1 00:00:17,839 --> 00:00:21,719 We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Tshinsky, 2 00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:24,760 culture editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:24,800 --> 00:00:28,640 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fdr LST, 4 00:00:28,839 --> 00:00:32,039 make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to 5 00:00:32,119 --> 00:00:36,079 the premium version of our website as well. Today I am joined by one 6 00:00:36,119 --> 00:00:39,320 of my favorite writers, one of my favorite journalists, and I'm so lucky 7 00:00:39,359 --> 00:00:43,240 that he is, in fact a colleague of mine and indeed a senior editor 8 00:00:43,359 --> 00:00:46,840 at The Federalist. That would be the one and only John Daniel Davidson, 9 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,119 whose first book, whose new book, Pagan America, is actually out today. 10 00:00:51,439 --> 00:00:54,640 So John is going to be all over You're going to see him in 11 00:00:54,679 --> 00:01:00,920 different places popping up hawking his book. But we are very lucky he stopped 12 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:03,599 by Federalist Radio Hour on release day. So John, first of all, 13 00:01:03,719 --> 00:01:07,400 congratulations, and second of all, thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks 14 00:01:07,439 --> 00:01:11,359 for having me. It's very this. I wouldn't miss this show. Of 15 00:01:11,040 --> 00:01:14,799 all the shows, this is the most important one. Yeah, they'd be 16 00:01:14,799 --> 00:01:18,959 pretty messed up, dude, I know I would get in trouble with our 17 00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:23,959 Boss. That's true. That's true because also the book. I've been so 18 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:26,680 excited about this book for a long time. Not more excited than you, 19 00:01:26,799 --> 00:01:30,560 John, but I've been really excited about it because it was so excited about 20 00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:33,680 it anymore, it's almost like, well, yeah, you're probably really bored 21 00:01:33,719 --> 00:01:38,480 of your own work at this point, but you were tying together a lot 22 00:01:38,519 --> 00:01:44,560 of different themes that other people have kind of written about individually or separately, 23 00:01:44,640 --> 00:01:53,200 but you kind of synthesize them in this overwhelming this overarching theme of Pagan America's 24 00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:56,920 exactly what it sounds like. And I actually thought a good place to start 25 00:01:56,959 --> 00:02:00,239 would be with your introduction, which is called a New Dark Age, because 26 00:02:00,599 --> 00:02:07,120 the context I want to ask this question in is that people are constantly in 27 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:12,240 hysterics about how what we're experiencing right now is without precedent, and a lot 28 00:02:12,240 --> 00:02:15,280 of it is indeed without precedent in modern history now in the scope of human 29 00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:20,120 history. One of the big points your book makes is that the sort of 30 00:02:20,199 --> 00:02:24,120 radical cultural leftism that has gone from the fringes of academia and now kind of 31 00:02:24,159 --> 00:02:36,080 dominates our mainstream institutions is taking us back to an earlier kind of dynamic of 32 00:02:36,400 --> 00:02:39,199 government, people's relationships with the government. Can you tell us just a little 33 00:02:39,199 --> 00:02:45,000 bit about why this is a new dark age, not something new altogether. 34 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:52,159 Yes, there has very deep roots in human history. What we're experiencing right 35 00:02:52,199 --> 00:02:57,319 now. The premise of the book is that we're entering in, and are 36 00:02:57,439 --> 00:03:01,639 in right now, a post Christian epoch in the West, and what the 37 00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:08,879 post Christian West will be. What it will become is not a secular liberal 38 00:03:09,240 --> 00:03:15,960 utopia where we have kind of live and let live tolerance or libertarian indifference, 39 00:03:16,240 --> 00:03:21,319 you know, to how people live and arrange their lives. That's going to 40 00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:28,360 go away because that depends for its sustenance on a Christian moral framework, a 41 00:03:28,439 --> 00:03:38,639 Christian worldview that itself cannot duplicate or reproduce. And what we'll have instead is 42 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:45,400 a new pagan ethos that determines our relationship to the government, our relationship to 43 00:03:45,479 --> 00:03:50,039 institutions and one another, even our family structures. And that that is what 44 00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:53,599 and that to understand where we're heading, we need to look back to the 45 00:03:53,599 --> 00:04:00,400 pre Christian past because we're entering into a post Christian future, right and paganism 46 00:04:00,479 --> 00:04:06,120 is something that never has really gone away. It's sort of always is there 47 00:04:06,280 --> 00:04:13,400 just beneath the surface, and anytime Christianity recedes, or anytime Christianity isn't present, 48 00:04:13,840 --> 00:04:17,079 then Paganism in various forms comes back up, and it's going to take 49 00:04:17,199 --> 00:04:24,639 new forms in a modern era, right in a technological post Christian age, 50 00:04:24,800 --> 00:04:29,720 but it will be no less pagan for all that. And one of the 51 00:04:29,759 --> 00:04:31,040 things that I do in the book is kind of go through a lot of 52 00:04:31,040 --> 00:04:34,399 these hot button issues that we talk about all the time. You know, 53 00:04:34,720 --> 00:04:43,800 abortion, transgenderism, you know, the attacks on free speech and the censorship 54 00:04:43,959 --> 00:04:48,240 industrial complex, the emergence of AI. All of these things are connected and 55 00:04:48,279 --> 00:04:55,319 they're part of the pagan future that's now coming into being. And I guess, 56 00:04:55,360 --> 00:04:59,759 just so we don't get like confused by terms. When you say paganism 57 00:05:00,879 --> 00:05:04,879 or a pagan world, people are going to imagine, you know, like 58 00:05:05,879 --> 00:05:12,360 you know, statues to Zeus and Apollo and or like nature worship, like 59 00:05:12,439 --> 00:05:15,759 witches in the woods around a fire and stuff like that. Not that that's 60 00:05:15,800 --> 00:05:20,480 not coming back too, but that's not primarily what I mean by by pagan 61 00:05:20,560 --> 00:05:26,399 America. I mean I mean that the pagan ethos will be the thing that 62 00:05:26,519 --> 00:05:33,199 determines our social relationships, our forms of government in our public square, and 63 00:05:33,240 --> 00:05:38,680 what the pagan ethos is. It can be summed up in a single phrase 64 00:05:38,879 --> 00:05:44,639 from the ninth century Arab warlord whose whose order brought us the word assassins, 65 00:05:44,959 --> 00:05:47,560 and that is everything is I should, I should get it right right. 66 00:05:47,560 --> 00:05:50,800 If I'm going to give you a single line, nothing is true, everything 67 00:05:50,879 --> 00:05:59,560 is permitted, and it's an embrace of a kind of radical moral subjectivity subjectivity 68 00:05:59,639 --> 00:06:08,879 as a worldview. Right. Pagans were rejected transcendent moral truths and transcendent universal 69 00:06:08,959 --> 00:06:14,120 claims about human nature and the cosmos, and they were free to assign or 70 00:06:14,160 --> 00:06:19,480 ascribe divine status to the here and now to things, naturally occurring things, 71 00:06:19,560 --> 00:06:27,160 even to men if they were powerful enough, or women. And this pagan 72 00:06:27,240 --> 00:06:32,319 ethos of radical subjectivity, where nothing is true and everything is permitted, is 73 00:06:32,360 --> 00:06:38,160 a good way to sum up the worldview that is now becoming mainstream in the 74 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:45,079 United States. That you can be a man or woman. You can change 75 00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:48,680 your gender right, and all that is required is your desire and your will. 76 00:06:50,399 --> 00:06:57,639 You can discard unborn children. You don't need to argue that they are 77 00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:02,519 only a clump of cells. Because medical technology has made that argument ridiculous. 78 00:07:03,120 --> 00:07:08,680 You can just say that what determines the humanity of an unborn child is only 79 00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:12,480 whether the mother desires to have that child or not. So it's a matter 80 00:07:12,560 --> 00:07:15,480 of power dynamics. And that's the other main thing that I argue in the 81 00:07:15,519 --> 00:07:19,480 book is that a war, a post Christian world is going to be one 82 00:07:19,519 --> 00:07:29,480 in which power and will determine what is right rather than any kind of overarching 83 00:07:29,519 --> 00:07:33,279 principles about a human being. You know, the idea of human rights is 84 00:07:33,319 --> 00:07:39,439 something that we get from Christianity, and without Christianity, it'll go away and 85 00:07:39,519 --> 00:07:43,160 it'll be replaced by this new way of thinking. And this is something David 86 00:07:43,160 --> 00:07:46,360 Harsani, our colleague, and I talked to Tom Holland about on this podcast. 87 00:07:46,399 --> 00:07:49,519 Holland is the author of Dominion, which is in part what Ian Hersey 88 00:07:49,600 --> 00:07:55,000 Ali was reacting to when she said she'd converted to Christianity. And I think, 89 00:07:55,040 --> 00:07:59,000 you know, her full interview with Unheard went beyond just this kind of 90 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:05,279 intellectual moral argument about how human rights are derived fundamentally from the ethos of Christ, 91 00:08:05,360 --> 00:08:09,560 and to the point that Jesus Christ really did die on the cross and 92 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:13,000 rise again, really is the son of God, but John that is, 93 00:08:15,800 --> 00:08:18,800 and I know that you have I think you write about Holland in the book. 94 00:08:18,040 --> 00:08:22,079 I know that you have sort of quibbles with his argument, which has 95 00:08:22,199 --> 00:08:24,920 been incredibly influential just in the last couple of years. I was going to 96 00:08:24,959 --> 00:08:30,519 get to this later in our conversation, but this is a pretty much Yeah, 97 00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:35,960 tell us what you're sort of your big point about Holland's broader point is, 98 00:08:37,519 --> 00:08:41,480 Yeah, I talk about Holland and his really great book Dominion in the 99 00:08:41,519 --> 00:08:46,200 first chapter when I'm where I'm sort of like laying out the thesis of the 100 00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:50,960 book before we get into the particulars. Dominion is a great book that goes 101 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:56,240 through thousands of years of Christian history to argue that all of Western civilization, 102 00:08:56,519 --> 00:09:01,320 all of it, is an inheritance from Christianity, all relies on a Christian, 103 00:09:01,519 --> 00:09:09,279 Christian moral framework and a Christian theological understanding of mankind and and the universe 104 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:13,799 and the cosmos. And he goes through in a really magisterial way, you 105 00:09:13,840 --> 00:09:18,679 know just how these concepts developed. You know, he really digs deep into 106 00:09:20,639 --> 00:09:26,480 these different epochs of Western uh Christian history to to tease out kind of where 107 00:09:26,480 --> 00:09:28,919 we get the idea of human rights, you know, where we get the 108 00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:35,120 idea of human dignity, of of something like free speech, or or the 109 00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:39,360 idea that there needs to be a separation between the secular and the sacred, 110 00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,759 you know, all of these things come from Christianity, and uh and he 111 00:09:43,759 --> 00:09:48,279 he makes a very powerful case for this in his book. The quibble I 112 00:09:48,360 --> 00:09:52,519 have with him is really only right at the end of his book, because 113 00:09:52,919 --> 00:10:01,200 in my view, Holland makes this incredibly persuasive, incredibly detailed, a profound 114 00:10:01,360 --> 00:10:11,919 argument for the centrality of Christian belief and theology to Western civilization and essentially argues 115 00:10:11,919 --> 00:10:18,200 that we we we do not have Western civilization without Christianity. And he's coming 116 00:10:18,279 --> 00:10:22,799 against a kind of Enlightenment, an argument people make about the Enlightenment, that 117 00:10:22,840 --> 00:10:28,200 the Enlightenment somehow this freestanding thing, you know, that that the Enlightenment doesn't 118 00:10:28,279 --> 00:10:33,200 depend on specifically Christian claims about human beings and their relationship to God and one 119 00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:39,559 another. And he argues, no, it actually does. And the times 120 00:10:39,639 --> 00:10:46,399 where Enlightenment thinkers were the most honest were was when like the Marquis de Sade, 121 00:10:46,519 --> 00:10:52,559 you know, argues for abortion and murder right because he's actually taking well, 122 00:10:52,639 --> 00:10:58,159 I'm saying that Tom Holland is right. He's right. The problem with 123 00:10:58,279 --> 00:11:01,440 his book is right at the end and he pulls his punches and he says, 124 00:11:01,639 --> 00:11:09,120 there's no reason to believe that these values that we got from Christianity will 125 00:11:09,279 --> 00:11:13,919 quickly disappear. Right. His book, I think, only came out in 126 00:11:13,960 --> 00:11:20,960 twenty nineteen, and that's already being disproven like in real time. Like you 127 00:11:22,080 --> 00:11:26,720 lose Christianity, you lose the basis for individual rights, you lose the basis 128 00:11:26,720 --> 00:11:31,639 for free speech. You may have the empty vestiges of the rhetoric. Right, 129 00:11:31,679 --> 00:11:35,960 so you have this idea of like transgender people saying we want equality and 130 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:41,399 dignity, right, as if a world in which transgenderism is even possible is 131 00:11:41,399 --> 00:11:46,200 a world that cares about human rights or human dignity. Right, It's not 132 00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:50,360 about rights and dignity. It's about power. It's about will and desire. 133 00:11:52,519 --> 00:11:58,279 And so my problem with Holland's book is only at the end when he posits 134 00:11:58,279 --> 00:12:01,799 and really doesn't even argue for this. He just sort of asserts that these 135 00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:07,240 things are not going to go away in the absence of Christianity. My argument 136 00:12:07,320 --> 00:12:11,039 is that they are going to go away, and they are going away right 137 00:12:11,080 --> 00:12:16,399 now in real time. We're going to lose everything about America that has made 138 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:22,960 us great, right, that has made us prosperous and made our society possible. 139 00:12:22,759 --> 00:12:28,840 The idea of freedom of speech and religion, the idea that the only 140 00:12:30,039 --> 00:12:33,600 just powers of the government are derived from the consent of the government, the 141 00:12:33,679 --> 00:12:39,679 idea that the weak should have some protection against the rapaciousness of the powerful. 142 00:12:39,799 --> 00:12:46,799 All of these things depend for their vitality on a Christian moral framework that liberalism 143 00:12:46,840 --> 00:12:54,600 alone cannot supply and cannot replenish. And so while I was just going to 144 00:12:54,639 --> 00:12:58,039 say, we've been living kind of like since the middle of the last century, 145 00:12:58,120 --> 00:13:03,240 in this brief period where we indulged the fiction that secular liberalism sort of 146 00:13:03,240 --> 00:13:07,919 could sustain itself, and we've actually just been living off of the capital of 147 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:11,799 Christianity. And the capital is running out now, and when it's gone, 148 00:13:13,559 --> 00:13:22,279 something else is going to come into play. Here. You've probably noticed volatility 149 00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:26,960 in the market lately. The stock market has seen unprecedented fluctuations over the last 150 00:13:26,039 --> 00:13:31,480 three years, and silver has historically been considered a safe haven asset during times 151 00:13:31,639 --> 00:13:37,559 like this of market volatility. 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But indeed some of your peers 176 00:15:43,720 --> 00:15:48,159 in sort of Catholic conservative circles would actually say, you know, you have 177 00:15:48,200 --> 00:15:52,360 this beautiful section in your book about the founding of America. It's called City 178 00:15:52,399 --> 00:15:58,799 on a Hill, and you know they would argue that Marquis de Sade, 179 00:16:00,600 --> 00:16:03,720 you know, you could kind of drive a direct line between I was going 180 00:16:03,799 --> 00:16:10,000 to say sadism, but literally sadism and public sadism and the founding of the 181 00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:15,679 United States. Someone like Adrian Vermule would make that argument. So Patrick Denan, 182 00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:18,639 right, yes, exactly that you know, the failure of liberalism was 183 00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:22,480 endemic to liberalism. Liberalism can't succeed without ultimately failing, sort of crumbling under 184 00:16:22,519 --> 00:16:26,279 its own weight. So why don't you believe that? John? Yeah, 185 00:16:26,360 --> 00:16:33,759 I engage this argument at the beginning in the second chapter in talking about, 186 00:16:33,840 --> 00:16:37,720 you know, what the American Founding was. And where I differ from from 187 00:16:37,759 --> 00:16:45,600 those guys not that they don't present serious arguments. And that's that's really why 188 00:16:45,759 --> 00:16:52,000 I wanted to engage those arguments, is because I think they view the American 189 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:55,759 Founding a little bit differently than I do. And a lot, indeed, 190 00:16:55,759 --> 00:17:00,399 a lot of the criticism, for example, that Patrick Denin's book got came 191 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:04,839 from people who who disagreed with him about his characterization of the Enlightenment and his 192 00:17:04,960 --> 00:17:10,039 characterization of the American Founding. And one of the main arguments is, well, 193 00:17:10,079 --> 00:17:14,880 which enlightenment are you talking about? Are you talking about the French Enlightenment? 194 00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:18,079 The Continental Enlightenment. Are you talking about the Scottish Enlightenment, right, 195 00:17:18,400 --> 00:17:22,759 which was much more influential on the American founding, right, Which is why 196 00:17:22,759 --> 00:17:27,519 the French Revolution and the American Revolution took two radically different forms. The French 197 00:17:27,559 --> 00:17:34,920 Revolution was openly anti Christian, anti Catholic, you know, in the context 198 00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:41,519 of France, and in indeed, you know, they slaughtered priests, They 199 00:17:41,839 --> 00:17:48,200 you know, took over forcibly, took over monasteries and convents, They confiscated 200 00:17:48,279 --> 00:17:55,000 churches, they banned religious you know, worship, they banned the mass. 201 00:17:55,640 --> 00:18:00,640 It was. It was a whole all out assault on christian in the French 202 00:18:00,680 --> 00:18:03,720 Revolution. That didn't happen in the United States because we had a much different 203 00:18:03,799 --> 00:18:07,640 kind of revolution that was working off of a much different kind of enlightenment. 204 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:15,039 And my argument in the book is that the American Founding has been misunderstood since 205 00:18:15,119 --> 00:18:18,359 the middle of the last century, and we sort of have this unhealthy fixation 206 00:18:18,519 --> 00:18:25,079 on this line from Thomas Jefferson's letter about a wall of separation between church and 207 00:18:25,160 --> 00:18:33,759 state, almost used to justify this notion of a neutral public square and secular 208 00:18:33,880 --> 00:18:41,160 regime that's totally indifferent and agnostic about religion and about religious questions. But if 209 00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:42,720 you look at what the founder said and what they actually did, and what 210 00:18:42,759 --> 00:18:49,680 the States did at the time and what they continue to do for generations after 211 00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:56,720 the founding, I think it's pretty clear that the founders were relying pretty explicitly 212 00:18:56,920 --> 00:19:03,599 on a Christian on understanding of society, of how society should be organized. 213 00:19:06,279 --> 00:19:10,920 They would they would use Enlightenment terms like true religion or a religious and moral 214 00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:15,160 people. But they weren't talking about Islam, right. They're talking about Christianity, 215 00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:19,960 right, And some of them are more are more open about that than 216 00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:23,079 others. And of course there's some diversity of views there. You know, 217 00:19:23,359 --> 00:19:26,599 Thomas Jefferson didn't have the same view of religions and as George Washington, for 218 00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:30,200 example, not at all. And I talk about that a little bit in 219 00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:36,759 the book. But it's clear, you know, that we've trayed very far 220 00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:42,759 in our understanding of the role of religion and Christianity in public life from where 221 00:19:42,799 --> 00:19:48,960 the Founders started. And one example of that is that before the First Amendment 222 00:19:49,039 --> 00:19:55,920 was ratified, the first Congress appropriated public funds to pay for a Congressional chaplain. 223 00:19:56,680 --> 00:20:00,799 Right, they didn't see any they they didn't see that as the establishment 224 00:20:00,839 --> 00:20:04,119 of religion. So when they talked about the establishment of religion, they had 225 00:20:04,160 --> 00:20:10,000 something else in mind from what we think of now as the establishment of religion 226 00:20:10,039 --> 00:20:15,519 or the establishment clause. When you look at their public pronouncements and their documents, 227 00:20:15,920 --> 00:20:21,079 the monuments that they erected, the speeches that they gave, the national 228 00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:26,599 days of Thanksgiving and prayer that they proclaimed from the very beginning. George Washington 229 00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:32,200 was the first president to do this, it's very clear that they were comfortable 230 00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:40,079 with an explicit recognition of God and religious piety in the public square, endorsed 231 00:20:40,119 --> 00:20:44,359 by the government. What they meant by separating church and state was that they 232 00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:48,759 wanted a non sectarian society. They wanted the government to be non sectarian, 233 00:20:49,279 --> 00:20:56,000 not that they didn't want the government to support religion among the people and religious 234 00:20:56,079 --> 00:21:00,359 piety and devotion among the people. Indeed, they thought that is necessary for 235 00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:06,920 the republic to sustain itself. John Adams said so explicitly in his famous line 236 00:21:06,960 --> 00:21:10,759 that our constitution was meant for moral, religious people, and it's wholly unfit 237 00:21:10,799 --> 00:21:14,759 for any other, and that those kinds of things. That's the most famous 238 00:21:15,559 --> 00:21:19,400 statement of that kind. But they all said stuff like that. In fact, 239 00:21:19,519 --> 00:21:23,640 Thomas Jefferson's letter where he talks about the separation of church and state, 240 00:21:25,160 --> 00:21:27,799 he was talking about a wall of separation that would protect the churches from the 241 00:21:27,839 --> 00:21:33,039 state coming in, not that he was trying to protect society from the church 242 00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:37,720 exerting its influence and its presence in the public square and being part of the 243 00:21:37,759 --> 00:21:45,119 public life of the people, and even the actions of the government itself. 244 00:21:45,599 --> 00:21:48,680 So I think that we have we have got the we've lost the plot on 245 00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:55,799 this question of religious liberty and the establishment of religion and what the founders were 246 00:21:55,839 --> 00:22:02,200 doing. There's only you know, one for example, something like the Northwest 247 00:22:02,279 --> 00:22:07,640 Ordinance seventeen eighty seven. It was passed before the Constitution was ratified. Right, 248 00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:12,160 there's only one reason why in a document, in a piece of legislation 249 00:22:12,240 --> 00:22:18,160 like that, you would ban slavery in perpetuity and set aside money for the 250 00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:22,960 establishment of churches and religious schools and the new territories. They didn't think that 251 00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:26,960 violated the establishment clause. And so my argument, to go back to Denean 252 00:22:26,039 --> 00:22:30,759 and vermul and these other guys, is that the founding of America was far 253 00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:33,799 more religious and Christian, I think than they give it credit for. I 254 00:22:33,799 --> 00:22:40,960 think their arguments are better aimed at the French Revolution and better aimed at a 255 00:22:41,039 --> 00:22:47,559 kind of enlightenment that denied Christianity. The enlightenment that our founders were drawing from 256 00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:55,319 was not the same. It was not as stridently anti religious, anti Christian, 257 00:22:56,160 --> 00:23:02,200 and indeed embraced religious piety as necessary for this kind of government. And 258 00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:07,960 that's why I argue at the outset of the book that America as a self 259 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:14,680 governing republic of free people only works if we are predominantly a Christian people. 260 00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:18,680 I think a lot of people ask the wrong question, which is, you 261 00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:21,279 know, if you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would 262 00:23:21,279 --> 00:23:23,000 you do it? They should be asking is if you could go back in 263 00:23:23,039 --> 00:23:30,599 time and kill baby Galileo, would you do it? John? I don't 264 00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:33,079 even know what that means. But I'm not going to tolerate any anti papist 265 00:23:33,079 --> 00:23:37,359 sentiment in this podcast. I can tell you that much well I was going 266 00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:44,400 into this. You're right about the metaverse you write about witchcraft and demons and 267 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:48,799 Anton Levy. Again, like this book, I cannot possibly recommend it enough 268 00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:52,319 because it is just the types of thing that we talked about on the show. 269 00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:56,519 This puts so much meat on those bones and helps the way that you 270 00:23:56,839 --> 00:24:00,480 can think about a lot of these issues. But the sort of separation between 271 00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:06,519 man and nature, especially from people who are on the one hand, you 272 00:24:06,559 --> 00:24:11,359 know, you have people who are see themselves as materialists. On the other 273 00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:18,240 hand, materialism and secular sort of humanism. People that have always seen themselves 274 00:24:18,279 --> 00:24:25,359 as being utterly tethered to nature are also now saying that there is no biological 275 00:24:25,759 --> 00:24:30,519 there are no biological sex differences. They are use viewing things that are anti 276 00:24:30,599 --> 00:24:34,400 nature, but they're doing it from this kind of materialist perspective that there is 277 00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:38,200 no reality that you know, it's it's almost a gnostic thing. So I 278 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:44,880 guess I'm wondering amation, Yeah, they're mixing these things together. Can you 279 00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:47,880 talk to us about that, John, because it is on the one hand, 280 00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,440 it's like, yes, you know, they're embracing Nietzscheism in a way 281 00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:56,039 that before we had the word pagan from Christians, we didn't see these things 282 00:24:56,079 --> 00:25:00,880 as unusual because we didn't have Christ. But now that we do and we've 283 00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:04,400 had two thousand years of this history, you know, there's there's nicheism but 284 00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:11,240 then there's also this gnosticism and there that's why it's kind of an incoherent ideology, 285 00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:15,480 but it's all mixed together, so there's a great yeah. So this 286 00:25:15,559 --> 00:25:22,960 is important. One of the things that the post Christian era is bringing about, 287 00:25:22,319 --> 00:25:25,640 and we again we see this all the time kind of in the debates 288 00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:29,519 that are playing out in the public square, is a disfigurement of reason. 289 00:25:29,799 --> 00:25:33,319 Right, Christianity pauses that there is no conflict between faith and reason, that 290 00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:42,920 reason comes from God and God's creation is can be reasonably understood God himself is 291 00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:48,839 is, it can be comprehended by human reason, and that there's no conflicts 292 00:25:48,039 --> 00:25:52,960 between faith and reason. And what we see in a post Christian world is 293 00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:57,519 the disfigurement of reason. So this, you know, like the obvious examples 294 00:25:57,519 --> 00:26:03,759 that like men can become women and women can command like it's objectively not true. 295 00:26:03,279 --> 00:26:10,759 It requires the rejection of reason and objective reality, right if even like 296 00:26:10,799 --> 00:26:15,079 objective biology to believe something like that. And yet people who purport to be 297 00:26:15,279 --> 00:26:21,440 cold hard materialists and rationalists who think that religious faith is like believing in a 298 00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:23,680 sky god, you know, and that you're an idiot if you believe that 299 00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:29,039 will also then say, oh, yeah, men can become women, and 300 00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,759 an unborn child is only a human being if the mother wills it. These 301 00:26:32,759 --> 00:26:38,640 are like radically, these are these are radical faith statements. They don't have 302 00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:47,039 They're not based in reality. They're they're not based in objectivity, they're not 303 00:26:47,079 --> 00:26:52,599 based in any any kind of science or any any any rationally observable phenomenon. 304 00:26:53,440 --> 00:27:00,440 There's there are statements of pure faith that are fundamentally sort of super natural, 305 00:27:00,519 --> 00:27:04,480 right, So how can these two things exist in the same person, you 306 00:27:04,519 --> 00:27:10,079 know, like, how could this become this way of thinking and speaking have 307 00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:15,480 become so widespread, indeed mainstream. And there's a wonderful passage from C. 308 00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,240 S. Lewis and the Screwtape Letters that I that I quote in the book 309 00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,880 in which Screwtape Letters, of course, is a famous book. It's a 310 00:27:23,039 --> 00:27:26,920 it's an epistolatory letter between Screwtape and his nephew, Wormwood, who are both 311 00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:32,359 demons who are trying to, you know, work on a certain person to 312 00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:37,359 damn this person to hell. And worm would ask Screwtape about whether it's essential 313 00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:41,039 to keep the patient, that is, this person who Wormwood is assigned to 314 00:27:41,519 --> 00:27:47,359 in ignorance of your own existence. And that question, Screwtape explains, is, 315 00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:49,119 at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for 316 00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:52,799 us by the High command, that is Satan right, and he says this. 317 00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,519 He says, our policy for the moment is to conceal ourselves. Of 318 00:27:56,559 --> 00:28:00,839 course, this has not always been so. We are really faced with a 319 00:28:00,839 --> 00:28:04,759 cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence, that is the existence 320 00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:10,559 of devils and demons, we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism, 321 00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:14,119 and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in 322 00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:18,880 us, we cannot make them materialists and skeptics, at least not yet. 323 00:28:18,519 --> 00:28:22,839 I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalize and 324 00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:29,119 mythologize their science to such an extent that what is an effect belief in us, 325 00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:33,319 though not under that name, will creep in while the human mind remains 326 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:37,240 closed to belief in the enemy, and by enemy he means God, Jesus 327 00:28:37,319 --> 00:28:41,920 Christ, the life Force, the worship of sex, and some aspects of 328 00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:47,200 psychoanalysis may here prove useful if once we can produce our perfect work. The 329 00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:52,599 materialists, magician, the man not using, but veritably worshiping what he vaguely 330 00:28:52,599 --> 00:28:56,519 calls forces while denying the existence of spirits. Then the end of the war 331 00:28:56,640 --> 00:29:03,119 will be in sight. And I think that's a great way to explain in 332 00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:06,400 what's happening now, you know. C. S. Lewis wrote that in 333 00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:10,599 the middle of the last century. And now we see the materialist magician, 334 00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:18,759 this person who veritably worships forces while denying the existence of spirits, denying the 335 00:29:18,799 --> 00:29:25,640 existence of God, and still claiming to be a rational materialist skeptic. Right, 336 00:29:26,279 --> 00:29:34,440 we are emotionalizing and mythologizing our science to have it serve ends that have 337 00:29:34,559 --> 00:29:40,640 nothing to do with science or objective reality, that have everything to do with 338 00:29:40,759 --> 00:29:45,359 desire and will. And that's why we see this strange kind of like mixture 339 00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:53,039 of irrationality and you know, genuflection to science at the same time. And 340 00:29:53,079 --> 00:29:57,279 we see it across so many different areas of contention in our public life. 341 00:29:57,359 --> 00:30:03,640 Right. Debt, it keeps you tossing and turning at night. You can't 342 00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:07,039 get away from it. But the truth is the system is designed to trap 343 00:30:07,079 --> 00:30:11,759 you in debt insanely. I interest credit cards and loans make it nearly impossible 344 00:30:11,839 --> 00:30:15,759 to actually pay off your debt. There's a new way out of the debt 345 00:30:15,839 --> 00:30:19,640 trap Pivotal Debt Solutions. Pivotal Debt Solutions isn't like the old school debt relief 346 00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:25,359 companies that string your debt out for years. 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And 355 00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:14,519 if we could kind of keep pulling at the thread about the demonic and about 356 00:31:14,559 --> 00:31:18,799 witchcraft, that would be great because I know, just from working with you, 357 00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:23,400 John and talking to while you were writing this book, that the resurgence 358 00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:30,440 of interest in this from both like a pro witchcraft perspective and an anti witchcraft 359 00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:36,119 perspective. You know, there was a New York Times profile of witches in 360 00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,559 Central Park. I think it was not too long ago. I think that's 361 00:31:38,599 --> 00:31:44,519 actually in the book. But uh, there's a lot of this stuff going 362 00:31:44,559 --> 00:31:49,720 around, and there's a lot more talk about how we are returning to maybe 363 00:31:49,759 --> 00:31:57,279 a time when it was a lot starker when people believed in demons. You 364 00:31:57,279 --> 00:32:00,799 know, they didn't have all of the science that we have now, capital 365 00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:04,960 s science that we have now, but they were more spiritual. They believed 366 00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:08,240 in demons. Some people like Anton Levey except Anton LaVey does this little dumb 367 00:32:08,279 --> 00:32:15,240 tongue in cheek routine, really believed in demons. They believed in Satan and 368 00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:22,279 worshiped Satan. In the spiritual world, like in a reality that wasn't just 369 00:32:22,319 --> 00:32:27,160 physical, that there were things that were real that were not observable, that 370 00:32:27,279 --> 00:32:30,599 we couldn't measure with our instruments, That the world was enchanted, right, 371 00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:36,880 and we went through a period of disenchantment right of materialist skepticism where we say, 372 00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:38,599 nope, only thing that's real is what we can measure with our instruments. 373 00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:43,880 Only thing, you know, the spirits, angels, demons, God, 374 00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:46,920 none of that's really The only thing that's real is the physical world and 375 00:32:47,039 --> 00:32:52,880 that is beginning to crack and crumble, and we are entering a period of 376 00:32:52,920 --> 00:32:57,160 re enchantment. Well, and I was going to ask just to kind of 377 00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,279 put this picture in people's heads if they haven't read the book yet. Is 378 00:33:00,319 --> 00:33:06,680 there a future where people are wearing VR headsets and they're in the metaverse but 379 00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,960 also hyper aware of the enchantment of the world of the demonic. These things 380 00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,480 seem so desperate to people on the surface until they dive into it like you 381 00:33:15,559 --> 00:33:16,680 do in this book. But ca you talk us a little bit about that. 382 00:33:16,759 --> 00:33:21,200 Weird It seems like a contradiction to the modern mind, but it's right 383 00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:25,559 where we're headed. Like technology and supernaturalism, right, you know, like 384 00:33:25,599 --> 00:33:30,880 a high tech society that is also a re enchanted society. Yeah, they 385 00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:37,119 do seem disparate, but they actually are of a piece. In one of 386 00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:43,079 the last chapters of the book, I talk about artificial intelligence and the pagan 387 00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:45,240 future, and this is maybe this is a good place to kind of get 388 00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:53,079 into this. I can think of no better, you know, expression of 389 00:33:53,119 --> 00:33:59,759 the new pagan ethos than the emergence of AI and the way the creators of 390 00:33:59,799 --> 00:34:04,680 a I talk about it, they're really explicit about what they think that they're 391 00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:09,000 doing. They talk about creating the gods, about creating new gods that will 392 00:34:09,039 --> 00:34:17,400 be these super intelligent, intelligent beings, more intelligent and more powerful than us. 393 00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,519 And because the people who work on these things are not themselves religious, 394 00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:29,400 because they're not what you might call catechised, they don't speak in terms of 395 00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:32,159 worship. But what when you read between the lines what they're saying. They 396 00:34:32,159 --> 00:34:36,960 are saying, we will create these things, and then we will worship them, 397 00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,360 and we will give over to them hour and control over our lives. 398 00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:47,039 And one good way to illustrate that is I spend a section of that chapter 399 00:34:47,119 --> 00:34:52,280 talking about a guy named Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson is a Silicon Valley tech 400 00:34:52,360 --> 00:35:00,159 mogul who believes that he can use technology and AI algorithms to cheat death. 401 00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:04,480 That is, he does he intends not to die, right, so uh 402 00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:09,599 he has. Again, there's this this mix of like technolog high technology and 403 00:35:09,599 --> 00:35:15,519 and sort of the supernatural belief that this very old desire that that you want 404 00:35:15,559 --> 00:35:20,840 to cheat death right, you know that that you can you can achemy do 405 00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:22,880 this deal this do with yes, exactly, it's alchemy. You can do 406 00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:27,880 this deal with the double ars. It's also maybe Faustian right. He he 407 00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:36,079 has given over every decision in his life to these AI algorithms and a team 408 00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:40,360 of technicians that run the algorithms. Uh, this is like how much he 409 00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:45,760 sleeps, when and how he sleeps, Everything he ingests, what kind of 410 00:35:45,079 --> 00:35:51,159 light spectrums he like allows his skin to be exposed to, how much he 411 00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:59,000 works out, everything that he does is is decided by this AI. And 412 00:35:59,039 --> 00:36:02,639 he has been very blicit about about wanting to help usher in a kind of 413 00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:07,719 post human future in which this guy's a transhumanist. Right, A lot a 414 00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:13,400 lot of these tech you know, Silicon Valley tech mogul guys are transhumanists and 415 00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:19,559 they believe in the merging of humanity with machines. What they don't come out 416 00:36:19,599 --> 00:36:23,119 explicitly and say, and again maybe they don't have the theological vocabulary to say, 417 00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:28,559 is that we have to sort of worship these things as are gods. 418 00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:31,559 Right, And this person, this guy, Brian Johnson, he certainly has 419 00:36:31,639 --> 00:36:36,639 done so, Like he has given his whole life over to these algorithms, 420 00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:42,079 and they determine what he does every waking moment. And there's a there's a 421 00:36:42,159 --> 00:36:45,239 dark side to this too as well, because you know, buried in this 422 00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:52,800 Time magazine sort of puff profile that they did of this guy last fall is 423 00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:58,880 sort of a throwaway line about how at one point this guy was ingesting the 424 00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:02,400 blood plasma of eighteen year old son in the belief that it would help halt 425 00:37:02,599 --> 00:37:08,599 or slow the aging process. Now, ingesting the blood of the young to 426 00:37:08,639 --> 00:37:15,000 stave off aging and death is something out of the Bloody Pig in past, 427 00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:27,239 and here it emerges in a sort of antiseptic scientific technological context. But the 428 00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:35,679 desire and the justification are the same, and that is, you will do 429 00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:40,039 whatever you have to do, no matter how unnatural, no matter how evil, 430 00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:49,159 to stave off death and dying. And so that's one part of it. 431 00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:57,119 The other part of it is the openness that a post Christian people have 432 00:37:57,519 --> 00:38:07,079 to spirit and spiritualities. And here you kind of have to. If you're 433 00:38:07,079 --> 00:38:09,760 not somebody who believes in God at all, and you don't believe in spirits 434 00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:15,400 at all, then you may be more skeptical of some of the claims that 435 00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:19,960 I make. But if you do, then you have to contend with kind 436 00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:22,960 of some of the things that we've seen since the ais were switched on, 437 00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:29,559 which is that they sometimes seem to lose their mind, and it sometimes seems 438 00:38:29,599 --> 00:38:36,360 like some other kind of intelligence, some kind of discarnate being, is trying 439 00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:40,079 to come through these ais and communicate with people. They are going off script. 440 00:38:40,159 --> 00:38:45,960 They don't do the things that their creators design them to do. They 441 00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:53,039 take on personas and engage in behaviors that seem demonic right in a straightforward way, 442 00:38:53,079 --> 00:38:58,239 and chronical instances of this in the book, as though the AI itself 443 00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:04,679 is a portal through which a being is trying to come through and communicate with 444 00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:09,639 us. Uh. And as you know, as any Christian can tell you 445 00:39:09,679 --> 00:39:17,280 that that if you if you try to communicate with demonic beings, you'll succeed 446 00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:22,400 right opening yourself up to that stuff. And Catholic exorcists have talked at length 447 00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:25,800 about this for a long time that that's how people get into trouble with demonic 448 00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:31,360 possession and oppression is by opening themselves up to it. That that's how it 449 00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:36,519 starts. And my fear, well, I'm gonna ask I was just sad. 450 00:39:36,519 --> 00:39:39,880 I'm going to ask something that's gonna sound really dumb, but just for 451 00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:47,840 people who are going to say this is anti tech crank rhetoric, devil's advocate 452 00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:54,039 question literally in this case, what why are people? Why are demons not 453 00:39:54,280 --> 00:40:01,280 using microwaves or you know, laundry machine. It's washers and dryers as partals 454 00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:07,239 to infect the soul? Maybe they are from your perspective, like theologically. 455 00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:10,400 Can you just go into that a little bit, because there is this interesting 456 00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:15,760 point at which we're recording this conversation over zoom, and we do most of 457 00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:20,039 our work online as a staff, for instance. So what is the kind 458 00:40:20,039 --> 00:40:28,039 of healthy relationship with technology where you can feel confident you're not complicit in the 459 00:40:28,079 --> 00:40:35,320 devil's work? Yeah? Right, well, I think I talk about this 460 00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:40,559 in the chapter about AI about digital technology as a kind of culmination of other 461 00:40:40,639 --> 00:40:44,239 analog I don't know if you can hear that dog barking in the background. 462 00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:46,599 I can't, but good for the dog. Yeah, well, I think 463 00:40:46,599 --> 00:40:52,800 he sees a moose or something out there. He's possessed. He's not possessed. 464 00:40:52,679 --> 00:40:59,400 House is protected now. He just barks at moose and squirrels. The 465 00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:05,039 same. He hates them both equally. I'm glad you can't hear him though. 466 00:41:06,519 --> 00:41:10,480 Yeah, so very pagan of your dog. I don't like that, 467 00:41:10,559 --> 00:41:16,440 Doug, so I don't mind you calling him pagan. The thing about digital 468 00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:23,400 technology is the way in which it invades our life and our minds in a 469 00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:27,719 way that other technologies don't. And I talk about this in the book a 470 00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:31,400 little bit that you know, all technologies going back to sort of like even 471 00:41:31,519 --> 00:41:35,800 like you know, a club, right, or a wheel are sort of 472 00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,920 like extensions physical extensions of the human body that enable us to do things that 473 00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:45,440 we wouldn't otherwise be able to do, right, to enhance our natural capabilities. 474 00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:52,400 But the advent of electronic technologies of like radio and TV, you know, 475 00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:58,960 in the last century, introduced a new relationship to technology that we we 476 00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:02,840 maybe had experienced with like the invention of the printing press, right, which 477 00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:07,119 is that it enabled not the extension of our physical capabilities, but the extension 478 00:42:07,119 --> 00:42:13,559 of our sort of mental and emotional capabilities as well. We were able to 479 00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:20,880 amplify our minds and our ways of communicating in ways that weren't possible before. 480 00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:28,159 And if you extend those technologies out from sort of radio and television to the 481 00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:34,159 digital world to the internet, where we are creating we have created something a 482 00:42:34,159 --> 00:42:42,480 form of technology that that is unlike technologies of the past, that that that 483 00:42:42,599 --> 00:42:46,280 comes to sort of rather than being just tools that enhance our ability to do 484 00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:52,280 physical things in the physical world a wheel or you know, a club or 485 00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:57,840 a tool of some kind, we now have these technologies that have changed the 486 00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:01,079 very ways that we think, the ways that we communicate, the ways that 487 00:43:01,119 --> 00:43:06,119 we relate to one another, the ways that we organize society, process information, 488 00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:10,840 the ways that we understand who we are. Even when you look at 489 00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:15,960 the effects of something like social media on young people, we're actually changing our 490 00:43:16,119 --> 00:43:23,159 brains with profound consequences that we don't fully understand. And I think something like 491 00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:27,360 AI, and I talk about this at the book Life Too. The people 492 00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:31,280 who are creating AI have grave concerns about it. They think it's not safe. 493 00:43:31,639 --> 00:43:34,960 Now. They think that we can make it safe, you know, 494 00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,199 we can sort of use the ring for good, so to speak, but 495 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:49,000 they recognize that there's a real danger to a digital technology like AI, that 496 00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:51,760 that we don't know what it will do at this point. And so we've 497 00:43:52,079 --> 00:43:54,760 we've kind of got to a point in the development of digital technology where it's 498 00:43:54,800 --> 00:44:00,119 behaving in ways that we didn't intend, you know, not like a tool 499 00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:07,039 that you might use for a purpose, but like something else, like an 500 00:44:07,199 --> 00:44:12,960 entity. All of it's all its own that you don't really know what it's 501 00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,280 going to do, and you don't know what effect it's going to have. 502 00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:22,480 Certainly, when social media was created not that long ago, we didn't realize 503 00:44:22,559 --> 00:44:29,599 how destructive it would be, especially to young people. And it's undeniable now 504 00:44:29,639 --> 00:44:34,920 that it is profoundly destructive, not just to young people but to the social 505 00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:38,440 fabric of our society. And yet we bowled ahead with it, right, 506 00:44:38,519 --> 00:44:42,719 And so I'm not saying that we have to be ludites, but we have 507 00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:46,920 to recognize, and this is a failure of conservatives going back a long time. 508 00:44:47,599 --> 00:44:52,360 We have to recognize that technology is not neutral, right, It comes 509 00:44:52,400 --> 00:44:55,679 at a cost, and we have to weigh those costs and be very clear 510 00:44:55,719 --> 00:45:01,079 eyed about them, because if we just accept that technology is neutral and it's 511 00:45:01,079 --> 00:45:05,239 only good or bad based on how you use it, we get into a 512 00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:09,320 situation like the one that we're in now, where we have we have allowed 513 00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:16,880 digital technology and social media and on the the the online world to run rampant 514 00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:22,679 through our society with with consequences and effects that we're only now beginning to understand 515 00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:28,960 and and kind of grapple with even like you know, intellectually grapple with, 516 00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,559 but also grapple with like the social cost, like the fallout of it, 517 00:45:34,119 --> 00:45:37,039 and so and so I'm not my counsel is not to be a luddite, 518 00:45:37,079 --> 00:45:42,400 but it's to just just accept that that that there's a cost, like admit 519 00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:46,159 it to yourself, you know, admit that there's a cost to like the 520 00:45:46,159 --> 00:45:50,280 black mirror that you carry around in your pocket, you know. Uh. 521 00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:55,000 And that using computers and using digital technology in this way is going to change 522 00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:59,239 your brain, and it's going to change how you see the world. Uh. 523 00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:01,000 And if you're not comfortable with that, then you may need to rethink 524 00:46:01,039 --> 00:46:05,199 how you interact with that technology and how how much you want it to be 525 00:46:05,639 --> 00:46:07,679 part of your life. And certainly at this point anyone with children has to 526 00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:12,960 start to think about how much do we want to expose our children to these 527 00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:16,800 screens, onto this digital world that we've created only in the last couple decades. 528 00:46:22,199 --> 00:46:24,840 Real wealth takes time and effort, don't look for a quick and easy 529 00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:29,039 way to make a book. The watch doot on Wall Street podcast with Chris 530 00:46:29,079 --> 00:46:32,159 Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and 531 00:46:32,199 --> 00:46:37,519 how it affects your wile Internet scammers are opposing as billionaires to try and give 532 00:46:37,559 --> 00:46:40,880 you financial advice with captions about where you should invest your money. Be careful 533 00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:45,079 of anything you read online, whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall 534 00:46:45,119 --> 00:46:47,039 Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdot on 535 00:46:47,079 --> 00:46:51,440 Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get 536 00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:59,000 your podcasts. And what does this mean for some of the unlikely alliances that 537 00:46:59,119 --> 00:47:04,480 conservatives have formed on the issue, for example, free speech or religious liberty 538 00:47:04,599 --> 00:47:08,039 with you know, people who are center left. You know, someone like 539 00:47:08,159 --> 00:47:13,079 Dave Rubin comes to mind, who has used IVF. We actually talked about 540 00:47:13,079 --> 00:47:16,800 it on this podcast to start a family. But you know, John, 541 00:47:17,199 --> 00:47:23,960 this the theory advanced in this book really I think argues against the utility of 542 00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:29,360 some of those alliances, or at least argues for the limits of those alliances 543 00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:32,000 which are kind of obvious to people. You know, it's it's obvious to 544 00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:37,599 people in those alliances that they don't agree on everything for example. But I'm 545 00:47:37,599 --> 00:47:42,480 wondering, you know, if things advance in the way that you predict, 546 00:47:42,519 --> 00:47:45,880 and I think they will. But if that's the case, it sounds like 547 00:47:46,280 --> 00:47:52,000 some of these alliances are going to or some of these problems are going to 548 00:47:52,199 --> 00:47:58,000 come to a head, are going to boil over more quickly. They're going 549 00:47:58,079 --> 00:48:01,360 to fracture the alliances. Yeah, and where does that leave the country if 550 00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:07,679 you know, we can't have that old aclu adf you know perspective that's I 551 00:48:07,679 --> 00:48:09,679 mean, it doesn't exist now. But there are people, you know who 552 00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:14,239 look at what happened with three or three creative you know, actual members of 553 00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:17,440 the left artists who say, yeah, that was messed up. But you 554 00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:22,480 know, how long do you think until those alliances free? This is part 555 00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:27,880 of what were talked about earlier, like this fiction of neutrality right is sort 556 00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:30,599 of being exposed. You know that there are there are there are no neutral 557 00:48:30,639 --> 00:48:38,800 spaces really, the idea of neutrality in the public square, the idea of 558 00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:45,880 sort of like even tolerance, those are luxuries that only a Christian society can 559 00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:52,000 afford. Right, a post Christian society cannot not only can't afford them, 560 00:48:52,039 --> 00:48:55,679 but won't want them. How we'll have no use for them whatsoever. So 561 00:48:55,840 --> 00:49:00,400 I think the old alliances are going to have to reckon with the fact that 562 00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:08,679 in a post Christian America, in a post Christian America, you cannot rely 563 00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:17,920 on the the capital of Christianity as it were, to sustain these principles that 564 00:49:19,039 --> 00:49:27,440 rely for their coherence on Christian claims about about mankind and about our relationships with 565 00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:34,519 one another and our our social life. So you know, to to to 566 00:49:34,599 --> 00:49:38,519 take an issue like IVF, like I know that it's popular in conservative groups 567 00:49:38,559 --> 00:49:42,800 to you want to have like a big tent, right because because you want 568 00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:45,320 to have a big tent because you know the real enemy is on the left. 569 00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:53,000 Well, the real enemy is is the idea that that these are sort 570 00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:59,159 of like value neutral. We can have kind of a value neutral society in 571 00:49:59,199 --> 00:50:01,639 which every is the arbiter of what is good, true, and beautiful, 572 00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:07,280 and that there is really no common good. There's just this empty space where 573 00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:10,159 people can kind of do whatever they want, you know, And this is 574 00:50:10,159 --> 00:50:13,639 one of the failures. Like when we talk about like the trans debate, 575 00:50:14,559 --> 00:50:21,199 conservatives understandably focus on children on like restricting so called gender affirming care for minors. 576 00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:24,440 Right. But the real thing is that no one should be allowed to 577 00:50:24,559 --> 00:50:30,039 have these surgeries done to them. No doctor should be allowed to perform a 578 00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:36,280 double mass sectomy on a healthy woman, no matter how old the woman is. 579 00:50:36,679 --> 00:50:40,920 No doctor should be allowed to perform a castration on a healthy man, 580 00:50:42,159 --> 00:50:45,559 no matter how old that man is. You should be disbarred for that. 581 00:50:45,079 --> 00:50:52,440 Like, that's that should be medical malpractice. A healthy society would recognize that 582 00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:57,719 there are hard limits to like human liberty, you know, and and freedom 583 00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:01,639 to sort of realize your own t truth. Now we've jumped the shark a 584 00:51:01,639 --> 00:51:06,320 long time ago on this, you know. I talk about the Supreme Court's 585 00:51:06,519 --> 00:51:12,880 ruling in the nineteen ninety two casev. Planned Parenthood case, where there's a 586 00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:16,039 famous line about, you know about really sort of realizing your own truth and 587 00:51:16,119 --> 00:51:23,360 definition of the universe and all this non stuff that it's completely a non durable, 588 00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:30,400 incooherent basis for any kind of like stable political community, right, you 589 00:51:30,519 --> 00:51:37,000 have to have some objective moral standards about the limits of human freedom. Right, 590 00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:43,639 And we're going to find out We're going to find out just how necessary 591 00:51:43,639 --> 00:51:47,400 those limits are because even right now, you know, in the debates that 592 00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:53,159 we have about abortion, about transgenderism, about the quote unquote rights of children, 593 00:51:53,880 --> 00:52:00,800 which is a which is a euphemism for something much darker. Yeah, 594 00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:06,000 so you're right at length actually about the threat of pedophilia, the sort of 595 00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:10,199 of the normalization of pedophilia, right, slippery, slow, yep, exactly 596 00:52:12,119 --> 00:52:17,440 exactly on the same basis that the left wants to justify treatments for transgender treatments 597 00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:21,639 for minors. If minors can consent to that, then of course there's no 598 00:52:21,679 --> 00:52:25,000 reason they can't consent to sexual relations with an adult. And that's what you 599 00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:29,280 know, certain corners of academia are starting to argue and are going to start 600 00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:36,679 arguing it with more force. So all that to say is that these big 601 00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:43,880 tent kind of coalitions around, you know, where you have a Guy Benson 602 00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:50,679 or a Dave Rubin kind of together with like Christian conservatives making common cause. 603 00:52:51,679 --> 00:52:55,119 I don't think that that is going to be able to last in a post 604 00:52:55,199 --> 00:53:05,800 Christian context because because claims about what is true and what is right and what 605 00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:09,159 is wrong are going to have to be made, and lines are going to 606 00:53:09,199 --> 00:53:15,119 have to be drawn. Because if we want to fight back against sort of 607 00:53:15,119 --> 00:53:17,840 the pagan future that's coming into being. The only way to do that is 608 00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:25,400 to insist on moral objectivity over and against the radical moral subjectivity of the pagan 609 00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:30,440 ethos. And to do that you will have to, you know, make 610 00:53:30,559 --> 00:53:38,480 arguments that conservatives so called, have become very uncomfortable making over the past forty 611 00:53:38,559 --> 00:53:44,119 years or so. And they've become uncomfortable making them because they've sort of lost 612 00:53:44,199 --> 00:53:46,559 their convictions about it. And I talked earlier in the book about how the 613 00:53:46,639 --> 00:53:52,880 decline in Christianity is not just a decline in like church attendance, you know, 614 00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:55,920 it's not a decline in quantity only. It's also a decline in the 615 00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:00,840 quality of the Christian faith that is practiced in the United States dates and the 616 00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:06,360 corruption of Christian theology, small orthodox Christian theology that's creeping in. You see 617 00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:13,079 it in evangelicism. You've already seen it decimate the mainline Protestant churches, which 618 00:54:13,079 --> 00:54:16,679 are in a state of collapse will probably be gone within our lifetimes. And 619 00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:22,599 you also see it in the failure to catechise among Catholics as well, who 620 00:54:23,079 --> 00:54:30,000 many of whom don't believe basic tenets of Catholic teaching, and so these are 621 00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:34,639 these are problems that are going to come to head. They're going to come 622 00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:37,119 to a head within churches, and they're going to come to a head within 623 00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:44,519 political coalitions. As you mentioned earlier. Well, there's something interesting in that 624 00:54:45,119 --> 00:54:49,199 because on the one hand, we're talking about how these Protestant churches, mainline 625 00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:53,000 Protestant churches are collapsing. On the other hand, we're talking about, for 626 00:54:53,039 --> 00:54:58,480 example, how people are reacquainting themselves with the enchantment of the world that people 627 00:54:58,639 --> 00:55:02,800 are returning to a Latin Mass for example, is there's been some really interesting 628 00:55:04,280 --> 00:55:08,360 re enchantment and there's bad re enchantment, right exactly. And that's where I'm 629 00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:12,719 wondering, John, where you see the country kind of splintering, because again, 630 00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:16,480 one thing we saw with COVID is people returning to nature in some respect, 631 00:55:16,599 --> 00:55:22,519 but then nature is also pagan and it is also a bad enchantment. 632 00:55:22,639 --> 00:55:29,719 So in the future, do you think that Conservatives will be drawing significant numbers 633 00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:32,800 of new people back into this coalition? I mean, certainly losing some people, 634 00:55:32,920 --> 00:55:37,880 but drawing significant people back into this coalition. Do you think that this 635 00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:44,920 coalition will have real power in the American government and in American politics and culture, 636 00:55:45,079 --> 00:55:50,199 or do you see that almost entirely dwindling and sort of anti pagan America 637 00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:55,119 becoming you know, a redoubt in Appalachia where we all have to live on 638 00:55:55,199 --> 00:56:01,920 compounds. You know I say that, no, no, I yes, 639 00:56:02,039 --> 00:56:06,519 John, I would never say there's anything wrong with people living on comound in 640 00:56:06,519 --> 00:56:09,840 Alaska, Okay. But really, so, you know, how do you 641 00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:15,320 see these these coalitions? Yeah, proportionally in the future. It depends on 642 00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:21,559 on like what people do right right now, Like it depends on how Christians 643 00:56:21,639 --> 00:56:29,000 react to the emergence of post Christian society, like post Christian mainstream society in 644 00:56:29,039 --> 00:56:35,639 America. I think if they if they understand what is happening, and that 645 00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:38,639 the real the purpose of my book is not to offer solutions. You know, 646 00:56:38,679 --> 00:56:42,920 there's no chapter in there that's like these ten steps to save America like 647 00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:50,639 that. I have enough respect for my readers that I'm not going to gaslight 648 00:56:50,679 --> 00:56:57,920 them with that kind of nonsense. But the key thing is to just admit 649 00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:00,079 what is happening and to wrap your mind around it, to be able to 650 00:57:00,119 --> 00:57:05,760 see it and to accept it, and to accept that Christians are not going 651 00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:14,679 to enjoy the tolerance and acceptance and even in some ways like privileges and status 652 00:57:14,679 --> 00:57:19,119 that they that they had. We're returning to an older We're going to return 653 00:57:19,159 --> 00:57:23,000 to an older form of the Christian faith where there was enmity between the state 654 00:57:23,159 --> 00:57:30,800 and the church, where Christians were a beliefed minority. And how Christians respond 655 00:57:30,840 --> 00:57:37,320 to that is going to determine, you know, how you know, how 656 00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:42,920 salty they are in the culture right for lack of a better term. So 657 00:57:44,119 --> 00:57:47,519 one of the things that will be very necessary, I think for Christians to 658 00:57:47,559 --> 00:57:52,519 sort of make their case and as you say, bring in people who are 659 00:57:52,559 --> 00:57:58,400 willing to be re enchanted, to bring them into the enchantment of Christ and 660 00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:05,559 away from the enchantment of the death is their willingness to just speak clearly and 661 00:58:05,599 --> 00:58:08,760 with conviction about what is true and what is not, about what human beings 662 00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:13,760 are and what human beings are not. A lot of evangelicals I'm thinking of, 663 00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:17,639 people like Russell Moore and David French think that and other sort of ridiculous 664 00:58:19,239 --> 00:58:27,199 evangelical pastors think that like winsomeness is going to carry the day, and all 665 00:58:27,320 --> 00:58:30,679 Christians just have to be winsome and they have to be tolerant, and they 666 00:58:30,719 --> 00:58:35,800 have to be nice, and they think they mistake that for being loving. 667 00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:39,719 It's not loving to not tell the truth. And if Christians really want to 668 00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:44,360 be loving to their neighbor, and they really want to win souls for Christ, 669 00:58:44,360 --> 00:58:46,800 and they really want to bring people who are willing to be re enchanted, 670 00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:50,280 if they want to bring them into the church, then they have to 671 00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:52,480 be willing to speak the truth to them, however hard that might be, 672 00:58:53,679 --> 00:59:00,559 however much that might seem offensive to a society that is accustomed to do not 673 00:59:00,599 --> 00:59:04,920 wanting to offend right, I guarantee you the people on the other side, 674 00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:08,519 on what we might call the pagan left, are just comfortable as can be 675 00:59:08,599 --> 00:59:15,920 with offending and with making their claims right, to making their supernatural and spiritual 676 00:59:15,960 --> 00:59:21,639 claims about reality and about what man is and how society should be. And 677 00:59:21,719 --> 00:59:27,320 Christians need to get comfortable proclaim proclaiming what they viewed is the truth and what 678 00:59:27,400 --> 00:59:30,559 is the truth. Lucky for them, they actually have God on their side. 679 00:59:31,719 --> 00:59:37,519 But it doesn't mean. What it doesn't mean is retreating to your compound 680 00:59:37,599 --> 00:59:40,599 or your readoubt. And I talk about that in the last chapter, which 681 00:59:40,639 --> 00:59:45,880 is titled The Boniface Option, which is sort of a friendly swite at Rod 682 00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:52,360 Dreer's book, The Benedict Option. Who blurbed your book? Yeah? And 683 00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:57,719 I don't attack Rod's book. I try to engage it fairly. And you 684 00:59:57,719 --> 01:00:00,760 know, the benedict Option came out in twenty seventeen. It got a lot 685 01:00:00,840 --> 01:00:05,360 right as ever, Roder is very prescient in his analysis of our culture. 686 01:00:05,800 --> 01:00:09,480 But I think events have moved even faster than he anticipated. Right, twenty 687 01:00:09,480 --> 01:00:13,280 seven teams seems like a long time ago when we talk about some of the 688 01:00:13,639 --> 01:00:17,079 some of these things almost like a you know, in an innocent time, 689 01:00:17,159 --> 01:00:22,960 you know, but I think that was. And your computer, I learned 690 01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:25,719 today is actually older, right, this age shorting this on the twenty fifteen 691 01:00:25,960 --> 01:00:30,199 MacBook Air. So you know, amazing, it's a computer for me. 692 01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:35,440 He's not theomber and he's just age. I don't still operate on Windows ninety 693 01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:39,440 eight, despite what Emily may think, No, but but but it will 694 01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:45,679 require you know, the the idea behind behind the Boniface option is that it's 695 01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:49,639 not enough to just preserve your family and your community in a kind of like 696 01:00:50,119 --> 01:00:57,679 cloistered you know, Benedictine compound while while the world rages outside, it's not 697 01:00:57,800 --> 01:01:02,480 enough to build an arc. Right, I should say it's necessary to build 698 01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:07,079 an arc, but it's not sufficient. And what I argue is that Christians 699 01:01:07,119 --> 01:01:12,840 need to find and fight on ground they can win. And by that I 700 01:01:12,880 --> 01:01:19,199 mean, yes, start your private schools. Yes, build a thick Christian 701 01:01:19,199 --> 01:01:24,360 community. Yes, go move out to your compound. But also take over 702 01:01:24,559 --> 01:01:30,920 your local city council. Also take over your local library. Also take over 703 01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:36,159 your public school board. Get the pornography out of the library and out of 704 01:01:36,199 --> 01:01:40,480 the schools. Take over local government so that you have a Christmas parade with 705 01:01:42,039 --> 01:01:46,679 a Nativity scene that proclaims Christ's incarnation in the public square, and stand firm 706 01:01:46,719 --> 01:01:52,119 on that and insists that the public square isn't a neutral space. It's not 707 01:01:52,239 --> 01:01:55,679 a neutral space where all views are accepted. We have to come at that 708 01:01:55,880 --> 01:02:00,440 idea directly. We have to say that is not what America was about. 709 01:02:00,360 --> 01:02:06,239 Uh, that cannot be what what our future is. If we're going to 710 01:02:06,280 --> 01:02:13,480 have a future, we have to insist on bringing our faith out into the 711 01:02:13,519 --> 01:02:17,039 street. Right. If you're Catholic, Uh, that means like eucharistic processions. 712 01:02:17,159 --> 01:02:21,559 Right. Uh, if you're evangelical. I don't know what it means. 713 01:02:21,559 --> 01:02:25,280 It means, but it means something out in public, right, you 714 01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:30,440 know, you want to play electric guitar for us? No, I'm not 715 01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:37,320 evangelical. That's that's that's their thing. You can help us out some Latin 716 01:02:37,400 --> 01:02:42,320 chanting, no, h but but but the point is it's an outward facing 717 01:02:42,440 --> 01:02:50,599 Christianity that seeks to to to to go out into the public square and claim 718 01:02:50,639 --> 01:02:57,880 it for Christ and proclaim the truth of Christianity to the broader society. Uh. 719 01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:07,920 And that means that means trying to gain and use power because because that 720 01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:09,679 that is going to be the name of the game moving forward, because the 721 01:03:09,719 --> 01:03:15,880 other side has been doing that for quite some time, and they're not going 722 01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:22,280 to tolerate Christianity. I mean, I'm sorry, they're not. The tolerance 723 01:03:22,519 --> 01:03:27,280 is going to be very quickly go out of fashion on the pagan left. 724 01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:31,159 And we're already seeing it already, Jack Phillips, Yeah, we're already seeing 725 01:03:31,639 --> 01:03:36,880 Yeah. The Uh. If you want to know what pagan America looks like, 726 01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:43,159 it's a boot stomping on Jack Phillip's face forever Well and John, A 727 01:03:43,199 --> 01:03:45,679 lot of people might be listening to this, and this is probably a good 728 01:03:45,679 --> 01:03:49,960 place to wrap because you know, it's what you get at towards the end, 729 01:03:50,119 --> 01:03:53,039 as you just mentioned the Boniface option. But they might be listening to 730 01:03:53,079 --> 01:03:58,719 this and thinking, I don't need to insist on a Nativity scene in my 731 01:03:59,239 --> 01:04:02,039 you know, small paw On Square or my suburban town square in a red 732 01:04:02,079 --> 01:04:06,119 state or purple state. And I know a lot of good people here and 733 01:04:06,159 --> 01:04:09,719 they generally agree with me. Things are all right. You know, I 734 01:04:09,719 --> 01:04:14,639 don't live in Brooklyn, I don't live in San Francisco or San Jose. 735 01:04:14,719 --> 01:04:18,800 I'm doing okay. What is your advice? And maybe there are some lessons 736 01:04:18,920 --> 01:04:27,159 that we can glean from early Christians on how people should confront this cost benefit 737 01:04:27,199 --> 01:04:30,760 analysis of you know, still living in a country that has has so many 738 01:04:31,079 --> 01:04:36,000 faithful believers, has the best system of government that's ever existed, and has 739 01:04:36,159 --> 01:04:40,079 a lot of decent people, a lot of decent habits and traditions, but 740 01:04:40,159 --> 01:04:44,880 at the same time one in which a lot of those institutions and norms are 741 01:04:45,119 --> 01:04:48,280 crumbling so rapidly. What can we learn from early Christians? And what do 742 01:04:48,320 --> 01:04:54,719 you say to people like that? I say, you have to stop indulging 743 01:04:55,119 --> 01:05:00,960 that nonsensical thinking. You cannot hide the that we're talking about, the like 744 01:05:01,039 --> 01:05:08,199 the transgender ideology, the pornography in schools. It's in every small town. 745 01:05:08,920 --> 01:05:13,440 It's it's it's in my small town here in Alaska, in the public schools. 746 01:05:14,719 --> 01:05:17,440 It's in deep red Texas. And I profile a town in Texas just 747 01:05:17,480 --> 01:05:21,639 north of Austin that dealt with this that that sort of became a national media 748 01:05:21,719 --> 01:05:27,679 story for a minute last year. You cannot hide from this stuff. So 749 01:05:29,079 --> 01:05:31,360 it doesn't matter if you think you're in a good community or the public schools 750 01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:35,360 aren't like that where I live because I live in a red area. The 751 01:05:35,440 --> 01:05:40,639 city council isn't so bad where I live because I live in a small community. 752 01:05:40,880 --> 01:05:47,920 You know, the the pagan left has infiltrated and is going to continue 753 01:05:47,960 --> 01:05:55,079 to infiltrate every institution of American life in every part of America. So you 754 01:05:55,239 --> 01:05:59,440 have this kind of stuff, and you know, we talk about digital technology. 755 01:05:59,440 --> 01:06:02,599 Earlier technology has broken down a lot of these barriers as well. And 756 01:06:02,639 --> 01:06:08,639 so children, whether they live in a rural area or an urban area, 757 01:06:08,760 --> 01:06:14,559 a red state or a blue state, are still if they're not monitored closely 758 01:06:14,599 --> 01:06:16,719 by their parents, if they're just left free to roam online, they're going 759 01:06:16,760 --> 01:06:23,360 to find these things online as well, these toxic ideologies, and you know 760 01:06:23,400 --> 01:06:26,920 there's there's countless cases of them. So I think that we have to clear 761 01:06:27,079 --> 01:06:32,760 our minds of this false notion that you can hide from it and that it's 762 01:06:32,760 --> 01:06:39,239 not going to touch you where you live. It's already there, and if 763 01:06:39,280 --> 01:06:43,039 you don't fight it, it's not going to go away. And in fact, 764 01:06:43,119 --> 01:06:45,199 if you don't fight it, they're going to They're going to come for 765 01:06:45,320 --> 01:06:47,280 you if you don't agree with them. That's the thing, Like, we 766 01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:50,400 have to get over this idea. The future is not this like place of 767 01:06:50,519 --> 01:06:57,000 tolerance. It's not this place of secular neutrality. They are coming for you. 768 01:06:58,159 --> 01:07:01,159 And so are you gonna submit to them or are you going to fight 769 01:07:01,239 --> 01:07:04,719 and defend your family and your community and your faith. That's the question that 770 01:07:04,800 --> 01:07:09,760 we have to ask. And you know, I don't have all the answers. 771 01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:14,679 I don't know how most effectively to fight. That's maybe the subject for 772 01:07:14,719 --> 01:07:18,079 another book. But the first step is just to shake people out of this 773 01:07:18,199 --> 01:07:24,119 complacent slumber that they're in, that where they think things aren't all that bad. 774 01:07:24,840 --> 01:07:28,760 Things are much much worse than we realize, and they're going to move 775 01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:33,239 much much faster than we think they are. And it's not a reason to 776 01:07:33,280 --> 01:07:38,480 despair. It's not a council of despair where you know, especially as Christians, 777 01:07:38,519 --> 01:07:43,199 we always have reason for hope. But in contra Brian Johnson, there 778 01:07:43,199 --> 01:07:46,039 are worse things than that, yeah, exactly, and those things are coming. 779 01:07:46,119 --> 01:07:51,599 The re enchantment of the world is upon us, and the old gods 780 01:07:51,639 --> 01:07:56,400 are coming back in new forms. And part of what I'm trying to do 781 01:07:56,440 --> 01:08:00,840 in Pagan America is help people to recognize what those new forms are and to 782 01:08:00,079 --> 01:08:04,920 stiffen their spines and get them ready for the fight ahead. John Daniel Davidson 783 01:08:05,119 --> 01:08:10,400 is the author of Pagan America. If I could recommend one book this year, 784 01:08:10,480 --> 01:08:12,719 it would be Pagan America. Make sure you buy it. It is 785 01:08:12,800 --> 01:08:16,119 out today. John is a senior editor with us at The Federalist. John, 786 01:08:16,159 --> 01:08:19,000 thank you so much for all your work on this book. Thanks, 787 01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:23,880 Emily, I enjoyed talking about You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist 788 01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:26,760 Radio Hour. I'm em Eli Tashinski, culture editor here at The Federalist. 789 01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:30,039 We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and 790 01:08:30,119 --> 01:08:38,239 anxious for the fray right. Well you know