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Speaker 2: Thinking Atheist Podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 1: As we talk about the end of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: approaching twenty twenty six, big question marks in the air
Speaker 1: about just about everything, and I wanted to bring on
Speaker 1: a friend and a constitutional attorney to speak about the
Speaker 1: state of the state. Andrew Seidel, Good to see you man.
Speaker 3: Always a pleasure, my friend.
Speaker 1: We have to talk first about the answering of one
Speaker 1: of the deep and probing questions that society has for
Speaker 1: some reason been wrestling with. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
Speaker 1: You had an opinion, you wrote a piece, we collaborated
Speaker 1: on a video, but you're going to have to defend
Speaker 1: your thesis. Man die Hard.
Speaker 3: Absolutely a Christmas movie. I don't think there's any real
Speaker 3: solid argument against the position, and I've heard them all before. Actually,
Speaker 3: I posted the video even on my LinkedIn page, which
Speaker 3: I never do because you know, it's my super professional page.
Speaker 3: But one of my college buddies re shared it and
Speaker 3: he was like, oh my god, I remember having arguments
Speaker 3: with you, you about this in our dorm room freshman year,
Speaker 3: which you know is twenty five years ago. And I
Speaker 3: mean to me, it is not just a Christmas movie.
Speaker 3: It is the best Christmas movie. It's a holiday tradition
Speaker 3: in my household. I watch it every year. It is
Speaker 3: not Christmas until Hans Grouper falls off Knakatomi Tower.
Speaker 1: It's just not Have you seen that Advent calend? I
Speaker 1: think it's an advent calendar that is made with Nakatomi Plaza.
Speaker 1: There's like a building and then there's Hans Gruber at
Speaker 1: the top and just notch him down?
Speaker 3: Do you mean that set?
Speaker 1: I just looked up and there it is. This is
Speaker 1: a kind of serendipitous convergence. Now when you got that,
Speaker 1: was it a kit? Did you have to paint it
Speaker 1: and do everything yourself.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, this was a gift that that one
Speaker 3: of my supporters sent Rich. A big thank you to
Speaker 3: Rich for this, you know again, because people know how
Speaker 3: serious I am about this. You know, I've been given
Speaker 3: over the years T shirts. You can see one of
Speaker 3: the T shirts that I got in the video that
Speaker 3: was my mom actually got me that T shirt five
Speaker 3: six years ago. I mean, this has been a thing
Speaker 3: for me for a long time. I'm more than half convinced.
Speaker 3: I actually started this entire debate, but I've never formally
Speaker 3: weighed in on it in the video format, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to do it. And I gotta say like, huge
Speaker 3: thank you to you because I just called you to
Speaker 3: pick your brain. And then you're like, yes, I want
Speaker 3: to be a part of this.
Speaker 4: Well, I get myself in trouble. You know.
Speaker 1: I'll hear an idea and I'm my inbox like yours
Speaker 1: is this big? But I'm like, you know, that'd be
Speaker 1: kind of fun. And Natalie knows that I have a
Speaker 1: hard time doing it halfway, so I'll sit here and
Speaker 1: be like, you know what, it'd be great, And that's
Speaker 1: another hour to put that graphic together.
Speaker 4: And then you know, you know what be fun.
Speaker 1: What if we did an explosion where Andrew's name, you know,
Speaker 1: goes into pieces and what if the blu ray morphs
Speaker 1: into Santa Claus at the end. And every time I
Speaker 1: get an idea, I end up, you know, chewing up
Speaker 1: the entire weekend, and my wife just comes up going,
Speaker 1: you know, did you get paid for this? And I'm like, eh,
Speaker 1: and the payment is relative, like it can be a
Speaker 1: payment here in my heart.
Speaker 3: I'll include it something for Natalie in your care package
Speaker 3: an apology.
Speaker 1: Just sent an apology lettery.
Speaker 3: This is the thing that I love about it though,
Speaker 3: because first of all, the end part that you just mentioned.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how much I love that. I mean,
Speaker 3: I did tell you like to me, I laughed so
Speaker 3: loud when I saw it. But this is the thing,
Speaker 3: right like, this is Andrew in his basement here with
Speaker 3: my shitty camera, you know, my halfassing recording stuff, and
Speaker 3: then I give it to you, and then you turn
Speaker 3: it into something that is close to a masterpieces. Diehard
Speaker 3: itself is and you know it. People should go watch it.
Speaker 1: I think it's bubble gum for the brain. It's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I, dude, I got an invitation.
Speaker 1: I did a ghost hunt. They'd like to call it
Speaker 1: a paranormal investigation. But I was invited earlier in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five to go and spend almost the whole freak
Speaker 1: a night in a mansion with my cameras. And I
Speaker 1: was there with a ghost hunting team and I was
Speaker 1: just tagging along, and do we see supernatural stuff?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, the scariest thing was the humidity, right,
Speaker 1: But it was kind of fun. And I just got
Speaker 1: an invite to go and tour a supposedly haunted submarine.
Speaker 1: It's called the Batfish and it's of course it's above
Speaker 1: ground now and it's on display and there's a museum
Speaker 1: attached to it. And of course a submarine in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: for me is an oxymoron. But okay, fine, So I've
Speaker 1: been invited to go and take my cameras. Do I
Speaker 1: have the time?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Am I going to get paid?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: But it's kind of bubblegum for the brain in this
Speaker 1: crazy world. We need our distractions, do we not?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, you know, it's it's kind of like
Speaker 3: the idea of heaven, right, Like heaven sounds terrible to
Speaker 3: me anyway, because if everything is great all the time,
Speaker 3: then nothing's great. You have you have to have ups
Speaker 3: and downs. You have to have variety. For there to
Speaker 3: be good, there has to be bad, right, and most
Speaker 3: of the things are going to be middle of the road,
Speaker 3: like like shit and serious. Right now, we're going to
Speaker 3: get into it like things are scary, they are hard,
Speaker 3: they are difficult, and you know, I actually I started
Speaker 3: scripting this video a while back. It was going to
Speaker 3: be an op ed. Still probably is going to be
Speaker 3: an op ed, but I was going to publish it
Speaker 3: last year, and I thought, you know what, nobody wants
Speaker 3: to hear it after Trump has won an election again,
Speaker 3: So nobody's gonna hear my cheeky ranch on Christmas movies.
Speaker 3: So we're going to do it. You know, We'm going
Speaker 3: to hit snooze on the project, and we did it
Speaker 3: this year instead. But it is important to have those
Speaker 3: kind of things. And I also I'm curious what is
Speaker 3: haunting the submarine? Like? Is it like fish like like
Speaker 3: is it like aquatic haunters or is it like sailors
Speaker 3: who died sub narrators?
Speaker 1: You know what the problem is this is I have
Speaker 1: all of this prep on serious issues and bringing a
Speaker 1: constitutional attorney on we're talking about die Hard and haunted fish,
Speaker 1: haunted submarines.
Speaker 4: But okay, let's go there.
Speaker 1: I first of all, I go online. Apparently there are
Speaker 1: some stories nobody died on the sub but somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: people are They will attach lore to almost anything. But
Speaker 1: just between you and me and the thousands of thousands
Speaker 1: of people who are watching and listening. When I watched
Speaker 1: the paranormal team pull out the tools to find ghosts knowing,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've spent years debunking what they do not do.
Speaker 1: Oh look the EMF meter, that's bullshit. Oh look it's
Speaker 1: the spirit box that's bullshit. And it might be divining rods.
Speaker 1: Those are bullshit. I mean, it's more of a social
Speaker 1: experiment for me watching patterned seekers and the desire to believe.
Speaker 1: So do I have an ulterior motive, not overtly, but
Speaker 1: I will be watching the humans probably more than I
Speaker 1: will be watching the dark hallways, the dark corridors of
Speaker 1: the sub Okay, you mentioned Trump getting elected for the
Speaker 1: second time. Did you call that? I was talking to
Speaker 1: Matt Dela Hunty and He's like, Andrew has been right
Speaker 1: about so many things, And I was like, Okay, Noster Damas,
Speaker 1: did you call that?
Speaker 3: I mean, I tried not to be. I tried not
Speaker 3: to be publicly down on what I thought the election
Speaker 3: result was going to be. And I really thought there
Speaker 3: was a chance that he would lose. But the I mean,
Speaker 3: the polling and the numbers looked terrible, especially while Biden
Speaker 3: was still in the race. They did not look good.
Speaker 3: And you know, I actually I remember being I was
Speaker 3: in Spokane, Washington at a conference on Christian Nationalism, their
Speaker 3: regional conference with Sam maguire from an American Atheists, and
Speaker 3: she and I were talking, and you know, I kind
Speaker 3: of like hinted like you know I am, I am worried,
Speaker 3: you know, and she's like, oh, no, He's definitely gonna win,
Speaker 3: like we don't have a chance, and she was. She
Speaker 3: was convinced. So she called it even more than I did.
Speaker 3: But I didn't I publicly, I did not. I kept
Speaker 3: my fears and worries to myself, and I did everything
Speaker 3: I could to help that not happen, to prevent that
Speaker 3: from becoming a reality. And you know, I live here
Speaker 3: in Wisconsin where you know it getting out there and
Speaker 3: knocking doors and can have a big impact. I participated
Speaker 3: in the Humanists for Harris fundraiser, which I was really
Speaker 3: proud to have done. We raised a good bit of
Speaker 3: money for her. It was sort of like the you know,
Speaker 3: there was all those zoom fundraisers that kind of happened
Speaker 3: right afterwards, and this was one of those. It It
Speaker 3: was disappointing, but not surprising.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about, you know, with a split country,
Speaker 1: do you feel like the wheels have been wobbling and
Speaker 1: they may come off? A lot of people are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, you know, we're definitely going to see
Speaker 1: the implode. It's going to be self immolation.
Speaker 3: It depends on what folks mean by that, right, I
Speaker 3: mean I do think what I think what we are
Speaker 3: seeing right now is the Republican Party realizing that Trump
Speaker 3: is a lame duck, and there has been a He
Speaker 3: has talked a lot about running again, even though he
Speaker 3: is constitutionally prohibited from doing that. I did a whole
Speaker 3: podcast on One Nation Indivisible about can Trump run for
Speaker 3: a third term? What would that look like? And one
Speaker 3: of the things I say is, look, we should expect
Speaker 3: him to try this. Since then, he has tamped down
Speaker 3: the rhetoric There's even been one instance of him saying, look,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do that, But every time he
Speaker 3: does that, he ramps it back up again. And I
Speaker 3: think what we're seeing right now with kind of Marjorie
Speaker 3: Taylor Green, for instance, pushing back. We saw the head
Speaker 3: of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Republican say, look,
Speaker 3: we're going to investigate what looks like war crimes, you know,
Speaker 3: the bombing of the or the dropping a missile on
Speaker 3: the survivors of this boat that we also dropped the
Speaker 3: missile on. And so you do see some Republicans kind
Speaker 3: of peeling off and splitting with Trump. And I think
Speaker 3: that's what people are talking about when they're talking about
Speaker 3: the wheels coming off. Trump's had an iron grip, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, just like a complete iron grip on the
Speaker 3: Republican Party, and anybody that stood against him was given
Speaker 3: a nickname, you know, run down on all the social media,
Speaker 3: and Trump turned the mob against that person. And that's
Speaker 3: still happening, right. That happened to Marjorie Taylor Green. She
Speaker 3: has been one of the worst people in all of
Speaker 3: American public life for you know, five ten years and
Speaker 3: a foil for the left, but never did she need
Speaker 3: protection or any kind of security until she crossed Trump
Speaker 3: and MAGA and he turned the Maga mob against her.
Speaker 3: And now all of a sudden she needs, you know,
Speaker 3: personal security, and she's getting all these death threats, which
Speaker 3: you know, gets to kind of the political violence in
Speaker 3: stochastic terrorism of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Damn you, Marjorie tagular Green forever making me agree with you? Right?
Speaker 1: And she comes forward about the Epstein files and Trump's
Speaker 1: treatment of her and his critics, and I just thought,
Speaker 1: what universe do I agree on anything? And there were
Speaker 1: some people who immediately began to jump on her bandwagon.
Speaker 1: She's seen the light, She's on our team, and I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Now she is not the hero we need.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I mean I will take her for the
Speaker 3: purposes of driving a wedge into any MAGA coalition. But like,
Speaker 3: she's still a Christian nationalist, she's still very bigoted, and
Speaker 3: there's still many many problems with the things she has
Speaker 3: said and done that she's not backed away from, you know,
Speaker 3: for instance, appearing at Nick Quentes and you know, his
Speaker 3: conference that he held on stage next to him, and never
Speaker 3: never divorcing herself from that evil twit but you know,
Speaker 3: the idea that the the wheels are coming off, right,
Speaker 3: I think there's also we're gonna come up on a
Speaker 3: point in the future where Trump is going to try
Speaker 3: to reassert that iron grip even more, and he's gonna
Speaker 3: he's gonna try to say, look, I am not a
Speaker 3: lame duck, and I will still any of you try
Speaker 3: to disagree with me. You know, it's gonna there's gonna
Speaker 3: be a backlash, a Trumpian backlash. In other words, I
Speaker 3: expect to see that in the future. And I mean
Speaker 3: the scary thing and the thing that I worry about is,
Speaker 3: you know, our institutions are barely barely holding on I mean,
Speaker 3: and to some extent maybe not. And we have seen
Speaker 3: in Trump one point, oh that many of the checks
Speaker 3: and balances and and checks on power that we're written
Speaker 3: into our institutions do not work.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I think probably the best example of this is is impeachment. Right.
Speaker 3: Trump was impeached twice but still retained power.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: This is a man who, on January sixth, insight a
Speaker 3: violent mob to attack the beating heart of American democracy
Speaker 3: and try to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and
Speaker 3: was then reelected. I mean that is not somebody who
Speaker 3: should ever be allowed near public office or given an
Speaker 3: ounce of government power ever.
Speaker 1: Again, And when you talk, if I may, about checks
Speaker 1: and balances, you've got the either their sickophants, their corrupt,
Speaker 1: or they're just invertebrates. In the Congress under Mike Johnson, right,
Speaker 1: So the Republicans have the majority and they are just
Speaker 1: almost completely in lockstep. And then you've got the neutering
Speaker 1: of the judiciary, I mean the Supreme Court. You call
Speaker 1: it a hostile takeover. Those people are like a, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the majority of the Supreme Court, right, I mean we
Speaker 1: expect them now to rule in his favor on almost anything,
Speaker 1: don't we.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean absolutely right. I mean, like, I don't
Speaker 3: think it's crazy to suggest that you could draw a
Speaker 3: direct between the Supreme Court saying Donald Trump is immune
Speaker 3: for pretty much anything he does while president and these
Speaker 3: war crimes that are being committed on people who are
Speaker 3: on boats in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, right, Like,
Speaker 3: one of the hypotheticals in the case involving you know,
Speaker 3: is Trump liable for illegal acts that he commits was
Speaker 3: what if he tells Seal Team six to go out
Speaker 3: and kill one of his political enemies, and the answer
Speaker 3: to that hypothetical was like, yeah, you can't. He can't
Speaker 3: be held liable. I mean, that's what we're seeing effectively happening.
Speaker 3: A version of that is happening out in the real
Speaker 3: world now. I mean, the Supreme Court is absolutely no
Speaker 3: kind of check on Donald Trump, and at every chance
Speaker 3: that it seems to have to be a check it folds.
Speaker 3: Congress certainly is not. The idea of impeachment is not.
Speaker 3: So that those are the things that worry me. And
Speaker 3: really what it comes down to is those first three
Speaker 3: words in the Constitution, We the people, We're going to
Speaker 3: have to be the check on this authoritarian.
Speaker 1: How does that happen if the courts are compromised and
Speaker 1: the Congress is compromised. I worry about violence. Maybe I
Speaker 1: need to come back to this potential civil war question
Speaker 1: in just a second, because I want to stick to
Speaker 1: sort of this potential turning of the tide with this
Speaker 1: recent Tennessee special election between mad Van Epps and Democratic
Speaker 1: challenger Afton Bane and the Republican one fifty four to
Speaker 1: forty five percent. But in the state of Tennessee, the
Speaker 1: fact that it was even that close it came down
Speaker 1: to a single digit percentage, is in the eyes of
Speaker 1: many an indicator that wait a minute, you know, there
Speaker 1: may be a I hate to say blue wave because
Speaker 1: it's such a cliche. Do you see that election as significant?
Speaker 1: Are the numbers significant?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the most significant thing coming out
Speaker 3: of at that election was the shift in the elector
Speaker 3: You know, if you look at the breakdown of the
Speaker 3: various counties that make up part of that district that
Speaker 3: we're voting, you know, I believe, and I haven't looked
Speaker 3: in the last twenty four hours, and by the time
Speaker 3: people will be hearing this, it'll be it'll be longer.
Speaker 3: But the smallest shift blue was an eight point shift.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was a seven point shift, and many of
Speaker 3: those were double digit shifts in the blue direction. So
Speaker 3: it suggests a significant change in the electorates preferences. And
Speaker 3: I generally in any midterm election, it is a backlash
Speaker 3: against the party that's in power, So we would expect
Speaker 3: to see this mid terms go the Democrats way. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it's a question of kind of how much. And I
Speaker 3: think those numbers in that you know, Trump twenty plus
Speaker 3: way plus district suggests that it could be a significant shift.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a hard election for the Democrats. It
Speaker 3: always is when it comes to, for instance, the Senate,
Speaker 3: because that body is both their miney. But that's a.
Speaker 1: Streamers were outlets off.
Speaker 4: Of the river. We could be here all day.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Ten Commandments. This is in your wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: You've written about it, including in book form at least once.
Speaker 1: Texas this year has become the third state to mandate
Speaker 1: that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.
Speaker 1: I find this amazing because statistically, Americans across the board
Speaker 1: can't even name five of the Ten Commandments right, and
Speaker 1: they certainly don't keep them. But it's really about marking territory,
Speaker 1: isn't it. They want to hang that stuff as a
Speaker 1: Christian nationalist exercise. But you've got Texas, you got Arkansas,
Speaker 1: you got Louisiana, and then lawsuits start flying, and this
Speaker 1: has happened with all three of those states. Do you
Speaker 1: think that Greg Abbott and Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Jeff
Speaker 1: Landry do you think that they are hoping that the
Speaker 1: Ten Commandments case is going to go to a friendly
Speaker 1: Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: I do think that was part of the initial push
Speaker 3: to do these laws anyway, and even if it was
Speaker 3: not necessarily like I don't think Sarah Huckabee Sanders is
Speaker 3: necessarily the most strategic legal thinker out there for the
Speaker 3: Christian nationalist movement. But the people pushing these bills and
Speaker 3: the Christian nationalists legal groups behind them, I do think,
Speaker 3: are hoping that eventually they can get this case to
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court and get the judges that have been
Speaker 3: part of that hostile takeover the justices on the Court
Speaker 3: to agree that, yeah, politicians can impose their personal religion
Speaker 3: on other people's children in the public school system. I
Speaker 3: think that's a decision that they are hoping to get.
Speaker 3: Very proud to be working at Americans United for Separation
Speaker 3: of Church and Stay, which just filed along with our allies,
Speaker 3: a class action lawsuit against the school public school districts
Speaker 3: in Texas to ensure that that kind of thing does
Speaker 3: not happen, that those Ten Commandments displays don't go up,
Speaker 3: you know. I Mean, one of the things that I
Speaker 3: find so irritating about this law that these different states
Speaker 3: have passed that mandate they rewrote the Bible, right like
Speaker 3: they're saying that this Bible and the Ten Commandments were
Speaker 3: so influential to the founding that we have to educate
Speaker 3: kids about what it says. And it's a holy book
Speaker 3: to all of us, so we need to educate and
Speaker 3: we need to impose them, and they have to. But
Speaker 3: then the politicians rewrote what those Ten Commandments say in
Speaker 3: these laws. You can't find those commandments that are going
Speaker 3: to be in the classrooms in any given Bible because
Speaker 3: they were rewritten. They removed things like punishing innocent children
Speaker 3: to the third and fourth generation for the crimes of
Speaker 3: their parents, which appear in the Commandments right. They removed
Speaker 3: the implicit recognition of slavery, which appears twice in the
Speaker 3: Ten Commandments. They took out a lot of the immoral
Speaker 3: and objectionable things. In other words, they rewrote that moral
Speaker 3: command using modern morality, because we don't get our morality
Speaker 3: from the Ten Commandments. They kind of undercut their entire
Speaker 3: argument for putting them up in the first place. And
Speaker 3: one other just really irritating note, like you know me
Speaker 3: and when it comes to us history and the disinformation
Speaker 3: the Christian nationalists love to push, like they justified the
Speaker 3: Louisiana law with a James Madison quote that is fake.
Speaker 3: It's just it's not a real quote. James Madison didn't
Speaker 3: say it. We know he didn't say it, but it's
Speaker 3: in the law as though this is something he said.
Speaker 3: And it just there's so much wrong with this, and
Speaker 3: really the most important thing is that it violates the
Speaker 3: religious freedom of every single student kid in a Texas
Speaker 3: public school and their families. But there's a lot of
Speaker 3: other little things too that bother me. In particularly well.
Speaker 1: Our former superintendent of Public Instruction, who is gone, by
Speaker 1: the way, you know, Ryan Walters, was disliked when he resigned.
Speaker 1: There were parties, like people had parties, educators had bookstores
Speaker 1: had parties there or politicians who live your life in
Speaker 1: a way, my friends, that people do not throw a
Speaker 1: bash and celebrate when you leave, right, That is probably
Speaker 1: a good rule of thumb. But on his bookshelf he
Speaker 1: had the Bible and he had one other apologetics book,
Speaker 1: I think, and then he had David Bardon, who is
Speaker 1: a pseudo historian and he is hugely popular, kind of
Speaker 1: a superstar among Christian nationalists because he's been pounding the
Speaker 1: drum that the founders, especially Thomas Jefferson, were Christians who
Speaker 1: intended a Christian nation. Now, I know Andrew Seidel has
Speaker 1: written the book called The Founding Myth, which everyone should buy.
Speaker 1: But let's address that on our conversation here. The founder's
Speaker 1: Christian nation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely not. And and David Barton, I would even,
Speaker 3: I would even say that pseudo historian is too kind
Speaker 3: of a term to capture what he does. He is.
Speaker 3: He is the granddaddy of Christian nationalist disinformation. Like so
Speaker 3: much of so many of the talking points that you
Speaker 3: hear regurgitated, especially on social media, about us being founded
Speaker 3: as a Christian nation, about the founding fathers all being
Speaker 3: Christian ministers, or you know whatever, this disinformation here, so
Speaker 3: much of it traces back to David Barton, And he
Speaker 3: really is responsible for pushing that that popular counter narrative
Speaker 3: that that no serious scholar agrees with. Right, Like, there's
Speaker 3: not actually a debate in the higher scholastic circles about
Speaker 3: whether America was founded as a Christian nation or not.
Speaker 3: It wasn't. There's not really a serious debate about that.
Speaker 3: It's just this Christian nationalist disinformation and these talking points
Speaker 3: that keep getting repeated over and over and over again,
Speaker 3: and so many of them trace back to David Barton.
Speaker 3: But when you when you look at them, when you
Speaker 3: pull them apart, and when you try to get to
Speaker 3: the heart of the matter, there's just there's no truth
Speaker 3: to any of it. Right. And I know people are
Speaker 3: out there screaming in their heads right now, say talk
Speaker 3: about the Treaty of Tripoli, Andrew and look, Treaty of
Speaker 3: Tripley is wonderful. Right. The United States has not in
Speaker 3: any sense founded on the Christian religion. Bam, that's a
Speaker 3: great line. It's it's a it's a document that was
Speaker 3: negotiated under George Washington, that was unanimously consented to by
Speaker 3: the US Senate and signed by President John Adams right
Speaker 3: like like it's it's as clear and emphatic a statement
Speaker 3: as you can get, and it was signed off on
Speaker 3: by like all the founding fathers. Kind of so really
Speaker 3: really useful. But I go much deeper in the founding
Speaker 3: myth because to me, it's not just that America wasn't
Speaker 3: founded as a Christian nation. I think you can take
Speaker 3: it one step further. It's that the claim that we
Speaker 3: were founded it as a Christian nation. It's not that
Speaker 3: it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It's actually that
Speaker 3: it's the the opposite is true that when you look
Speaker 3: at those those values on which America was founded, and
Speaker 3: some of them are absolutely aspirational. Right, we haven't lived
Speaker 3: up to them yet. But when you look at those values,
Speaker 3: they're fundamentally opposed to the values that you would see
Speaker 3: in Christian nationalism.
Speaker 1: Next up, the religious beliefs or lack of of the
Speaker 1: Founding Fathers. I'm going to ask Constitutional Attorney Andrew's Seidel
Speaker 1: about that and much more. I so appreciate your listening today.
Speaker 1: I am speaking with Constitutional Attorney Andrew Seidel. You said
Speaker 1: something in a conversation we had a few years back,
Speaker 1: and I want to go there again. Were talking, and
Speaker 1: often we talk about the religiosity or lack.
Speaker 4: Of and the founders. You know, this idea that.
Speaker 1: They were not all Bible thumping Jesus lovers. There were
Speaker 1: some Christians. I think Jefferson was a deist. Franklin, I
Speaker 1: think he mocked the Puritans. I don't know where he landed.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they like Jesus as a philosopher. We would talk
Speaker 1: about whether or not they were Christians. But you said, well,
Speaker 1: that's not really the point, right, whether they were personally
Speaker 1: a believer or not is not. That shouldn't be the
Speaker 1: hill that we fight on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's super fascinating, right, and I
Speaker 3: love to have the conversation, and you know, you open
Speaker 3: that bottle back there behind me and get a little
Speaker 3: bit in me and I can go for hours talking
Speaker 3: about the personal religious beliefs of the Founding fathers. But
Speaker 3: it's a fallacious argument in the sense that even if
Speaker 3: I am, even if I were to concede the Christian
Speaker 3: nationalists claim that all of the founders were Bible believing
Speaker 3: Jesus rose from the dead evangelical Christians, that doesn't do
Speaker 3: any anything to prove that they wrote the Constitution or
Speaker 3: base the Constitution or any of our governing documents or
Speaker 3: philosophy on the Christian religion. Right, Christians are perfectly capable
Speaker 3: of doing things that do not infuse their religion onto
Speaker 3: those things, you know, like like we wouldn't talk about
Speaker 3: like a building as a Christian building unless it were
Speaker 3: a church, unless it incorporated those aspects of the Christian
Speaker 3: religion and the kind of the sacredness of the Christian religion.
Speaker 3: Right then you say, you might say Okay, that's a
Speaker 3: Christian building. Same thing. There's there's no reason, even if
Speaker 3: we concede all the founders were Christian to say that
Speaker 3: the Constitution is a Christian document. You have to dig
Speaker 3: a little bit deeper and look at the principle so
Speaker 3: that it's based on. So it's a fascinating conversation. But
Speaker 3: you can actually while you're having that argument conceded and
Speaker 3: just say, forget about that for a second and just
Speaker 3: name me a single principle that is unique or origin
Speaker 3: all to Christianity which can be found in our Constitution.
Speaker 3: And that's a stumper that can't be done. So to me,
Speaker 3: it's fun. I love the and I do the argument
Speaker 3: in the founding myth because because it's unavoidable, but it's
Speaker 3: actually not necessary. And I think when when you are
Speaker 3: trying to persuade people, it often becomes one of those
Speaker 3: those rabbit trails which which you can get lost down.
Speaker 3: And if you keep your eyes on the prize of
Speaker 3: you know, were we founded as a Christian nation or
Speaker 3: based on Judaeo Christian principles, which is their fallback oftentimes, right,
Speaker 3: you don't even need to get into the personal religious
Speaker 3: beliefs of the Founding Parlis. It's also it's also just
Speaker 3: kind of hard too, because right, like like look at yourself, Seth, Right,
Speaker 3: did you believe the same thing when you were a
Speaker 3: young man of eighteen as you do now? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Historian was to say, what did Seth think? It's like, well,
Speaker 1: was I twenty one? Was I twenty nine? Was I
Speaker 1: forty five? Where was I? You know, theologically, philosophically in
Speaker 1: my life? I mean I don't fit in a box.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm a work in progress. And the founders
Speaker 1: were the same.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely right, and you know they changed their minds
Speaker 3: about things all the time. And so it's not just
Speaker 3: a question of like taking the errant the you know,
Speaker 3: an errant quote out of context here or there. It's
Speaker 3: maybe they did believe that when they were eighteen, and
Speaker 3: they didn't believe that at the time of the Founding
Speaker 3: or when they were actually like at the Constitutional Convention
Speaker 3: in Philadelphia, you know, getting into the nuts and bolts
Speaker 3: of crafting the Constitution, and maybe they personally believed in
Speaker 3: the divinity of Jesus and that people who hold power
Speaker 3: should be Christian. But they created a document that bans
Speaker 3: religious tests for public office and that's that is like
Speaker 3: clear and unavoidable. You cannot you cannot work around the
Speaker 3: ban on religious tests in Article six. So it's it
Speaker 3: oftentimes is a little bit of a distraction, I think,
Speaker 3: and when you're having that debate with Christian nationalists, it
Speaker 3: can really derail things pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I'll put on an apologist hat for a
Speaker 1: moment and say, well, God doesn't exist. There's no reference
Speaker 1: to God in the Constitution. But the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 1: talks about the rights given to us by a creator
Speaker 1: with a capital c uhha.
Speaker 3: Andrew Seidel, Yeah, well, we're going to hear a ton
Speaker 3: about that in twenty twenty six because it is the
Speaker 3: country's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 3: So there's gonna be so much disinformation out there about
Speaker 3: the Declaration of Independence, about it being our founding document.
Speaker 3: And I would really encourage people to pick up a
Speaker 3: copy of the Founding Myth from their library, because I
Speaker 3: got two chapters that dive into the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 3: including each of the supposedly forementions of the Christian God
Speaker 3: in there. And the first thing to note is that
Speaker 3: none of those mentions invoke the Christian God right that
Speaker 3: they don't. They don't say Christian God or Jesus or
Speaker 3: Yahweh or Biblical God right they are. They are these vague,
Speaker 3: at best, deistic references. And there was only one in
Speaker 3: the original Constitution as it was, or excuse me, in
Speaker 3: the original Declaration as it was drafted. There was only
Speaker 3: one of those mentions. And the reason that that's important
Speaker 3: is because there was really it was only that one
Speaker 3: mention that was integral to the philosophy that Jefferson lays
Speaker 3: out in the Declaration. And the more important thing I
Speaker 3: think to note is that the Declaration is not a
Speaker 3: document of creation. It did not create the United States
Speaker 3: of America. It's a document of destruction. It severed our
Speaker 3: political connection with Great Britain, right, it destroyed that subservient
Speaker 3: relationship that the colonies had with Great Britain. It broke
Speaker 3: our chains, it set us free. But it didn't create
Speaker 3: the United States of America. That wouldn't happen until we
Speaker 3: drafted the Constitution in seventeen eighty seven and it was
Speaker 3: ratified two years later. So important document, and some people
Speaker 3: call it the birth Certificate, but it did not create
Speaker 3: the United States of American in fact, that the document
Speaker 3: that was our governing document in between was kind of
Speaker 3: a failure, the Articles of Confederation. You may remember this
Speaker 3: back from your history classes. It didn't work, and that's
Speaker 3: the reason we needed to have the Constitution to kind
Speaker 3: of redo that and rewrite it. And the other thing
Speaker 3: to note about the declaration is that the philosophy that
Speaker 3: it lays out is almost anti biblical. I think it's
Speaker 3: fair to say that it's anti biblical in that it
Speaker 3: directly cuts against, for instance, one of the Christian nationalists'
Speaker 3: favorite Bible chapters, Romans thirteen, which says that you have
Speaker 3: to be basically subservient to the rulers because the rulers
Speaker 3: are put in place by God. I'm paraphrasing, but the
Speaker 3: declaration completely counteracts that that the people people have a
Speaker 3: duty to rebel against tyranny and doesn't make a distinction
Speaker 3: between divine or human there. And you know, to get
Speaker 3: into the mentions a little bit, right, the laws of
Speaker 3: nature and of Nature's God is one of the ones
Speaker 3: that people say reflects the Christian God. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: the laws of nature and Nature's God do not sound
Speaker 3: very Christian to me. It sounds pagan if anything, but
Speaker 3: it's clearly an invocation of an idea called natural law
Speaker 3: endowed by their creator the other. And this these fourmentions
Speaker 3: to me, are also they're highlighted by Christian nationalists constantly,
Speaker 3: But if you look at the balance of the document,
Speaker 3: it is not concerned with the supernatural or the divine.
Speaker 3: It begins when in the course of human events it
Speaker 3: is necessary for one people to does all of the
Speaker 3: political bands which have connected them with another right. And
Speaker 3: it is talking about humans and humanity and our shared humanity,
Speaker 3: and that is what it is concerned with, not with
Speaker 3: the Christian God, which again doesn't even get a mention.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to bounce into current events in just
Speaker 1: a second, but let me throw this at you. You're
Speaker 1: a constitutional attorney, you will know. Do you think that
Speaker 1: the secular Constitution was fueled in some way by our
Speaker 1: separation from the Church of England? I mean, did they
Speaker 1: see the England as a theocracy?
Speaker 4: They'd seen the.
Speaker 1: Religification of government. Did that fuel some of the attitudes?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? In fact, in the rough draft of the Declaration
Speaker 3: of Independence, which we do have a copy of, there
Speaker 3: was a mention of Christianity and it talked about the
Speaker 3: Christian King of Great Britain Christian in all caps. That
Speaker 3: we shouldn't pay too much attention to the capitalization of
Speaker 3: anything in the Declaration for reasons I explained in the
Speaker 3: Founding myth, but that was edited out because it was
Speaker 3: a condemnation of the Christian king basically rubber stamping and
Speaker 3: allowing the slave trade to happen. And you know, our
Speaker 3: founders had they had some serious issues, and not in
Speaker 3: the good way when it came to slavery.
Speaker 1: And beyond personal liberties autonomy with the people, did they
Speaker 1: see the divine right of kings and push back hard
Speaker 1: against that?
Speaker 3: They so, they definitely did. And like one of the
Speaker 3: things that they looked at were historical examples of how
Speaker 3: not to create a country. And they looked at one
Speaker 3: of the phrases that stands out is James Madison's phrase
Speaker 3: the torrance of blood, torrents of blood that had been
Speaker 3: spilled in the old world trying to get to some
Speaker 3: sort of religious uniformity or conformity, right, talking about when
Speaker 3: religion and the government unite, they try to stamp out
Speaker 3: all dissent, and it often is is done through it
Speaker 3: inevitably it is done with violence. And we have you know,
Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson and the Notes on the State of Virginia
Speaker 3: looks at the Puritans and the Pilgrims up in Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: which we you know, we just got done celebrating this Thanksgiving, right,
Speaker 3: and he says, hey, that's a terrible way to organize
Speaker 3: a government, right, Like they're just establishing these little theocracies
Speaker 3: and enforcing their religious will and imposing it on everybody else.
Speaker 3: And it's grim and brutal, and we should not do
Speaker 3: that when we're like thinking about doing something else here.
Speaker 3: So you know, they look at these examples that existed
Speaker 3: out there and say, no, no, no, we don't want
Speaker 3: to go that way. We want to avoid that. And
Speaker 3: the only way to avoid that is to separate church
Speaker 3: and state. And by the way, that's the only way
Speaker 3: that we can guarantee for everybody true religious freedom. Right.
Speaker 3: There's there's no way that we can guarantee you the
Speaker 3: freedom to believe in worship as you want, so long
Speaker 3: as you're not harming others, right, which is an important
Speaker 3: caveat that's often missed these days. Without keeping church and
Speaker 3: state separate, and to answer the Christian nationalists follow up,
Speaker 3: there's no such thing as a one way wall. We
Speaker 3: were not just talking about a national church here, or
Speaker 3: the church could influence the government, but not the other
Speaker 3: way around. That's why they chose the metaphor of the
Speaker 3: wall of separation.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in this idea of today's government seems to
Speaker 1: be more about the Old Testament God. Now I don't
Speaker 1: let Jesus off the hook, right, but I mean we
Speaker 1: do tend to separate our ideas that Jesus is the
Speaker 1: hippie love and light. Come and I'll give you a hug,
Speaker 1: and we'll all, you know, smoke weed and listen to
Speaker 1: Yannie music together. And it was, you know, yahweh. He
Speaker 1: was the one who was crazy and everything was on
Speaker 1: fire and there was blood in the rivers and.
Speaker 4: All that stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I see in Christian nationalists a kind
Speaker 1: of an attraction to the God of the punisher, the
Speaker 1: punisher of the wicked. And now we're seeing in many
Speaker 1: more egalitarian churches they are saying, well, my Jesus as
Speaker 1: would never expel the immigrants or target someone of color
Speaker 1: or gay or trans people. They would never be cruel,
Speaker 1: they would never execute people in a boat, you know,
Speaker 1: coming out of Venezuela, et cetera. It's a clash of cultures.
Speaker 1: It's a broad umbrella question. Do you want to comment
Speaker 1: on this sort of splash of different types of Christianity
Speaker 1: warring with itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that is a conflict that
Speaker 3: goes back to the founding of the country and even before.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think you can see it. One
Speaker 3: of the encapsulations of it is, well, Christian nationalism is
Speaker 3: not Christian or or Christian nationalists are not real Christians, right,
Speaker 3: And yeah, I already hear people talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: the no true scotsman. I think that is interesting because
Speaker 3: to me, it shows that this division in Christianity itself
Speaker 3: has existed for a long time, right, It's not new,
Speaker 3: you know. So for instance, to give you, as John
Speaker 3: Fugel saying has a book out right now, Separation of
Speaker 3: Church and Hate, where he talks about, you know, the
Speaker 3: real Jesus and that Christian nationalists are betraying the true
Speaker 3: Gospel of Jesus and are not real Christians. I'm I'm
Speaker 3: summarizing and putting words in his mouth, and I apologize John,
Speaker 3: But that kind of thing goes back to right. Like,
Speaker 3: go listen to Lincoln's second inaugural. You can't listen to it,
Speaker 3: go read it. You know. He talks about how both
Speaker 3: sides in the Civil War read from the same Bible,
Speaker 3: and this is what he is talking about. They prayed
Speaker 3: to the same God. This is what this is what
Speaker 3: he means. He means, how are we We're coming out
Speaker 3: of the same book, But we have these two very
Speaker 3: divergent ways of operating and believing. And to use your word,
Speaker 3: the culture right, I mean the culture of slave holding
Speaker 3: South versus the North right. And to me, this suggests
Speaker 3: the way that we fight Christian nationalism is not by
Speaker 3: saying they're not Christian, and not by saying they've got
Speaker 3: the Gospel wrong, but by saying they are anti democratic.
Speaker 3: They are abusing their power. They are trying to create
Speaker 3: a country where they are legally favored and everybody else
Speaker 3: is disfavored. We attack them on the other fronts. We
Speaker 3: attack them because they are a threat to a government
Speaker 3: of the people, for the people, and by the people,
Speaker 3: not on those theological grounds, because that theological debate appears
Speaker 3: to be eternal and insoluble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean, we do have to say that
Speaker 1: those people who say that the Christian nationalists are not
Speaker 1: true Christians have not read the Bible at least literally, right,
Speaker 1: it's a dominionist book. Yeah, you know, they're supposed to
Speaker 1: go and win the culture war. They're supposed to take
Speaker 1: land and change minds, et cetera. So you know, I
Speaker 1: want to I do get sucked into those conversations where
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, actually they kind of are true Christians.
Speaker 1: But I see what you mean. Maybe more on a
Speaker 1: humanity and human rights front, we may get more traction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's I don't I don't care. It's
Speaker 3: not for me to police Christianity and say what is
Speaker 3: or is not a Christian. I mean, I definitely think
Speaker 3: they're Christians. Like they they call themselves Christian, they go
Speaker 3: to church, they read from the Christian Bible. They use
Speaker 3: Jesus to as a justification and as a permission to
Speaker 3: do a lot of terrible things. Like you. The other
Speaker 3: part of it, Seth, And the reason that I do
Speaker 3: like I also get sucked into them is because there's
Speaker 3: tied up in that debate about like, well they can't
Speaker 3: be real Christians. Is this implicit belief that conflates Christian
Speaker 3: with good person, and that is one thing that I
Speaker 3: cannot stand and I think so much of the knee
Speaker 3: jerk pushback against calling Christian nationalists Christian is that they
Speaker 3: can't be Christian because they're clearly bad people, they're clearly big.
Speaker 3: It's they're clearly racist, so therefore they can't be Christians.
Speaker 3: And that's just that is a false belief that we
Speaker 3: do need to call out and do. It does need
Speaker 3: to tear down like we actually it's part of the
Speaker 3: stigma attached to being non religious in this country. It
Speaker 3: is something that really does need to be tackled and
Speaker 3: destroyed as well. To be a Christian says nothing about
Speaker 3: your morality or whether you are a good person, and
Speaker 3: we cannot let people conflate that and get away with it.
Speaker 3: So I don't mean to suggest that, but I do
Speaker 3: think that when we are specifically tackling and trying to
Speaker 3: push back on Christian nationalism, especially in a public debate,
Speaker 3: it is more effective to talk about it not as
Speaker 3: not being Christian or being counter to the values of Jesus,
Speaker 3: but as a threat to a government of the people,
Speaker 3: for the people, and by the people, and all of
Speaker 3: those other things that I.
Speaker 1: Said, scary days. These days, a lot of people worried
Speaker 1: about civil war. What does Constitutional Attorney Andrew Seidel think
Speaker 1: we'll find out next coming up next week, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be releasing the audio and the video of the
Speaker 1: speech that I've been touring with around the United States.
Speaker 1: It's called a War Story about Love. And then at
Speaker 1: the end of the month, we're doing kind of a
Speaker 1: general knowledge show. It's called What's Up with that Wet
Speaker 1: Dog Smell? And we're going to do some science together
Speaker 1: and enjoy a little levity as we approach twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Right now, I am continuing my conversation with Constitutional Attorney
Speaker 1: Andrew's Seidel.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: In May of this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and
Speaker 1: ain't he a piece of work? He got praised by
Speaker 1: none other than Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist
Speaker 1: Billy Graham, for a Christian prayer service that he led
Speaker 1: at the Pentagon, And this is one of several that
Speaker 1: he's done. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, it was
Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth who led military troops in a Christian prayer
Speaker 1: and then he apparently took clips of that and put
Speaker 1: it on X and he was over with the visuals
Speaker 1: of fighter jets flying by and flags waving in the
Speaker 1: usual Americana and whatnot. So you and I pushed back
Speaker 1: and were like, what in the actual hell are you doing?
Speaker 1: But the argument might be, well, since Eisenhower and before
Speaker 1: this stuff's been going on, I mean, God and country,
Speaker 1: this is nothing that Pete Hegseeth came up with. What
Speaker 1: would you say to that?
Speaker 3: I mean, that is where I think, yeah, let's push
Speaker 3: back against that. Right, that is a man who abusing
Speaker 3: his power to impose his personal religion on soldiers who
Speaker 3: are risking their lives for this country, to violate their
Speaker 3: religious freedom, to trample a founding American value, the separation
Speaker 3: of church and state, while pretending he's doing it in
Speaker 3: the name of patriotism. Right. I mean, that is absolutely,
Speaker 3: to me a quintessential example of something that we can
Speaker 3: and ought to push back on. Not as this is
Speaker 3: an an accurate reflection of the Christian Gospel because Jesus
Speaker 3: was gentle and meek and mild, which may or may
Speaker 3: not be true, but because this is a literal threat
Speaker 3: to our lives and our society as we know it
Speaker 3: and if I.
Speaker 1: Can jump in yeah, I guess My question is, given
Speaker 1: the current the intensity of the current political and cultural climate,
Speaker 1: does this kind of theater hit different than it did when, say,
Speaker 1: Congress was voting in God we trust to be on
Speaker 1: the money during the Red Scare? I mean, is this
Speaker 1: a different animal today?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think I think we're in a
Speaker 3: time that is not terribly dissimilar from kind of the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties. There have been other times in our country
Speaker 3: where dissent and pushing back were it was scary to
Speaker 3: do and where where the government really kind of cracked
Speaker 3: down on it. There was a time during during the
Speaker 3: early years that Thomas Jefferson referred to as the reign
Speaker 3: of Witches. You know, I think I think the Red
Speaker 3: Scare is another example, is you know, with McCarthyism and
Speaker 3: the House on American Activities Committee, right, we've seen waves
Speaker 3: of this, and we often see during those times Christian
Speaker 3: nationalists seizing on those those times of national fear and
Speaker 3: crisis to abuse their power and impose their personal religion
Speaker 3: on others. And we get a lot of the artifacts,
Speaker 3: the scars, the disfiguring scars of Christian nationalism, that modern
Speaker 3: Christian national let's point to as an example to say, see,
Speaker 3: we really were found that as a Christian nation. A
Speaker 3: lot of those scars came from those earlier waves of
Speaker 3: Christian nationalism and those times of fear and crisis, and
Speaker 3: they lead up to the Civil War and during the
Speaker 3: Civil War, for instance, the nineteen fifties were huge. We
Speaker 3: get in God, we Trust added to our coins, we
Speaker 3: get it you under God, added to the pledge we
Speaker 3: get in God we Trust adopted as our motto. All
Speaker 3: of these different things happen where dissent is suffocated and
Speaker 3: almost impossible and likely to get you thrown in jail.
Speaker 3: And it's no coincidence that at those times they are
Speaker 3: able to abuse their power to impose their personal religion
Speaker 3: on all of us. So to me, the historical note
Speaker 3: and the time that we're in, it's all the more
Speaker 3: reason to push back against it and to stand up
Speaker 3: all of us and say no, not on our watch.
Speaker 1: So if the courts are compromised, if the Congress is compromise,
Speaker 1: and the White House is out of control, people feel powerless.
Speaker 1: We've seen millions. I was there for the No Kings.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you were there for the No Kings demonstrations.
Speaker 1: We are being seen and heard, but we also in
Speaker 1: many ways still feel helpless.
Speaker 4: I think it was.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior that once said that. Forgive me
Speaker 1: if I've misattributed, but he said riots are the language
Speaker 1: of the unheard.
Speaker 4: And so I.
Speaker 1: Worry now what happens if we are seeing the pressure
Speaker 1: cooker continue to heat up, people feel desperate and helpless
Speaker 1: and outraged, and then the Trump administration is aching for
Speaker 1: something to break out, because then he's got an even
Speaker 1: greater excuse to wage war on the citizens of this country.
Speaker 1: The words civil war are more and more easily coming
Speaker 1: to mind. Andrew, I need you to walk me through
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that one.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I mean, I think it's good to clarify
Speaker 3: what I meant when I said, you know, it's up
Speaker 3: to we the people, because I'm not talking about a
Speaker 3: civil war. I'm talking about civil resistance, which is far
Speaker 3: more like. It includes the No King's rallies. And I
Speaker 3: do think that is the way forward, not only because
Speaker 3: it captures the popular imagination and channels are frustrations and
Speaker 3: anger and hurt into channels that are fruitful. So you know,
Speaker 3: I have been doing a ton of reading this year.
Speaker 3: I'm on just finished book number one twenty five, and
Speaker 3: I'm asking my reading list in addition to being complete
Speaker 3: escapism because I need that right now, is asking how
Speaker 3: did the twenty twenty four election happen? What can we
Speaker 3: do to stop it? And so a lot of it
Speaker 3: focuses on politics, but also on communications, meaning like do
Speaker 3: we live in a shared reality? How could something like
Speaker 3: this happen? And two of the books that stand out
Speaker 3: that I read were Why Civil Resistance Works by Chenowith
Speaker 3: and Steven And it's a very scholarly book, but you
Speaker 3: may have heard recently like it only takes three percent
Speaker 3: of the population to really stand up and force a
Speaker 3: change in a country through civil resistance. It is this
Speaker 3: book that is the genesis of that statistic, and it
Speaker 3: makes a convincing case that civil resistance is the way
Speaker 3: to change the politics of a country and that civil
Speaker 3: wars often are going to fail. That the subtitle is
Speaker 3: the strategic logic of non violent conflict. So I like
Speaker 3: doing more things like the No King's Rally, and not
Speaker 3: just the No Kings Rally, but resisting Ice in all
Speaker 3: of the creative ways that we've seen it, whether it's
Speaker 3: you know, teenagers driving around, high schoolers driving around in
Speaker 3: filming ice and you using, in their words, their privileged
Speaker 3: to resist, or you know, during the shutdown coffee there
Speaker 3: was a coffee shop in Portland. I'm going to get
Speaker 3: the name wrong, but it was something like Heathen Coffee.
Speaker 3: They had a great godless name to it, right. There
Speaker 3: was just giving out free breakfast, not to not to
Speaker 3: people who were on snap, but to anybody who showed
Speaker 3: up to get one. And then and then that caught
Speaker 3: our imagination and it raised hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 3: to make that program work.
Speaker 1: It's amazing the power of a Portland frog, I will say.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, the artists, I think
Speaker 1: are also going to be on their front lines of
Speaker 1: resistant says. They have been through history. I think it's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that autocrats go after the arts first.
Speaker 3: Would you agree, Oh, I mean absolutely that, and they
Speaker 3: genuinely you know, Hitchins wrote that the literal mind can't
Speaker 3: understand the figurative one. And part of and he wrote
Speaker 3: it in the context of autocracy, and part of what
Speaker 3: he means there is they cannot take a fucking joke.
Speaker 3: I mean, they they cannot stand any kind of mockery, right.
Speaker 3: It is like Steven Miller is a short piece of
Speaker 3: shit and he that being said, and that being out
Speaker 3: there in the ether drives him insane and drives him
Speaker 3: to distraction. He can't allow it. And the other book too,
Speaker 3: I want to recommend to folks because I think it's
Speaker 3: equally important and it also is kind of the flip
Speaker 3: side of what we're talking about, is How Civil War
Speaker 3: Start by Barbara Walter. I think it's maybe the most
Speaker 3: important book I've read all year. The subtitle is and
Speaker 3: how to Stop Them. So it's also like it's not
Speaker 3: just like scary, it's also uplifting and kind of gives
Speaker 3: you some good good takeaways there. But I mean, to me,
Speaker 3: those two books and a number of other things that
Speaker 3: I've read, and going to the Note King's Rally, you know,
Speaker 3: with the whole family, like that is our way out
Speaker 3: of this. And I know people are saying, like, really,
Speaker 3: marching doesn't seem to be enough, but it's it is
Speaker 3: the physical manifestation of so much more, and it is
Speaker 3: something that cannot be ignored. And to your point, right,
Speaker 3: it's it's not. It's not a manifestation that is going. Yes,
Speaker 3: it could get out of control h and could get
Speaker 3: cracked down, but they're doing a great job of making
Speaker 3: sure that that doesn't happen. And people like we took
Speaker 3: our kids to those those marches and it was it
Speaker 3: was perfectly safe, and I felt safe doing that. And
Speaker 3: that's the kind of that kind of civil resistance is
Speaker 3: I think a viable path forward.
Speaker 1: Well, I can see in the background the books and
Speaker 1: the Choske's. I'm sure we're paid for by the George
Speaker 1: Soros check that must have arrived. For the way, it's
Speaker 1: the way the level of conspiracy theory thinking that the
Speaker 1: Fox newsers have been pushing, I just think, how irredeemably
Speaker 1: stupid can you be to believe that we were all
Speaker 1: out there, you know, professionals and and uh, you know
Speaker 1: lay people and and and professors and school teachers and
Speaker 1: you know janitors and plumbers and active like me and
Speaker 1: constitutional attorneys like you, and somehow we're all in on
Speaker 1: one of the greatest conspiracies and no one's been busted,
Speaker 1: no one can trace the money.
Speaker 4: It just blows my mind. So go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 3: They don't believe it right, it's they know it's a lie.
Speaker 3: They're telling themselves that lie. And what it is a
Speaker 3: It is a way to preserve the integrity of the
Speaker 3: information silo that they are in, right, Like, it is
Speaker 3: a way that they can it's it's got enough of
Speaker 3: something for them and their audience to latch onto, to
Speaker 3: provide them that kind of mental security blanket to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: this isn't really happening, and that that is why, that's why,
Speaker 3: that's what I'm talking about, doing these kind of marches
Speaker 3: with millions of people around the country, so that you
Speaker 3: can't log on to social media, you can't turn on
Speaker 3: the TV without seeing how fucking pissed off everybody is. Right,
Speaker 3: that breaks through into their silo, and it breaks through
Speaker 3: in a way that is not really deniable, like that
Speaker 3: is the flimsiest and it may work for some of them,
Speaker 3: but it's not going to work for all of them,
Speaker 3: and will it will break through and crash through the
Speaker 3: walls that they have so carefully erected of these media silos.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's wrap up with a proactive you. Working with
Speaker 1: Americans United for Separation of Church and State. We are
Speaker 1: talking about an interfaith efforts. I happily ally with progressive
Speaker 1: religious people who have more in common with me as
Speaker 1: far as a human being, as a humanist than many
Speaker 1: others do. And we can talk about their god belief later.
Speaker 1: But I'm more interested in humanity, shared humanity, human rights,
Speaker 1: that's what you are advocating and promoting. Right, going to
Speaker 1: win The atheists ain't going to win this one unless
Speaker 1: we join with other people, right.
Speaker 3: I mean absolutely, it's not possible. Right. The numbers just
Speaker 3: aren't there, even if you take like the best numbers
Speaker 3: that are possibly out there for us. Right, Like, if
Speaker 3: you look at wil Gervas's study from oz I think
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, where he doesn't ask people what they are,
Speaker 3: you know, they don't self identify. He asked them questions
Speaker 3: about what they believe, and he says, look like even
Speaker 3: a quarter of the country may be atheists, even in
Speaker 3: that best case scenario. Right, Like, we're still outnumbered and
Speaker 3: we're not going to do this on our own. And
Speaker 3: we're also not a We're a very progressive liberal group
Speaker 3: by in large, but we're not politically uniform. We're not
Speaker 3: a monolith by any means. So we need allies, and
Speaker 3: they are going to have to be religious. And it
Speaker 3: is absolutely true that shared values matter more than shared beliefs, right,
Speaker 3: And that especially is true when you are fighting an
Speaker 3: authoritarian movement like Christian nationalism or an autocrat like Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Shared values matter more than shared beliefs. So find those
Speaker 3: people who share your values, whether they believe in Jesus
Speaker 3: or not, and fight alongside them. And the other truth
Speaker 3: is like, we can be on the outside talking about
Speaker 3: how bad Christian nationalism is and how dangerous it is,
Speaker 3: but unless there are Christians who are inside that bubble
Speaker 3: willing to call their friends and family and neighbors out where,
Speaker 3: we are not going to convince them on our own.
Speaker 3: We need their help to be able to do this.
Speaker 3: We just do.
Speaker 1: And my position is not one that is so cynically strategic.
Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't come off like, well, we ain't
Speaker 1: gonna win without them, so let's pair up with them.
Speaker 1: For me, it's more like a lot, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have some kind of God belief
Speaker 1: are lovely, good, amazing, noble people of integrity and great
Speaker 1: values that I'm proud to ally with. And you know
Speaker 1: what's that line. It's a great line shared value are better.
Speaker 3: Than shared value matter more than shared beliefs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that may be a good show title. Pitch
Speaker 1: your books real fast. I want to make sure everybody
Speaker 1: knows what you've written before we wrap it up. It's
Speaker 1: really good stuff.
Speaker 3: Thank you. The founding myth why Christian nationalism is Unamerican,
Speaker 3: you know, that's the founding of our country debunks every
Speaker 3: single bit of disinformation you've heard from the Christian nationalists,
Speaker 3: and you're going to hear a lot of it again.
Speaker 3: The two fiftieth of seventeen seventy six coming up, So
Speaker 3: get those Declaration of Independence chapters read. The second book
Speaker 3: is American Crusade. How the Supreme Court is weaponizing religious freedom.
Speaker 3: That's sort of the other bookend on our history. That's
Speaker 3: the modern history of the Supreme Court's attempt too, as
Speaker 3: I said, weaponize religious freedom. And then definitely please go
Speaker 3: check out the Diehard is a Christmas movie video bookmarket.
Speaker 3: When you see somebody in the comments, not of that
Speaker 3: video but anywhere on the Internet, you respond with that
Speaker 3: video link to me.
Speaker 4: So the debate really is over.
Speaker 1: I just have to toss this out person, Andrew. But
Speaker 1: with the Supreme Court, with the zelots and the sick
Speaker 1: of fans and all those. I find myself looking at
Speaker 1: their ages. I'm like, okay, the average live span of
Speaker 1: the American male one seventy seven. How old is Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do find myself doing that. And of
Speaker 1: course then the next step is, ah, shit, Trump would
Speaker 1: a point his replacement and that person would be forty
Speaker 1: or something like that. Do you ever go there in
Speaker 1: your head?
Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, I mean like I've I feel like
Speaker 3: I've studied actuarial tablet into the Supreme Court. But like
Speaker 3: it's also right, it's not. The scarier question is, okay, well,
Speaker 3: Thomas and Alito are quite old, and they are they
Speaker 3: are zelots, And what if they decide after the midterms
Speaker 3: they want to retire. You know what, if it doesn't
Speaker 3: have to be an actuarial reality that sets in. It
Speaker 3: could just be them making a decision to give up
Speaker 3: power in an effort to solidify their seat on the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court to a conservative for another fifty years.
Speaker 1: Now, Holy shit, Then you'd have Kevanaugh and Amy Cony
Speaker 1: Barrett and some younger guns in there for decades, plus
Speaker 1: the new hires that they may be able to spend
Speaker 1: half of their lives as justices of the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: doing zealot type stuff. It is terrifying. I was going
Speaker 1: to try to end light and you know how that
Speaker 1: worked out for me. Sorry, Andrew. I will link to
Speaker 1: your site and your a diehard video and your books
Speaker 1: in the description box of this conversation. I hope you
Speaker 1: have a wonderful holiday and a happy new year. And
Speaker 1: depending on how twenty twenty six goes, we may have
Speaker 1: to rendezvous here again and sort of catch everybody up
Speaker 1: on more recent events as they happen.
Speaker 3: Okay, absolutely, my friend. Always happy to see you and
Speaker 3: always happy to chat. Thanks Broan.
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