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 0.80

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 1.00

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 0.98

00:01:35.520 mean paganism? In a word, yes, because in the end there is only one alternative to Christianity, 0.90

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 0.95

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.86

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 1.00

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 0.87

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 0.97

00:05:21.140 that it is the will of the mother that determines the humanity of the child. So we have abortion laws 0.74

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 0.98

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 1.00

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. 0.92

00:07:12.240 And if you want to help this country, you'll have more abortions. And she's thrilled to do it. 0.90

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 0.55

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 0.86

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 0.99

00:10:14.920 Christianity, you know, declines or becomes, we enter into a post-Christian era, those things are 0.93

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.

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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 1.00

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 0.99

00:15:03.400 were in charge. It was a pagan society and they required all subjects to bow down before their gods, 0.93

00:15:08.340 to acknowledge their gods. Christians wouldn't, and they murdered the Christians by the tens of 1.00

00:15:11.300 thousands. Then Constantine converts, it becomes a Christian empire, but the Christian empire does 0.99

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 0.54

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 1.00

00:16:04.620 Christianity does not compel belief, but pagan societies do. And so the idea that we could have 0.88

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 0.55

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 1.00

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 0.95

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 0.96

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. 0.99

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 0.94

00:21:08.780 is a return to form, right? You either have a Christian society and a public square that allows 0.94

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, 0.99

00:21:27.700 as Christianity recedes, we're going to return to a different form of society. And that's what I mean 1.00

00:21:32.640 when I say there's only two options here. There's the Christian society and there's a pagan society. 0.90

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 0.99

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 1.00

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? 1.00

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 0.59

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 1.00

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 0.99

00:25:40.620 America. Um, you, you either speak the truth or you accept the lie. And too many of our Christian 1.00

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

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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 0.99

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, 0.97

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 1.00

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. 0.73

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 0.88

00:31:11.260 Christian God. Right. They're going to serve some other being, uh, and, and they're going to get 0.89

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, 0.95

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 0.99

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 1.00

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. 0.82

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, 0.94

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 0.97

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.

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