For over a century, duties on foreign goods weren t a last resort. They were the default. Now, in a global economy where everything from lettuce to lithium is imported, the word "tariff" triggers panic in boardrooms and headlines across cable news. To help us break this down, we're joined by Ron Dodson, someone who understands the mechanics behind tariffs, the fragility of modern markets, and what's really at stake in this economic tug of war.
00:02:46.140And as soon as we got back, we've got plenty of news every single, basically every 30 minutes from the White House with Donald J. Trump.
00:02:55.620And so today, as we already announced, we have a special guest, Ron Dodson, who actually knows what he's talking about.
00:03:01.460I don't on this subject, but I'm here along for the ride and I've got a few thoughts.
00:03:05.580We're going to be bringing him in, but quickly, because we want to get to our guests as quickly as possible.
00:03:10.140Michael and Wesley have prepared some charts because if you're not chart maxing we all know
00:03:16.240charts save lives right Donald Trump that chart saved his life so if you're not chart maxing
00:03:21.180it's like what are you even doing on your podcast so we're going to show some charts and try to talk
00:03:24.420a little bit about historically what tariffs you know what we've had in the past and what we have
00:03:29.340now and we're going to try to do that in just a couple minutes and then hand it over to Ron so
00:03:33.220Michael you want to start absolutely the one thing I want to say before we dive into some of this
00:03:37.140historical evidence and charts is that the world is not what it was when the country founded or
00:03:43.800even leading through the 1800s. That's obvious, right? Like the government did not need as much
00:03:49.020money just as a simple one-to-one comparison. The government did not claim that it needed as
00:03:55.620much money to function as it claims it needs now. And so it is a little bit of comparing apples to
00:04:01.540oranges if you account for the fact that what the government says it needs is spending for
00:04:06.720entitlement, spending for Social Security, all of these things. Nevertheless, I think we all know
00:04:12.780it was President Trump who said, well, you know, when President McKinley was president, tariffs were
00:04:17.780the main way that we funded our government. And it's true. For most of U.S. history, tariffs have
00:04:23.400accounted for all or most, I can't even say most, but for the first couple, you know, 150 years of
00:04:29.340U.S. history, tariffs accounted for all or most of the money that the U.S. government brought in.
00:04:34.740So, Nate, let's go ahead and start with graph number one.
00:04:38.180This is a graph that shows tariffs revenue as a share of total federal receipts, right?
00:04:45.520And so you can see that from the very beginning, from the very first Congress where they passed the first law that taxed foreign goods coming in,
00:04:54.960it was 100% of our income, the federal government's income.
00:04:58.740And then it actually stayed about that high until the late 1800s.
00:05:03.5201800s. And then it dropped precipitously. And then we had the Civil War, of course, during that time.
00:05:10.300And then a variety of historical trends. And now you see the yellow on the end. And of course,
00:05:18.080tariffs account for almost none of the percentage of U.S. federal receipts, which whatever you think
00:05:25.760about tariffs or your position on them is they have been a primary way that the U.S. has funded
00:05:32.060itself for a very long time. Nate, let's look at number two. I find this one particularly
00:05:39.640interesting because it shows the tax revenue as percent of the GDP. Now, I realize that we are
00:05:47.800suspicious of measuring all financial stability by just the GDP metric. Nevertheless,
00:05:54.040nevertheless, this was federal GDP. And what's interesting to me is that when tariffs were a
00:06:01.420much higher percentage of the money that the U.S. government was bringing in, it was, as far as the
00:06:07.080entire GDP, a much lower percent. You look all the way to the right there, and most of the GDP
00:06:13.800is accounted for by U.S. government spending or taxing of some sort, whether it's some tariffs
00:06:21.260or whether it's income tax or whether it's payroll tax, which for those of you who are
00:06:25.360watching, payroll tax is things like Social Security, Medicare, that's not income tax.
00:06:31.400It's what your employee or employer is withholding from your paycheck to go for some of these
00:06:48.360It's the percentage of total GDP that is accounted for by U.S. government taxation of some point of some sort.
00:06:56.580And I'm sure with with Ron, we can get into the question of, you know, is GDP the best metric to measure the the health of a nation's economy?
00:07:07.240But nevertheless, it's surprising. I wanted to show Nathan, I wanted to show just these last three images quickly.
00:07:13.120You can just scroll through them as I'm talking.
00:07:16.000But this was from the very first Congress, and this was the list of things that they
00:07:21.260allowed the federal government to put taxes on.
00:07:24.700So essentially, those would be tariffs.
00:07:29.660But they have a very specific list here, and I'm not going to read through all of it.
00:07:33.760But for the listener, they have things like distilled spirits from Jamaica, other distilled
00:07:38.600spirits, molasses, Madera wine, malt, all sorts of things.
00:07:42.540These are products that were coming in from other countries.
00:07:45.720And as I understand it, kind of the last bit of historical data that I'll give here, initially, Alexander Hamilton especially was in favor of tariffs because he saw that the U.S. needed protection to build up its manufacturing base.
00:08:01.040Even though they had been a colony of Great Britain, they didn't actually have all the manufacturing facilities that they needed to be self-sufficient.
00:08:10.980And it would be probable that if goods were available from other countries that already had those manufacturing productivity plants set up, that what we would do is we would just import them all from other countries.
00:08:23.560And so Hamilton and others, this first Congress, they passed quite a few tariffs, which was allowed in the Constitution and Article one.
00:08:31.520But it was so that America would be incentivized to build up its manufacturing.
00:08:37.000So it would be cheaper for the country and for Americans to build a factory and then sell their goods in America.
00:08:43.480And it was really quite well thought out that they thought we can't just rely on Jamaica's rum.
00:08:53.560And so they put tariffs on foreign goods so that it would kind of cause and incentivize Americans to build factories here and sell their goods here and get the best possible cost for it.
00:09:03.960So, Wes, anything you wanted to add about this?
00:09:05.460I was just going to say the brilliance of that is you still get the rum.
00:09:08.260There's obviously more more necessary items on that list, like shoes, for example.
00:11:22.080And so economics in this gets to your question of is GDP a good way to measure the health of a country?
00:11:31.520And the answer is no, because it assumes this fungibility, this aggregate measure of humanity.
00:11:39.460And especially as we've turned into with mass immigration and so on and so forth, a factionalized salad bowl rather than a well-heated melting pot, that's impossible.
00:11:59.220So the assumptions are wrong. So that's my, I think Charles Haywood wrote an absolutely
00:12:06.680excoriating piece against GDP as a national measure about a month ago. And if you're not
00:12:14.040familiar with The Worthy House, I highly recommend the work of Charles Haywood. But he did a very
00:12:20.780good, oh, if you listen to it, half hour, 45 minute takedown of GDP as a measure. So I really
00:12:28.900recommend that. However, you've got to measure certain things somehow, and it does give
00:12:35.720whether or not the federal government should be that which is doing it is, I think, a valid
00:12:42.960question. I think these measures would be much better served coming from private sources or
00:12:51.640even the states, but it is what it is and it's what we have. With regards to tariffs and the
00:13:00.240percentage of income, I think the key thing is, wow, the amount of money our government takes in
00:13:08.860is enough. It needs no more. It could do with a lot less. It's just mind-blowing that our
00:13:18.420federal government, and this isn't even including the states, that our federal government takes in
00:13:26.100over 20, was it close to 25% there at the end of total, if you're going to look at GDP, of total
00:13:35.200GDP is sponged up by the federal government. And make no mistake, you know, income taxes and payroll
00:13:44.980taxes, it's all coming out of your back pocket. So they can, you know, Social Security, this
00:13:53.280quote unquote IOU, don't look too hard into that system or you'll get blackpilled really quick.
00:14:00.800It's all just taxes. It goes into the general fund one way or the other and our deep state
00:14:06.900spends it. With regards to tariffs as a means to generating income, you know, the world has
00:14:20.480gone to a system over the last hundred years following our lead largely in taxing productivity.
00:14:29.260Whether or not that's the, I would argue that that's just simply immoral, that the role that's taxing a person's blessing and productivity is the role of the church, or at least the kingdom, the churches being the mechanism of that.
00:14:52.960Now, I don't even like calling it a tax. Our tithes are a voluntary free will offering. We've been given this guideline by God. But it is in the taxing of transnational transfers that is the role of the state, because the state is there to protect the borders and protect the safety within.
00:15:15.340So I just find it somewhat immoral that the federal government that is distant from us, and we are a collection of states of different peoples, that the federal government would choose to raise its income by taxing us, taxing what we make and disincentivizing income.
00:15:38.460That seems strange to me, but we all know the real reason is, well, number one, they could collect a lot more money that way.
00:15:45.340But the real reason is, is they can exert a tremendous amount of influence over what we do.
00:15:54.640The tax code, if it were simply about raising money, it would tax our top line, not the bottom line.
00:16:02.060There would be no all these manipulative exemptions and and deductions, and it would be a low flat percentage.
00:16:14.280But instead, we see a tax code that would fill up this room in all its rulings and regulations.
00:16:20.640So it's Talmudic. And even that's probably gracious. So show me voting nay against the
00:16:31.520entire system. And I think personally, I think the current it's due for a massive rethink. And
00:16:37.500I think Trump is serious when he says, look, let's let's have the federal government tax
00:16:43.900the world for the opportunity to do business here. And let's not tax at the federal level,
00:16:50.020the productivity of the citizens of what a tremendous unlocking of value and talent that
00:16:55.080would be. How many people, how many smart, capable, talented people, their entire lives
00:17:02.620are given to tax preparation as a way to make a living? And how would they be unlocked if they
00:17:10.060were allowed to go into productive industries. I think the questions that have been raised
00:17:25.000by the president in bringing tariffs to bear and questioning the income tax is set up to unlock
00:17:33.840tremendous amounts of talent and value within the American economy. Now, that can't be done
00:17:40.080overnight. It is a transformative process. And anytime you transform things, there are eggs that
00:17:47.500are broken when you're making that new omelet. And we need to be sensitive to that. I really
00:17:55.380believe that collateral damage in any kind of liquidity event is real. I know some people in
00:18:01.620banking, you know, last night, the basis trade about locked up. And there were some people in
00:18:06.600my business that were not sleeping well last night, but, and we need to, and we need, you know,
00:18:13.940not that we need to be too concerned with the health of hedge fund managers. You know, we all
00:18:19.720do pretty good. Most of us do, but collateral damage is a real thing. And we, and we need to
00:18:26.800think about that. But that being said, I'm a huge fan of what's going on. I'm a big fan of what
00:18:33.580Besant's doing. I think he's very impressive, even though I might disagree with some of his
00:18:38.580life choices. I think he is a guy who talks like a trader. He was a very successful macro trader.
00:18:47.700He knows the levers to pull. And show me voting eye on all this. I'm very impressed.
00:18:56.800yeah cool thank you um so can you this is pretty basic but could you talk just for a moment about
00:19:05.340you know i i think the temptation sometimes of uh christians especially post-millennial christians
00:19:12.060is well free trade you know and and all taxes are bad you know and um you know somebody makes
00:19:18.320something you know a widget on the other side of the world and he wants to sell it here and why
00:19:21.960should we have to pay any taxes you know but but as you start to think about these things a little
00:19:26.680bit more it's um like it it destroys at some level like unfettered free trade without any
00:19:34.340regulations whatsoever is an enemy of national sovereignty uh that's impossible to um to really
00:19:42.800be america first if um if there's you know financial incentives for us to export all of
00:19:48.900our manufacturing and all of our jobs and all these kinds of things to where you know future0.52
00:19:53.060generations don't have any opportunities that uh they can buy cheap things you know from china that0.99
00:19:59.440break you know in six months but uh but they can't actually get a job with livable wages0.72
00:20:04.540their wife has to enter the workforce every single household is two income uh then the kids have to
00:20:10.340be pawned off on the state you know in public schools and grow up to be democrats and you know
00:20:15.800rinse and repeat and do it all over again and that's kind of where we've been for a while and
00:20:19.900so i you know i i appreciate free trade as much as you know the next guy but um but as i've you
00:20:27.360know looked into these things further a lot of my opinions have started to change and um you know
00:20:33.880even you know there there are some streams of post-millennial reformed christians where
00:20:39.000you know they have a bible verse you know i'm not saying that they don't have any exegesis to
00:20:45.260support what they're doing i i know that they do and i'm friends with some of these individuals but
00:20:49.680at some level it just becomes financial libertarianism walking around in a christian
00:20:54.980skin suit and uh you know like the like the famous gk chesterton quote you know if man will
00:21:00.400not have 10 commandments he will have 10 000 to which i would respond yes and amen i i that you
00:21:06.080know the spirit of that quote i appreciate and resonate with very much but i can see certain
00:21:11.520guys in the industry of finance you know appealing to mosaic laws and these kinds of things but the
00:21:18.180real appeal for them is not necessarily the glory of god and the good of his people but
00:21:23.160less regulation so that um we can continue to be really rich so all that being said i guess my
00:21:30.400question is with all these tariffs it's like yeah it's going to hurt your 401k at least temporarily
00:21:36.600and um and we've already seen the volatility you know things bouncing back even this afternoon
00:21:41.300or late this morning when trump announced a 90-day pause um with all the countries that
00:21:47.060were willing to come to the table and bargain a little bit and play ball. And then increased
00:21:52.640tariffs were threatened to China because of their refusal to play ball. And so these things can go
00:22:02.660back and forth. The pain could be long term. The pain could also be very temporary and there could
00:22:08.500be a V-shaped recovery. All these things are possible. But for me, as a novice, and I admit
00:22:13.500that looking in uh i you know i have some investments they're not doing great uh but i
00:22:19.460would rather my investments not do great but my son be able to grow up and get a job and feed his
00:22:23.680family and so for me i'm pretty pro tariffs and so i guess my question is like like if we just
00:22:32.120have unfettered free trade i don't know how to do that without also fully embracing globalism
00:22:37.620It seems like sovereign nations are just not possible.
00:22:50.920We go back, you know, the godfather of all this is Adam.
00:22:54.060Well, God is the author of what really is we call free trade, but it's free price discovery.
00:23:03.720even Jesus when he talks about one anothering the the arm length the arms length transaction
00:23:12.440where both people are able to say thank you both people are blessed that is a manifestation of
00:23:19.940of this free price discovery but it reflects the will of God that men should be
00:23:25.340economics in that sense is a God-given thing you know and and ancient but when Adam Smith was
00:23:32.520talking about it in a transnational standpoint and he spoke of wealth of nations
00:23:39.000what most people don't realize is smith uh was assuming he wrote in the context of christendom
00:23:47.240and he assumed uh common presuppositions with your trading partners and what does that mean
00:23:53.640presuppositions well these are just common the common uh basic values we would say some people
00:24:01.800you know in uh we used to have a you know worldview was kind of there's problems with
00:24:07.160that term but but you'd say we have common worldview view of the world of why what is
00:24:14.040what conservatives would say need to be conserved we we hold none of that in common
00:24:20.920with the chinese communist party and i've got absolutely let me be perfectly clear before i
00:24:27.240go down this road because because i'm going to say some pretty direct things but i have
00:24:33.240no quarrel with the chinese people my uh we used to host uh we used to host chinese exchange
00:24:41.320students i had i had the daughter of a communist party official stay in my house she came to faith
00:24:48.360in Christ while staying with us. I have my two goddaughters are Chinese. I have a great love
00:24:56.580for the people. The Han are an incredibly gifted people. That being said, you know, through no
00:25:09.060help of ours, because we abandoned Chiang Kai-shek and may have been prudent, I don't know.
00:25:17.900I don't think it was. But the communist Mao took over and the communists won that deal. And these are not the regime that rules China. These are not our presuppositional partners. These are not people who would agree with what we would consider should be the basics of life and should be conserved.
00:25:41.740So Adam Smith would think it crazy that that China, number one, was admitted to the, you know, to the World Economic Forum and given full trading partner status, even understanding why why Nixon did certain things back in the 70s.
00:26:04.460I'm speaking of the of the changes that came about in the later on in the 90s. Adam Smith would have would have never countenanced that. And so so our understanding of free trade is is is a is kind of a bastardization of of of what would be Christian wealth of nation understanding.
00:26:27.840So let's take that. Should the United States have a commonwealth with other Christian nations0.61
00:26:36.820eventually to where we generally have open trade among the Christian brotherhood, so to speak?
00:26:45.180I'm great with that. Absolutely. But free trade in its modern understanding of frictionless
00:26:53.620capital movements at light speed that are borderless does nothing but hollow out,
00:27:03.440as you said, national sovereignty. And again, hey, look, my industry is largely based on this
00:27:12.980of finding arbitrage across national boundaries, setting up a rentier relationship there and then
00:27:22.760levering it to the hilt. It's not what I do, but that is hedge fund 101, but it's not good.
00:27:32.960Just for disclosure purposes, I do statistical volatility arbitrage. So I basically sell
00:27:40.460insurance into the market. So I would like to think of myself as a good guy, but just for
00:27:49.560For clarity's sake, but Nick Land, I don't know if you're familiar with Nick Land, if
00:27:55.760your listeners and viewers, Nick Land, continental English philosopher, prominent in the last,
00:28:04.460probably one of the more prominent philosophers of the last 30 years or so. Nick's a couple
00:28:10.460years older than me, 60, has written a ton on this about how these capital being able to move
00:28:21.440across borders, what that has done, and I'm going to simplify, Nick is a very esoteric writer,
00:28:29.180but what he said is, is that has basically meant that dollars are now that have a truer
00:28:38.560citizens have the true rights of citizenship more than the citizens themselves because dollars have
00:28:46.700more rights than citizens okay so that and that's a it's it's very much related to corporate
00:28:54.160personhood and we can talk about that as well but these things absolutely erode as as international
00:29:02.360frictionless capital movements, free trade, we can call it that, as that has risen in importance
00:29:10.060and the Eurodollar market has risen, and those are just dollars that are created by banks
00:29:16.460offshore with no supervision of the U.S. Federal Reserve, whether you're a fan or not of the
00:29:23.460Federal Reserve, it's the system we have. Those notes are Federal Reserve notes. And so the
00:29:28.640federal, we should have some governing authority over them. But as this is all moved, you've seen
00:29:34.140with it the erosion of the rights of U.S. citizens. So this whole process is known as, in a way,
00:29:44.740as financial Dutch disease. And the Dutch disease is named after, in Holland in the late 60s,
00:29:54.380early 70s they found in in in dutch territorial waters they found tremendous reserves of natural
00:30:00.760gas and and traditionally holland is one of the bread baskets of europe uh it was really a farming
00:30:07.500nation and uh you know the the the the netherlands the the hot the lowlands of europe which is in
00:30:16.740very well watered and very fertile soil but when these natural gas reserves were found the entire
00:30:22.880economy pivoted and all the talent went towards natural gas and it hollowed out the rest of the
00:30:29.240nation. Well, we've seen that in the United States with the financialization, this financialization
00:30:36.980of the U.S. economy to where if you're a smart, if you're very, very smart and you go to a top
00:30:44.200university, you're going to study finance and you're going to go into this industry to where
00:30:50.800all of the other industries are hollowed out and what is our dutch disease what's the if it was
00:30:57.900natural gas for holland what's our dutch disease it's the dollar itself and so um even to the point
00:31:05.280of you say well hey the country makes uh has always produced great art and entertainment
00:31:10.520our movie business is the greatest in the world when was the last time you went and saw a something
00:31:16.300that was a uniquely american uh comedy for instance it's all this you know now we have
00:31:24.300superhero movies that are slop that that are slop exactly it's and so so i completely agree now
00:31:34.460again if we have common a commonwealth of nations that agree with with us and are
00:31:42.780something we need to get in later on the show, geographically tied to us, would it be great
00:31:51.200if Canada and Mexico and Ecuador could rise up and be great Christian nations and together we had a
00:32:02.100true Christian commonwealth that was tied to us geographically that we could have some level
00:32:08.500of freer trade with? Well, sure, I'm great with that. We're a long ways from that right now. I
00:32:14.520mean, Canada has turned into a, you know, communism light. And I have lots of friends. By the way,
00:32:20.420my wife's from Canada. My kids have, you know, in theory, have Canadian citizenship. They don't
00:32:26.000want, I mean, you know, whatever. But I have a real love for the people and traditional Canadian
00:32:33.480culture up there it was a great christian nation at once upon a time but we're far from that now0.99
00:32:38.920and in mexico is a one step away from a failed narco state so so but but that would be that
00:32:46.680would be the goal is is is moving towards something like that okay i've talked long
00:32:52.600enough i'm sure y'all have some thoughts no that's good west you got some thoughts i was
00:32:57.000gonna say that's profound that point that you made about being the dollar being the citizen
00:33:01.640of the world the 70s and the 80s and 90s you have a market that 24 7 is awake now it wouldn't
00:33:08.640necessarily be the stock exchange but all across the world you have trade happening you have money
00:33:13.180that can move at the speed of light this is a profound technological turning that our grandparents
00:33:19.000just didn't live through never before in human history would you know what's happening in china0.77
00:33:24.100would you be aware of their impending real estate crash would you then be as you think i used to
00:33:29.000work for like biotechs when i worked in consulting and i mean in their mind is do we do manufacturing
00:33:34.200in the netherlands do we do it in india never before in human history would you have this kind
00:33:38.580of global frame of things and i don't think it's at all a coincidence that you have these global
00:33:42.960markets you have instant money moving you have your question of i can get this labor i can get
00:33:47.520these parts i can get this done for pennies on the dollar and as that happens as that grows and
00:33:52.880people see of course the margins on it that all of a sudden we come to a place where americans have
00:33:56.760no identity of themselves and it's of course we're interconnected in so many ways to the rest of the
00:34:01.400world in a way that's probably not possible for human beings to do well it's impossible to be a
00:34:06.340citizen of the world to appreciate every culture to know every place to track every market we're
00:34:10.820just we're human we're limited not as a result of the fall so something like the fall creaturely
00:34:15.520exactly introduces to us like oh now we couldn't contain or comprehend all this information we're
00:34:21.260just we're creatures and we weren't meant i don't think to be interconnected to eight million people
00:34:26.180to dozens of financial markets 8 billion people dozens of financial markets billions of dollars
00:34:31.540of transaction all the news all the events everything going on and trying to do so has
00:34:36.500eroded i mean in many ways for one a sense of place this is home these are my people but we
00:34:42.980can do what i love you're forgetting there's 330 million americans and then there's you know like
00:34:49.380eight billion potential americans right so we're all american these are all our neighbors we can
00:34:55.140him do it being a little bit sarcastic there michael i want to hear your thoughts and then
00:34:59.500real quickly i want to hit a couple super chats and one question from neville that i thought was
00:35:03.900insightful and let ron answer that question but what are your thoughts well my thought is maybe
00:35:07.840it's actually just a follow-up for ron maybe you could touch on briefly um you know we on the on
00:35:13.220the show we often talk about what we think would be the ideal but what it what would be a viable
00:35:19.840alternative is tariffs the viable alternative to this sort of globalist free trade that still is
00:35:26.560global markets it's just controlled global markets and so is there any returning like i agree with
00:35:32.640what wes is saying but there's also the the statement that we come back to all the time well
00:35:37.420the tubes out of the toothpaste uh you know what is there a viable years or decades long alternative
00:35:46.220that we ought to be building towards that would be something different than the almighty dollar
00:35:53.640working 24-7 global markets, tracking stock exchanges in Japan, all of these things that
00:36:01.680we're talking about? I understand what we say, this is not ideal, but what do we do about that?
00:36:07.440What are alternatives that could be built towards?
00:36:10.280well that's a that's a big question i again i i don't have a problem with for instance uh
00:36:19.280certain rare earths and certain uh other minerals are only god only put in certain places i mean if
00:36:26.580you're gonna you know uh uh although i think there's a quite a bit of titanium maybe in
00:36:33.120tennessee we've made it to where it's almost impossible to mine in this country so if you're
00:36:38.180to get titanium i think you got to go to russia right now uh for instance in rare earths uh well
00:36:44.260that's uh you know that's eastern ukraine uh a lot of the rare earth minerals in in china uh if
00:36:51.380you're gonna so so uh you know copper and beryllium i think it's uh south america somewhere again
00:36:57.380mining's not my game but but god distributed these things i mean forever you know all the
00:37:03.700petrochemicals that was in uh the persian gulf now now they're all in my state uh texas um but uh
00:37:11.700they're the so so i i think the the goal isn't hey we do away with trade
00:37:19.220that's not the idea that the idea is that is that
00:37:25.060is that you is that you can't have frictionless capital movements without having
00:37:34.640the erasure of borders and again this is coming from somebody who grew up I mean I was a member
00:37:41.180of the Ludwig von Mises society you know I grew up reading uh Hayek and von Mises you know I have
00:37:48.280price and theory on my bookshelf at home. I really came to a modern understanding. This
00:37:55.760is in the early 90s. Yes, I was a nerd. I was reading Hans Hermann Hoppe, who I still find
00:38:03.300absolutely breathtakingly brilliant. I think that movement went off the rails when it went
00:38:10.240the anarcho-capitalist way because because because the the idea moved from the trading of goods to
00:38:24.320to which is good trade is not a bad thing i believe god wants us to trade the problem is
00:38:32.720is that if is that if i only have to move this fiat currency then i'm not really invested
00:38:44.080i am i i am i am just playing a game and and this i mean this is going to get philosophical and i
00:38:50.800don't mean to get pie in the sky but it's it's think about how our capital markets work in the
00:38:56.560the U.S. now. Everybody owns everything. No one, very few people buy individual stocks anymore.
00:39:06.040You go and buy the S&P and you buy the NASDAQ. We're buying the spiders and we're buying the
00:39:11.640cubes and we're so on and so forth. Well, I used to think that everybody owning everything was
00:39:17.800called communism and so there's no there's no there's no responsibility and investment just
00:39:27.240isn't my dollars it's not just rentier rentier just means i have dollars that i can use to
00:39:34.640without work soak up value okay it's not a good thing traditionally you want as little rentier
00:39:42.240opportunity and an effective economy as possible. What you want is, because there was a certain
00:39:49.640faction that found rentier opportunities and levered those up with usurious rates and you
00:39:57.540create these massive returns. That's not really, you're never going to get completely rid of it.
00:40:03.100Europe fought wars over this kind of stuff. And again, I don't want to get weird, but-
00:40:10.920No, no, no, no, no. You're speaking our language.
00:40:12.940Yeah, I think you know what I'm talking about.0.88
00:40:14.860So anyway, the point is, is that you want to encourage, for instance, there are opportunities right now for American smart, hardworking young guys to go make a killing in Africa right now.
00:40:31.880That's not free trade. That's investment.
00:40:34.920You are going and actually because because there's there's minerals and there's stuff in the ground and there's some, you know, hardworking people who you give them some opportunity to work hard and they will.
00:40:52.820OK, unless they have a different set of gifted. Do they have a different set of giftedness than the average American?
00:40:59.800Sure. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about that's a different thing than me just sending, oh, look, there's this African ETF and I'll just throw some dollars at it at light speed.
00:41:12.820And now, you know, again, and I'm not, I don't want to paint with a mop here, but the former is good.
00:41:26.520That is God taking his people with different giftedness and using them to minister to one another.
00:41:33.260The latter is saying that what's most important is just this, is just these, you know, is just, it's almost like this phantom reality that's going.
00:41:46.720And again, I really recommend if you've got the horsepower and wherewithal to read some philosophy, Nick Land is great on this stuff.
00:41:56.200uh xenocosmography is his twitter too and he's a fun he's a he's he's healthy again and he's active
00:42:03.280on twitter and he's a fun he's a fun follow and absolutely brilliant i mean the guy nick's got to
00:42:10.060be 160 iq kind of guy but um but uh oh you asked about something else golly uh how do we get off
00:42:19.180you asked one other thing uh that i meant to answer no i think i think you hit i think you
00:42:23.800hit on what i was getting at so yeah thank you let's let's do this real quick i want to get to
00:42:27.760the super chats i want to uh to try to address a couple questions and then we need to go to a
00:42:32.900commercial break so first um this is from ben huffsteadler who is almost single-handedly keeping
00:42:39.220right response ministries afloat he gave us a 200 super chat god bless you um i don't i don't want to
00:42:46.020i don't want to just grift here but i'd like to think you know that somebody today could beat
00:42:52.600Ben Huffsteadler for the largest super chat. I think somebody's got it in them. They can do it,
00:42:58.500but if not, he's the reigning champ. So this is Ben Huffsteadler, a regular giver towards our
00:43:04.140ministry. Incredibly grateful for you. Thanks, Ben. He said, stay bold, gents. People are being
00:43:09.400changed by your work. Attended the conference via online this year. Already bought tickets for the
00:43:15.240next year. See you in June this year, though. So I imagine he's going to the new Christendom
00:43:19.940conference. I'll be there speaking. I'm excited about that. And then he said, smash the like
00:43:24.320button or Trump will put personal tariffs on you. Amen. So true, King. Yep. If you are not liking
00:43:31.600this video, if you're hiding out in the chat and you haven't given us a thumbs up and you haven't
00:43:35.180liked it, Trump will personally, he will come to your house, 125% tariff and your entire family
00:43:41.280will starve. We don't make the rules, but under Christian nationalism, you will like this video
00:43:45.020or you will starve all right simple as that okay this is chase cormick he gave us a hundred dollars
00:43:50.140super chat that's pretty big pretty generous we appreciate you chase thanks so much he says
00:43:55.540thank you for these streams they've been really helping my new wife and i and new wife we're
00:44:02.540going to assume he's newly married and not that he got rid of his old wife and trader
00:44:05.920so newly married uh my new wife and i has been helping us tremendously and he said joel i have
00:44:12.100a question about your sunday sermon uh-oh let's see what did i say uh my wife was confused when
00:44:18.900you were talking about the small g gods lowercase g gods uh being real gods i think i know what you
00:44:26.580mean but you can you help expound on that a little uh since it's not the topic for today
00:44:30.820um i'm not going to talk about a whole lot but because you gave a hundred dollar super chat i'm
00:44:34.960going to talk about it briefly so um this uh this is what i meant i was simply saying that i think a
00:44:40.240lot of the Old Testament gods, that they weren't just, you know, carvings on a piece of wood,
00:44:45.780that it wasn't just... They weren't figments of their imagination. They weren't figments of their
00:44:48.580imagination. Now, Paul does talk about, you know, that an idol is no God at all in the New Testament.
00:44:54.120So Paul does say this, but I really believe that during Old Testament times, I think there's still
00:44:58.880remnants of this truth, even to this day, and especially during the interim period between
00:45:03.740the, you know, the first coming of Christ and then AD 70. I think, you know, these things were
00:45:08.060being wrapped up but especially in the old testament pre-incarnation of christ is life
00:45:12.820death resurrection and ascension before that happened uh these were real gods and so what
00:45:18.560i was saying is that uh when when you're talking about molek or you know the asherah poles or
00:45:22.700you know the ball uh balls whatever you may be looking at i i really do believe that these were
00:45:28.560real gods lowercase g uh meaning that they're not um they're not the one true triune gods
00:45:35.040They're not the creators, so they're still creatures, but angelic beings that were gods,
00:54:30.100But I just like to just be a little bit
00:54:33.600of uh just a degenerate predictor concluder uh what's going to happen so i'm going to try to ask
00:54:40.440ron a little bit of you know what what do you what do you foresee what do you what do you think
00:54:44.700is going to happen you know as we as we start to broaden you know out and think like are we coming
00:54:49.520into a recession what's that going to look like you know and and obviously all that will be
00:54:53.780alleged with a grain of salt you know none of us are a prophet or the son of a prophet but it's
00:54:57.720still fun to to look ahead and see uh see what might be coming down the pipeline all right so
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00:56:17.740commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on the wall, but to actually be used
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00:56:40.900all right we are back uh mr ron dodson would you do me the great honor of just trashing all of
00:56:54.020your credibility right here live on the show and making some degenerate predictions of what might
00:56:58.820happen in the future what do you think well uh you can say allegedly as many times as you need
00:57:07.660to say it. No, it's okay. I mean, I don't, I, uh, I, I'm not worried about anything. Uh, past
00:57:15.560performance is no indication of the future. It actually is, but go ahead. Anyway. Uh, if you,
00:57:24.400if you look at the delinquency rates in, in the, uh, in the market, uh, or in the, in the economy
00:57:32.180right now, then you'll see that we've probably been headed towards some type of shallow recession
00:57:39.620since late Q3 last year. And what am I talking about? Well, if you look at delinquency rates
00:57:49.380on credit card loans. Well, that number has risen from a low in the third quarter of 2021
00:58:03.620and is now about 2x what the long-term trend is. If you look at, and by the way, a lot of the
00:58:17.560numbers, the employment numbers and everything seem to have been pretty cooked because the
00:58:21.480revisions have just been ridiculous lately. That shouldn't surprise us. The deep state
00:58:26.760collects and runs a lot of this stuff, and they sure didn't want Trump elected.
00:58:32.500If you look on the delinquency rate on single-family residential mortgages booked in domestic
00:58:40.500offices, that has actually been down. So I don't think we're looking at a, or has been
00:58:47.200uh hasn't risen so you're not talking about a deeper section where people are a lot of people
00:58:53.300are losing their homes you know like we had in uh uh you know late 07 through a 08 and early 09
00:59:01.360which was just a real disaster if you look at the delinquency rates on consumer loans all commercial
00:59:08.620banks and so these are consumer loans uh you're you're talking about a tremendous rise again since
00:59:16.320a trough in the third quarter of 2021 those have risen precipitously if you're looking
00:59:23.200at the delinquency rate on commercial real estate loans uh uh those have been rising uh over the
00:59:32.320past uh 18 months um delinquency rate on credit card loans not among the hundred largest in size
00:59:41.920by assets. So you're talking about the lower credit quality. Those have been greatly elevated.
00:59:50.380Delinquency rate up close to 8%, which doesn't sound crazy, but it's much higher than normal.
00:59:59.940And then delinquency rate on all other consumer loans. And by the way, you can look at this data.
01:00:08.520you don't have to be a professional hedge fund manager like me you can go to the federal reserve
01:00:13.800bank of st louis which is the fed federal reserve bank that uh that collates all this data um and
01:00:21.560uh again since the trough in quarter three of 2021 that number is accelerating and going up so
01:00:29.880so you're seeing this the the lowest quality of of consumer credit really performing poorly
01:00:38.520These are leading indicators as far as possibly a shallow recession. And then, you know, changing any type of regime in an economic sense is going to have, like we said before, it's going to have a certain amount of collateral damage that harms liquidity.
01:00:58.800And so I think that is a I wouldn't be shocked if if I don't think that, for instance, Joe Sixpack, this the tariffs are not going to impact him nearly as much as as the doomsayers are saying.
01:01:17.080Why do I say that? Well, I mean, if he wants to go buy a 75 inch TV screen, I mean, that might be impacted, although those are mostly made in South Korea.
01:01:27.280Um, the, the, what, but the, the, there's a, there's a, there is a concept in, in economics
01:01:37.660called the elasticity of demand that is, that is poorly appreciated.
01:13:33.880Like I prepared the outline for the episode last night
01:13:36.000And then today things changed with with the 90 day hiatus on the tax on the tariffs.
01:13:43.060So if you were to take a guess, what do you think the Trump administration is actually about?
01:13:48.760What are they trying to do with this whole process?
01:13:53.300Well, I think it's a rebalancing of all of it.
01:13:56.020I don't think it's a linear relationship.
01:13:57.800I think it's a you know, it's a it's an optimization on multiple axes.
01:14:06.000So, you know, like old linear programming, a Lindo issue.
01:14:09.700So you are, I think that you are trying to create a different revenue stream for the
01:14:17.020government that isn't taxing your own people.
01:14:20.280I think you're trying to create some friction for capital flows because that ultimately
01:14:29.840increases the value of nationhood, citizenship, all these non, I say non-financial,
01:14:39.420uh, uh, everything, uh, you know, in the modern sense is, is, is financialized, but these,
01:14:46.260these non-financial issues, uh, can be heightened in value by creating some friction for dollars.
01:14:55.040and also you kill you help kill the euro dollar market so um and you know uh what that does is
01:15:05.160if there's more i mean i would i'm not a monetarist a strict monetarist but i do think
01:15:11.380milton friedman was correct when he said uh inflation is always and everywhere a monetary
01:15:17.020phenomenon if you have no ability to control dollars created offshore then you really are
01:15:23.660going to have far less control over inflation when you need to have it. So part of this is
01:15:31.220a greater control over your own money supply, a heightened value for what it means to be a
01:15:43.220citizen of the United States rather than a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, which is
01:15:47.580really meaningless all that does is uh is is create we we believe i think we're all on the
01:15:54.300same page here that we believe that pareto is reality that generally because of the differences
01:16:01.380in giftedness and and the differences in opportunity 80 percent of resources tend to
01:16:07.680go to about 20 of the people that's and and and there's not a lot you can do to fix that
01:16:13.680We don't live in a, that, that raw, complete and utter egalitarianism is a lie. And, uh, you would have to strip people of identity and borders and all these things in pursuing that. And you're still going to get, so, so I think we all agree that, or at least I would think we agree that some level of Pareto is, is just reality.
01:16:34.340But if you have, again, without any resource friction, you get Pareto times rentier times leverage.
01:16:45.820And so instead of 80-20, you get 99-1.
01:16:54.900I don't think God's really happy with that.
01:16:57.940And so creating some friction and people, very smart people in the market after, if you all remember the flash crash from 2011, some smart people suggested perhaps a tiny, very tiny transactional tax for stocks would help prevent this.
01:17:21.720I, you know, where you would do away with some of the high frequency trading, which all that does is, is it robs market makers.
01:17:28.720So now you don't really have market makers anymore.
01:17:30.900You just have. Now, again, I don't want to get into a big argument on on on that level of liquidity, but it's the same idea that if you have if you have some level of friction that you you increase investedness.
01:17:47.860So do I think Trump is ultimately for increasing the importance of American markets to Americans for the benefit of American citizens? Yes.
01:18:02.540Do I think he's trying to increase the level of U.S. control over the currency? Yes. Do I think he's trying to have an alternate source of revenue for the federal government that is less than income tax? Yes, I do.
01:18:22.040um and uh so i think all the and do i think that for the trade that is going to be there do i think
01:18:30.640he wants a level playing field for all uh parties yes and all you can't maximize one of the you the
01:18:40.620idea isn't to maximize one over the other it's to increase the efficient frontier if you remember
01:18:46.920from, you know, your microeconomics, your efficient frontier of risk and return.
01:18:55.220Well, it's similar among multiple fronts.
01:18:57.520You're just trying to get as far onto that frontier while realizing there's multiple goals at play.
01:19:11.300um okay all right uh darth amalgamate uh amalgamation he asked did you manage to sell
01:19:20.700enough of the cigars at the conference so that you didn't have to bring them home and kill yourself
01:19:24.400by smoking all of them so it's a thoughtful question because i would have done that uh yeah
01:19:29.120we sold them all i actually didn't get a single cigar i didn't either yeah so they're gone you
01:19:34.180guys did well thank you uh we appreciate it this is jeff halfley he gave us a couple super chats
01:19:39.060thanks jeff we appreciate he said great meeting um oh nope starting up higher uh great meeting
01:19:45.580y'all at the right response conference your staff is great uh thanks jeff and then he also followed
01:19:52.120up he said that a certain group of individuals reformed christians they're not actually arguing
01:19:57.100with you they are instead arguing with their own parents generation and then he has some other
01:20:02.920comments uh back on the main thread to kind of flesh that out uh if you can go back real quick
01:20:08.000nathan uh scroll up yep scroll down there it is he said 1950s 60s christian right wingers were
01:20:14.820anti-feminism anti-crm anti-mlk martin luther king anti-egalitarianism and they were race
01:20:22.140realist so i think what jeff is saying is that there is a certain uh sector within the reformed
01:20:29.240world that um aren't really arguing with you um they're actually arguing with their dad
01:20:34.580uh their dad is probably uh dead at this point uh but he's basically talking about some of the
01:20:40.700older guys that are um they're you know they say that you're extreme or you're novel you're
01:20:46.020different or you know this that and the other uh but in reality um it's really just kind of
01:20:51.500skipping the immediate uh earthly fathers to get back to ancient fathers matthew henry talks about
01:20:57.380this you know ancient fathers civil fathers familial there are different kinds of fathers
01:21:01.600ecclesiastical or spiritual fathers um oh no i'm sorry that's thomas watson uh but um i think what
01:21:08.080jeff haffley is saying is there was a comment uh for all the listeners who weren't at the conference
01:21:12.160or haven't had a chance to sign up for our patreon to watch the live stream which i need to remind
01:21:17.080you guys about here in just a moment but um there was a moment where basically i i was saying yes
01:21:23.040we want to obey the fifth commandment we want to honor our fathers but what do you do um what do
01:21:28.520you do if if your immediate fathers meaning the the immediate preceding
01:21:34.280generation to your own happens to be a generation that of course there are
01:21:40.040always exceptions there are some guys who stood the test of time they went
01:21:44.060against the grain they were faithful they were countercultural and and
01:21:48.740obedient to God and we praise God for them but on the whole speaking in
01:21:52.280generalities the boomer generation in general not universal but in general what0.99
01:21:58.460do you do if that immediate preceding generation to your own is demanding that you honor them
01:22:04.180in keeping with the fifth commandment but by honoring them if that honor means agreement
01:22:10.480like unfettered allegiance and fidelity and full agreement if agreeing with that immediately
01:22:17.780preceding generation to yours would would then necessarily it would automatically you know
01:22:25.340translate to a full-fledged rebellion and disagreement with every single other generation
01:22:30.520in the history of all humankind because that's kind of where we're at so i think that's what
01:22:37.040jeff halfley is getting at i talked about that at the conference briefly but just saying that
01:22:41.120yes we want to honor our immediate familial fathers especially your father like your earthly
01:22:47.100your literal debt uh we want to honor our fathers as best we can um but um in general um a lot of
01:22:56.080a lot of honoring fathers uh what it's going to require is is respectfully but but steadfastly
01:23:05.080disagreeing with um the immediate preceding generation to ours because um they dishonored
01:23:13.260all of their fathers it's i i didn't you know i didn't do this i didn't i don't want it to be0.72
01:23:18.000this way i'm not trying to pick on anybody i'm not trying to be disrespectful but um the hippie
01:23:24.120free love movement of the 60s i mean that's literally what it was founded on it was it was
01:23:29.900literally founded on rebelling against dad that's literally what it was it was i'm gonna if i'm a
01:23:36.420dude i'm gonna grow my hair out you know just to stick it to the man i'm gonna have long hair just0.91
01:23:40.580as a sign of rebellion if i'm a chick i'm going to cut it short we're going to do drugs um you
01:23:45.300know drugs rock and roll all this kind of you know whatever and but the whole thing is um we're
01:23:50.300raging against the machine we're going against our fathers and their fathers and their fathers
01:23:54.600and their fathers and their fathers so yeah so if if the if the train is gonna you know it's been
01:23:59.760derailed if it's going to get put back on the tracks um you can do it respectfully you don't0.96
01:24:04.080have to be a jerk about it you shouldn't be a jerk about it uh but what it's going to look like0.97
01:24:08.020is telling an entire generation no that's what it's going to look like and you do that respectfully1.00
01:24:14.520but it's going to look like saying i'm sorry uh but your your gay race communism is not going to0.95
01:24:21.640be uh distilled down to my children like it stops the buck stops here stopping with my generation0.97
01:24:27.060um that was gay that was wrong i'm not rebellious you're rebellious you literally had t-shirts made0.85
01:24:34.740about rebellion you your your generation you were proud of it the rebellious generation so for me to0.99
01:24:42.180not be rebellious i have to rebel against the rebellious generation i'm sorry i don't make
01:24:47.320the rules but under christian nationalism the boomer mindset will be defeated so i think that's
01:24:54.980what jeff halfley's talking about nothing to do with our conversation today but he gave a super
01:24:59.300chat trying to honor it jeremy kearns he gave a super chat he said great conference right response
01:25:03.940glad that god uh has put y'all in our lives i uh believe your conference will be talked about
01:25:09.840uh in the history books probably not but i appreciate that uh the tide is turning and i
01:25:14.600think that's true uh it will be taught probably not in the history books but it will be talked
01:25:18.460about in the twitter streets i guarantee you it already has been i saw the form uh going around
01:25:23.820did you guys see this somebody was saying uh it was a church disciplinary form and it was saying
01:25:29.380If you have anyone that you personally know who is at the Christ is King Right Response Conference, here's a form, and you need to write down their name, and there's two boxes that you could check.
01:33:33.000And all those things play into a business plan
01:33:36.960that you either determine is resilient or not
01:33:41.100to uh recessionary concerns so um that's that's about the best i can do on that i did want to say
01:33:49.340i did want to say that regarding uh one thing i forgot about matthew 17 when we're talking about
01:33:55.000tribute you know solomon when he solomon split ended up because of his actions split the kingdom
01:34:01.940and what was it over he taxed the people uh uh uh over and above the tithe to the temple
01:34:10.040to go and do certain things. And that's why the northern tribes left. And so you see,
01:34:17.520and God never judges the northern tribe. God judges the northern tribes because of their0.73
01:34:22.520unfaithfulness, not because they left due to that. And so I think that's a, we can get some1.00
01:34:29.520principles from that about the right relationship of the righteous king. And then regarding what
01:34:35.420you were saying, Joe, by the way, very good distillation of that. I caught up with Isker
01:34:41.160about this stuff. With the theonomy debate? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, it's really good
01:34:46.140because, you know, but, you know, you have to ask yourself, was Jesus not going to, in a prelapsed
01:34:52.520area, if Adam had not fallen, would Jesus have ever been king? And so is there an eternal purpose
01:34:59.360king. And who reformed the priesthood? Was it a prophet? Was it the high priest or was it the
01:35:05.960king? It was David. David reformed the priesthood and David was no sinless man. He was just the king
01:35:12.400and he had the authority to do so. And even if you look at the geography of Jerusalem, it is
01:35:17.300not Mount Moriah that is tallest. It is Mount Zion, the traditional home of the Davidic king.
01:35:23.740And so you have to look at some of these eternal purposes and not just think sometimes in our reformed zeal to be forensic about everything.
01:35:34.500We lose some of the some of the more exciting topological insights that come from a literary reading of Scripture.
01:44:13.140But no, I want to make some. I am not a I am not a day trader. I trade in and out of stocks for my family office account once a month and I rebalance. I am a I'm a I'm a you. You want advice on volarb? Then you're my competitor and I'm not giving it. So.
01:44:33.940fair enough uh any other questions that look worth addressing jesse s he says what's the
01:44:43.720theme for next year's conference honestly i couldn't tell you i you know not that you won't
01:44:50.200you couldn't i couldn't tell you i would tell you um no like i'll say this um i just think
01:44:58.680everything is shifting and changing so quickly there's been so many fractures um in the world
01:45:05.180in our in our country politically and ecclesiologically um ecclesiastically like
01:45:11.600within the church um that it's it's hard to predict honestly it's it's hard to predict um
01:45:18.160what the lord may be doing what would be most useful what would be most helpful and it's perhaps
01:45:23.900even exponentially more difficult to predict who to invite i think that that's in in some sense
01:45:32.360that's one of the mistakes that i've made in previous years is trying to solidify our conference
01:45:39.780you know too soon well ahead of time it's nice for people to plan but then but then something
01:45:46.840happens and all of a sudden you know the person that you know one of the people that you invited
01:45:53.540it's like uh you know like maybe he doesn't doesn't really like you anymore you know and so
01:45:59.360it feels like every six months there's like some earth shattering you know transition and uh change
01:46:05.580that's uh happening and so i i don't really know if i had to guess today one one of the things i'll
01:46:12.900say this um i don't know what you know a year from now what what what will happen we'll start
01:46:17.640you know making plans and and as we make plans we'll make announcements and uh and make that
01:46:22.700you know public information but for now um the biggest my biggest takeaway from the conference
01:46:29.000and and it's not really because of anything that somebody specifically said at the conference but
01:46:33.080i've just been feeling this leading up to the conference and i feel like it's all the more
01:46:36.660confirmed um after the conference uh just in conversations that i've had with people um i i
01:46:43.640think dan burkholder and i had a conversation on wednesday night and i thought it was really
01:46:49.500insightful um it was it was the two of us and um and you know the other ogden boys were there eric
01:46:56.520and ben and so you know so the four of us were talking but dan and i were primarily you know
01:47:01.160going back and forth and we're talking about like the next four years now that we've had a trump
01:47:04.760victory and these kinds of things and the first thing that dan said was um that because we've had
01:47:10.440this victory you know which is far from perfect and there's a ton more work to do and honestly
01:47:15.860in my opinion you know not not speaking about finances or tariffs or the i i'm i those things
01:47:21.520i'm i'm i'm pretty pleased but there's some other issues where i'm like i think the verdict's still
01:47:26.460out whether or not uh how much of a victory this is actually going to be right like if if
01:47:31.380if all of a sudden you know income tax is done away with and you know america enters you know
01:47:38.420financially a golden age but um but i i have to think about how to plan my prison ministry
01:47:44.640um because trump's greatest contribute contribution is um anti-anti-semitism laws
01:47:53.060and palantir's facial recognition puts me in jail then you know i don't know for me personally i
01:48:01.660don't know if it uh you know if i'd be looking back and say yeah that was a victory all right
01:48:05.080yeah we're winning you know i'm like at that point i'd be like yeah i think i am sick of
01:48:10.640winning because winning threw me in jail but um uh so here's my point dan was kind of saying like
01:48:16.820i think it's gonna be harder for for ministries and and different you know media companies and
01:48:22.080stuff like that to distinguish themselves in the next four years on the backdrop of victory whereas
01:48:27.920the last four years there were so many headwinds and now we may have some tailwinds but there were
01:48:32.780so many headwinds that it was really easy to distinguish yourself and i know what he's saying
01:48:37.660And I generally agree. He was talking about COVID. He was talking about, you know, mostly peaceful riots, you know, in the summer of love and George Floyd and BLM, you know, and all these different things. And saying that, like, you know, if you just, if you had some courage, then you could, you know, you could distinguish yourself from all of Big Eva and all, you know, this group. And all of a sudden you start to, you start to stand out. And I think that's a generally right instinct. I think he's correct.
01:49:04.940but i actually i told him and and he ended up agreeing with me i i think it won't be harder
01:49:10.660to distinguish ourselves in the next four years i think it'll actually be far easier and the reason
01:49:15.940why is is not because you know after careful consideration i've decided to become worse
01:49:20.540it's not that scenario although i have after careful consideration i have decided to become
01:49:24.520worse but without becoming worse this is my point you will not have to step forward this is my
01:49:30.940prediction for the next four years. You will not have to step forward. All you have to do is stay
01:49:35.220put in terms of courage and what you're talking about and what you're willing to address. You
01:49:39.880don't have to take it up a notch. You don't have to step forward. You just stay put and you will
01:49:44.920distinguish yourself because all of your friends are going to be taking 10 steps back. And I'm
01:49:49.480watching that happen in real time. I'm watching that happen in real time. I'm watching, you know
01:49:55.060what, now that we've had this win, I'm doing the calculus. And for me personally, you know, my
01:49:59.840goals are really more suited towards this and i don't know if i really want to go after this issue
01:50:04.340you know that gets you in trouble and i don't really know like this is enough like a lot of0.64
01:50:09.420people right now are and i'm not talking about you know a bunch of heathens i'm talking about
01:50:13.660i'm talking about reformed ministers i'm talking about christians um and i think a lot of them are
01:50:21.160doing the calculus and they actually are saying um it's enough winning for me uh this is enough
01:50:27.520winning for me i've i've won enough and um and for me i'm i'm looking at that and um and it's not
01:50:35.460enough winning for me um i think that there are formidable enemies of christ that are still at
01:50:42.200large in the world there's been um zero threat posed to them they're walking around uh free as0.87
01:50:49.120bird uh terrorizing a whole swaths of the church and uh and i plan to go for their throats and um
01:50:59.920and i plan to talk about those kinds of issues and um and it's not really so much a change for
01:51:07.440me but it's just i'm going to continue doing what i'm doing and i have lots of friends that i
01:51:12.280respect and i'm not even saying they're wrong so i'm not even saying hear me i'm not saying this
01:51:16.260it's objectively compromised and this person is in sin or this person is selling out or i'm not
01:51:21.280saying any of those things everybody has to decide individually but the reason why ogden and i
01:51:25.600georgetown and ogden are so aligned part of it to just to be frank it's it's not just conviction
01:51:31.320it's not just theological um but but there is there's a practical calculus ogden in addition
01:51:37.700to you know like they're insulated like who's going to fire brian so they
01:51:41.860their elder rule they're not a part of a presbytery right like like all the the guys
01:51:50.120who became presbyterian you know in the last five years it's like well are you presbyterian0.83
01:51:54.420because kind of the key word there is presbytery you like you're just paedo baptist you're john
01:51:58.180owen you're a congregationalist you know who baptized babies and that's great i'm here for
01:52:01.960it that's you know i support you but my point is in just in terms of their church polity they're
01:52:05.900not a part of presbytery it's it's um it's it's inside it's autonomous it's elder rule
01:52:13.580um brian is bulletproof and i'm glad he is i'm not saying any of that is a bad thing i
01:52:20.140thank god that that brian survey and eric khan um that they actually can't be canceled they can't
01:52:27.820they are bulletproof they are uncanceable and and outside of their church life pastorally what
01:52:33.680they're doing there and that's and that's first and foremost and that has to be the priority but
01:52:37.760beyond that um what are they doing as they're making the calculus for the next four years what
01:52:42.280are they trying to do um they're they're starting a media company and so in starting a media company
01:52:48.880they have every incentive to distinguish themselves and not just be big con ink you know and like
01:52:56.860you know daily wire 2.0 yeah daily wire you know you know the israeli wire 2.0 like they're no
01:53:02.840they're going to want to distinguish themselves and exercise, for them, courage is currency.
01:53:11.300For them, it is in their practical best interest. Aside from theological convictions and their
01:53:16.300fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ, they have every practical incentive to exercise courage.
01:53:22.200There are plenty of other guys that we love, guys who are on the broader team. So what I hope
01:53:26.120doesn't happen, I'll add this disclaimer, is we don't need any more fracturing. We don't need any
01:53:30.760more divisions we don't need to go we don't need any more brother wars i really hope that we could
01:53:35.080be done with that so what i foresee is actually more divisions but more charitable divisions
01:53:39.920where we can have a broader team where we genuinely love each other but it may get to the
01:53:44.760point where where there's still enough separation distinction between us where it's simply not
01:53:50.780advantageous for instance for someone like william wolf who i admire and respect uh but it just may
01:53:58.040not make if if he's trying to unseat the erlc and brent leatherwood with cbl um and win normies
01:54:06.800in the sbc that is a noble and honorable cause and it just may not suit his practical purposes
01:54:12.840to speak at our next conference right and get blacklisted you know like and so that's just a
01:54:19.920practical calculus that doesn't say anything about william compromising anything that's that's my
01:54:24.940point so i don't want anybody to read it like think like this is cryptic what's he actually
01:54:28.820saying is there another brother war you know brewing behind the scenes not that i'm aware of
01:54:33.340i'm sure there is but not that i'm aware of um i'm not saying any of that what i am saying is
01:54:37.780um there have been the brother wars where it's like it's the reformed you know they call it the
01:54:41.840reformed longhouse i i think in some ways there is that but there's also the reformed deep state
01:54:46.460where it's like this is a hit job we're trying to take somebody out like we're literally trying
01:54:50.540to destroy you um and i i think that we'll probably get a little bit less of that because
01:54:55.840i think a lot of those dividing lines have already fallen and people just kind of you know let bygones
01:55:01.200be bygone and go in their separate ways right i think a lot of that dust is settling hopefully
01:55:05.880by god's grace we don't have that like just full-on shootouts but i do think we'll still
01:55:10.480have fractures they don't have to be they can be i think they'll be amicable fractures i don't think
01:55:16.520they have to be mean spirited i don't think they have to be bloody um but but i do think we're
01:55:21.780gonna have fractures where it's like this group that two years ago we might have partnered on
01:55:26.320something or this group that you know six months ago we might have been doing this or he might have
01:55:31.400come on the podcast and and now he's not going to and it's not because he's not an ally it's not
01:55:38.260because he's not a part of this broader um banner of like a co-belligerent and it's not even because
01:55:43.460he's not a friend i can still pick up the phone and call him privately i could get counsel uh he
01:55:48.360loves me i love him even behind the scenes there might still be some partnering there might even
01:55:52.820be a donation from someone you know from time to time but in terms of public facing everybody's
01:55:59.620doing the personal calculus now that we have some some tailwinds um all we've had is headwinds
01:56:05.920forever forever like we as conservatives we didn't think tailwinds were a thing we forgot that like
01:56:11.460that that could actually happen so now that like we we actually have some tailwinds people are
01:56:16.780going to be making the calculus of what to do with those tailwinds which chart to course or which
01:56:21.740course to to chart and and they're going to be you know and some of the guys are going to say
01:56:25.280these tailwinds are enough to to to get me what i'm trying to do i'm trying to start a business
01:56:31.540i'm trying to win the sbc i'm trying to just pastor a church and and and it's a bunch of
01:56:39.480normies or a bunch of boomers or a bunch of you know whatever and they're not they're not ready
01:56:42.760for a conversation about x y and z and and so there's going to be a lot of people making that
01:56:48.660calculus based off of what their ministry is what is their vocation what are they doing what are
01:56:53.740their goals um ogden and georgetown are unique in the sense that um we're both highly insulated
01:57:00.980um just like ogden uh you know our church covenant bible church is independent um
01:57:08.340and and in terms of internally with the church um people can drop whatever hit piece they want
01:57:15.760and because i've been honest and forthright um the church is not caught off guard they're not
01:57:21.000surprised and they're for me they're in my corner and so uh brian silvey and eric khan are bullet
01:57:27.480proof. Joel Webin is bulletproof. And in addition to our local church ministries, we both also have
01:57:33.740the same practical goals of we're both starting media companies. And in that world, when that's
01:57:41.780your objective, we have every practical, like everybody else who's going to be taking five
01:57:48.480steps back or 10 steps back or 20 steps back saying that it's please, Mr. President, it's
01:57:54.000enough winning this is all i need for me my family my vocation my goals um and they're going to play
01:57:59.520ball a little bit and just say hey it's good you know this is this meets my goals and what i'm
01:58:04.540trying to achieve for for guys like ogden and guys like us um that actually is counterintuitive to
01:58:12.260our goals we do that if we do that uh we lose our entire listening base and for all those who are
01:58:19.680listening right now i would say kudos well done you should leave if uh if if i back down you
01:58:26.380should leave you should stop watching you should stop supporting um if i back down you have you
01:58:32.260have my unadulterated blessing to absolutely abandon me and uh and it's the same ogden is
01:58:40.340the same calculus with him like eric and i you know we talked just yesterday morning and we're
01:58:44.700like yeah um everybody's still our friend we love them wish them the best privately if there's
01:58:51.520anything we can do to help them serve them um absolutely 100 no public counter signaling
01:58:57.020right no no you know uh subtweeting and uh you know like no we're not doing that
01:59:03.440but uh for ourselves individually and what what we're overseeing after careful consideration
01:59:11.600we've decided to become worse so anyways all that back to the conference question you know what's
01:59:17.340what's the theme of next year's conference um tbd it's to be determined uh but it'll probably
01:59:25.940if i had to guess if anything it'll probably be something along those lines it'll be um it'll be
01:59:31.940identifying what are the dragons right because lots of people like to lark they like to go to
01:59:37.980the dead carcass of the dragon that was killed 50 years ago you know like racism you know and
01:59:42.580they just they kick it you know and hit it with their pretend wooden toy swords you know and
01:59:47.080pretend to be you know you know knights in shining armor fighting a dead dragon that somebody else
01:59:51.960slayed 50 years before they were born um that's that's not what i'm gonna do that's not what
01:59:57.420ogden's gonna do so for us i think you know in in looking at future themes and things that we're
02:00:03.120going to address it's going to be um it's going to be whatever the reigning terror whatever the
02:00:08.800leviathan is um presently not the leviathan of 50 years ago not the leviathan of four years ago
02:00:15.380it's not just going to be rehashing crt and wokeness um like you know like we're not we're
02:00:21.080not going to larp anymore wokeness um no there's plenty of people who are not putting the woke
02:00:25.880away but a lot of people are like a lot of people are putting the woke away even if they didn't want
02:00:31.020to because because just capitalism is is saying no to wokeness and um and so a lot of people are
02:00:37.620putting so we're not we're not going to just go and and uh address wokeness while fully embodying
02:00:44.560woke light you know like no we're we're gonna we're gonna keep pushing the ball forward you
02:00:50.600know what's what's the next thing and um and i have some ideas and we'll probably have to save
02:00:55.840that for another episode but i think there are at least three three pillars um formidable enemies
02:01:03.440of the church in our american context that must be must be addressed and um and i'm going to
02:01:11.940address them and i'm talking about you know doing series on these topics and there's a lot of things
02:01:17.440that we'll be announcing in the near future that i'm excited about so uh that's it for a conference
02:01:22.400question that's it for all the questions that's all the time we have ron do you have any final
02:01:26.300thoughts or final words that you'd like to leave the audience with where can we find you too oh
02:01:30.600yeah how can we follow uh i'm uh ronald dodson on uh twitter at ron dodson uh and then i have a
02:01:39.020sub stack the eyes of apilles uh which is uh ron dodson sub dot sub stack however that works
02:01:46.500uh then i write for american reformer uh i was just published uh as i mentioned in uh the american
02:01:54.480mind yesterday uh i think i'll have another piece coming out with them in the next week or so uh
02:02:02.000and uh you know i uh oh i'm on with con the guys contramundum often and uh and with several other
02:02:12.220I've been on, I got an appearance with Pete Canona's coming out in the next day or two.