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We're back with another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emili Jashinsky,

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culture editor here at the Federalist.
As always, you can email the show

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at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on ex at fdr LST,

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and if you want to support our
work, you can head over subscribe

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to the premium ad free version of
our website at the Federalist dot com as

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well. I'm joined today by my
colleague John Daniel Davidson, senior editor at

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The Federalist and also the author of
a book that I am so excited to

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read. John. Thanks for joining
the show and when does the book come

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out? Again? Thanks Emily.
I have to give a covey that I

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have a head cold, so if
it sounds like I have a head cold,

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I do. The book comes out
at the end of March. It's

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called Pagan America, the Decline of
Christianity and the Dark Age to Come.

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So this is actually a perfect topic
to begin on because I'm curious how many

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times you reference J. R.
R. Tolkien in Pagan America. You

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know, my wife was teasing me
about this at various points in the writing

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of the book because she thinks I
reference them, maybe too many times,

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but I tend to think I didn't
reference them enough. But yes, I

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do reference them in the introduction and
in various chapters, but you know,

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not in a gratuitous way. It's
all very germane to the topic at hand.

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So it's not and you know,
I know what you're probably thinking.

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No, it's not all references to
the Lord of the Rings. There are

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references to his letters and some of
his other other writings as well. Look,

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I make no apologies. I'm a
big Tolkien fan, have been since

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the third grade when I first read
The Hobbit and so yes, and I've

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been reading a book, a biography
of a new biography of Tolkien as well,

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so he'd been on my mind.
Let's say, well this. My

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interest in John's interest in Tolkien was
peaked originally when I heard that John dressed

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up as Gollum for Alloween going a
year and it was such an amazing story

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that I took an interest in John's
interest, which turns out out on somewhat

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of a fanaticism. But John just
might kind of bring everyone up to speed,

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listeners up to speed on why this
book Pagan America might have so many

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entirely Germane references to Tolkien in it, and I think this is a great

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you know, distillation or window into
your worldview, especially in you know,

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as it's coalesced in the last ten
years or congealed in the last ten years

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about Pagan America and how that sort
of fits in with this lifelong interest.

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Well, one of the things that
he says in one of his letters is

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that he explains to his correspondent that
he is a Christian, and indeed a

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Roman Catholic, and so he is
accustomed to view history as a long defeat.

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That's his phrase, is a long
defeat. And he has a kind

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of tragic view of history. And
and as as a Christian, he can

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see the modern how the modern world
is anti thetical to Christian civilization. And

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you know, keep in mind,
this is a guy who lived through He

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was born right at the end of
the nineteenth century. He fought in World

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War One, he was middle aged
Oxford professor and father for during World War

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Two, and died in the nineteen
seventies. So he saw, you know,

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the worst parts of the twentieth century. And I think he understood that

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the world that the modern kind of
industrial world that was that was ushered in

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mostly during his lifetime, was one
that was antithetical to Christian civilization, to

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the Christian faith, and to all
of the values that we get through Christianity

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that makes our civilization possible. And
so he had this kind of tragic view

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and and and he coined, you
know, sort of put it in this

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great way, I thought, is
that we fight the long defeat. We

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understand that the world is is dying, the world is passing away. As

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Christians, we hope for or a
new Heaven and a new Earth. And

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in the meantime we fight the long
defeat, and we don't we don't give

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up on this world, and we
don't give up on uh one another,

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on our civilization, but we do
understand that it is passing away. And

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that is as as Saint Paul said, that we fight against the powers and

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principalities of darkness who have to some
degree have rule over the over the world.

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And there's a battle going on.
And you see this all through his

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writings, not just The Lord of
the Rings, but all of the extant

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writings that are that are connected to
to his Middle Earth Legendarium. Probably the

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greatest exposition of this kind of Christian
cosmology is the first you know, eleven

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or twelve pages of the Silmarillion,
which is sort of where he gives kind

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of the creation story of Middle Earth, which is basically totally Christian and totally

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awesome too. So you could have
a podcast where you just you know,

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read out loud from the Silver Allian. I think that would be a lot

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of listeners would would appreciate that the
origin story of the Middle Earth is distill

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they make it's fun of me all
you want, Emily, but you know,

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I'm right, it's incredible, all
right, keep going, John,

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Where else do I talk about him? There's a chapter in the book Nothing

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that we need to make this whole
podcast about my book. But there's a

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chapter in the book. You know, maybe I should back up a little

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bit and and explain what the title
means when I talk about Pagan America.

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What I'm talking about is the the
end of the Christian era in the West,

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right, the Western civilization was was
created by the combination of Christianity with

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with you know, the the Greco
Roman world, right, and so you

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have Athens and you have Jerusalem together
and you get Western civilization. It always

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depended on the Christian faith though to
propagate the morality and the virtues that were

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necessary for that for our civilization to
flourish. And indeed, you know,

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the American experiment specifically relies on Christianity
in a way that you know, when

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you really look into like the Founders
and the generation before the Founders, and

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what they said about what it was
that they were doing, it was explicitly.

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It wasn't an explicitly Christian project in
the sense that they weren't sort of

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like setting up a Christian empire.
But they understood that the kind of society

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that they were setting up was one
that could only be undertaken by people who

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were faithful Christians, who were religious
people, whose morality and whose principles were

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formed by religious faith. And they
said so explicitly. Of course, the

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most famous line is John Adams who
said that our republic is only fit for

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moral and religious people, and it's
not it's not possible with anything but that

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kind of a people. So he
was talking about Wickens though, of course,

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right, well, that I mean, but that actually is the the

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interpretation that a lot of sort of
like you know, secular you know,

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liberals would put on it. And
say like, oh, moral and religious,

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So that means wickens too. Rite, He's not saying just Christians,

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No, he's talking about Christians.
They were all talking about Christians. And

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if they weren't talking explicitly about about
a certain you know, sect of Christianity

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or denomination of Christianity, they were
speaking broadly of the Christian faith. They

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weren't thinking of Muslims, right or
Wickens. So so you have you have

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this American experiment, and it relies
on Christianity, and and even the values

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that undergird are like Bill of Rights, things like individual liberty and you know,

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the consent of the government, and
free speech and freedom of religion and

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things like that. Those all of
those stem from principles and values that flow

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out of Christianity. If you take
Christianity away, there's no basis for those

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things anymore. Like individual rights,
for example, is derived from the doctrine

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of Imago Day that man is created
in the image and likeness of God,

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and so he has inherent dignity and
worth and rights too. And one of

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the things that I do at the
beginning of the book is kind of in

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brief trace back, you know,
how these things were articulated in really in

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medieval Catholic Europe. You know,
the idea of individual rights. You can't

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just do whatever you want to other
people because you have power. That mentality

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that might makes right powerful do what
they want. That is a pagan virtue

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and that defined the pagan world.
And my argument in brief is that as

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Christianity fades in America, we are
going to return to a to a pagan

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morality and a pagan way of organizing
society. And that is not going to

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be a country that any of us
want to live in, even people who

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are not Christians, because it's going
to be brutal and violent and oppressive and

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ruled by the powerful, and the
weak and the powerless will be completely subject

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to a powerful class of people who
do basically whatever they want, which is

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historically fairly in the norm. Yeah, that's the norm, right. What's

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said is that we devise a system
based on truths that would overcome the norm.

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Historically. That's what's so remarkable about
the American system, the Western system

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of government, and that's what we
stand to lose. And John I wanted

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to ask about how Tolkien, who's
who's dealing with the world that such a

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turning point historically, How did he
deal with Nietzsche. He's not writing that

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long after Nietzsche, and he's writing
when Nietzschism is sort of popular among elites

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or in certain quarters of the elites. And I asked that question in the

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context of the debate right now that
sort of royal some you know, certain

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niche corners of the right about whether
Christianity uh sort of necessarily generated woke ideology,

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that woke ideologies in some ways premised
on and maybe Protestantism or something like

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that. How is Tolkien dealing with
Nietzsche when he's writing He never wrote,

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you know, in his correspondence or
in any of his other writings directly about

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Nietzsche, as far as I understand, or as far as I know.

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Maybe maybe I'm wrong, and some
listener will call me out on that,

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but he did. You the idea
that liberalism or or extreme liberalism, like

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wokeism, flows out of Christianity or
as a consequence of Christianity, I would

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say, is a is not right. And I think Tolkien would say the

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same thing. It's a perversion of
Christianity that discards much of the Christian inheritance

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and specifically the Catholic inheritance of Europe. He the thing to understand about Tolkien

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is that he was deeply Roman Catholic, was a devout Roman Catholic. He

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was formed by you know, the
pre Vatican to Church. He had memorized

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the entire canon of the Mass in
Latin. The Canon of the Mass,

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for our non Catholic listeners, is
the part of the Mass that doesn't change

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from season to season. It's always
the same, uh said in a certain

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point in the Mass is the canon, and it's and it's constant because anyway

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he he he was totally formed by
the Catholic faith, and so his and

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I would argue that to fully understand
his writings, uh, the Lord of

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the Rings and all the writings associated
with the Middle Earth, you can't have,

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you know, a deep understanding of
them without without seeing and understanding his

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Catholic faith and and uh seeing the
ways that that that faith shaped his creative

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output, his literary output, uh
and and imbued it with with that faith.

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So I would say that The Lord
of the Rings is deeply Catholic work.

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I don't there's playing people disagree with
about that. Uh. Tolkien wasn't

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like C. S. Lewis in
the sense that he didn't write he wasn't

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an apologist for Christianity. He didn't. He didn't write apologetics or nonfit essays

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arguing for the faith. He didn't. He wasn't explicit in that way about

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his faith. But he his view
was that Christianity was what he called a

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quote true myth. So his view
is that all of mythology is sort of

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trying to get at something that is
fundamentally true about the created order and about

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human beings. And that's with Christianity
you have, you have the fulfillment of

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all mythology. God becomes man,
sacrifices himself to enter so that man can

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enter into communion with God and redeem
the world. And that that understanding Christianity

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from a sort of mythopoetic point of
view is the proper way to understand it,

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and also to understand all mythology right
and by extension, much of human

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history tree as well. So to
someone to answer your question sort of roundabout

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way, to someone like Nietzsche who
who kind of sees Christianity as a slave

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religion, as imbue or is infecting
civilization with these weak principles that are going

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to destroy it. He would have
totally rejected, would and did totally reject

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that view of Christianity. Number two, Like, but you get a little

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bit nerdy here, because this is
a podcast about Jaror Tolkien. How you're

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going to get at before it was
a straight shock. This is just normal

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stuff, you know, probably you
know, really you know, really familiar

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to everybody. Barroom banter. Yeah, exactly. The you know, we

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forget and we have have have lost
our vocabulary about the virtues into a large

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extent that that we're part of sort
of Christian christendom for for a long time.

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And I'm thinking of things like magnanimity. Right, most people don't even

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know what that means. It means
a desire or a striving toward greatness,

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right, And a character like Aragorn
was was perfectly encapsulated the Christian virtue of

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magnanimity. Right. He wasn't he
wasn't a tyrant or a despot. He

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didn't hunger and seek for power.
He saw it and was and bided his

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time and sacrificed greatly himself in order
to finally achieve greatness. That's so Nietzsche

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kind of had this like caricatureized view
of Christianity. I don't think he understood

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it very well, for one thing, and propagated this notion that Christianity,

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you know, that there were no
like martial values or there was no greatness

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in Christianity, which is ironic because
you know, he's a guy who's living

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in European civilization that was created,
you know, the greatest kind of civilizational,

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a flower of civilization, right,
living in nineteenth century Europe, with

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the greatness of Christ and to them
all around him, and he thinks that's

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it's a slave religion for weaklings.
Well, how did Europe happen then?

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If that's the case anyway, I
so long answer to say, I think

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I think Tolkien would have understood and
would have thought Nietzsche's view of Christianity was

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totally wrong, much like the view
of Christianity that we see on the left

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today. They have no idea what
Christianity is and they and they really have

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no idea that our entire society depends
on these Christian morals and principles for its

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survival. The Watched Out on Wall
Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day,

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which has been one of the more
interesting I've probably mentioned it too many

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times on the show since it happened, but it's one of the more interesting

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parts of a in here c I
Lee's conversion to Christianity, which you wrote

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about John really wonderfully, and I
was curious about it that I actually went

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behind the paywall over at Unheard and
watched her full long conversation and read the

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transcript, and I found it's been
much more. It's fleshed out much more

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than just the original essay wise,
and that was brought on by a really

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important book, which is Tom Hollinds
Dominion, David Harsani and I had Tom

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Holland total honor to have him on
the show a few months back. But

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to your point, John, it's
like we've lost and Holland emphasizes this too,

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it's like we've lost the vocabulary to
understand all of this so much so

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that myths are not recognized as sort
of Christian stories and I shouldn't even say

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stories, but as Christian myths fundamentally. And I want to ask you about

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that, about the myths that the
Left tells itself about Tolkien, or about

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the way Tolkien is now sort of
perceived in our society in some ways because

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as children are imbibing Tolkien today,
as they still do, you know,

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very often it's not recognized for what
it very obviously clearly is. Yeah,

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and that's so I answer that.
But let's but I want to say word

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about Tom Holland too in a way. So I in the same introductory chapter

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of my book that I quote Tolkien
talking about the Long Defeat, I quote

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at length from Tom Holland's Dominion,
which is which is a great book and

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an important book, but it gets
one big thing wrong. And it's at

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the end, right he goes through, you know, fifteen hundred years of

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Christian history and explains how our whole
civilization depends on these things that come from

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Christianity. These concepts and morals and
ideas about society and about individuals, about

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families, about government power, all
of these things are completely derivative and totally

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dependent on Christian faith. Not only
that, but he even explains how at

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the end of the book he starts
getting into how even expressions of sort of

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extreme liberalism and or wokeism also,
you know, come from Christianity. I

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would argue that they're they're sort of
like distortions of Christianity. But even as

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distortions, they they have their they
have their source in a Christian understanding of

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the world. You know, even
something like I think he references this at

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the end of the book, the
Me Too movement. That kind of a

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movement, and this is part of
this point. That kind of a movement

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would have been impossible in a pagan
society because because if a powerful man like

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Barbie Weinstein had taken advantage of of
young young women actresses that were that he

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was doing things for, you know, and getting them jobs or whatever,

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that wouldn't have been a problem in
the Roman Empire. Right, it's only

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a problem. We only see it
as a problem because we have this idea

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that there should be something like consent, That that we have this idea that

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powerful people shouldn't shouldn't abuse their position
to gratify themselves. Right, we have

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the slave morality, right, we
we right what nature we call the slave

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morality? But what what what a
Christians would understand? The reason that we

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have the idea of consent, The
reason that we say that the powerful man

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shouldn't be allowed to just rape a
woman because he wants to, is because

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that woman has inherent dignity and worth
as a child of God. Right and

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so anyway, So, so Holland
goes through this sort of really well,

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goes through centuries and centuries and Christian
history, teasing out this idea in all

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these different ways. But when he
gets to the end of the book,

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he doesn't quite He pulls this punch
right at the end and said, he

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essentially said, there's no reason to
believe, and I'm paraphrasing him here,

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that these these virtues are these these
ideas that have been the foundation for Western

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civilization will quickly go away, will
quickly fade. But I think that that's

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wrong. I think that there's every
reason to believe that if the faith goes

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away, the ideas are going to
go with them. We may cling onto

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them. I think that's the period
of history that we're in right now.

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We may cling onto them as a
start of echo of their source, as

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an echo of the civilization that that
that was created out of these ideas and

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these virtues. But there, But
but it only takes a few generations for

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for for things to change completely.
And there's a lot of examples of this

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throughout history. But if you have
if you raise a generation or two on

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the kind of uh, you know, pagan values and and and distortions of

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Christian values that we that that are
in the mainstream today, it's not going

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to take very long. We already
see things like, you know, race

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consciousness coming back, you know,
the joke of being. You know,

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a thirteen year old spends two hours
on TikTok and then he's quoting Osama bin

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Lad. Right, that's what I'm
talking about, Right, If you don't

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chatechize the upcoming generations. To my
education was so important to Christian Europe,

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it was so important to the Founders. They understood if we don't educate the

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upcoming generation to have these values and
to have this religious sensibility and moral sensibility,

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then our society is going to fall
apart. So that and that,

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in a way is a jumping off
point for my book is to say Holland

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about that, he's not right about
that. And the rest of the book

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is showing the ways that the things
that are happening right now that show that

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these things are going away quickly and
they're being replaced by new kind of morality

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which is decidedly pagan. And when
I say pagan, I don't mean people

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are going to be like, you
know, bowing down to idols of artivists

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and Zeus in Times Square or something
like that at all. Yes, I'm

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not saying that. It's not that
that's the only thing that's going to happen.

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Uh, that's not the key thing. The key thing about paganism and

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something I say at the beginning of
the book can be summed up in the

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phrase nothing is true and everything is
permitted. It's a kind of materialism and

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a moral relativity that allows the powerful
to do as they please and the week

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to suffer what they must. Uh. And and that was and that's why

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pagan societies are have throughout history for
in large part also been slave societies,

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and slavery and paganism, Uh,
you know go together perfectly. Uh.

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And and that that is what we
as we embrace moral relativism, as we

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embrace the idea that nothing is true
and everything is permitted, we are going

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to return to a pagan morality and
a pagan society, which is to say,

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a slave society. So well,
I was gonna say so. Tolkein

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sort of illustrates the virtues of Christian
mythology with his own myths. What did

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he have to tell us in his
myths about the dangers? What warnings are

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there as people are maybe rereading token
themselves thinking about Tolkien right now as we're

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talking about it, or thinking about, you know, how they teach their

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children Tolien, what warnings are there
in his work about what could be to

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come? Well, one of the
main things that you get in terms of

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morality from Lord of the Rings,
let's say, is that evil is real

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and good is real, and they're
distinct and it's possible to know the difference.

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And that is a kind of moral
clarity that comes from Christianity and comes

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00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:07,319
from his Roman Catholic faith. There's
no there's none of this sort of you

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00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:15,039
know, woke liberal postmodern sensibility that
you know, good and evil are?

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00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:21,160
Are you context dependent? To quote
Claudine Gay and Liz McGill. Uh,

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00:27:21,279 --> 00:27:27,640
you know the who said that recently
before Congress about anti Semitism. Evil is

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00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:33,640
not context just dependent, you know
it is. It is a rejection of

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00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:37,359
the good and a perversion of the
good. So one of the things you

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00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:42,079
see in uh Salon right and uh
and before him going to get nerdy on

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00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:48,960
you melcoor right, who is the
valor? And that Sara is a mayar

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00:27:48,079 --> 00:27:53,400
who is a you know, archagel
below Melcore. And once Melcore was bound

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00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:57,000
and sent into the eternal darkness,
Sauron lived on. And he's the main

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00:27:57,079 --> 00:28:03,240
villain that we know about him.
But all that to say, my boyfriend

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00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:04,839
is going to yah. I was
going to say, Phil will know what

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00:28:04,839 --> 00:28:12,799
I'm talking about. He can get
you up to speed afterwards. So so

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00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:18,720
the the villains in Lord of the
Rings, they hate the created world as

316
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it is. They hate free You
know that that the different peoples of Middle

317
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:30,079
Earth have a measure of freedom.
They hate the messiness and the disorder of

318
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:34,200
it. Right, which is always
something that that uh, that something that

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00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:37,759
comes up in Tolkien, that something
comes up in Cus Lewis's writings as well,

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is that the the those who are
evil, uh, they they hate

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disorder, they hate freedom, they
hate uh, and they want to impose

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00:28:48,279 --> 00:28:52,240
control, right, They want to
impose the society to take it back to

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Pagan America. This is society and
Middle Earth that Sovereign wants to create as

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a slave society. It's perfectly ordered, uh, according to his will,

325
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right. And uh. So that's
one aspect. The other aspect is that

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he he cannot create himself. Evil
does cannot has no creative power. It

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can only distort uh what is good. So the Orcs, for example,

328
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:26,119
are are not creatures that sa has
has created himself. And there's there's different

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00:29:26,119 --> 00:29:32,079
accounts of like the origines story,
like the evil creatures like Orcs and the

330
00:29:32,119 --> 00:29:37,160
spiders and whatnot that are in Middle
Earth. And and there's and there's some

331
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:40,680
conflicting accounts because you know, Tolkien
was kind of working this out over the

332
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:45,200
course of decades that that he worked
on all of this while he was doing

333
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:49,599
his his you know, being a
professor at Oxford and everything. But the

334
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:56,160
Orcs are are are corrupted elves,
right, the goblins are are corrupted ends

335
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:03,440
and and and that's a feature you
know that that comes from Tolkien's very Christian

336
00:30:03,799 --> 00:30:08,799
and Catholic understanding of God's creative power. That what God creates, as it

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00:30:08,839 --> 00:30:11,680
says in Genesis that he saw what
he had created, and he saw that

338
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:17,680
it was good. So the things
that God creates are good. Evil cannot

339
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:22,240
create anything good. It can only
distort what God has created. And so

340
00:30:22,279 --> 00:30:26,759
we see that that that's sort of
like a you know, really and really

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00:30:26,839 --> 00:30:32,960
dramatic mythopoetic ways is brought out in
the Lord of the Rings story. You

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00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:36,680
know, the whole land of Mordor
has laid waste by by by sal On

343
00:30:36,759 --> 00:30:41,160
it by his armies and and and
for whatever it's worth too, Tolkien understood

344
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:48,519
that like machines and the corruption of
nature and the abuse of nature, uh,

345
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:53,279
we're also part of this wicked,
evil, distorted morality. Uh.

346
00:30:53,359 --> 00:30:57,559
So that you know, Salama,
for example, you know, destroys all

347
00:30:57,599 --> 00:31:04,920
the trees as part of his creating
this war machine of the you know,

348
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:08,160
the white hand of his army of
works that he's going to send out.

349
00:31:10,759 --> 00:31:15,759
So anyway, that's one example to
what to answer your question of how this

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00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:22,799
Christian morality comes out in Tolkien's legendary, in his Middle Earth myth that that

351
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:30,319
is a distinctly Christian is a distinctly
Christian morality and Christian understanding of good and

352
00:31:30,359 --> 00:31:34,359
evil, not just that they exist
objectively, but like what evil is and

353
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:40,480
what good is. And John,
I know that we've talked about this before,

354
00:31:40,599 --> 00:31:45,000
but another thing we've almost lost the
vocabulary to talk about because we've become

355
00:31:45,839 --> 00:31:51,759
also numb to hyper novelty. That's
one of the functions of high tech hyper

356
00:31:51,759 --> 00:31:56,119
novelty is that you're sort of a
frog in a boiling pot. I imagine

357
00:31:56,160 --> 00:32:02,920
you've you could fill actually pages withscussion
on Tolkien technology. But the sort of

358
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:10,200
irony poisoned Zoomers of America. Are
you resurrecting the unibomber and having a lot

359
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:14,880
of fun with it because you know, actually it was onto a couple of

360
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:20,839
things, And there's some of that
in you know, the the world that

361
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:25,039
Tolkien is reacting to and that he's
writing about. So as people are sort

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00:32:25,039 --> 00:32:29,920
of maybe particularly and I should say, John did not pitch this as a

363
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:32,400
conversation about his book at all.
I just realized literally as we were beginning,

364
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,640
that there are probably a lot of
Tolkien references in the book, but

365
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:39,960
as we sort of take that lens, there are the lurch towards paganism in

366
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:46,559
America right now to this conversation about
technology. What does Tolkien tell us as

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00:32:46,599 --> 00:32:51,799
we're thinking about TikTok and Osama bin
Laden to the point you just made,

368
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:57,359
what can we find in his work
about that he had a he had a

369
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:06,319
deep distrust of the industrial of industrialism
and end of the machine age. In

370
00:33:06,359 --> 00:33:10,039
fact, a funny anecdote is that
he, you know, later in life,

371
00:33:10,839 --> 00:33:17,799
as he became the internationally celebrated author
revert he published The Hobbit in nineteen

372
00:33:17,839 --> 00:33:22,279
thirty seven and and it did well, but The Lord of the Rings wasn't

373
00:33:22,279 --> 00:33:27,440
published until the fifties, and so
he was sort of like I had been

374
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:32,319
a professor an academic at Oxford for
many, many years, but he wasn't

375
00:33:32,359 --> 00:33:37,079
like famous in the way that that
he became after the publication of the Lord

376
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:40,640
of the Rings. And so you
know, all these interviews that that that

377
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:45,680
interview requests that came in and correspondence
as that came in, he was asked

378
00:33:45,759 --> 00:33:53,400
to record a portion I believe of
the Lord of the Rings or for some

379
00:33:53,920 --> 00:34:00,839
media media thing. And but before
he would have to have his voice recorded

380
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:07,599
on the recording machine, he he
did a brief exorcism right on the tape

381
00:34:07,639 --> 00:34:15,480
recorder and prayed the our Father in
Gothic over it. Because because the idea

382
00:34:15,519 --> 00:34:20,360
that you would you would that your
voice would be captured by this machine forever.

383
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:25,960
Uh. He understood that that wasn't
necessarily uh, just a mechanical thing

384
00:34:27,039 --> 00:34:30,760
that was happening. That there was
that that your your voice is your own,

385
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:36,400
and that there's something mystical and spiritual
that that that our whole reality is

386
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:40,280
shot through with the with the with
a spiritual reality, and that there is

387
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:46,639
uh that our physical world and the
spiritual world are intertwined. And so you

388
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:52,400
every time you start, uh,
every time Gmail tries to autocurr that's right,

389
00:34:52,599 --> 00:34:57,480
immediately do an exorcistm R. Yeah, I'm constantly shouting at my computer

390
00:34:57,519 --> 00:35:02,679
in Laddin. Uh he you know, And it wasn't This wasn't unique to

391
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:07,159
Tolkien, right. Cs List writes
about this too. A lot of a

392
00:35:07,199 --> 00:35:14,199
lot of men of that generation who
who were born into sort of not not

393
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:17,960
that they were born into a pre
industrial world, but they were young men

394
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:22,920
who maybe fought in World War One
or who witnessed World War One. They

395
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:30,119
understood that a new world was coming
into being, a mechanized, industrialized world

396
00:35:30,119 --> 00:35:35,960
where even warfare was industrialized and was
able to just lay waste in a way

397
00:35:36,039 --> 00:35:40,280
that that warfare had never had never
done. Churchill talks about this too his

398
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:45,800
experience in the Boer War in the
eighteen nineties. He was horrified at what

399
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:51,519
sort of modern armaments and modern military
tactics were able to do, and he

400
00:35:51,599 --> 00:35:54,559
thought it it unnatural, and he
wrote about it at the time, which

401
00:35:54,679 --> 00:36:00,480
you know, then ironically, much
later in life he would be overseeing Britain's

402
00:36:00,519 --> 00:36:05,119
war effort in World War Two,
which was which were many orders of magnitude

403
00:36:05,159 --> 00:36:08,519
more destructive than the Boar War.
But these men understood that there was something

404
00:36:08,599 --> 00:36:15,599
unnatural about a fully mechanized, fully
industrialized society that ignored the spiritual reality,

405
00:36:17,559 --> 00:36:22,239
you might even say, the the
mythic or mythopoetic reality of our world.

406
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:29,880
That things are not you know,
that we don't live in a coldly materialistic,

407
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:35,280
rationalistic world. That that's a lie, that that the world is just

408
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:39,440
a world of things, uh,
and not a world of beings and of

409
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:45,840
intelligences and of spiritual realities that are
just as real as you know, the

410
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:50,239
tape recorder, let's say. And
so that was something that now I've been

411
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:53,039
talking for so long, I forgot
your initial question. But to give you

412
00:36:53,079 --> 00:36:57,519
an example technology, that's right.
So to give you an example of Toulkin's

413
00:36:57,519 --> 00:37:02,159
relationship with technology, that that's the
kind of they looked out at a world

414
00:37:02,199 --> 00:37:10,719
of exploding technology through that lens and
understood that technology wasn't necessarily our friend.

415
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:15,800
And that's something that I think,
you know, we've talked about this at

416
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:20,239
the Federalists before and we've written about
it, but conservatives over the past you

417
00:37:20,239 --> 00:37:24,639
know, eighty years or so have
not engaged that question, the question of

418
00:37:24,639 --> 00:37:28,719
technology the way that they should.
There's been even among conservatives, has been

419
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:32,679
kind of a passive acceptance of the
inevitability of technology and the neutrality of it.

420
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:37,400
Right, that technologies is this neutral
thing, and what matters is what

421
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:38,599
you do with it. Do you
use it for good or do you use

422
00:37:38,639 --> 00:37:45,159
it for ill? Tolkien and Lewis
and all of these guys. Chesterton,

423
00:37:45,679 --> 00:37:50,760
they would have rejected that understanding of
technology and they would have said, know

424
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:58,599
that technology is not neutral. All
technologies impose a cost. And one of

425
00:37:58,639 --> 00:38:01,440
the things you have to grapple with
is is the cost worth It? Is

426
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:07,320
the cost greater than the benefit of
this technology. And I think that's something

427
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:12,280
we have completely not has not been
part of the discussion about, you know,

428
00:38:12,639 --> 00:38:16,559
something like social media, smartphones,
you know, the ubiquity of the

429
00:38:16,559 --> 00:38:22,000
Internet and screens in our lives.
No, there's been yeah, podcasts,

430
00:38:22,079 --> 00:38:25,719
you know, people should probably stop
listening to this podcast right now and go

431
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:30,719
outside and start, like, you
know, chopping wood. You can multitask.

432
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:35,920
I guess you can put your earbuds
in and then go chop wood while

433
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:44,079
you keep listening. But the idea
that technology imposes the cost that you can

434
00:38:44,159 --> 00:38:46,880
see that in the Lord of the
Rings as well. It's very interesting.

435
00:38:47,159 --> 00:38:51,880
In one of his letters, Tolkien
talks about the notion of power and the

436
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:53,840
word power as well, and one
of the things he says is that whenever

437
00:38:53,880 --> 00:39:00,559
he uses the term power in the
Lord of the Rings, it's almost always

438
00:39:00,599 --> 00:39:06,480
in a negative sense, that that
exercising power for the beings in Middle Earth,

439
00:39:07,079 --> 00:39:09,360
not just sort of elves and dwarves
and men, but but the but

440
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:15,559
the sort of spiritual beings like Sauron
Uh and the wizards like Gandolf and Suraman.

441
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:22,320
Power is something that that God alone. It comes from God alone,

442
00:39:22,559 --> 00:39:29,239
and all the all all other power
that's exercised is derivative from God's power.

443
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:36,000
And so obviously a creature like Sauron
distorts God's power uses it for ill.

444
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:43,480
He seeks to aggregate more power to
himself and and impose his will through power

445
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:47,480
and and creature like Gandolf, who, by the way, again Phil Phil

446
00:39:47,519 --> 00:39:53,519
will can explain it to you later. Gandolf is is an an angelic being

447
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:58,599
the order of the Blue Wizards,
was sort of sent by the Valor to

448
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:01,960
Middle Earth to help you know,
the elves and men in the Third Age,

449
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:07,639
and and so so Gandalf also has
power, that is that is given

450
00:40:07,679 --> 00:40:14,639
to him by the kind of archeanngelic
beings that have ultimate governance over Middle Earth,

451
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:17,320
the val Are, who themselves are
the archaegels of the Louvatar, who's

452
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:22,800
the god of Middle Earth. Anyway, Gandalf, Gandalf has given this power,

453
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,239
but he says at one point that
and I can't remember if it's in

454
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:29,480
the Lord of the Rings or this
is in the Silver Alien, but it's

455
00:40:29,639 --> 00:40:32,320
it's made clear that the power that's
given to the Blue Wizards, they are

456
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:37,320
very circumscribed and how they can use
their power, and so, which is

457
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,039
why you don't see Gandalf out there
like shooting lightning bolts out of his staff

458
00:40:40,079 --> 00:40:45,119
and like just laying waste the armies
of Sauron. Right. He is there

459
00:40:45,119 --> 00:40:50,639
to assist man and elves and peoples
of Middle Earth in their struggle against Sarn,

460
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:53,920
but he is very circumscribed in when
he can use the powers that he

461
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:58,679
has, how he can use them, what he uses them for, and

462
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:05,199
what context he's able to use them. And so it's it's uh, it's

463
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:09,920
very much in contrast to to a
creature like Sorron or one of the Order

464
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:16,679
of the Wizards who ends up becoming
enthrall to sorrow Saramon, who was the

465
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:21,320
most powerful the wizards, but he
ignores the limits that was placed on his

466
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,400
power and seeks to and then he
seeks to become more powerful himself, and

467
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:30,039
it becomes this like you know,
horrible villain and who lays waste the countryside.

468
00:41:30,719 --> 00:41:37,599
So this idea of technology throwing it
back to technology. Technology amplifies our

469
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:43,159
power, uh, the power of
mankind in amazing ways. But I think

470
00:41:43,159 --> 00:41:49,360
Tolien would have understood that that amplifying
your power your abilities, uh, does

471
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:52,440
come into cost, and it is
something that we need to exercise great caution

472
00:41:52,599 --> 00:41:55,559
for it. It's not an unmitigated
good, and we can see in our

473
00:41:55,639 --> 00:42:00,440
society now helpless ways in which the
new power of the Internet and of social

474
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:07,000
media have done incredible damage, especially
to younger people and the generation now coming

475
00:42:07,079 --> 00:42:14,159
up with it. In ways.
I think that if if there ever is

476
00:42:14,159 --> 00:42:16,119
a restoration in Western civilization, we
will look back on it and say,

477
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:21,559
like, what the hell are we
doing with this technology? We destroyed whole

478
00:42:21,599 --> 00:42:27,880
generation of kids. Well that's bleak
but appropriate. I'm really excited. Buy

479
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:31,320
my book Pagan America for more bleak
content like this. If you would have

480
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:37,559
been horrible, can go buy America. No. I mean, obviously,

481
00:42:37,559 --> 00:42:43,760
the fundamental message of any of any
book that John would write is a hopeful

482
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:46,760
one, because our hope is not
in this world. So John Daniel Davidson

483
00:42:47,039 --> 00:42:51,840
Pagan America out in March can people
pre order it now? They can,

484
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:57,400
It's on Amazon. You can pre
order it now. And of course you

485
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,239
know we'll be talking about it more
at the Federalists. Be a close to

486
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:04,840
publication. I'll say one more thing. If you're about to sign off on

487
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:08,920
the connection that you asked earlier about, you know, Christian themes in in

488
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:15,360
Tolkien's Legendarium, one really potent.
One kind of just came to mind because

489
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:19,559
I was talking about Gandolf. You
know, anyone who reads The Lord of

490
00:43:19,559 --> 00:43:22,440
the Rings will be familiar with this
scene in the minds of Maria when they

491
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:29,800
barely escape because they they you know, they've awoken the bow Rog. And

492
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:31,239
and Againdolf is like, you know, he says, fly you fools,

493
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:35,039
you know, and he turns and
to face the bow Rog while the rest

494
00:43:35,039 --> 00:43:38,519
of the fellowship escapes. There's a
famous scene of this in Peter Jackson's not

495
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:45,719
very good film adaptation of Lord of
the Rings. And he fights the val

496
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:50,800
Rog and we're we're to understand he
dies. He dies fighting this balrog down

497
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:54,320
in the depths of the of the
of the Earth. But he comes back.

498
00:43:54,360 --> 00:44:00,320
He's sent back, right, He's
he is resurrected in a way.

499
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:07,320
It's very Christian uh theme there sent
back to continue helping the peoples of Middle

500
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:10,719
Earth. But he's changed when he's
sent back, he's changed. He's no

501
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:15,880
longer Gandalf the Gray, He's Gandalf
the White. And we even have this

502
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:22,159
this scene where he first reveals himself
to Aragorn and Himli and Legolas, and

503
00:44:22,199 --> 00:44:25,079
he says, I believe to Aragorn, you know, do you not recognize

504
00:44:25,119 --> 00:44:30,320
me? And it's very derivative of
of uh, of the account in the

505
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:36,199
Gospel where Jesus uh you know,
appears on the road to amais to the

506
00:44:36,199 --> 00:44:39,079
two disciples who don't recognize him,
and he expounds to them that all of

507
00:44:39,119 --> 00:44:43,239
the scriptures in the New Testament,
uh, and their hearts are burning within

508
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:45,880
them, and then you know,
he disappears and they're like, and then

509
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:50,639
they realize who it was. It's
very reminiscent, you know, of that.

510
00:44:51,039 --> 00:44:55,159
There's there's the Gandalf being Gandalf the
White, you know, and there's

511
00:44:55,199 --> 00:45:00,960
there's been this change in him.
It's almost his glorified of of Gandalf right,

512
00:45:00,119 --> 00:45:06,599
just like the glorified Christ returned to
the disciples and taught them and spent

513
00:45:06,679 --> 00:45:09,880
time with him. He was really
there physically. They touched to the wounds

514
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:15,239
in his hand, in his side, but he was a resurrected, glorified

515
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:21,559
version of himself in the flesh.
And so we have that in sort of

516
00:45:21,559 --> 00:45:28,159
the Resurrection and Return of Gandolf as
well. Maybe a bit obvious, but

517
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:31,920
I didn't want to go without mentioning
that since this is a podcast about supposed

518
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:38,039
to be about Tolkien and not about
my book, I'll say too perfect that.

519
00:45:39,519 --> 00:45:44,800
Mark Hemingway recently published the Federalist Notable
Books of twenty twenty three. My

520
00:45:45,039 --> 00:45:47,400
only entry in that for this year
is a book that just came out in

521
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:53,280
September by Holly Ordway, and it's
called Tolkien's Faith and it's a spiritual biography

522
00:45:53,519 --> 00:45:59,280
and it's about Tolkien's Catholicism and how
it informs his work and his life.

523
00:45:59,599 --> 00:46:06,679
Really great book. Highly recommend recommend
that as a new worthwhile work on JRR.

524
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:08,880
Tolkien. There's not very many of
them, but this one is well

525
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:14,280
worth the time for fans of Tolkien
out there. Maybe you can get it

526
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:19,079
for Phil Emily, You're like,
I was just thinking that, but it's

527
00:46:19,119 --> 00:46:23,000
too late. At this point.
There's twelve days of Christmas. Christmas goes

528
00:46:23,039 --> 00:46:27,920
until January sixth to Epiphany, so
you have time Tolkien book a day.

529
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:30,719
Yeah, that would actually be that
would be an awesome gift. Go over,

530
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:35,880
well oh man, oh Man,
John Daniel Davidson, what a pleasure.

531
00:46:36,159 --> 00:46:38,960
I'm so excited to read your book. And this was a fascinating conversation.

532
00:46:39,119 --> 00:46:43,400
Thank you as always, thanks for
having me on. Emily. You've

533
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:45,760
been listening to another edition of The
Federalist for radio hour. I'm Emily Dashinski,

534
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:49,440
culture editor here at The Federalist.
We'll be back soon with more.

535
00:46:49,639 --> 00:47:00,840
Until then, the lovers of freedom
and anxious for the fray, I heard

536
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:10,679
the fat voice, the reason,
and then it faded away. Mm hm