus 20. And then all these judicial laws, you're just

00:22:58.140 extracting the general equity. You know, what's the main moral? So parapet on the borders of the

00:23:03.440 roof. Okay, well, we don't sleep on the roof because we have HVAC, you know, but that means,

00:23:08.000 you know, to preserve human life, the dignity of human life. So seatbelts and speed limits,

00:23:13.160 you know, whatever. So that's, you know, that's, that's how we do it. So general equity theonomy,

00:23:17.860 yes, I'm on board. But some of the old school reconstructionist, theonomic, you know, pure

00:23:23.280 blood guys who I appreciate and respect immensely, they would go so far as to say that the scripture

00:23:30.120 actually dictates not just laws, but a particular form of government. And they, of course, being

00:23:36.800 guys from the 60s and the 70s and the 80s, predominantly in American context, lo and

00:23:42.400 behold, shocker, the type of government that the Bible absolutely dictates is a constitutional

00:23:48.300 republic. And I would say, I don't know. Now, if you're asking me my preference, that would

00:23:55.120 probably be my preference would be a constitutional republic. But I think the conditions for that is

00:24:02.560 immoral people. So I think you can work towards that in the future, but I don't think

00:24:08.700 constitutioning even harder is going to get us out of our current mess. I don't see us getting

00:24:17.640 out of this apart from things getting worse and worse, and then eventually like a Caesar type

00:24:25.720 rising through the ranks of populist you know figure in the people you know the political will

00:24:32.660 the people that the people are desperate and they're like yes do it so and so and and then

00:24:38.220 so and so constitution be damned just rules with an iron fist and uh and you know like a cromwell

00:24:45.420 type and then and then you you know hopefully don't get his son maybe then you're able and then

00:24:50.480 you you maybe it's just a one generation one guy kind of thing and then you you have to move back

00:24:55.340 to, you know, aristocracy or some other form.

00:24:59.480 What do you think?

00:25:01.000 Yeah, it can be very complicated.

00:25:02.720 When you look at the historical cycle of regimes, it would seem like we're at the point, as

00:25:08.180 you say, where Caesar figure often rises.

00:25:10.760 We're really in that moneyed oligarchical period of existence.

00:25:15.260 And it feels like the, you know, that you can feel that pressure building as to, you

00:25:20.260 know, the only way through that to cut through that Gordian knot, that gridlock and kind

00:25:25.320 of restore order would be someone who could take the reins but but it really of course depends

00:25:32.160 joseph de maestro again said that every people will have a different form of government that

00:25:38.440 that it's not that there is no right form of government but it again will align with the

00:25:43.400 way of being of the people and no people is static so the people will change over time their

00:25:49.920 needs and desires and will change over time. And so therefore their governments will change over

00:25:56.040 time. In the United States, we kind of do this little trick. See, we don't number our republics

00:26:01.340 the way that, say, like France does. And so we pretend like we've had this one homogenous rule

00:26:07.500 the entire existence of the United States. Of course, that's not true at all. We started under

00:26:11.960 the Articles of Confederation. We dissolved those improperly. We didn't take a vote. We didn't follow

00:26:17.340 the rules of articles of confederation our elites just said all right we're going to pass the

00:26:21.420 constitution now and even inside the constitution we've had a very radically different ways of

00:26:27.840 governance so for instance the president presidencies of say fdr and abraham lincoln are

00:26:33.840 very close to dictatorial i mean people don't remember the fdr literally stole all the gold

00:26:38.640 in the united states he just took it he said you can't own gold anymore and he put it in fort

00:26:43.600 Knox. And we just pretended that's a normal thing that presidents do. We didn't declare that the

00:26:49.580 Constitution was over. We just let the president steal all the gold. And then we moved on. And we

00:26:54.680 pretended that we had the exact same government we had before. And so the United States has had

00:26:59.260 strong men. They've had dictatorial Caesar-like rulers in our history. In fact, they're often

00:27:05.680 the people we revere the most, despite pretending that we care very much about separation of powers

00:27:10.360 and checks and balances and control of the executive office.

00:27:13.540 It's not really the case.

00:27:14.980 We kind of allow these people to rise as necessary.

00:27:17.920 And so as De Maester predicted, we kind of allow our form of government to change in

00:27:23.060 time, even though we technically keep the storyline, the continuity of the people as

00:27:28.480 if we've been one continuous republic this entire time.

00:27:31.620 So will we see a formal change out of the republican form of government?

00:27:36.680 And I don't think so in the same way that Augustus did not formally change Rome into an empire.

00:27:44.740 No one came by and banged a gong and said, the Republic is done, and now Rome is an empire.

00:27:49.320 He simply slowly acquired the powers of the Principate and put them together.

00:27:54.680 And a couple generations later, no one could imagine that a Caesar didn't have all these powers, even though there was no formal declaration of this imperial title for Augustus.

00:28:06.500 He was simply the first citizen.

00:28:09.260 And so I think that's probably the situation we're heading towards, assuming that America holds together as one political entity.

00:28:15.860 I'm actually a little skeptical that that will continue.

00:28:18.720 But if it does, I don't think we'll see a formal announcement that we've moved to the American imperium.

00:28:26.000 Right. I think that's fair.

00:28:27.440 So talk about that for a moment.

00:28:28.920 Talk about the nation splitting.

00:28:30.200 What do you see is make your go ahead and pull out your crystal ball and give us some predictions.

00:28:38.160 Well, a lot of people talk about national divorce, right?

00:28:40.760 We hear this this phrase thrown around a lot.

00:28:43.600 Now, I'm skeptical again that we're ever going to get some official secession.

00:28:47.820 I think the question of secession, for better or for worse, was kind of answered in the 1860s.

00:28:52.680 And we're probably not going to see any any official move in that direction.

00:28:56.940 However, I think we can all feel that the competency of our current state is collapsing. We can feel that competency crisis and what's happening there. And it's also becoming very clear that states like Florida that completely ignored what the federal government demanded that they do during COVID fared much better than those that complied with everything that the central government demanded of them.

00:29:18.580 We're also seeing this with things like immigration.

00:29:20.900 We see guys like Greg Abbott and now probably Ron DeSantis with possible mass migration from people fleeing the Haitian Civil War have being tested.

00:29:30.040 Like, will you protect your state from an invasion?

00:29:32.840 Because the federal government isn't doing it.

00:29:34.460 In fact, they're actively importing it.

00:29:36.620 They're facilitating it.

00:29:38.280 Are you willing to take independent executive action?

00:29:41.180 And as we saw with Greg Abbott, when he started to lock down Eagle Pass, the federal government threatened him and said there was going to be a lot of retaliation and then nothing happened.

00:29:51.220 Right. And every time there's a check on sovereignty like that, every time the federal government has to go head to head with somebody and loses the battle and there are no consequences, people start to notice and they say, hey, man, would you rather live in a state where your borders are protected and people are allowed to go outside, even though the news is telling them that they're dying from a pandemic?

00:30:12.140 Or, you know, do you want to constantly be waiting for the 19th booster and, you know, keeping your kids home from school because you have to house the next wave of illegal immigrants in their classroom and people start making their choices? 0.94

00:30:25.220 You know, my state, Florida, is now currently flooded with people who, you know, came from New York and these other New Jersey, these other places that had these wild COVID lockdowns. 0.97

00:30:36.320 And so what I think we're going to see is probably that people simply start ignoring the federal government more and more, that they're going to fail these tests of sovereignty and power is going to accumulate in these regions.

00:30:48.820 And like many empires before it, the United States will probably just slowly come apart, not with any official declaration, but simply because the different territories realize that it's better to govern themselves than to continue to kick authority back up to Washington.

00:31:03.960 Right. Yeah.

00:31:04.820 My family and I and seven other families, we left at the end of 2020.

00:31:09.420 I was born and raised in Texas, but I had moved in 2009 to California to plant a church in Southern California and handed the church over in 2020.

00:31:21.600 And at the end of that year, my family and seven other families, we all moved to Texas, back to where I grew up.

00:31:29.680 and um and i wrote this little book i've got it next to me but uh fight by flight which is a

00:31:36.040 glorified blog um you know with uh just massive font to to get to 100 pages but basically it's a

00:31:43.900 simple concept but just saying that um i don't think it's just you know one of two choices that

00:31:48.580 i stay and fight fight the good fight in my blue state um or i surrender and quit and give up and

00:31:55.140 lose by leaving um i i think one of the ways that um that people can fight blue states is uh and i

00:32:02.240 think one of the more effective ways is to leave um to stop propping them up with uh your business

00:32:08.720 your taxes you know um that uh one of the you know california if you know six 16 million professing

00:32:16.060 christians and you know a state of 42 million population um six million voted for trump you

00:32:23.000 know so like six million people took their vote flushed it down the toilet because it was 12

00:32:27.480 million for biden um so not even close uh when you know at the electoral level it is less than

00:32:33.180 50 000 votes and you know like three or four states respectively uh that would have flipped

00:32:38.520 you know trump uh winning the presidency and so um i i really do think that that's that's one of

00:32:44.240 the ways that you know a practical way that you can fight back and i know that's not for everybody

00:32:47.800 so you know some people there are uh extenuating circumstances some people really are missionaries

00:32:52.980 So that's, that's one, you know, like we send people to the Sudan, um, but we don't send

00:32:57.840 everyone to the Sudan.

00:32:59.040 And I think that as we move more into like Aaron Wren's conception, you know, of, of

00:33:04.100 negative world, um, I think as the America becomes more hostile towards Christ, I think

00:33:11.540 we're going to need to start thinking about certain States in the way that we previously

00:33:15.000 have thought about certain countries when it comes to missions that, um, okay, these

00:33:19.340 people these places still need the gospel they still need churches they still need ministers

00:33:23.900 um but but we would we would look for certain qualifications we want to send just anyone

00:33:30.540 right like there's 16 million professing christians in california um i don't think

00:33:35.240 all 16 million of them are missionary caliber i think you know that a lot of them uh probably

00:33:42.640 he should consider uh leaving and then maybe newsome finally has to lie in the bed that he's

00:33:49.800 been making for years um maybe he actually has to take a spoonful of his own medicine you know

00:33:57.180 that he's not bailed out and maybe not you know maybe that that's ineffective maybe it doesn't

00:34:01.040 work um but all that being said you know to your point echoing your point of um yeah a lot of people

00:34:07.760 are are moving and balkanizing you know some of the guys on twitter like no don't balkanize

00:34:15.300 live near the coast to save that state and also go on a cruise and pay money um you know i i just

00:34:23.680 think that's insane to ask christians to sacrifice their kids because that's what you're asking

00:34:27.800 you're asking christians to uh very with a you know not a guarantee but but a very high likelihood

00:34:34.320 of their children, if they remain in that state with those schools and those laws and that culture,

00:34:41.880 they're basically saying, in the name of evangelism, would you give up your kids?

00:34:47.340 And people make that trade because that's literally what we've been doing, I think,

00:34:50.300 for like six decades. That is Southern Baptist. Personal evangelism. Meanwhile, all your kids

00:34:56.040 grow up, you put them in public school, and they're all atheists now. But do you have any

00:34:59.540 thoughts on that? Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's exactly correct. We have this idea that we have to

00:35:05.040 win everywhere all the time. And if we aren't, if we aren't constantly evangelizing, if we aren't

00:35:09.720 constantly changing the culture everywhere, then we're not doing it anywhere. And this is, I think,

00:35:14.900 a failure on a lot of levels to understand human organization. I think we have a very serious

00:35:20.980 problem of scale of civilization involved here, where we have adopted the idea that we must

00:35:28.640 convert the entire empire and you need to understand america as an empire not as simply

00:35:33.460 a nation if you if you if you think of it as a as a nation you will fail this test uh but you

00:35:39.180 we have to win the whole empire once or not at all and that that's just a terrible way to

00:35:43.440 understand things one of the hardest problems with christian nationalism and i think i think

00:35:50.440 christians attempting to involve themselves in politics is we have lost the idea of what a nation

00:35:57.460 even is. We can't even define it. We don't understand it. One of my problems with the 0.80

00:36:01.860 phrase Christian nationalism is not that I disagree with pretty much anything that Christian

00:36:05.940 nationalists want to do in general, but that it avoids the more difficult question of what a

00:36:12.520 nation really is. And I know Stephen Wolf talked about this somewhat in his book. I haven't read

00:36:16.400 it yet, but I've been told that he did address this. But until we understand that and understand

00:36:22.900 that you know yes america is a christian nation but armenia was a christian nation you know

00:36:28.080 ethiopia is a christian nation that's not sufficient to explain what you are as an american

00:36:33.120 and not to say that christianity or christ is not sufficient but this is simply not what defines

00:36:38.360 in its entirety what people are and so for us to be a people first we must be geographically

00:36:45.440 concentrated that's what defines a nation that's why for instance one of i think the top priorities

00:36:51.120 to create any kind of understanding and shared identity as Americans is closing the borders.

00:36:56.220 Because unless you have a set population that can understand their relationship with each other,

00:37:01.560 you can never bind into one people. You can't constantly have this massive turnover and still

00:37:08.040 create an identity and a shared moral vision cemented in Christianity or anything else,

00:37:13.620 because you're constantly changing who is involved in your society. And this constant

00:37:17.500 renegotiation makes it impossible for you to understand this. And so I think geographic

00:37:22.440 concentration is critical, especially as the culture becomes more hostile. Like you said,

00:37:27.900 I had Aaron Ren on recently. And one of the things that both he and I have talked about is that

00:37:33.360 we have to start looking at this as people who are in a minority situation. When the Catholics

00:37:40.440 or the Jews came to America, they created their own schools. They didn't let Protestants raise 1.00

00:37:46.660 their children because they wanted to have their religion and their culture continue even though

00:37:51.580 the majority of that culture was not catholic or jewish protestants used to be able to just assume

00:37:57.340 that if your kid went into a public school classroom they were going to get a generic

00:38:01.540 protestant education we we called it american education but that's not what it was and we can't

00:38:06.880 do that anymore and so we have to start thinking more like people who do not live in a culture that

00:38:11.540 it's default assigned with their values and their identity. Right. No, I think you're absolutely

00:38:18.360 right. A nation is not an economic zone. It's not merely a set of moral principles. It has to be

00:38:26.080 at some level, at the most basic level, it has to be people in place. It's actually land. It's

00:38:33.240 actually people um a particular people and uh multiculturalism is not your friend um we you

00:38:41.540 know we have to have borders or you don't have a nation and you know if we had borders and a

00:38:47.120 generation passed we probably would over time um have a lot more unity diversity has not been our

00:38:54.740 strength um and and that's not to say you know everybody hears that and they're like oh so you

00:38:59.780 just want um the nation to be 100 white people no i i want the nation to be uh people who have

00:39:06.220 the same culture i don't i don't i don't particularly care what color the people are

00:39:09.780 but i want them to have the same culture i want them for for certain to have the same religion

00:39:15.120 culture cultists the latin word worship i want um i want us to have the same culture to where

00:39:21.780 you know if if we shut down the borders today and and held that tightly um then you know my

00:39:29.860 grandkids could live next to their black neighbor and um and they'd be able to share in common

00:39:37.880 uh that their fathers and grandfathers uh fought in the same wars hold the same traditions um

00:39:45.320 have the same religion the same theological convictions at least generally so like you're

00:39:50.500 still going to have denominations and different variations, but, but yeah, you can't, you can't

00:39:56.620 do that when, when your nation has no borders and it's just an economic zone that you just move in

00:40:04.420 and move out, you know, at free will. And it doesn't, so yeah, we, we're, yeah, we're not much

00:40:11.760 of a nation these days, but I think we can be. And, and that's everybody, you know, again,

00:40:17.240 back to the Christian nationalist thing that they try to make it a boogeyman. Christian nationalism 0.90

00:40:20.880 is really just, it's just racist. You know, they just want it all to be white people. No, I, but 0.99

00:40:27.820 I do want America to be uniquely Christian and beyond that, because you're saying, well, okay, 0.83

00:40:34.120 but what if Japan's Christian? And what if, you know, Argentina is Christian? And what if, you 0.97

00:40:38.240 know, then, then what, what makes America unique? Well, the geographic center, its borders, its

00:40:45.500 land. But in speaking of its people, I would say what, what makes America unique is as opposed to

00:40:53.360 other European countries is that America was uniquely Protestant. You know, so different 0.92

00:40:59.220 expressions, theological expressions of, of Christian thought. I think that America these

00:41:06.180 days, you know, we were kind of, it started in many ways as a Presbyterian revolt, you know,

00:41:10.480 the black robe regiment and um i think that if we could get back to a christian center um america

00:41:17.220 would actually be uniquely um protestant and particularly baptist that might be american

00:41:23.000 culture is uh americans are baptist that's what they are and that would be great i don't think

00:41:29.740 there'd be anything you know bad about that but but it would have to be shared it would have to

00:41:33.780 be common among the people. It can't just be all these splintered factions or you can't keep a

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00:44:08.180 Yeah, when we look at the geographic size of America, obviously, if this was a European country, yeah, it's funny, go to England, and it's like, yeah, this entire country, which is not a small country by European standards, is the size of my state, right?

00:44:24.960 And so if we were a European country, we'd be many different countries, we would be very recognizably an empire anywhere else.

00:44:33.200 And the size of America has always had a very distinct impact on its identity.

00:44:38.180 We always had multiple different types of Protestants, even Catholics and others in the colonies.

00:44:45.640 They all kind of broke out into their own.

00:44:48.060 Most people don't know that the separation of church and state isn't in the Constitution and still the incorporation of First Amendment.

00:44:54.840 You were allowed to have state churches and we did.

00:44:58.340 And these things were very common that this is part of the American experience in a way that we've kind of cleansed from history.

00:45:05.200 So we can pretend that this is some kind of secular nation and always has been. And so these different identities existed regionally. People in New England were very different from people in North Carolina or Georgia, but they all shared this kind of general identity as Americans.

00:45:23.820 And that was okay, because we used to be these United States. And that regionalism allowed us to have significant cultural and even religious differences, while still binding together in a way that allowed us to cooperate and have a shared identity.

00:45:38.820 and in a weird way we kind of destroyed that post-World War II especially right after the

00:45:45.460 Civil War and then World War II ironically that the radio and shared public education

00:45:50.200 kind of just attempted to homogenize the entirety of American identity and it's created a very weird

00:45:56.960 scenario where everyone had to fit into this cookie cutter box of what America was going to

00:46:01.380 be because it got piped in through your television set and we're kind of seeing that come back apart

00:46:06.360 right now. So I don't think there's anything wrong necessarily with different states or

00:46:11.060 different regions having very different ways of being and different understandings. But like you

00:46:16.140 said, there has to be an overarching thing that gels the country together. And that was most

00:46:22.320 assuredly Protestant Christianity. But with the abandonment of that, we've gotten this 0.85

00:46:26.920 heretical version of it in wokeness. And it's all of the most radical universalist strain of

00:46:34.280 protestantism without any of the you know god and so obviously it's it's doing its best to be this

00:46:40.840 kind of gutter religion that binds the country together uh but in the most horrific way possible

00:46:45.400 right yeah it seems like if there's anything that america now you know a universal thing that like

00:46:53.140 what is america what it's um anti-racist yep that's that's what america is which really um

00:47:00.020 if you if you want to you know spell that out more more accurately um america is a country

00:47:07.240 that hates itself uh that i mean that's that's really what it is japan doesn't hate itself

00:47:13.220 japan isn't losing sleep you know um you know burdened by guilt um they're they're perfectly

00:47:21.020 comfortable being japanese and china is perfectly comfortable um i feel like we're we're only you

00:47:27.200 know one of the few countries that um that that you know uh is ashamed of our past um hates

00:47:35.360 ourselves you know and i you know i've been telling people um i feel like two things that

00:47:40.160 you need in terms of like a positive vision if you if there's going to be any hope is um honor

00:47:45.340 for your fathers and hope for the future uh whereas i feel like we have uh disdain for our

00:47:52.340 fathers and um and you know doubt and despair for the future and uh if if you don't and i think a

00:48:01.580 lot of that actually is religious i think a lot of that is dispensationalism i think a lot of that

00:48:05.700 is you know boomer theology like you said like there's no hope for the future and we've all been

00:48:09.900 taught that um our founding uh not just for our nation but but you know the last 2 000 years of

00:48:15.840 christianity is mostly bad um that the features are all the bad things and the bugs are you know

00:48:21.900 every now and then we got it right, you know, so that we're marked by the Spanish inquisition and, 0.99

00:48:27.360 um, you know, all these, you know, terrible, terrible things. And so if that's, if that's the,

00:48:32.500 the, the frame of mind for the people is that, um, that our past was bad and our future is, uh,

00:48:38.960 bleak, then, um, there's not much, there's just not much that you can do. Um, so I, I don't know,

00:48:45.540 I think people, I, you know, a lot of the things that have been helpful for me over the past few

00:48:50.020 years is, you know, continuing to read theology, but realizing just how, um, how weak my understanding

00:48:57.980 was of history. Like I've had to read a lot more history, um, and, and trying to read, you know,

00:49:04.540 about history. That's not just a revisionist, you know, um, trying to find primary sources and

00:49:11.080 what actually happened. Um, you know, what were the crusades all bad? What, you know,

00:49:16.100 was this good? Was this bad? So do you think there's any hope for Americans to be, to relearn,

00:49:22.580 to, to be, to be taught? Or do you think that the post-war consensus is just done irrevocable

00:49:28.620 damage? I think the post-war consensus probably has done some pretty serious damage. And I think

00:49:35.100 that at this point where we're in a scenario where the only way out is through. I think that

00:49:41.120 you have a honorable history of america i think there is a lot to rescue from this but i think

00:49:50.000 that we're we're in we're really through this post-modern setting at this point where people

00:49:55.580 have lost that continuity of history and you're not going to probably go ahead and just

00:50:03.460 revivify that by giving everyone more intense civics lessons you know cicero said that to not

00:50:11.560 know history is to always remain a child and that the purpose of a man's life is to be woven into

00:50:17.460 the great chain of being into the tapestry of their ancestors and we have completely abandoned

00:50:23.940 that like you said we've rejected our ancestors we cast them down what one of the things that

00:50:29.180 even probably most christians most conservatives you know baptists and many have have done is

00:50:34.800 they've they've followed the you know replaced the story of the founding fathers with the story

00:50:39.420 of the civil rights revolution america was a country born in sin and iniquity and it's only

00:50:44.780 through the constant uh you know remission of of racial sins that we can go ahead and uh you know 0.67

00:50:51.660 become something new and better that's that's a terrible way to live like you said that that's a 0.63

00:50:55.560 that's a doctrine of self-annihilation and we have to have an identity that is something that

00:51:00.400 we can be proud of something that we can care about something we can hand proudly to our

00:51:04.240 posterity and that means probably re-establishing a way of being i mean what do we have at this

00:51:10.060 point c.s lewis predicted the abolition of man because he said eventually the social engineers

00:51:16.780 would figure out everything about kind of what makes a man a man and they would strip them out

00:51:21.560 and reconfigure it and if that's not what we've done through our uh through our advertisements

00:51:28.800 through our social media and everything else simply strip the human down to its constituent

00:51:34.060 parts and reprogram that to consume things then i don't know what else has happened and so if we're

00:51:39.760 going to be human again if we're going to return to to uh being a real a real people grounded in

00:51:47.160 an identity and a history, being connected to our God and worshiping, that necessarily requires us

00:51:54.020 to go back to an existence where we're probably, again, geographically concentrated, building a

00:52:01.280 tradition. We have to start that culture again anew because what was before has been more or

00:52:08.500 less made unaccessible to us. It's hard for many people to even grasp what that would mean.

00:52:14.480 And so I think that that starts again, I think, with scaling things down, not trying to convert the entire country or the entire world, but first looking to your neighbor and being like, do I know them? Can we hold each other accountable? Can we share a faith together? Do our families grow together? That's a much more important task right now than getting your Jesus commercial on the Super Bowl.

00:52:37.480 right especially if your jesus commercial sucks yeah um yeah no that's really good uh as you were 0.98

00:52:44.160 talking it just made me think about you know again um dishonoring your fathers being you know 0.97

00:52:49.940 being taught this revisionist history that they were all bad and that we just basically need to

00:52:53.660 atone for the sins of our fathers and that's our entire existence um it makes me think you know

00:52:59.920 it's it's almost feels like too on the nose but i you know but i think it's just because god's

00:53:06.660 word is living and active and relevant and applicable. Um, so I don't, I don't think it's

00:53:11.120 too obvious. I think it's exactly true. The fifth commandment, um, you know, the apostle Paul

00:53:16.980 brings it back up in Ephesians, um, and says, you know, this is the first commandment with a promise

00:53:21.500 and the, and the promise is the fifth commandment to honor thy father and mother.

00:53:25.720 The promise is that, um, that you would live a long life, but particularly that you would live

00:53:30.280 long in the land um and i think that nations that dishonor their fathers will not last in the land

00:53:38.380 and i'm i think i think the bible means that it's like well what's the deep you know secret

00:53:43.600 metaphorical meaning uh no i think it's just that i think you get kicked out of the land literally

00:53:48.220 um you if you hate your founding hate your fathers hate your history um if if a generation

00:53:57.780 whole cloth is taught to um despise their heritage uh then they will lose it they will

00:54:07.680 they will give it up um you know they'll give it away and and that really is you know like thinking

00:54:15.060 um that our our forefathers were terrible people that's one way that we've dishonored disobeyed

00:54:21.520 you know broken the fifth commandment dishonored our fathers but another way is um is through

00:54:26.680 immigration um our great grandfathers and great great grandfathers and beyond um and mothers for

00:54:35.480 that matter uh they paid an immense price some of them gave their lives um they didn't do that

00:54:42.840 for strangers and that's not because we hate strangers that doesn't mean that that you know

00:54:48.580 that somebody from another nation is bad we're not saying that but what we're saying it like

00:54:53.140 right now i'm working my butt off as a pastor and then in addition to that you know making right 0.99

00:54:58.300 response ministries i'm with with a couple guys members in my church we're working on starting a

00:55:02.860 soap company it's like why why are you doing you already got enough going on why why the soap

00:55:06.920 company um because i want to leave an inheritance to my children's children because the bible

00:55:11.300 commands me to do so um and that inheritance can be nothing less than a spiritual inheritance

00:55:16.040 teaching them uh the truths of christ uh but i would be shocked if it's not more i don't think

00:55:22.020 it's merely a spiritual inheritance um i think that inheritance is spiritual and i think it

00:55:27.340 includes cash i just think it does and so so my point is i'm working my butt off uh but here's

00:55:34.900 the deal i am not working my butt off uh for a child in uganda and and i think children in uganda

00:55:42.580 are great love them but i don't love them like i love my kids not even close um our forefathers

00:55:50.360 died. They died for their posterity. And when their posterity gives away a legacy that we

00:56:00.900 didn't earn, but that our forefathers died for to strangers, we are breaking the fifth commandment

00:56:07.660 and not honoring our father and mother. And the fifth commandment is the first commandment that

00:56:12.100 comes with the promise that you will live and specifically in the land. And yeah, right now,

00:56:17.620 i think we're in the process of of losing the land shocker yeah no i would 100 agree i think

00:56:24.040 what happened um is that we told ourselves a story because it allowed us to not have to work

00:56:32.040 very hard and the story was this america is a land of individualism we are individuals the the

00:56:37.680 capable individual is the key building block of of kind of liberty and freedom and so therefore

00:56:43.580 I don't have a duty to my children or my children's children.

00:56:46.860 I have a duty to the generations that will follow me in my posterity because, well, they need to learn how to do all this on their own.

00:56:54.080 I don't want to spoil them. Right. I don't want to. And so it's OK if I go ahead and go on my 19th cruise or whatever.

00:57:01.340 And it's OK if the borders open because I get me a really cheap labor, because ultimately, like my kid will just have to find it out. 0.99

00:57:08.060 And I mean, aren't people from other nations just as good as my kid? 1.00

00:57:10.800 And there's no reason for me to go ahead and prefer this. 1.00

00:57:13.100 What we did is we allowed ourselves to abdicate our responsibilities.

00:57:18.580 The truth is that sovereignty lies in duty and reliance, right?

00:57:23.700 The ability of one to trust others and the duty of one to care for others is what actually

00:57:31.300 binds a society together and what gives a group its sovereignty and its continuity.

00:57:36.500 And if we abandon those things, then they don't just go away.

00:57:40.580 People don't stop being dependent.

00:57:42.580 I hate to break to everyone listening to this, but you're not an island. You're not self-sufficient. You need a lot of things, including your church and your family, your community and everything around you. And so do your children. And if they don't get it from you, they'll get it from someone else. And the people they're getting it from is the government.

00:58:00.180 One of the reasons that we have the kind of government we have now, the reason we have the total state, as I call it in my book, is because we abdicated all of those responsibilities, the different intermediate institutions that stood between the individual and the all-consuming government.

00:58:19.660 Governments didn't used to be able to wield the level of control they have now because they didn't teach your kids, because they didn't take care of your parents when they got old, because they didn't provide you their health care.

00:58:29.600 These are all things your community did your family did, but it's a lot easier to tell ourselves. Oh, well, I don't want to spoil my cat. I don't want to make them dependent on me. So I'll just turn them loose, which means I'll just turn them over to the government is actually what you're saying.

00:58:43.740 and so if we if we have this idea that everyone is american everyone can become an american anyone

00:58:50.980 can walk in at any time and just become an american then it absolves us the duty to our

00:58:56.440 neighbor because who's our yeah i had phil fisher the guy from veggie tales uh telling me this on

00:59:02.220 twitter everyone's our neighbor and it's like phil if everyone's our neighbor then nobody's our

00:59:06.980 neighbor there is no duty to anyone we can't have a duty to everyone there's no such thing as a duty

00:59:12.900 to everyone. No one is capable of that. We are only able to be bound to a certain number of 0.92

00:59:19.760 people and hold a particular duty to a certain number of people. And if we don't have an idea

00:59:23.640 of who those people are, then we just don't take care of anyone.

00:59:27.800 You're right. Yeah, Bob the Tomato has been sorely disappointed with Phil for a very long time.

00:59:33.000 But with that, it's just such theological ignorance. So theologically, that's the whole

00:59:38.360 point. When Jesus is talking about the Good Samaritan and he's talking about love for

00:59:42.700 neighbor. Well, who is my neighbor? Um, and then he tells, you know, like this parable of the Good

00:59:46.800 Samaritan and it's the guy that you least expect. Um, and, and there is theologically, I mean,

00:59:53.100 theologians have hold this, held this forever and long before the reformed tradition for 2000 years,

00:59:58.420 Augustine, plenty of guys, um, that there is a sense in which we have a universal neighborhood,

01:00:03.480 um, that every human being created in the image of God is our neighbor. However, Augustine and

01:00:09.380 the Reformed tradition after him and everybody else has also argued the order of loves, that

01:00:16.640 everyone may be our neighbor, but we are not equally obligated, morally obligated to all

01:00:24.740 of our neighbors. Every child is my neighbor. But if I clothe children on the other side of the

01:00:33.780 planet and neglect to clothe my own, then the Bible has very harsh words for me. The man who

01:00:39.200 doesn't provide for the members of his own house has denied the faith and is worse than an 1.00

01:00:46.240 unbeliever. He's an apostate. And I think American evangelicals, this is a general, you know, large 0.99

01:00:53.080 swath comment I'm about to make, but in a general sense, American evangelicals are apostates

01:00:58.640 per the apostle Paul. They have denied the faith and are worse than unbelievers because they have 0.92

01:01:05.040 cared more about the children in Uganda than the children at their dinner table. And so yes, 1.00

01:01:13.620 in a technical sense, theologically, everyone is our neighbor, but nowhere in scripture are we told

01:01:19.060 to treat every neighbor with an equal devotion, with an equal love and affection. I love all women,

01:01:28.240 but I love my wife more. And if I didn't, then I wouldn't be a lover of women in a biblical sense.

01:01:36.120 I would just be a womanizer. I would be a pervert. I'd be a loser. I'd be some red pill, you know, 0.99

01:01:41.980 guy who, you know, says get a vasectomy at 20 and never marry. And I repeat myself, a loser. 1.00

01:01:47.960 So I, you know, that's not the way it works. And with the Samaritan, people say, oh, but he's a 0.95

01:01:53.220 Samaritan. He's not even related. And so this is the foreign, you know, immigrant kind of thing

01:01:58.000 going up. No, there's an argument for proximity. Part of the Good Samaritan, theologically what's

01:02:03.780 baked into the equation there, is this is not a Samaritan on the other side of the world.

01:02:07.500 This is a Samaritan who is literally walking right next to a guy who's been beaten up and

01:02:14.060 left for dead. And why is he obligated? Because of their genetic ties? No. Because of religious

01:02:20.220 ties? No. He's obligated because he's there. He's right there. He's right next door. And

01:02:28.060 the guy is right next to him, bleeding out, about to die. And if he doesn't stop, no one

01:02:34.960 else, no one else, it's not just that no one else will, no one else can, no one else is

01:02:39.760 around. And so there is something to be said for, in terms of familial bonds, national

01:02:46.020 bonds. You know, so kin is part, it comes into the equation. Everyone's my neighbor, but there's

01:02:52.120 something to be said for a family in terms of prioritizing one neighbor above the other.

01:02:56.640 There's also something to be said spiritually. So Galatians, Paul says, as often as you have

01:03:00.840 opportunity, do good to all, but especially, that is prioritize the household of faith.

01:03:05.980 So I'm called to, with my finances, practically, spiritually, at every level, emotionally,

01:03:10.400 relationally, to prioritize my brothers and sisters in Christ above, you know, Jesus even

01:03:15.620 says, whatever you do for the least of these. And evangelicals have misinterpreted this for decades.

01:03:19.780 Oh, well, who's the least of these? Who are the people on the margins? Oh, well, it's the illegal

01:03:22.900 immigrant who's being paid pennies on the dollar to do the work that white Americans don't want to 0.87

01:03:27.380 do. And no, no, no. Jesus specifically says, whatever you do for the least of these, my

01:03:32.120 brothers. If you visited, when I was in prison, you came and visited me. When did we visit you?

01:03:37.740 When you visited the least of these, my brothers. The implication there is not that the Christians 0.96

01:03:42.820 went and visited a rapist in jail. No, the implication is they visited a Christian who 0.83

01:03:50.120 was imprisoned for preaching Christ. And the least of these, my brothers among Christians,

01:03:56.360 and as often as you do that, you've done it for Christ himself. We've lost the thread. We've

01:04:03.160 entirely lost the theological thread of the order of loves, which neighbor we... Everyone's your

01:04:11.440 neighbors, sure. But there is a hierarchy. There's a hierarchy of obligations to neighbors. So I have

01:04:17.360 familial ties. I have church ties, you know, spirits to my fellow believer. And then I have

01:04:23.580 national ties to my countrymen. And then if there's anything left over, then yeah, sure.

01:04:31.300 Then maybe I also support some mission agencies or institutions in a third world country that's

01:04:38.540 helping with poverty or something like that. I can consider that as well. That's not wrong to do,

01:04:43.960 but we put the cart before the horse. We just, we turned the whole thing on its head, where it's

01:04:49.840 like my flesh and blood kids, I don't want them to be spoiled so they can fend for themselves.

01:04:55.540 And then the neighbor that I've never even met. And part of it is exactly what you said, Oren.

01:05:01.320 It's not because we grew in love. We became less loving. It's because it was easy. It's easy to

01:05:07.980 love in theory. It's easy to love the people that you've never met, right? Plenty of people

01:05:14.100 love the children in Uganda, but they can't get along with a roommate, right? Yeah, I love all 0.99

01:05:20.040 people except for the people that I happen to meet. And then I realized that I'm actually not

01:05:25.360 too good at love. And that's, I don't know. Any final thoughts? I know we need to land the plane,

01:05:30.940 but any final thoughts about your book or about what we need to do to fix this mess? Is there any

01:05:36.620 hope what do you think like i said i think we really are in the in this kind of the only way

01:05:42.460 uh out is through scenario and so i do think that i i've said this i'm long on americans

01:05:49.260 but i'm probably short on america as it stands now the u.s as a as it's constantly is it's

01:05:55.780 currently constituted as a political entity i think that basically civilization was just never

01:06:00.560 meant to scale this way i think we've lost sight as you say of the the condition of our neighbor

01:06:06.020 because we've decided that everyone else is one and so we we cannot take care of ourselves our

01:06:11.960 community uh and we cannot provide for uh and and share an identity and that will kind of move our

01:06:18.840 community forward and so i think like like i said what is necessary really is to bind ourselves

01:06:24.620 back into those tighter communities uh you know that we have to go ahead and be you know

01:06:31.120 geographically, yes, at first, but in every other way, reconstruct those intermediate

01:06:37.820 institutions. When de Tocqueville came to America, he wrote Democracy in America. The reason he said

01:06:43.160 it worked was because there are all these voluntary associations, all these different

01:06:48.840 social clubs and churches and everything else that Americans spent a lot of their time,

01:06:56.040 you know, they didn't spend a lot of time watching television, obviously it didn't exist,

01:06:58.780 But they didn't spend a lot of free time just idling away.

01:07:02.540 They bound themselves into these social institutions that created these different mutual aid societies and things that meant that the government didn't have to do this kind of thing for them.

01:07:12.940 And so it's that reinstantiation of virtue.

01:07:15.620 But virtue, as Aristotle told us, can only be practiced inside a tradition, inside a community.

01:07:20.500 It can't be in some vast, abstract way.

01:07:23.940 It has to be person to person inside, again, bounded inside that shared understanding and identity.

01:07:31.320 And so that means if we're going to go ahead and create those intermediate institutions again that will allow us to devolve power away from the state and once again be a community, we have to take the responsibility on to ourselves.

01:07:44.660 We have to build stronger families.

01:07:45.960 We have to build stronger churches.

01:07:47.240 We have to be willing to go out and care again for specific groups of people and ensure that their their well-being will continue before we can then expand that and share that with others.

01:07:59.880 And I think that's really the key to getting rid of much of what we're going through now is scaling things down, becoming local again, becoming personal again and recognizing that we can't share.

01:08:12.500 There is no liberty without virtue, and that virtue can, again, only be practiced once

01:08:18.800 we are in a community again.

01:08:20.840 Right.

01:08:21.240 That's great.

01:08:22.160 Well, thanks for coming on the show.

01:08:23.480 Your new book, The Total State, May 7th, it'll be available.

01:08:27.720 And people can follow you on Twitter, I assume?

01:08:31.420 Twitter, YouTube, Substack, Oren McIntyre.

01:08:35.240 Of course, I'm on The Blaze as well.

01:08:37.220 Right.

01:08:37.580 On The Blaze with your podcast.

01:08:39.540 And is it just The Oren McIntyre Show?

01:08:41.400 Or a McIntyre show.

01:08:42.520 I'm on Blaze TV and the podcast as well.

01:08:45.020 All your favorite podcast platforms.

01:08:47.040 Cool.

01:08:47.520 Well, Oren, thanks again for coming on the show.

01:08:49.200 Appreciate it.

01:08:49.820 Thanks for having me.

The NXR Podcast - May 06, 2024

THE INTERVIEW - Why There’s No Going Back To The US Constitution with Auron MacIntyre

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