The Tucker Carlson Show - Author John Daniel Davidson says paganism in America is on the rise.

00:00:00.000 Hey, it's Tucker Carlson. Welcome to our podcast. The main way that corporate media lied to you

00:00:15.760 is by not telling you things, ignoring stories completely, particularly the important ones.

00:00:21.320 We promise never to do that. You can check out tuckercarlson.com for a complete library

00:00:26.440 of past episodes. Here's today's. One thing we know about human civilizations is they're inherently

00:00:32.200 religious, even or maybe especially the ones that claim to be secular. Everybody worships

00:00:38.180 something. So as the United States becomes progressively and now aggressively less

00:00:43.360 Christian, that doesn't mean that religion has disappeared. Easter was replaced just the other

00:00:48.860 day by the Biden administration with the worship of transsexualism, Trans Visibility Day. So it's a

00:00:56.360 religion. It's just different. And in this case, it happens to be a pagan religion. And that's the

00:01:01.000 direction the United States is speeding right now toward paganism. The question is, what does that

00:01:06.000 mean? And does it make anybody happier? Very few people have thought about this in any systematic

00:01:10.960 detail. John Daniel Davidson of The Federalist is one who has, in fact, he's written a new book on it

00:01:15.360 called Pagan America, The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. And we are happy to have

00:01:21.380 join us now. John, thanks very much for coming on. So Pagan America does a bunch of questions, but does

00:01:30.200 the decline of Christianity, which is demonstrable and obvious and intentional, does that inevitably

00:01:35.520 mean paganism? In a word, yes, because in the end there is only one alternative to Christianity,

00:01:41.980 and that is paganism. And we should be clear about our terms, right? When we say paganism, I don't mean

00:01:49.280 that where there's going to be a sudden resurgence of the worship of Zeus or Odin, you know, and an

00:01:56.940 explosion of witchcraft, although that is happening as well. Yes. What I mean is a return of the pagan

00:02:03.200 ethos. And the pagan ethos is and always has been a rejection of transcendent or objective truth,

00:02:11.940 right? Pagans were free to divinize and assign divine status to the here and now, to things,

00:02:19.040 to natural phenomena, even to people. And we are returning to that as the world becomes re-enchanted

00:02:26.940 from its sort of secular hiatus that we've been on for the past century or so. And what that means in

00:02:33.020 America, of course, is a radical moral subjectivity that we see in the trans movement, that we see in

00:02:40.780 Black Lives Matter and critical race theory, that we see all across our society asserting itself now

00:02:45.500 that rejects what are fundamentally Christian claims about the human person, our relationship

00:02:52.200 to one another, and our relationship to God. So it seems like one of the ways, maybe the main

00:02:57.520 way, that Christianity is different from all other religions in a practical sense is that it rejects

00:03:02.720 human sacrifice, human sacrifice being a constant throughout all recorded history in every

00:03:06.900 non-Christian culture, human sacrifice is at the center. So as Christianity recedes, should it

00:03:13.640 surprise us that abortion, euthanasia, killing, war, human sacrifice has come to the center of our

00:03:20.900 culture? Not at all. In fact, I deal with this at length, specifically with abortion and euthanasia

00:03:28.060 as the most obvious manifestations of the return of human sacrifice in the new pagan cults. And it's

00:03:35.720 interesting when you look at the justification for something like abortion, you know, back after

00:03:40.300 Roe v. Wade and even into the 1980s, the justification was, this isn't a human being, this is just a clump of

00:03:47.540 cells. You're not taking a human life and these fetuses aren't viable. And as medical technology

00:03:56.580 progressed in the 80s and 90s and over the past 25 years, you see the justification change. Advances in

00:04:03.880 medical technology made the original justification make no sense. It could not be maintained that this

00:04:10.580 was just a clump of cells. We all knew, and we all know undoubtedly now, beyond any doubt,

00:04:16.220 objectively, an unborn human being is a human being. And so the justification has changed from

00:04:24.920 it's a clump of cells to safe, legal, and rare to shout your abortion. And so now you have a positive

00:04:31.460 defense of abortion as a good, in fact, as a moral good that we should brag about and we should

00:04:38.200 champion. And that is not a Christian value. That is a pagan value. And it's reasserting itself now in

00:04:45.680 a modern context. Well, I have noticed this. I haven't thought it through to the impressive degree

00:04:50.620 that you have, but I noticed that the justification for abortion went from essentially rational,

00:04:55.500 right? So if the fetus is not a human being, that's no different from an appendectomy. And

00:05:00.000 there's, I don't agree with that, but that is a rational defense of abortion. It's not a big deal

00:05:04.360 because the question of taking life doesn't enter into it. But once you give that up, then what exactly

00:05:10.220 is, what is the justification? Is there a justification, publicly declared justification for

00:05:15.460 taking another human life? Well, there is now, and it's very pagan indeed. The justification now is

00:05:21.140 that it is the will of the mother that determines the humanity of the child. So we have abortion laws

00:05:27.100 in this country where a child of the same gestation, two children of the same gestational age

00:05:31.800 in two different states, one has to be saved if born prematurely. All the medical technology,

00:05:39.240 all the medical expertise that can be brought to bear to save that child's life must be brought to bear.

00:05:44.000 Same gestational age, child born in another state can be killed with impunity. The only thing that

00:05:50.060 determines the humanity of this person is the desire of the mother to have the child or not have the

00:05:55.880 child. And that is also quintessentially pagan because in a pagan society, what determines right,

00:06:02.380 what is morally correct is based on a power dynamic. Those who have power do what they want to those

00:06:10.640 who have no power. And that is their right. That is their God-given right to enslave or kill or rape

00:06:19.000 or abuse anyone who they have power over. And that's the dynamic we see returning now. It may start

00:06:25.000 with a rational or secular justification as we saw with abortion, but as we're seeing now in places

00:06:31.100 like Canada with euthanasia, it quickly moves into a power dynamic where people who are inconvenient

00:06:37.680 are simply being killed. And there's very little justification on a moral, on a Christian moral

00:06:43.320 basis for it. Instead, there's a pagan moral justification, which is all about power and

00:06:48.560 force and will.

00:06:49.560 And there's a delight there. I mean, you watch the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen,

00:06:54.220 who I consider a criminal based on crimes that she has committed and never been punished for,

00:06:58.000 but whatever you think of Janet Yellen, her job has nothing to do with abortion. She's the treasury

00:07:01.800 secretary. And she comes out sort of in, it's almost like this non sequitur. It's like,

00:07:07.220 why are you talking about abortion? And tells us that it's just a good thing. It's just a good thing.

00:07:12.240 And if you want to help this country, you'll have more abortions. And she's thrilled to do it.

00:07:15.440 So I look at that and I'm like, there's a supernatural component here. There's got to be,

00:07:19.260 because there's no rational justification for it.

00:07:21.720 Yeah, exactly. There's no rational justification to allow healthy young people who are suffering

00:07:27.960 from depression or maybe substance abuse addiction to, to kill themselves, but to have

00:07:33.880 physician assisted suicide. And yet that's what's happening in Canada right now. And they went down

00:07:39.380 the slippery slope. It only took them a few years to go from only people with terminal illnesses to

00:07:44.020 anyone who's depressed and lonely. And maybe, maybe also people who are costing the national

00:07:49.780 health system, a lot of money, maybe those people do, we can get rid of them. And there's actually,

00:07:54.400 you know, some government studies in Canada have actually calculated how much the national health

00:07:59.040 service will save by expanding their euthanasia program. This is really dark stuff. And we have

00:08:05.160 to understand it for what it is. It's the replacing of Christian morality with pagan morality and the

00:08:13.120 transformation of a republic of self-governing citizens into what essentially is a slave empire,

00:08:19.500 where those with power, the ruling class rules over an underclass that is subject to, to, to that

00:08:27.500 power. And that's a very different dynamic. It means a total transformation of American society.

00:08:32.680 And I don't think that many people have really started to wrap their heads around the implications

00:08:36.620 of that for all of us. Well, in, in Canada, I mean, you have the state murdering its own native

00:08:40.780 population, overwhelmingly the Christian population of Canada, people whose ancestors were Christian

00:08:46.020 churchgoers, and then replacing them with people who, you know, who are not Christians from other

00:08:50.140 countries. So it's, it's hard not to see that as, as part of it. I mean, that's just a fact. I, I mean,

00:08:55.700 I guess you could interpret it in a different way, but it's, it's the Christian Canadians who are

00:08:59.780 getting killed by the state. I think that's just, just true.

00:09:03.600 I mean, it was also, you know, we saw with this, um, this hoax about the mass graves at the

00:09:09.400 indigenous schools as well, that unleashed a flurry of violence against Catholic churches in

00:09:14.840 Canada. Dozens of churches were burned down, vandalized, destroyed, and the prime minister

00:09:20.740 encouraged it. He cheered it on. It was the same thing with the Black Lives Matter protesters here in

00:09:25.720 the summer of 2020. The regime did nothing. They encouraged it. They, they wanted it to happen.

00:09:31.420 Uh, they were willing to countenance violence in the streets and the use, again, the use of raw

00:09:36.680 force to advance their agenda and cement their rule, uh, and then, and then unequally apply the force of

00:09:42.540 the state against Christians, against, uh, pro-life protesters, uh, against people who were in the

00:09:47.700 vicinity of the Capitol on January 6th. Uh, this is a pattern that we're going to see repeated more and

00:09:53.440 more often as we get away from this idea, um, of, uh, of traditional Christian morality, that is to

00:10:02.040 say individual rights, rule of law, consent of the governed. These aren't things that just exist in

00:10:08.280 like a secular liberal utopia. They depend on an actual Christian society to sustain them. And when

00:10:14.920 Christianity, you know, declines or becomes, we enter into a post-Christian era, those things are

00:10:21.660 going to go away. Like they can't, they can't sustain themselves on their own. Uh, and I, I don't think

00:10:28.160 that, that we appreciate just how much we rely on our Christian inheritance for like our specifically

00:10:34.480 American way of life. So I think that's really insightful what you just said, but it's also the

00:10:40.480 opposite of what we were promised. So what we were promised as always was liberation from the

00:10:45.300 strictures of this ancient religion that kept people from dancing and playing cards and having

00:10:49.500 premarital sex and like any kind of fun at all, right? It was the foot, the footloose model.

00:10:53.920 And, but that's, but what we got was not liberation. The country doesn't seem freer or liberated as

00:11:00.040 compared to the America of 30 years ago. So it, it does seem like it's a lie. Yeah.

00:11:06.960 Tucker says it best. The credit card companies are ripping Americans off and enough is enough.

00:11:18.180 This is Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas. Our legislation, the Credit Card Competition Act

00:11:23.960 would help in the grip Visa and MasterCard have on us. Every time you use your credit card,

00:11:30.100 they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee, and they've been raising it without even telling you.

00:11:35.140 This hurts consumers and every small business owner. In fact, American families are paying $1,100

00:11:41.760 in hidden swipe fees each year. The fees Visa and MasterCard charge Americans are the highest in

00:11:49.060 the world, double candidates and eight times more than Europe's. That's why I've taken action,

00:11:54.640 but I need your help to help get this passed. I'm asking you to call your Senator today

00:11:59.620 and demand they pass the Credit Card Competition Act.

00:12:03.720 Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates

00:12:07.660 committee. www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com.

00:12:11.180 The swamp in Washington has closed in on the Supreme Court to muddy its future with plans for court

00:12:19.320 packing and term limits to purge the court's conservatives, shifting the balance to churn out

00:12:25.440 radical decisions. But you can keep the swamp at bay by insisting candidates for president or

00:12:32.260 Congress come clean on whether they plan to restructure the court. Learn more ways to help the

00:12:37.280 court rise above the mire of politics at SupremeCoup.com.

00:12:44.040 Yeah, well, it is a lot. And I think there's a misunderstanding maybe of terms that has crept

00:12:51.840 into our society as well. Like when the founders said life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,

00:12:56.900 they understood happiness in a very specific way, which was the cultivation and the acquisition of

00:13:02.280 virtue. You are free not to do as you want to, whatever you want to. You're free to do as you

00:13:09.700 ought. This is something John Paul II talked about. The true meaning of freedom was freeing you to be

00:13:17.900 good and to be virtuous. It wasn't freeing you to try to change your sex or to engage publicly in sexual

00:13:29.160 fetishes and to try to voice that on children or to be an out-and-out racist. That's not what freedom

00:13:36.580 is for. And so we see, along with a decay of freedom into license, we also see a disfigurement

00:13:45.520 of reason. And that's also characteristic of pagan societies. Reason and faith are complementary.

00:13:50.800 That's what Christians have always believed because it's the truth. But now we see creeping in

00:13:55.640 an abuse of reason. And you see this most obviously, right, in the COVID pandemic where

00:14:01.880 people were invoking science, but making everyone do these completely irrational things that had

00:14:07.200 nothing to do with science and were totally unreasonable. And you see this justification

00:14:12.100 everywhere now in public life. And always it is the, we still use the language of science and reason,

00:14:19.120 but clearly what is, what is, what is the determining factor for the people in power is simply force and

00:14:26.140 will. We are going to make you do this, not because it's reasonable, not because it even works. We're

00:14:30.860 just going to make you do it because we're telling you to do it. And we're going to start to see a lot

00:14:34.520 more of that too. COVID should have been a real eye-opener. And I think it was for some people

00:14:38.180 about what the regime is capable of and how we're sort of operating on a new level, even when it comes

00:14:44.280 to the justifications for major public policy. So, I mean, I think this, I think you're exactly

00:14:50.340 right. You know, Christianity has rules, but by its nature, it rarely uses force to impose them on

00:14:58.020 others. Paganism is the opposite. So the first several centuries after Jesus's death, the Romans

00:15:03.400 were in charge. It was a pagan society and they required all subjects to bow down before their gods,

00:15:08.340 to acknowledge their gods. Christians wouldn't, and they murdered the Christians by the tens of

00:15:11.300 thousands. Then Constantine converts, it becomes a Christian empire, but the Christian empire does

00:15:17.440 not force the non-Christians to bow down before Jesus on pain of death. It allows them to live there,

00:15:23.500 right? So they're like, in other words, Christianity is more, I guess, in the American

00:15:27.400 sense, a little bit more libertarian or much more libertarian, really, than any kind of pagan

00:15:32.780 religious structure. Or am I misreading this? No, you're absolutely right. Tolerance, like religious

00:15:39.160 tolerance is a specifically Christian principle. It exists only in Christian societies and it depends

00:15:46.240 on a Christian worldview. And you have to accept some Christian theological claims about the cosmos

00:15:51.500 and about man and God in order to even entertain the idea of something like tolerance or freedom of

00:15:58.000 speech, right? These are luxury goods that only a Christian society can afford, right? Because

00:16:04.620 Christianity does not compel belief, but pagan societies do. And so the idea that we could have

00:16:12.700 tolerance and we could have freedom of speech and we could have sort of a live and let live

00:16:18.320 libertarianism without Christianity is totally false. You actually need a Christian society and a

00:16:25.500 public square that is shaped and formed by Christian moral virtues in order to have tolerance,

00:16:31.660 in order to have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. So, you know, when the founders, when

00:16:37.120 George Washington sent his letter to the Hebrew congregation, you know, what he was saying in part

00:16:42.200 was, we will not impose force on you. We will leave you free to practice your faith because we are a

00:16:50.240 Christian nation and because we can allow that, we can have tolerance for your beliefs here because we're

00:16:57.280 a Christian. We're losing that. And when we lose that, we're going to see force and compulsion and

00:17:03.780 coercion come back into the public square with force. And we're actually seeing that right now. I mean,

00:17:09.580 how much longer are people going to be allowed to be pro-life or to oppose gay marriage or even to,

00:17:15.240 you know, insist that men are men and women are women?

00:17:18.480 Well, right. Bow down before my tranny God. I mean, that's what they're demanding. It feels like people got

00:17:26.640 this backwards. And I just want to press you a little bit on the question of science. So science

00:17:31.500 flourished in the West and really only in the West, pure science flourished only in the West when it was

00:17:38.200 Christian. And as Christianity recedes and of course under attack and disintegrating in its institutional

00:17:44.480 form, science is going away too. I noticed that our leaders don't believe in actual science,

00:17:50.600 in empiricism, for example. What's the connection between Christianity and science?

00:17:55.680 Well, it's what we were saying earlier about, you know, that there is no conflict between faith and

00:18:00.120 reason. These are complementary. The truth about the physical world is revealed by God, but it's also

00:18:07.180 revealed to mankind through our reason, through the faculties that God gave us. We are created in the

00:18:13.380 image and likeness of God, and we can apprehend truths about God's creation through our senses and

00:18:19.660 through our rational minds and using scientific method, using scientific instruments. It doesn't

00:18:26.620 mean that the only thing that's true are things that we can measure with our instruments. Right. But

00:18:31.620 the things that we can measure with our instruments are true. They are part of God's truth. But when you

00:18:37.180 reject the idea of God's truth or the existence of God, or even the existence of a rational and

00:18:42.860 reasonable universe, what you're left with, again, is just force and will. And so we see now a

00:18:52.400 comfortableness on the part of our ruling elite to simply ignore science, to suppress it, to censor it,

00:18:59.160 whenever it contradicts their agenda, especially when it comes to things like the transgender movement,

00:19:05.300 where all of the science and all of the studies that we have point to how harmful and how dangerous it is,

00:19:10.500 and how the people who are suffering essentially from gender dysphoria need help. And all of that

00:19:16.260 is being ignored in favor of this radical pagan agenda. It's also is being ignored about social

00:19:22.480 media and screens. We know that those things are harmful. We push them on kids anyway. So we're

00:19:28.000 going to see this a lot more often too, and a disregard for science. And so like appeals to scientific

00:19:35.320 studies and appeals to reason and to objectively observable phenomena are going to start to fall

00:19:42.180 on deaf ears because a pagan regime really doesn't care about objective truth and doesn't care about

00:19:49.940 moral objective truth, but also doesn't care about scientific objective truth.

00:19:54.260 Yes. It's just so interesting. And I mean, that's a refrain in my own head every day. Everyone's so

00:19:59.080 unreasonable. When do people get so unreasonable, like truly unreasonable? They just don't care

00:20:02.900 what the established facts are. But I haven't connected it as directly and as eloquently as

00:20:10.100 you just have to religious faith. And it's just interesting that everything, the reality is

00:20:14.000 exactly the opposite of what we've been promised for the last 40 years, which is a secular society

00:20:18.960 will be more tolerant and more reasonable. Religion, Christianity specifically, is the root of

00:20:23.440 division, the root of oppression, and the root of superstition, right? It's the opium of the masses.

00:20:29.260 But the opposite has turned out to be true. Am I misreading this?

00:20:34.980 No, you're right. The opposite is true. I think we have to take a step back and understand the idea

00:20:41.780 of secularism, of a neutral public space where everyone was free to kind of have their own

00:20:46.900 opinions and go their own way. That is a temporary, that was kind of this temporary

00:20:52.400 like cesura in the life of Western civilization made possible by the triumph of Christianity,

00:20:59.780 but reliant on Christianity for its sustenance, for its vitality. The thing that we're seeing now

00:21:08.780 is a return to form, right? You either have a Christian society and a public square that allows

00:21:16.680 for, you know, secularism and freedom of speech. I mean, secularism, the whole idea of secularism was

00:21:22.140 invented by Christianity. So it's a product of Christian civilization. But without that,

00:21:27.700 as Christianity recedes, we're going to return to a different form of society. And that's what I mean

00:21:32.640 when I say there's only two options here. There's the Christian society and there's a pagan society.

00:21:38.300 And we're going to go under different names. It's not going to take the same forms as it did in

00:21:42.720 ancient times, but the ethos and the cosmological worldview of the ancient pagan world is going to

00:21:50.100 be reconstituted in modern times. And it's going to be very bad. It's going to be the kind of society

00:21:55.140 that not even a secular atheist will want to live in. I don't know if you saw the other day,

00:21:59.980 the famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, in an interview was saying how he's a cultural Christian. He's not

00:22:05.560 a believing Christian. And he's upset that there's so much being made in Britain about Ramadan because

00:22:10.560 he thinks Britain should be culturally Christian and he likes cathedrals and he likes the old

00:22:15.300 Christmas carols. And why can't we just have that? Well, you can't have that, Richard,

00:22:21.700 if you don't have actual believing Christians who are practicing the faith. There has to be somebody

00:22:27.160 in the cathedrals that is worshiping, somebody who's singing the Christmas carols, who believes

00:22:31.960 the content of the words. Without that, cultural Christianity withers and dies and something else

00:22:38.200 is going to come in and replace it if you don't have actual Christians living Christian life in

00:22:44.800 the public square in your nation and in your community. I'm a little confused by the leadership

00:22:52.340 of Christian churches in this country and why there's this reluctance to say obvious things that

00:23:00.040 are clearly true in the interest of their congregations and of their faith, things that they would be

00:23:05.020 required to say really as Christians. And I'm even more deeply confused by, in many cases,

00:23:11.840 the collaboration between those churches and a regime that hates them. Why have so many Christian

00:23:18.900 leaders just stood by and allowed Joe Biden, for example, to pose as a Christian or people around him

00:23:24.420 to pretend that this isn't really about crushing Christianity? Like, why not just tell the truth?

00:23:28.820 Yeah. As a Roman Catholic myself, I have to say I'm dismayed and confused about why Joe Biden hasn't

00:23:37.580 been excommunicated from the Catholic Church by now. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and many other major

00:23:43.280 political leaders who purport to be Catholic in public. But it is very confusing and it's disheartening.

00:23:49.300 I think a lot of Christian leaders in America have accepted this false notion that winsomeness

00:23:58.040 and being nice is the way to win people over to the faith and not sort of, you know, speaking clearly

00:24:07.240 about moral truth. And I think it's a great mistake because, of course, the loving thing to do to anyone,

00:24:14.300 if you love someone, you tell the truth, right? You have to tell them the truth if you love them

00:24:19.220 because you don't want them to persist in a lie that harms them and damages them. So when it comes

00:24:24.980 to an issue like transgenderism, the loving thing for Christian leaders to do is not to pretend that

00:24:29.520 this is normal or healthy, but it's to tell the truth about transgender ideology, to save people

00:24:35.460 who may be ensnared in it from getting involved in it and to help people who are ensnared to get out.

00:24:40.160 And a willingness to tell the truth has been sorely lacking from our religious leaders across,

00:24:46.260 you know, denominations in the United States. And I think that has to change. We have to grow a spine

00:24:52.440 and our leaders have to get some backbone and be willing to speak the truth, the Christian truth

00:24:58.840 about men and women, about the unborn, about how society should be structured, about marriage,

00:25:04.780 about children, uh, and speak it clearly and unapologetically in love. Uh, but, but without

00:25:11.360 caveats, that's, that is loving. That is the way to love people as Christ loves them. And that's also

00:25:18.280 the way to win souls and to convert a nation and a people, uh, is, is to not apologize for the truth.

00:25:24.640 And, and unfortunately, as you say, we have had a lot of mealy mouthed, weak Christian leaders in this

00:25:30.740 country who don't know what time it is and who don't realize like what we're talking about, that

00:25:35.380 our society is becoming post-Christian and in the future pagan order that's coming into being in

00:25:40.620 America. Um, you, you either speak the truth or you accept the lie. And too many of our Christian

00:25:46.840 leaders are tacitly right now, accepting the lies of, of the regime.

00:25:51.020 Hillsdale College offers many great free online courses, including a recent one on Marxism,

00:26:01.220 socialism, and communism. Today, Marxism goes by different names to make itself seem less dangerous.

00:26:07.320 Names like critical race theory, gender theory, and decolonization. No matter the names, this online

00:26:13.420 course shows it's the same Marxism that works to destroy private property and that will lead to

00:26:18.120 famines, show trials, and gulags. Start learning online for free at tuckerforhillsdale.com. That's

00:26:27.240 Tucker, F-O-R, Hillsdale.com. Well, given that you can only serve one master, um, I mean, you are only

00:26:39.400 serving one master, right? So if you're a bishop or some sort of religious figure who stands next to

00:26:45.360 Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden, both of whom have, you know, aggressively promoted human sacrifice and you

00:26:52.020 don't, you know, say, get behind me, Satan, uh, then you're not, you know, you're, you're serving

00:26:59.780 dark forces. Are you not? I mean, it's not just that you're polite or shy or something. It's that

00:27:04.120 you're actively working, um, against the God you claim to serve, I would think.

00:27:08.760 You are. And this gets to the other big thing about paganism, uh, and the reason for its

00:27:15.060 persistence, right? Um, in the ancient, uh, pagan world, it was understood that the pagan gods were

00:27:22.280 real beings. They, they were, um, uh, gods, angels, uh, what, what we might call today disincarnate

00:27:30.380 intelligences or multidimensional beings. Right. Uh, but the, the point is they were cast out of heaven.

00:27:36.160 So they're here, they're, they're here. Right. And, and they, uh, and worshiping them and swearing

00:27:42.380 fealty to them and giving sacrifice to them confer certain benefits. Wait, let me, let me ask you to

00:27:46.960 pause for a second and just elaborate. So you're saying that in traditional pagan societies, these

00:27:52.580 gods cast out of heaven, moving from the spiritual realm to the physical realm, but we're occupying the

00:27:58.360 physical realm. Like you could touch them. They were physically present. Is that what you're saying?

00:28:02.720 I'm saying, well, they were, they were physically, um, represented in, in temples and in idols and

00:28:09.680 in, in, in rites, in secret rites and rituals and in pagan sacrifices, human sacrifices, uh, and other

00:28:17.480 kinds of rituals. That was, that was how we connected to these, these non-physical beings, but it was

00:28:22.820 understood that these non-physical beings were, they, they had authority and power over the things

00:28:27.980 in the earth, uh, over nature in some cases, over the fortunes of nations and armies and rulers.

00:28:34.040 Uh, and that was a pretty universal belief in, in the pagan world. And it was even, uh, a belief of

00:28:40.400 the, of the Jewish people, although their account corrected the pagan account. So instead of, uh, the

00:28:46.260 god Baal overthrowing his god L and taking the throne, the attempt to overthrow the one true God by,

00:28:52.440 by Lucifer was defeated. And Lucifer was cast down with the fallen angels and cast down to earth.

00:28:57.980 Right. And so to your point about whether, about you either serve God or you, you serve, uh, the

00:29:03.760 forces of darkness, you serve the devil, uh, that is still true, right? As Christians, we believe

00:29:09.680 that's true, uh, that, that, that Satan is real, that fallen angels are real, uh, and that, and that

00:29:16.740 the occult, uh, is something that is also real. And, you know, I think people are becoming more and more

00:29:22.820 aware of this, that paganism changes throughout the ages and it takes different forms and we use

00:29:27.760 different words to describe it. Uh, but certainly these, these forms of worshiping other beings,

00:29:34.740 uh, uh, and other gods besides the Christian God are visible now, uh, that they're manifest. Now you

00:29:42.100 can see it working itself out now, not just in like teenagers, uh, you know, practicing witchcraft on

00:29:48.360 TikTok, although, although that is one manifestation of it, but also with the transhumanist movement and

00:29:53.400 the transgender movement, you know, uh, it's, it's very pagan in the way it talks about what human

00:29:59.640 beings are and what our destiny is, even in, in the artificial intelligence, uh, community and the

00:30:05.540 push to develop AI, these AI developers talk about it. They talk openly about creating gods and creating

00:30:11.680 a God that will do things for us that we can't do. That's more powerful than us. It's very, it's a very

00:30:17.340 pagan mentality and we need to understand where it's going. Uh, and it's not going anywhere good.

00:30:22.520 And that it's real. I mean, I guess I would argue that every religion, every religion believes that

00:30:29.540 spiritual beings physically walk among us. That's the heart of Christianity. God became man.

00:30:35.940 He got crucified, came back, met with his disciples, ate broiled fish, and then went to heaven like that,

00:30:42.020 but he physically existed. And so I think every society from the beginning of recorded history

00:30:48.380 has believed that, you know, beings from that dimension are right here and you can touch them.

00:30:54.940 And so like, it's real, I think. Is that fair to say? Yeah. I, I, I think that, I think that more and

00:31:00.620 more people are, are coming around to that way of viewing the world. Some of them are Christians,

00:31:05.820 some of them reject Christians. Right, right. And, and, and so, but so they're not going to serve the

00:31:11.260 Christian God. Right. They're going to serve some other being, uh, and, and they're going to get

00:31:16.040 more explicit about it too. You know, I, I think that, that, and there's a whole bunch of different

00:31:20.240 directions that, that this discussion would go and probably don't have time to get into all of it,

00:31:23.640 but, uh, but, but we're seeing that play out. And I try to explain some of those instances in the book,

00:31:30.100 maybe that people haven't thought of, uh, particular with, with artificial intelligence. I think there's

00:31:34.440 some of this going on with the, the UFO, UAP phenomenon, uh, people who are, who are looking into that

00:31:40.500 and who are deeply involved in that, you know, when, when they're pressed on it, that, you know,

00:31:44.660 they'll talk about how they believe that they're in touch with these disc, discarnate beings that are,

00:31:50.880 um, that are very advanced and that have advanced knowledge, uh, and that, and that will confer that

00:31:56.800 knowledge on us for a price. Uh, and this is exactly how like the ancient Mesopotamians understood

00:32:03.040 their gods as well, that, that they would get knowledge, secret knowledge, and they would get

00:32:07.560 advantages and technology in exchange for serving these gods. Uh, and, you know, it's difficult for

00:32:13.740 modern men to where we're used to kind of a materialist vocabulary and a scientific way of

00:32:19.520 looking at the world, but, but that's being eroded. And, and, uh, we're, we're seeing the creation now

00:32:25.680 of what C S Lewis called the materialist magician in the screw tape letters. He talks about how they

00:32:31.020 want to conceal their presence. The demons want to conceal their presence from the materialist human beings.

00:32:36.480 Uh, you know, because, because that, that way that they can make skeptics and, and materialists out

00:32:41.900 of them, but they hope someday to develop a new man who is both a materialist and a skeptic,

00:32:48.560 but, uh, also recognizes the existence of forces while not naming the spirits and veritably worships

00:32:55.400 them while maintaining his skepticism. And that kind of man is coming into being now.

00:33:00.000 Oh, well, I, I've met quite a few of them. Um, so just to press you a little bit on that,

00:33:04.560 on what you said about UFO, UAP, uh, phenomenon, which I, you know, I think people are waking up to the fact,

00:33:11.400 the established fact that there is something going on. It's not from China or Russia. The U S government

00:33:16.160 has detailed knowledge of it, which is being withheld from the public. Like that all is established fact,

00:33:20.640 I would say. Um, but in, in the reporting on this, the research into it that you have done,

00:33:27.360 what are your conclusions? Do you think it is possible that the U S government has, or elements

00:33:32.720 of the U S government, people within the U S government are in contact with these beings,

00:33:38.520 spiritual beings, I think it's fair to say, and have made some arrangement with them as the ancient

00:33:44.240 Mesopotamians did a, an exchange of technology for compliance, for, for worship, for something.

00:33:50.320 I think that's the most reasonable explanation. You think that's the most reasonable, you think

00:33:56.960 that's the most reasonable, that's like the most far out thing I've ever, that's ever entered my

00:34:01.400 brain. Right. Well, again, right. So, so, so again, you know, uh, reasoning, I think that's the most

00:34:08.840 reasonable explanation. I mean, I agree with you, but I, I'm just, I, it's funny if you think about it.

00:34:14.440 I think, uh, it's more reasonable than thinking that these things come from space, right? Yeah.

00:34:19.280 They don't come from space. I'm aware of these, these aren't like, these aren't little green men

00:34:23.120 who are like flying ships through, like from Mars to earth. Uh, I, I think that, uh, the UAP phenomenon

00:34:31.760 is, is best explained. The most reasonable explanation for it is that it is a spiritual

00:34:38.480 phenomenon and the beings that people, uh, ha report having encountered, um, are discarnate,

00:34:47.440 multidimensional intelligences or what Christians would have called demons or angels, uh, and have

00:34:54.000 called throughout human history. And the, and non-Christian peoples have had different names for

00:34:57.600 them as well. Uh, you know, we, we, I think we call them aliens, uh, to kind of soothe ourselves,

00:35:03.920 right? Because for modern man, for a materialist, skeptical, modern, it's too much. It's too scary to

00:35:10.000 say, oh, these are angels and demons. And so we say, oh, they're, they're aliens. They're aliens.

00:35:14.560 That's, that's more reasonable. Uh, now, uh, I, I do think that these things are real,

00:35:20.320 that our government has had contact with them, possibly other governments have too,

00:35:25.120 uh, and that they're being kept, it's being kept secret for obvious reasons. Um, but, but I think

00:35:30.400 the more you look into it, that, that, that's really the only, uh, reasonable explanation that

00:35:36.400 you can come to, uh, you know, it's either that, or you have to descend into kind of a, a rat hole of

00:35:42.000 conspiracy theory, uh, thinking that, you know, oh, we have these secret technologies that are

00:35:47.280 totally man-made and there's, the government has invented UFOs as an elaborate way to cover it up.

00:35:53.280 Uh, you know, and, and even these videos that we saw in recent years from Navy pilots are all fake,

00:35:59.520 you know, and, and it becomes a lot less reasonable to believe that than, than to believe the ancient

00:36:04.400 Christian beliefs that people have believed through for thousands and thousands of years,

00:36:08.400 uh, and are attested to throughout all human history. Uh, I, I think that, that is the most

00:36:13.520 reasonable explanation. And I think too, that as we enter into this post-Christian era and, and this

00:36:19.360 new pagan era arises, that's going to become a lot more obvious. I, I couldn't, I could not agree with

00:36:25.920 you more. I wonder though, if you will just expand a little bit on the implications of that. So if the U.S.

00:36:30.960 government, which we pay for and does all of this, whatever it does in our names, because it's a

00:36:36.160 democracy, it's our government, if the U.S. or parts of the U.S. government, people within the U.S.

00:36:41.040 government, employees or contractors have made contact with dark spiritual forces, which I think

00:36:47.920 is true and have made some arrangement with them with technology exchange, you know, uh, that would

00:36:55.040 require them to be complicit in whatever these forces, uh, are doing. Like what are the implications

00:37:00.960 of that? It's the U.S. government, our government. Well, yeah. So the implications of that is that,

00:37:08.560 uh, you know, America is not going to decline and fall. America is going to become evil, right? I mean,

00:37:13.920 that what, if, if elements of the, of the, uh, deep state, right, you know, we can call it the

00:37:21.520 administrative bureaucracy or whatever the permanent deep state, uh, are doing this, uh, then, then that deep

00:37:29.280 state, we need to understand that as a hostile force that is setting about, uh, evil designs,

00:37:36.400 uh, and is, and is pursuing malign ends. Uh, and one thing that, that, uh, that deep state and those

00:37:42.720 forces are not interested at all is in, um, allowing Christians to sort of flourish and practice their

00:37:49.120 faith openly in the United States. They're not interested in that at all. Uh, and so Christians

00:37:55.040 need to get, get that through their head. Part of what I'm trying to do with this book, and I should

00:37:59.920 say, I don't go into the UAP UFO thing in the book, but it's obviously adjacent to it. And, and the

00:38:05.600 implications are obvious. Um, part of the purpose, uh, my purpose of writing the book is to get

00:38:11.440 Christians to kind of accept the reality, to wrap their brains around what's happening. It's hard to do.

00:38:17.040 It's hard to accept that your government is, is, is an enemy, not just of, uh, your political party,

00:38:23.360 but, but your whole way of life and your, and your religion and your family and your community.

00:38:27.840 Uh, and that you need to be prepared for your government to be an enemy and to persecute you

00:38:33.040 and come after you. And you need to be prepared to be a minority in a post-Christian society and,

00:38:38.560 and understand what the implications of that are. I don't have all the answers. There's not

00:38:42.320 a chapter in the book that says these 10 steps will save America. I think the first big step is to

00:38:47.280 get people to realize this is happening. This is the reality. Uh, and, and, uh, and to,

00:38:54.400 and to not kind of trundle along like, like, uh, we live in the 1940s. We don't, that world is over.

00:39:04.000 John Daniel Davidson, uh, really appreciate this conversation very, very much. The book is Pagan

00:39:09.280 America, the decline of Christianity and the dark age to come. Thank you for writing it and for telling

00:39:13.760 us about it. I appreciate it. Thanks Tucker. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Tucker

00:39:19.440 Carlson podcast. If you liked it, be sure to hit subscribe and leave a review. And remember we only

00:39:25.200 released some of our interviews as podcasts. The only place you can get all of it, including past

00:39:29.440 episodes is Tucker Carlson.com. And we hope you will.

The Tucker Carlson Show - April 30, 2024

Author John Daniel Davidson says paganism in America is on the rise.

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript