In this episode of Theology Applied, Pastor Joel Webin is joined by Oren McIntyre, a contributor with The Blaze, to discuss why we should fight for a return to a constitutional republic. Oren has a new book, The Total State, which is out May 7th.
00:01:46.520All right. So you've got a new book coming out. Let's go ahead and plug that first and give us
00:01:51.260a brief synopsis for the listener of why did you write the book? What's it about?
00:01:56.320Sure. I think like a lot of people who probably watch this, I grew up as a talk radio conservative
00:02:01.540standard GOP, neoconservative type of guy. And I went to school for politics. I ended up being
00:02:08.860a political reporter, worked a little bit in politics. And then 2016 and 2020 happened.
00:02:14.300And like a lot of people, I just learned that politics doesn't work at all the way that I
00:02:19.120thought it was power in the united states actually does not conform to the constitution it doesn't
00:02:23.780restrict any of the things that i thought it did and this kind of threw me for a loop and so i kind
00:02:29.360of went on a journey of exploring political theory trying to understand what had happened why we were
00:02:35.740in the situation we were in and how power really works here and as i did that i started to kind of
00:02:42.400collect all of that and put it into youtube essays and eventually that turned into the book and so
00:02:47.460The 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.
00:03:10.720And basically what you're, you're just pulling back the veil that God and his providence pulled
00:03:17.040back for you, you know, at a personal level over 2016 and 2020 and just realizing, I think, you
00:03:23.220know, like, you know, one mutual that you obviously know and that I've had the pleasure of getting to
00:03:28.280know Steve Dace. How does he say it? We're not a nation of laws and never will be. We are a nation
00:03:33.960of political will or do you know what I'm referencing? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And he's
00:03:38.400exactly right about that. That's a deeper insight that I think a lot of people realize of what a
00:03:43.480nation really is at the end of the day. It's not a constitution. It's not a piece of paper. It's a
00:03:48.700people with a particular way of being. And that's certainly something that I learned on my journey
00:03:53.420when writing that book. Right. The people and their political and moral, religious will. I
00:04:00.060think back to COVID, the restrictions and the lockdowns and the mask mandates and all those
00:04:06.360things um it ended precisely at the moment that the american people said we're done
00:04:12.780that's that's when it wasn't the science did not change the political science changed
00:04:18.580and what changed the political science was um the critical mass of the american people saying okay
00:04:24.500that's enough we're done and then it just was over yeah it was the elites realizing that there
00:04:30.000was a limit to how far they could push people how far they could manipulate people and they
00:04:34.600got away with too much and they pushed them too far but there was a natural limit and you're
00:04:38.360exactly right well all of a sudden we got a scaling down oh you don't have to be six feet
00:04:42.180away you could be three feet away actually you can be right next to each other maybe you need a
00:04:45.700mask well maybe you don't need it at all maybe it doesn't really do anything yeah how many vaccines
00:04:50.300we kind of lost count we're not sure it really was just commiserate with people saying we're done
00:04:56.140yeah when people said we're done all of a sudden the rules changed um yeah so let's let's talk
00:05:02.380about the constitution briefly. So I, I, you know, um, um, uh, I'm one of the guys who's, you know,
00:05:10.640willing to wear the label Christian nationalists. Like I wouldn't have, you know, Doug Wilson says,
00:05:16.020I wouldn't have chosen that label for myself. I wouldn't have picked it, you know, out of a hat.
00:05:19.580Um, but there's, uh, lots of pejoratives that will be thrown at, uh, the conservative Christian
00:05:25.920right. And, uh, and it's somewhat rare that they, uh, they pick a pejorative that you can actually
00:05:32.820work with. Um, it's like, well, yeah, I can, I could work with that. Um, I know that some of
00:05:37.860your, um, hesitancy with that label is, uh, and I think you're right about this is recognizing that
00:05:43.220Christian nationalists is really just a placeholder for white Christian nationalists. Um, that's what
00:05:48.440they mean. That's what the left means that this ethnocentric, you're a racist. When they say you're0.98
00:05:52.980a Christian nationalist, they mean you're a racist, right? Exactly. Yeah. It's a way for them
00:05:58.520to go ahead and link Christianity to their anti-fascist crusade, which is the animating
00:06:03.120ideology of our current regime. To be very clear, people are confused about what ideology binds this
00:06:09.980very diverse coalition of the left together. And it's really that they think they're putting Red
00:06:14.820America through denazification. That's insane, of course, when you look at Red America and its
00:06:20.180beliefs and its level of tolerance but they don't care that that's what animates them that's what0.96
00:06:24.560puts them together and so when they tried to coin the phrase christian nationalist of course it had
00:06:29.500existed before them it was not something created wholly by the media however it was certainly
00:06:34.960thrust on to people who want to see uh christians take a more active role in the government do you
00:06:42.020want to see a return to the idea that biblical values should be reflected and that there's
00:06:45.300no problem with basing your law on the law of God, that these things are in no way mutually
00:06:51.100exclusive. They went ahead and thrust that title on them for a reason, because they knew for better
00:06:57.200or for worse that white evangelicals are one of the largest and most powerful forces in the United
00:07:03.140States, and one of those that are most likely to continue to have Christian values. And so they
00:07:07.940wanted to single them out, they wanted to demonize them, and they wanted an easy catchphrase to go
00:07:12.200ahead and sweep them into this crusade against hate racism all these things right right uh so
00:07:19.820within the christian nationalist banner there there are lots of variations and lots of different
00:07:25.760definitions lots of you know um but i think you know that that's part of the difficulty
00:07:29.620but 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
00:07:36.460where guys of different persuasions can partner together and work towards, you know, a common
00:07:42.540cause. But one of the, if I think of, you know, well, what's the lowest common denominator
00:07:47.640that pretty much every Christian nationalist would agree with? I think one is that, you know,0.68
00:07:55.840most of the Christian nationalists that I speak to believe that God could change the nation,
00:08:02.260not just in one way, but in one of two ways. And the two ways being he could send revival,
00:08:10.520there could be a mass move of his spirit across the land and through preachers and churches and
00:08:15.400gospel heralding that people are born again and that there's mass conversion and regeneration
00:08:22.840and we just have more Christians and that these Christians then exercise their political will.
00:08:30.480And, you know, if we have numbers on our side, then, you know, things start to get better.
00:08:34.060And I absolutely think that that's something God can do.
00:08:36.980I see as a drawback there, though, I think, you know, some would say, well, we've never had the numbers on our side.
00:08:43.620You 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.
00:08:52.060You know, so we've never really had the numbers on our side.
00:08:54.580And even if the numbers are there in terms of church attendance at, you know, Protestant
00:08:58.260evangelical churches, you know, half of the people aren't truly born again.
00:09:47.220And 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.
00:10:03.940No, it's just in the province of God. You get a Josiah. Josiah begins to legislate and enforce
00:10:10.580righteous laws and tear down the high places. And that functions as a tutor that begins to
00:10:16.460righteous laws enforced with power begins to disciple the people and the hearts of the people
00:10:23.220change. And then, you know, that's Old Testament, but then over the last 2000 years of church
00:10:27.480history, not just the history of Israel under the old covenant, but you look at whether it's King
00:10:32.240Alfred or Constantine or Charlemagne or all these different examples, I feel as though, yes, God has
00:10:40.820sent revival, but often if we're looking at the chronological order, it does seem as though in
00:10:46.300the province of God, it's a small percentage of the population that's strategic and organized
00:10:52.480and that accrues power, which power is not inherently evil. It depends how you wield it.
00:11:00.440It'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.
00:11:26.880It doesn't save people, but it becomes a context for gospel preaching, which does save people.
00:11:31.840And 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
00:11:52.540I 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.
00:12:11.320This 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.
00:12:25.840But 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.
00:12:34.220These things were wildly unpopular not very long ago.
00:12:38.000the gay marriage was voted down in california in proposition eight not that long ago barack obama
00:12:44.960and hillary clinton had to disavow it in their presidential runs had to say no i'm for the
00:12:49.860traditional definition of a man and a woman that's how unpopular this was just a few decades ago and
00:12:55.720now you get fired for disagreeing with it now you're you're completely unable to be uh even
00:13:00.900employed at a large company if you happen to disagree with this if you have a basic biblical
00:13:06.220view a natural view of what marriage has been for its entire existence and somehow people still
00:13:11.440think that this is all about some kind of marketplace of ideas or popular opinions that
00:13:15.880will rise from the bottom no this is top down again look at look at the speed at which it's
00:13:21.020become normalized to feed puberty blockers to eight-year-olds try telling anyone that 10 years
00:13:25.960ago they'll think you're insane the westboro baptist church wouldn't have warned you against
00:13:29.620this kind of stuff right they would have said no that sounds a little extreme man like i know
00:13:33.200things are bad but it's not going to get that bad and now this is just the reality we live in
00:13:37.380so i think there has to be a real awakening i think a lot of people on the right had what i
00:13:42.900like to call boomer eschatology which is just well america is a christian culture and it'll
00:13:48.340always be a christian culture and if you know the the christian culture ends it can only be because
00:13:52.860it's the end of the world you know that they tied uh american institutions and biblical truth
00:13:58.320one to one and assumed that they would exist side by side in perpetuity and the only thing
00:14:02.700that could possibly rend them apart would be the literal end of all existence. And so they never
00:14:09.460thought that they needed to impose that. They never thought that they needed to maintain
00:14:12.940Christendom. Christendom was just an assumption that would always exist. It was not something
00:14:17.440that we needed to go ahead and maintain. It wasn't just assumed. I think Christendom was
00:14:23.500despised. And when you talk about boomer eschatology, we call that dispensational0.95
00:14:28.800pre-millennialism, because that's what it is. The idea that Jesus is going to come back next0.93
00:14:34.140Thursday and that God has destined. It's written in the stars that things will progressively
00:14:39.820be worse and worse until he does. And then you look back to a Christendom of yesteryear
00:14:46.660and you look back at it with shame, regret, even hatred, despising it, thinking that the thought,
00:14:58.660I think for a lot of evangelical kind of boomer theology is that Christendom lends towards weaker
00:15:05.460pulpits, weaker doctrine, weaker gospel preaching, and false conversions. Because everybody will think
00:15:11.180that they're, you know, culturally Christian. They'll just assume that the nation is Christian,
00:15:15.980the culture is Christian, and therefore that they, as an individual, are Christian in the
00:15:19.480proper sense, capital C Christian, that they're regenerate and born again and going to heaven when
00:15:24.320they die. And therefore, you know, it's going to be a net loss. Christian culture is a net loss0.97
00:15:30.380because you don't have transient kids, but you have millions, you know, people by the millions1.00
00:15:35.820going, you know, bound for hell while thinking that they're bound for heaven, which I just,
00:15:42.840I think that that's a false dichotomy. I completely reject the notion. I forget who it is,
00:15:47.680but some major atheist, one of his main right-hand guys, you know, during COVID, you know,
00:15:52.680was trying to escape all the lockdowns and things like that,
00:15:55.200moved to some tiny little rule, red dot on the map.
00:15:58.640And after being there for six months, he and his wife,
00:16:21.660And 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.
00:27:14.980We kind of allow these people to rise as necessary.
00:27:17.920And so as De Maester predicted, we kind of allow our form of government to change in
00:27:23.060time, even though we technically keep the storyline, the continuity of the people as
00:27:28.480if we've been one continuous republic this entire time.
00:27:31.620So will we see a formal change out of the republican form of government?
00:27:36.680And I don't think so in the same way that Augustus did not formally change Rome into an empire.
00:27:44.740No one came by and banged a gong and said, the Republic is done, and now Rome is an empire.
00:27:49.320He simply slowly acquired the powers of the Principate and put them together.
00:27:54.680And 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.
00:28:30.200What do you see is make your go ahead and pull out your crystal ball and give us some predictions.
00:28:38.160Well, a lot of people talk about national divorce, right?
00:28:40.760We hear this this phrase thrown around a lot.
00:28:43.600Now, I'm skeptical again that we're ever going to get some official secession.
00:28:47.820I think the question of secession, for better or for worse, was kind of answered in the 1860s.
00:28:52.680And we're probably not going to see any any official move in that direction.
00:28:56.940However, 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.
00:29:18.580We're also seeing this with things like immigration.
00:29:20.900We see guys like Greg Abbott and now probably Ron DeSantis with possible mass migration from people fleeing the Haitian Civil War have being tested.
00:29:30.040Like, will you protect your state from an invasion?
00:29:32.840Because the federal government isn't doing it.
00:29:34.460In fact, they're actively importing it.
00:29:38.280Are you willing to take independent executive action?
00:29:41.180And 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.
00:29:51.220Right. 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?
00:30:12.140Or, 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
00:30:25.220You 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
00:30:36.320And 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.
00:30:48.820And 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.
00:31:04.820My family and I and seven other families, we left at the end of 2020.
00:31:09.420I 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.
00:31:21.600And at the end of that year, my family and seven other families, we all moved to Texas, back to where I grew up.
00:31:29.680and um and i wrote this little book i've got it next to me but uh fight by flight which is a
00:31:36.040glorified blog um you know with uh just massive font to to get to 100 pages but basically it's a
00:31:43.900simple concept but just saying that um i don't think it's just you know one of two choices that
00:31:48.580i stay and fight fight the good fight in my blue state um or i surrender and quit and give up and
00:31:55.140lose by leaving um i i think one of the ways that um that people can fight blue states is uh and i
00:32:02.240think one of the more effective ways is to leave um to stop propping them up with uh your business
00:32:08.720your taxes you know um that uh one of the you know california if you know six 16 million professing
00:32:16.060christians and you know a state of 42 million population um six million voted for trump you
00:32:23.000know so like six million people took their vote flushed it down the toilet because it was 12
00:32:27.480million for biden um so not even close uh when you know at the electoral level it is less than
00:32:33.18050 000 votes and you know like three or four states respectively uh that would have flipped
00:32:38.520you know trump uh winning the presidency and so um i i really do think that that's that's one of
00:32:44.240the ways that you know a practical way that you can fight back and i know that's not for everybody
00:32:47.800so you know some people there are uh extenuating circumstances some people really are missionaries
00:32:52.980So that's, that's one, you know, like we send people to the Sudan, um, but we don't send
00:32:59.040And I think that as we move more into like Aaron Wren's conception, you know, of, of
00:33:04.100negative world, um, I think as the America becomes more hostile towards Christ, I think
00:33:11.540we're going to need to start thinking about certain States in the way that we previously
00:33:15.000have thought about certain countries when it comes to missions that, um, okay, these
00:33:19.340people these places still need the gospel they still need churches they still need ministers
00:33:23.900um but but we would we would look for certain qualifications we want to send just anyone
00:33:30.540right like there's 16 million professing christians in california um i don't think
00:33:35.240all 16 million of them are missionary caliber i think you know that a lot of them uh probably
00:33:42.640he should consider uh leaving and then maybe newsome finally has to lie in the bed that he's
00:33:49.800been making for years um maybe he actually has to take a spoonful of his own medicine you know
00:33:57.180that he's not bailed out and maybe not you know maybe that that's ineffective maybe it doesn't
00:34:01.040work um but all that being said you know to your point echoing your point of um yeah a lot of people
00:34:07.760are are moving and balkanizing you know some of the guys on twitter like no don't balkanize
00:34:15.300live near the coast to save that state and also go on a cruise and pay money um you know i i just
00:34:23.680think that's insane to ask christians to sacrifice their kids because that's what you're asking
00:34:27.800you're asking christians to uh very with a you know not a guarantee but but a very high likelihood
00:34:34.320of their children, if they remain in that state with those schools and those laws and that culture,
00:34:41.880they're basically saying, in the name of evangelism, would you give up your kids?
00:34:47.340And people make that trade because that's literally what we've been doing, I think,
00:34:50.300for like six decades. That is Southern Baptist. Personal evangelism. Meanwhile, all your kids
00:34:56.040grow up, you put them in public school, and they're all atheists now. But do you have any
00:34:59.540thoughts on that? Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's exactly correct. We have this idea that we have to
00:35:05.040win everywhere all the time. And if we aren't, if we aren't constantly evangelizing, if we aren't
00:35:09.720constantly changing the culture everywhere, then we're not doing it anywhere. And this is, I think,
00:35:14.900a failure on a lot of levels to understand human organization. I think we have a very serious
00:35:20.980problem of scale of civilization involved here, where we have adopted the idea that we must
00:35:28.640convert the entire empire and you need to understand america as an empire not as simply
00:35:33.460a nation if you if you if you think of it as a as a nation you will fail this test uh but you
00:35:39.180we have to win the whole empire once or not at all and that that's just a terrible way to
00:35:43.440understand things one of the hardest problems with christian nationalism and i think i think
00:35:50.440christians attempting to involve themselves in politics is we have lost the idea of what a nation
00:35:57.460even is. We can't even define it. We don't understand it. One of my problems with the0.80
00:36:01.860phrase Christian nationalism is not that I disagree with pretty much anything that Christian
00:36:05.940nationalists want to do in general, but that it avoids the more difficult question of what a
00:36:12.520nation really is. And I know Stephen Wolf talked about this somewhat in his book. I haven't read
00:36:16.400it yet, but I've been told that he did address this. But until we understand that and understand
00:36:22.900that you know yes america is a christian nation but armenia was a christian nation you know
00:36:28.080ethiopia is a christian nation that's not sufficient to explain what you are as an american
00:36:33.120and not to say that christianity or christ is not sufficient but this is simply not what defines
00:36:38.360in its entirety what people are and so for us to be a people first we must be geographically
00:36:45.440concentrated that's what defines a nation that's why for instance one of i think the top priorities
00:36:51.120to create any kind of understanding and shared identity as Americans is closing the borders.
00:36:56.220Because unless you have a set population that can understand their relationship with each other,
00:37:01.560you can never bind into one people. You can't constantly have this massive turnover and still
00:37:08.040create an identity and a shared moral vision cemented in Christianity or anything else,
00:37:13.620because you're constantly changing who is involved in your society. And this constant
00:37:17.500renegotiation makes it impossible for you to understand this. And so I think geographic
00:37:22.440concentration is critical, especially as the culture becomes more hostile. Like you said,
00:37:27.900I had Aaron Ren on recently. And one of the things that both he and I have talked about is that
00:37:33.360we have to start looking at this as people who are in a minority situation. When the Catholics
00:37:40.440or the Jews came to America, they created their own schools. They didn't let Protestants raise1.00
00:37:46.660their children because they wanted to have their religion and their culture continue even though
00:37:51.580the majority of that culture was not catholic or jewish protestants used to be able to just assume
00:37:57.340that if your kid went into a public school classroom they were going to get a generic
00:38:01.540protestant education we we called it american education but that's not what it was and we can't
00:38:06.880do that anymore and so we have to start thinking more like people who do not live in a culture that
00:38:11.540it's default assigned with their values and their identity. Right. No, I think you're absolutely
00:38:18.360right. A nation is not an economic zone. It's not merely a set of moral principles. It has to be
00:38:26.080at some level, at the most basic level, it has to be people in place. It's actually land. It's
00:38:33.240actually people um a particular people and uh multiculturalism is not your friend um we you
00:38:41.540know we have to have borders or you don't have a nation and you know if we had borders and a
00:38:47.120generation passed we probably would over time um have a lot more unity diversity has not been our
00:38:54.740strength um and and that's not to say you know everybody hears that and they're like oh so you
00:38:59.780just want um the nation to be 100 white people no i i want the nation to be uh people who have
00:39:06.220the same culture i don't i don't i don't particularly care what color the people are
00:39:09.780but i want them to have the same culture i want them for for certain to have the same religion
00:39:15.120culture cultists the latin word worship i want um i want us to have the same culture to where
00:39:21.780you know if if we shut down the borders today and and held that tightly um then you know my
00:39:29.860grandkids could live next to their black neighbor and um and they'd be able to share in common
00:39:37.880uh that their fathers and grandfathers uh fought in the same wars hold the same traditions um
00:39:45.320have the same religion the same theological convictions at least generally so like you're
00:39:50.500still going to have denominations and different variations, but, but yeah, you can't, you can't
00:39:56.620do that when, when your nation has no borders and it's just an economic zone that you just move in
00:40:04.420and move out, you know, at free will. And it doesn't, so yeah, we, we're, yeah, we're not much
00:40:11.760of a nation these days, but I think we can be. And, and that's everybody, you know, again,
00:40:17.240back to the Christian nationalist thing that they try to make it a boogeyman. Christian nationalism0.90
00:40:20.880is really just, it's just racist. You know, they just want it all to be white people. No, I, but0.99
00:40:27.820I do want America to be uniquely Christian and beyond that, because you're saying, well, okay,0.83
00:40:34.120but what if Japan's Christian? And what if, you know, Argentina is Christian? And what if, you0.97
00:40:38.240know, then, then what, what makes America unique? Well, the geographic center, its borders, its
00:40:45.500land. But in speaking of its people, I would say what, what makes America unique is as opposed to
00:40:53.360other European countries is that America was uniquely Protestant. You know, so different0.92
00:40:59.220expressions, theological expressions of, of Christian thought. I think that America these
00:41:06.180days, you know, we were kind of, it started in many ways as a Presbyterian revolt, you know,
00:41:10.480the black robe regiment and um i think that if we could get back to a christian center um america
00:41:17.220would actually be uniquely um protestant and particularly baptist that might be american
00:41:23.000culture is uh americans are baptist that's what they are and that would be great i don't think
00:41:29.740there'd be anything you know bad about that but but it would have to be shared it would have to
00:41:33.780be common among the people. It can't just be all these splintered factions or you can't keep a
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00:44:08.180Yeah, 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?
00:44:24.960And so if we were a European country, we'd be many different countries, we would be very recognizably an empire anywhere else.
00:44:33.200And the size of America has always had a very distinct impact on its identity.
00:44:38.180We always had multiple different types of Protestants, even Catholics and others in the colonies.
00:44:45.640They all kind of broke out into their own.
00:44:48.060Most people don't know that the separation of church and state isn't in the Constitution and still the incorporation of First Amendment.
00:44:54.840You were allowed to have state churches and we did.
00:44:58.340And these things were very common that this is part of the American experience in a way that we've kind of cleansed from history.
00:45:05.200So 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.
00:45:23.820And 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.
00:45:38.820and in a weird way we kind of destroyed that post-World War II especially right after the
00:45:45.460Civil War and then World War II ironically that the radio and shared public education
00:45:50.200kind of just attempted to homogenize the entirety of American identity and it's created a very weird
00:45:56.960scenario where everyone had to fit into this cookie cutter box of what America was going to
00:46:01.380be because it got piped in through your television set and we're kind of seeing that come back apart
00:46:06.360right now. So I don't think there's anything wrong necessarily with different states or
00:46:11.060different regions having very different ways of being and different understandings. But like you
00:46:16.140said, there has to be an overarching thing that gels the country together. And that was most
00:46:22.320assuredly Protestant Christianity. But with the abandonment of that, we've gotten this0.85
00:46:26.920heretical version of it in wokeness. And it's all of the most radical universalist strain of
00:46:34.280protestantism without any of the you know god and so obviously it's it's doing its best to be this
00:46:40.840kind of gutter religion that binds the country together uh but in the most horrific way possible
00:46:45.400right yeah it seems like if there's anything that america now you know a universal thing that like
00:46:53.140what is america what it's um anti-racist yep that's that's what america is which really um
00:47:00.020if you if you want to you know spell that out more more accurately um america is a country
00:47:07.240that hates itself uh that i mean that's that's really what it is japan doesn't hate itself
00:47:13.220japan isn't losing sleep you know um you know burdened by guilt um they're they're perfectly
00:47:21.020comfortable being japanese and china is perfectly comfortable um i feel like we're we're only you
00:47:27.200know one of the few countries that um that that you know uh is ashamed of our past um hates
00:47:35.360ourselves you know and i you know i've been telling people um i feel like two things that
00:47:40.160you need in terms of like a positive vision if you if there's going to be any hope is um honor
00:47:45.340for your fathers and hope for the future uh whereas i feel like we have uh disdain for our
00:47:52.340fathers and um and you know doubt and despair for the future and uh if if you don't and i think a
00:48:01.580lot of that actually is religious i think a lot of that is dispensationalism i think a lot of that
00:48:05.700is you know boomer theology like you said like there's no hope for the future and we've all been
00:48:09.900taught that um our founding uh not just for our nation but but you know the last 2 000 years of
00:48:15.840christianity is mostly bad um that the features are all the bad things and the bugs are you know
00:48:21.900every now and then we got it right, you know, so that we're marked by the Spanish inquisition and,0.99
00:48:27.360um, you know, all these, you know, terrible, terrible things. And so if that's, if that's the,
00:48:32.500the, the frame of mind for the people is that, um, that our past was bad and our future is, uh,
00:48:38.960bleak, then, um, there's not much, there's just not much that you can do. Um, so I, I don't know,
00:48:45.540I think people, I, you know, a lot of the things that have been helpful for me over the past few
00:48:50.020years is, you know, continuing to read theology, but realizing just how, um, how weak my understanding
00:48:57.980was of history. Like I've had to read a lot more history, um, and, and trying to read, you know,
00:49:04.540about history. That's not just a revisionist, you know, um, trying to find primary sources and
00:49:11.080what actually happened. Um, you know, what were the crusades all bad? What, you know,
00:49:16.100was this good? Was this bad? So do you think there's any hope for Americans to be, to relearn,
00:49:22.580to, to be, to be taught? Or do you think that the post-war consensus is just done irrevocable
00:49:28.620damage? I think the post-war consensus probably has done some pretty serious damage. And I think
00:49:35.100that at this point where we're in a scenario where the only way out is through. I think that
00:49:41.120you have a honorable history of america i think there is a lot to rescue from this but i think
00:49:50.000that we're we're in we're really through this post-modern setting at this point where people
00:49:55.580have lost that continuity of history and you're not going to probably go ahead and just
00:50:03.460revivify that by giving everyone more intense civics lessons you know cicero said that to not
00:50:11.560know history is to always remain a child and that the purpose of a man's life is to be woven into
00:50:17.460the great chain of being into the tapestry of their ancestors and we have completely abandoned
00:50:23.940that like you said we've rejected our ancestors we cast them down what one of the things that
00:50:29.180even probably most christians most conservatives you know baptists and many have have done is
00:50:34.800they've they've followed the you know replaced the story of the founding fathers with the story
00:50:39.420of the civil rights revolution america was a country born in sin and iniquity and it's only
00:50:44.780through the constant uh you know remission of of racial sins that we can go ahead and uh you know0.67
00:50:51.660become something new and better that's that's a terrible way to live like you said that that's a0.63
00:50:55.560that's a doctrine of self-annihilation and we have to have an identity that is something that
00:51:00.400we can be proud of something that we can care about something we can hand proudly to our
00:51:04.240posterity and that means probably re-establishing a way of being i mean what do we have at this
00:51:10.060point c.s lewis predicted the abolition of man because he said eventually the social engineers
00:51:16.780would figure out everything about kind of what makes a man a man and they would strip them out
00:51:21.560and reconfigure it and if that's not what we've done through our uh through our advertisements
00:51:28.800through our social media and everything else simply strip the human down to its constituent
00:51:34.060parts and reprogram that to consume things then i don't know what else has happened and so if we're
00:51:39.760going to be human again if we're going to return to to uh being a real a real people grounded in
00:51:47.160an identity and a history, being connected to our God and worshiping, that necessarily requires us
00:51:54.020to go back to an existence where we're probably, again, geographically concentrated, building a
00:52:01.280tradition. We have to start that culture again anew because what was before has been more or
00:52:08.500less made unaccessible to us. It's hard for many people to even grasp what that would mean.
00:52:14.480And 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.
00:52:37.480right especially if your jesus commercial sucks yeah um yeah no that's really good uh as you were0.98
00:52:44.160talking it just made me think about you know again um dishonoring your fathers being you know0.97
00:52:49.940being taught this revisionist history that they were all bad and that we just basically need to
00:52:53.660atone for the sins of our fathers and that's our entire existence um it makes me think you know
00:52:59.920it's it's almost feels like too on the nose but i you know but i think it's just because god's
00:53:06.660word is living and active and relevant and applicable. Um, so I don't, I don't think it's
00:53:11.120too obvious. I think it's exactly true. The fifth commandment, um, you know, the apostle Paul
00:53:16.980brings it back up in Ephesians, um, and says, you know, this is the first commandment with a promise
00:53:21.500and the, and the promise is the fifth commandment to honor thy father and mother.
00:53:25.720The promise is that, um, that you would live a long life, but particularly that you would live
00:53:30.280long in the land um and i think that nations that dishonor their fathers will not last in the land
00:53:38.380and i'm i think i think the bible means that it's like well what's the deep you know secret
00:53:43.600metaphorical meaning uh no i think it's just that i think you get kicked out of the land literally
00:53:48.220um you if you hate your founding hate your fathers hate your history um if if a generation
00:53:57.780whole cloth is taught to um despise their heritage uh then they will lose it they will
00:54:07.680they will give it up um you know they'll give it away and and that really is you know like thinking
00:54:15.060um that our our forefathers were terrible people that's one way that we've dishonored disobeyed
00:54:21.520you know broken the fifth commandment dishonored our fathers but another way is um is through
00:54:26.680immigration um our great grandfathers and great great grandfathers and beyond um and mothers for
00:54:35.480that matter uh they paid an immense price some of them gave their lives um they didn't do that
00:54:42.840for strangers and that's not because we hate strangers that doesn't mean that that you know
00:54:48.580that somebody from another nation is bad we're not saying that but what we're saying it like
00:54:53.140right now i'm working my butt off as a pastor and then in addition to that you know making right0.99
00:54:58.300response ministries i'm with with a couple guys members in my church we're working on starting a
00:55:02.860soap company it's like why why are you doing you already got enough going on why why the soap
00:55:06.920company um because i want to leave an inheritance to my children's children because the bible
00:55:11.300commands me to do so um and that inheritance can be nothing less than a spiritual inheritance
00:55:16.040teaching them uh the truths of christ uh but i would be shocked if it's not more i don't think
00:55:22.020it's merely a spiritual inheritance um i think that inheritance is spiritual and i think it
00:55:27.340includes cash i just think it does and so so my point is i'm working my butt off uh but here's
00:55:34.900the deal i am not working my butt off uh for a child in uganda and and i think children in uganda
00:55:42.580are great love them but i don't love them like i love my kids not even close um our forefathers
00:55:50.360died. They died for their posterity. And when their posterity gives away a legacy that we
00:56:00.900didn't earn, but that our forefathers died for to strangers, we are breaking the fifth commandment
00:56:07.660and not honoring our father and mother. And the fifth commandment is the first commandment that
00:56:12.100comes with the promise that you will live and specifically in the land. And yeah, right now,
00:56:17.620i think we're in the process of of losing the land shocker yeah no i would 100 agree i think
00:56:24.040what happened um is that we told ourselves a story because it allowed us to not have to work
00:56:32.040very hard and the story was this america is a land of individualism we are individuals the the
00:56:37.680capable individual is the key building block of of kind of liberty and freedom and so therefore
00:56:43.580I don't have a duty to my children or my children's children.
00:56:46.860I 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.
00:56:54.080I 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.
00:57:01.340And 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
00:57:08.060And I mean, aren't people from other nations just as good as my kid?1.00
00:57:10.800And there's no reason for me to go ahead and prefer this.1.00
00:57:13.100What we did is we allowed ourselves to abdicate our responsibilities.
00:57:18.580The truth is that sovereignty lies in duty and reliance, right?
00:57:23.700The ability of one to trust others and the duty of one to care for others is what actually
00:57:31.300binds a society together and what gives a group its sovereignty and its continuity.
00:57:36.500And if we abandon those things, then they don't just go away.
00:57:42.580I 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.
00:58:00.180One 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.
00:58:19.660Governments 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.
00:58:29.600These 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.
00:58:43.740and so if we if we have this idea that everyone is american everyone can become an american anyone
00:58:50.980can walk in at any time and just become an american then it absolves us the duty to our
00:58:56.440neighbor because who's our yeah i had phil fisher the guy from veggie tales uh telling me this on
00:59:02.220twitter everyone's our neighbor and it's like phil if everyone's our neighbor then nobody's our
00:59:06.980neighbor there is no duty to anyone we can't have a duty to everyone there's no such thing as a duty
00:59:12.900to everyone. No one is capable of that. We are only able to be bound to a certain number of0.92
00:59:19.760people and hold a particular duty to a certain number of people. And if we don't have an idea
00:59:23.640of who those people are, then we just don't take care of anyone.
00:59:27.800You're right. Yeah, Bob the Tomato has been sorely disappointed with Phil for a very long time.
00:59:33.000But with that, it's just such theological ignorance. So theologically, that's the whole
00:59:38.360point. When Jesus is talking about the Good Samaritan and he's talking about love for
00:59:42.700neighbor. Well, who is my neighbor? Um, and then he tells, you know, like this parable of the Good
00:59:46.800Samaritan and it's the guy that you least expect. Um, and, and there is theologically, I mean,
00:59:53.100theologians have hold this, held this forever and long before the reformed tradition for 2000 years,
00:59:58.420Augustine, plenty of guys, um, that there is a sense in which we have a universal neighborhood,
01:00:03.480um, that every human being created in the image of God is our neighbor. However, Augustine and
01:00:09.380the Reformed tradition after him and everybody else has also argued the order of loves, that
01:00:16.640everyone may be our neighbor, but we are not equally obligated, morally obligated to all
01:00:24.740of our neighbors. Every child is my neighbor. But if I clothe children on the other side of the
01:00:33.780planet and neglect to clothe my own, then the Bible has very harsh words for me. The man who
01:00:39.200doesn't provide for the members of his own house has denied the faith and is worse than an1.00
01:00:46.240unbeliever. He's an apostate. And I think American evangelicals, this is a general, you know, large0.99
01:00:53.080swath comment I'm about to make, but in a general sense, American evangelicals are apostates
01:00:58.640per the apostle Paul. They have denied the faith and are worse than unbelievers because they have0.92
01:01:05.040cared more about the children in Uganda than the children at their dinner table. And so yes,1.00
01:01:13.620in a technical sense, theologically, everyone is our neighbor, but nowhere in scripture are we told
01:01:19.060to treat every neighbor with an equal devotion, with an equal love and affection. I love all women,
01:01:28.240but I love my wife more. And if I didn't, then I wouldn't be a lover of women in a biblical sense.
01:01:36.120I 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
01:01:41.980guy who, you know, says get a vasectomy at 20 and never marry. And I repeat myself, a loser.1.00
01:01:47.960So I, you know, that's not the way it works. And with the Samaritan, people say, oh, but he's a0.95
01:01:53.220Samaritan. He's not even related. And so this is the foreign, you know, immigrant kind of thing
01:01:58.000going up. No, there's an argument for proximity. Part of the Good Samaritan, theologically what's
01:02:03.780baked into the equation there, is this is not a Samaritan on the other side of the world.
01:02:07.500This is a Samaritan who is literally walking right next to a guy who's been beaten up and
01:02:14.060left for dead. And why is he obligated? Because of their genetic ties? No. Because of religious
01:02:20.220ties? No. He's obligated because he's there. He's right there. He's right next door. And
01:02:28.060the guy is right next to him, bleeding out, about to die. And if he doesn't stop, no one
01:02:34.960else, no one else, it's not just that no one else will, no one else can, no one else is
01:02:39.760around. And so there is something to be said for, in terms of familial bonds, national
01:02:46.020bonds. You know, so kin is part, it comes into the equation. Everyone's my neighbor, but there's
01:02:52.120something to be said for a family in terms of prioritizing one neighbor above the other.
01:02:56.640There's also something to be said spiritually. So Galatians, Paul says, as often as you have
01:03:00.840opportunity, do good to all, but especially, that is prioritize the household of faith.
01:03:05.980So I'm called to, with my finances, practically, spiritually, at every level, emotionally,
01:03:10.400relationally, to prioritize my brothers and sisters in Christ above, you know, Jesus even
01:03:15.620says, whatever you do for the least of these. And evangelicals have misinterpreted this for decades.
01:03:19.780Oh, well, who's the least of these? Who are the people on the margins? Oh, well, it's the illegal
01:03:22.900immigrant who's being paid pennies on the dollar to do the work that white Americans don't want to0.87
01:03:27.380do. And no, no, no. Jesus specifically says, whatever you do for the least of these, my
01:03:32.120brothers. If you visited, when I was in prison, you came and visited me. When did we visit you?
01:03:37.740When you visited the least of these, my brothers. The implication there is not that the Christians0.96
01:03:42.820went and visited a rapist in jail. No, the implication is they visited a Christian who0.83
01:03:50.120was imprisoned for preaching Christ. And the least of these, my brothers among Christians,
01:03:56.360and as often as you do that, you've done it for Christ himself. We've lost the thread. We've
01:04:03.160entirely lost the theological thread of the order of loves, which neighbor we... Everyone's your
01:04:11.440neighbors, sure. But there is a hierarchy. There's a hierarchy of obligations to neighbors. So I have
01:04:17.360familial ties. I have church ties, you know, spirits to my fellow believer. And then I have
01:04:23.580national ties to my countrymen. And then if there's anything left over, then yeah, sure.
01:04:31.300Then maybe I also support some mission agencies or institutions in a third world country that's
01:04:38.540helping with poverty or something like that. I can consider that as well. That's not wrong to do,
01:04:43.960but we put the cart before the horse. We just, we turned the whole thing on its head, where it's
01:04:49.840like my flesh and blood kids, I don't want them to be spoiled so they can fend for themselves.
01:04:55.540And then the neighbor that I've never even met. And part of it is exactly what you said, Oren.
01:05:01.320It's not because we grew in love. We became less loving. It's because it was easy. It's easy to
01:05:07.980love in theory. It's easy to love the people that you've never met, right? Plenty of people
01:05:14.100love the children in Uganda, but they can't get along with a roommate, right? Yeah, I love all0.99
01:05:20.040people except for the people that I happen to meet. And then I realized that I'm actually not
01:05:25.360too good at love. And that's, I don't know. Any final thoughts? I know we need to land the plane,
01:05:30.940but any final thoughts about your book or about what we need to do to fix this mess? Is there any
01:05:36.620hope what do you think like i said i think we really are in the in this kind of the only way
01:05:42.460uh out is through scenario and so i do think that i i've said this i'm long on americans
01:05:49.260but i'm probably short on america as it stands now the u.s as a as it's constantly is it's
01:05:55.780currently constituted as a political entity i think that basically civilization was just never
01:06:00.560meant to scale this way i think we've lost sight as you say of the the condition of our neighbor
01:06:06.020because we've decided that everyone else is one and so we we cannot take care of ourselves our
01:06:11.960community uh and we cannot provide for uh and and share an identity and that will kind of move our
01:06:18.840community forward and so i think like like i said what is necessary really is to bind ourselves
01:06:24.620back into those tighter communities uh you know that we have to go ahead and be you know
01:06:31.120geographically, yes, at first, but in every other way, reconstruct those intermediate
01:06:37.820institutions. When de Tocqueville came to America, he wrote Democracy in America. The reason he said
01:06:43.160it worked was because there are all these voluntary associations, all these different
01:06:48.840social clubs and churches and everything else that Americans spent a lot of their time,
01:06:56.040you know, they didn't spend a lot of time watching television, obviously it didn't exist,
01:06:58.780But they didn't spend a lot of free time just idling away.
01:07:02.540They 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.
01:07:12.940And so it's that reinstantiation of virtue.
01:07:15.620But virtue, as Aristotle told us, can only be practiced inside a tradition, inside a community.
01:07:20.500It can't be in some vast, abstract way.
01:07:23.940It has to be person to person inside, again, bounded inside that shared understanding and identity.
01:07:31.320And 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.
01:07:47.240We 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.
01:07:59.880And 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.
01:08:12.500There is no liberty without virtue, and that virtue can, again, only be practiced once