Speaker 1: Meaning a light man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: his wing big down in a forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man,
Speaker 1: nobody seen it. Nobody else.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 1: You don't need to know many like you followed another
Speaker 1: story and you got back in fact, that man got
Speaker 1: black to name on the panel.
Speaker 2: Man, man, you don't don't matter many All right, Doctor
Speaker 2: Ed Dutton, Welcome back to the Jay Burden Show. How
Speaker 2: are you doing.
Speaker 1: Hello, good to see you again. I'm going to see you.
Speaker 2: Again, definitely glad to have you back on. So, in
Speaker 2: the time since we spoke last, you've released a new
Speaker 2: book on a subject I am personally very interested in,
Speaker 2: that is Quakers. So where we get into the meat
Speaker 2: of it. What interested you about the subject?
Speaker 1: Well, what sparked it was there was a particular organization
Speaker 1: called something like the Center for Countering Digital Hate. And
Speaker 1: who's funding this organization? Well, a lot of your right
Speaker 1: aid friends, a lot of your very online right wing.
Speaker 3: Friends, are likely to say, uh, it's the Jews, the Jews,
Speaker 3: it's this, it's this, It's this knee jerk reaction that
Speaker 3: you get if you end up due to due to
Speaker 3: the Internet and due to the perization of society and a.
Speaker 1: Right wing echo chamber. And yeah, there's a degree to
Speaker 1: which that's true. But there's also other groups that are
Speaker 1: funding it, such as Roundtree and what are they Well,
Speaker 1: they are a Quaker company that makes chocolate and sweets
Speaker 1: and things like that. And there are other groups that
Speaker 1: were funding it as well, and these were also Quaker groups.
Speaker 1: And actually the influence that the Quakers kind of fly
Speaker 1: under the radar when it comes to people that are
Speaker 1: into conspiracy theories and they want to look at this
Speaker 1: idea there's a conspiracy of rich, influential people that are
Speaker 1: funding the left and trying to destroy Western civilization and whatever.
Speaker 1: And they always talk about Jewish interests. Of course, your
Speaker 1: friend has heard of the Rothschilds, of course, but has
Speaker 1: he heard of Barclay's Bank, Has he heard of Gurney's Bank?
Speaker 1: Has he heard of Lloyd's Bank? And all of these
Speaker 1: organizations are Quaker, and in particular, Cadbury and Rowntree do
Speaker 1: a great deal to fund left wing, left wing stuff
Speaker 1: and they are Quaker. And so I thought, why is
Speaker 1: it that this group just because they come across as
Speaker 1: pat they talk about being pacifist, and they talk about
Speaker 1: and all all this kind of thing. Nobody really bothers
Speaker 1: about them, but they should because their influence on basically
Speaker 1: subversion that there isn't There isn't a left wing campaign
Speaker 1: in the last three hundred years really that hasn't had
Speaker 1: Quakers behind it. And all they really do is left
Speaker 1: wing campaigns. If you compare them to Jewish people, there
Speaker 1: are many Jews that have contributed to right wing kind
Speaker 1: of ideas. Benjamin Dosraally, the arch imperialist was Jewish, or
Speaker 1: Hernstein and Murray, Well, they look at race differences and
Speaker 1: so forth. Well, Hernstein was Jewish. And there are many
Speaker 1: Jews that have won Nobel Prizes for science and so
Speaker 1: forth and have contributed a great deal to Western civilization.
Speaker 1: But with the Quakers, all you really have is left
Speaker 1: wing subversion. So why is nobody focusing on them? So
Speaker 1: that's kind of what inspired.
Speaker 2: Well And I mean to that point, I believe even
Speaker 2: relatively large charities like oxfam as as far as I understand,
Speaker 2: some Quaker roots to it. And in the US, this
Speaker 2: history is equally as long. I mean, you have sort
Speaker 2: of conical you know, elements to this, like for instance,
Speaker 2: The whole reason that my ethnic group got brought to
Speaker 2: America is because they needed someone to fight the Indians
Speaker 2: because the Quakers wouldn't do. But you have much more
Speaker 2: serious instances like even the even the New England Puritans
Speaker 2: couldn't stand these people. They kept kicking them out because
Speaker 2: they were impossible to be around.
Speaker 1: This is a very good point. So let's take what
Speaker 1: Let's take one point after the other. So what ethnic
Speaker 1: group are you talking about? By the way that it's
Speaker 1: your group.
Speaker 2: You call us a Scott's Irish. Here we're border What.
Speaker 1: Was what was going on during the period when Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin was living in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was founded by Penn.
Speaker 1: Penn was a Quaker convert from a very wealthy father.
Speaker 1: He in he had his Charles, the King, Charles second,
Speaker 1: the restored King, owed all this money to Penn's father
Speaker 1: within Penn's father, and so this was this very wealthy
Speaker 1: man goes down into Pennsylvania and what is now Delaware
Speaker 1: and he founds this this Quaker colony, and then we
Speaker 1: are under Quaker rules. I think there was the death
Speaker 1: penalty for murder, but otherwise it was extraordinarily liberal and
Speaker 1: so forth. And constitutionally pacifist. And then you get into
Speaker 1: a situation where England, of which America is a part,
Speaker 1: is what the states are apart, is at war, whether
Speaker 1: I think it was at the French uh and and
Speaker 1: the thease of Americans ally with the French and start
Speaker 1: invading Pennsylvania and killing people in killing the Scots Irish.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Scott's Irish planters and the Scot's Irish
Speaker 1: planters flee to the capital of Pennsylvania and beg those
Speaker 1: who are running Pensylvania help, and they say, no, we
Speaker 1: can't do that. No, we're pacifist, we can't do that,
Speaker 1: and so and so and so. In the end you
Speaker 1: end up in a situation where Benjamin Franklin helps to
Speaker 1: bring about a sort of private army, and in the
Speaker 1: end those that were in charge of Pennsylvania resign and
Speaker 1: go into just being religious and not being involved in
Speaker 1: politics because they won't stand up, they won't fight against
Speaker 1: even those that are invading and killing people within the
Speaker 1: Quaker state that was Pennsylvania. It's extraordinary. And then the
Speaker 1: other case you look at is that the other Puritan colonists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got a colony and that colony is having to
Speaker 1: fight outside as it's having to fight Native Americans and
Speaker 1: so forth and so and they're killing them, and so
Speaker 1: of course you need law and order, and so what
Speaker 1: do they say? What does this woman I think her
Speaker 1: name was maryder what does she what does she argue?
Speaker 1: She argues in favor of this kind of antiinomianism where
Speaker 1: basically there's no law in order, there's no law, there's
Speaker 1: no laws, there's nothing that unites us together. There's nothing
Speaker 1: that holds us together. There's no positive and negative ethnocentrism.
Speaker 1: There's just God inspires me with my ideas. And that's right,
Speaker 1: because God inspires me with them. I have what's called
Speaker 1: the inner light. God is in me, and I will
Speaker 1: do what I like. Now I'm not, of course, these
Speaker 1: were people of their time. It's very brutal. They hanged
Speaker 1: very dire in the end, in the end. But but
Speaker 1: but she was so in chaos within a community that
Speaker 1: needs to hold together against the enemy at the gate
Speaker 1: that is killing it. Now, whether you think that it's
Speaker 1: morally right or wrong, they're taking Native American land as
Speaker 1: a different issue. But assuming that you side with the colonists,
Speaker 1: they've got to defend themselves. This is chaos. They threw
Speaker 1: her out, they made her leave. She went back to England.
Speaker 1: They made it quite clear to her that she was
Speaker 1: exiled and she was not to come back to the colony.
Speaker 1: And she comes back just just so she can be
Speaker 1: a martyr, just so she can be executed, I would argue.
Speaker 1: But by the way, there's good. There's good research indicates
Speaker 1: that martyrdom is a kind of maladaptive form of narcissism.
Speaker 1: And I strongly suspect that what you get with a
Speaker 1: lot of these people, you get a lot of people
Speaker 1: on the left anyway, is they are relatively high in narcissism.
Speaker 1: They deal with their negative feelings or whatever by telling
Speaker 1: themselves that they are superior to everybody else, and in particular,
Speaker 1: they are more moral than everybody else. They are more
Speaker 1: as it were, godly sometimes than everybody else, to the
Speaker 1: extent that that that need for narcissistics apply can literally
Speaker 1: be fulfilled by by martyrdom. I mean, there's worse than that.
Speaker 1: There's the the universal uh, the what's it called now,
Speaker 1: the the Universal Friend.
Speaker 2: This was a universal friend, Yes, this was.
Speaker 1: This was in Rhode Island. So they preempted. Everything on
Speaker 1: the modern wote left. Everything you can think of is preempted,
Speaker 1: is precursored by Quakers, even transfer exuality. And what you
Speaker 1: have with Public Universal Friend was this woman that has
Speaker 1: a bit of a breakdown, essentially, that has a bit
Speaker 1: of a mental breakdown, and she comes back from this
Speaker 1: declaring that she's neither male nor female. She's she's not anything.
Speaker 1: She is she is Public Universal Friend. And she would
Speaker 1: get incredibly angry, the same way that trans women get
Speaker 1: angry if you address them by as men or by
Speaker 1: the wrong pronoun. She would get incredibly angry she was
Speaker 1: addressed as a female or addressed by her original name,
Speaker 1: it was her dead name, and she would demand that
Speaker 1: she'd be addressed as what she was, which was public
Speaker 1: Universal Friend. Fascinatingly, in the Wikipedia article about her, they
Speaker 1: don't use the pronoun she. They use the pronoun friend,
Speaker 1: which which which, which just tells you the extent to
Speaker 1: which the Quakers were this ideal, like, what is this
Speaker 1: idea of the inner light? This is this is the
Speaker 1: fundamental idea in Quakerism that God is God, isn't something
Speaker 1: outside us that can guide us or whatever God is
Speaker 1: in us, and so there's a sense in which it's
Speaker 1: almost pantheism, that there's a sense in which or gnosticism,
Speaker 1: there's a sense in which we are God, and therefore
Speaker 1: what we do is what God wants us to do
Speaker 1: because it is God's will, because we are God. The
Speaker 1: only way you can define your own sex and say
Speaker 1: I am male, I am female because I say I
Speaker 1: am is if you believe that there is really no
Speaker 1: true objective reality, and that we are all little I
Speaker 1: am the reality, You are your reality. We are all
Speaker 1: little sparks of divine light in a world of darkness,
Speaker 1: where we are I am that I am, I define
Speaker 1: what I am. And that idea, that woke idea is
Speaker 1: there is germinating already in the public universal friend, and
Speaker 1: not just in the public universal friends, but in other
Speaker 1: other people within Quakerism as well, This whole idea, even
Speaker 1: that the idea that they are sinless, we can talk
Speaker 1: about that. And is there in Quakerism that you are God?
Speaker 2: Well, there's one thing you mentioned briefly when speaking about
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania that I want to bring up, because this is
Speaker 2: an abiding character of the Quaker, which is their attitude
Speaker 2: towards crime and punishment from a very early early stage
Speaker 2: opposing the death penalty, of course, but also our concept
Speaker 2: of reformatory prisons in itself is deeply tied to Quakerism.
Speaker 2: It's sort of an interesting aside, if you have anything
Speaker 2: to add.
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, well, it's it's just it's just one of
Speaker 1: it's just one of many examples of whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I would suggest, I would I put it. I'd take
Speaker 1: a sort of a much broader view, what almost like
Speaker 1: an evolutionary view. What is going on with Quakerism. You
Speaker 1: have this particular period of time in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Civil War or during the Civil War, where it's
Speaker 1: a very time to be alive. It's extremely cold, things
Speaker 1: are getting much colder. The population is getting too high
Speaker 1: for the amount of the agricultural land that you can
Speaker 1: deal with, which is one of the reasons why you
Speaker 1: have all these people fleeing to the United States and
Speaker 1: the colonies and so on. You have the Civil War itself,
Speaker 1: and then the interregnum, the Republic, which turns everything on
Speaker 1: its head, the abolition of bishops, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a crazy world. It's an unstable world. It's a
Speaker 1: frightening world. I don't think it's any coincidence that you
Speaker 1: get the witch craze at exactly that time as well.
Speaker 1: And also when people are high in mortality saliens, and
Speaker 1: when people are uncertain, and when there's political uncertainty, people
Speaker 1: become much much more religious and much much more religiously fervent,
Speaker 1: and you get these kinds of religious experiences, and you
Speaker 1: get people going through phases of very intense religious fervor,
Speaker 1: and that's what you see with Quakerism. And so you
Speaker 1: just have this man that's an educated man, the shoemaker
Speaker 1: called Jorge Box, who's incredibly charismatic and inspiring and so on,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, and the law and orders breaking down because
Speaker 1: normally you had to have a license to preach and
Speaker 1: things like that, but it can't really be enforced because
Speaker 1: it's just chaos. So he's able to go around preaching
Speaker 1: in the countryside, and he takes everything, every tradition, everything
Speaker 1: that holds society together, every example as it were, of
Speaker 1: positive ethnocentrism, everything that's uniting, and attacks it and now
Speaker 1: in favor of essentially equality. That's what he goes on
Speaker 1: on about equality, which is of course damaging to the
Speaker 1: group as a whole because it's the group that's high
Speaker 1: in positive and negative ethnocentrism, according to concluding models, which
Speaker 1: tends to dominate other groups. But it emerges at that
Speaker 1: time of chaos where you have to find a niche.
Speaker 1: You have to find a niche where you can basically
Speaker 1: pass on your genes. And so what is your niche?
Speaker 1: If you're in the middle, you're in the middle, you're
Speaker 1: middling sort, you're up against it. You've got to find
Speaker 1: a way of getting ahead of getting a bit more well. Obviously,
Speaker 1: as we see now, what you can do is virtue
Speaker 1: signal or purity signal. You fear a fair fight, so
Speaker 1: you virtue signal or you purity signal, and thus you
Speaker 1: covertly play for status. And that's the essence of Quakerism.
Speaker 1: It's that you virtue signal about equality and harb avoidance
Speaker 1: in a society which does value those things. Because we
Speaker 1: are pack animals, we value equality, individual interests to quality, harboroids,
Speaker 1: but also group or into things. But you such as
Speaker 1: the medisa, authority, tradition, sanctity, whatever. But you focus on
Speaker 1: those things and you covertly play for status, and you
Speaker 1: cloak yourself in this idea that oh I'm just so kind,
Speaker 1: I'm so wonderful, I'm a pacifist, I'm nonviolent. And this
Speaker 1: of course allows you manipulatively to get past the immune
Speaker 1: system of everybody else and thus attain slightly more status,
Speaker 1: slightly more resources. And this is what they do. And
Speaker 1: I think that if you look at the psychology of
Speaker 1: the kind of people that are attracted at times of
Speaker 1: crisis to these new religious movements, they're very high in Euroticism.
Speaker 1: They tend to be very mentally unstable, and they need
Speaker 1: something that makes absolute sense, and they feel bad about themselves,
Speaker 1: so they need a way of feeling superior to others.
Speaker 1: And one way they can feel superior to others, and
Speaker 1: Quakerism offers this is by feeling that they are morally
Speaker 1: superior to others, by telling themselves they are morally perfect.
Speaker 1: God indeed is in them. They are God in a sense.
Speaker 1: How much more perfect can you feel? And that's what
Speaker 1: Quacarism allows them to do. So it would have attracted
Speaker 1: in the first instance. I think these people that were
Speaker 1: quite mentally unstable and thus quite therefore kind of developed
Speaker 1: to kind of narcissism, essentially, a kind of grandiose narcissism,
Speaker 1: uh and and but it worked as an evolutionary niche
Speaker 1: because yes, some of them would be persecuted and whatever,
Speaker 1: and there would be problems and George Fox spent time
Speaker 1: in prison and so on. But broadly it allowed an
Speaker 1: evolutionary space to be created where they could kind of
Speaker 1: play for status via their virtue signaling and people and
Speaker 1: people let by the more anti social aspects of that signaling,
Speaker 1: like how like how now we overlook the far left
Speaker 1: gluing themselves to roads and and things like this. We
Speaker 1: kind of let them get away with it because they
Speaker 1: appeal to this idea. Well, look, we're peaceful, We're such peaceful,
Speaker 1: kind weak people, but they're not really. And that's I
Speaker 1: think the space that they they carved out. And then
Speaker 1: they marry in and until I think was it the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, they had to marry in or they would
Speaker 1: be thrown out of their community. So they marry other
Speaker 1: people like them, and so you end up almost with
Speaker 1: a proto sub ethnic group among the among the English
Speaker 1: genetically English people of the UK of Britain, America, under
Speaker 1: a few other places.
Speaker 2: Well to that point, both this pattern of effectively social
Speaker 2: virtue signaling and also radical egalitarianism. When you see that
Speaker 2: in the current Quaker order of worship, you can put
Speaker 2: quotes around order of worship because basically what they do
Speaker 2: is they have these large rooms, the benches facing in
Speaker 2: and the order of worship is silence until someone is
Speaker 2: led by the light to speak out. And in effect,
Speaker 2: what that is is a it is a public place
Speaker 2: for social progressives to signal their values. I mean quite literally,
Speaker 2: as someone who's been to these services, you will hear
Speaker 2: yesterday's NPR special repeated almost blow for blow, and everyone,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, congratulates themselves about how brave they
Speaker 2: are to be talking about at the time I went
Speaker 2: kids in cages. And of course, you know, if you're
Speaker 2: a cynically minded fellow, you might say, well, was that
Speaker 2: the light or was that you know, National Public broadcast.
Speaker 1: There's something so dishonest about it because in normal churches,
Speaker 1: I mean the way he would condemn hierarchy, George Fox,
Speaker 1: he'd talk about churches as steeple houses. He does that
Speaker 1: priests were completely unnecessary. They'd refuse to engage in any
Speaker 1: acts that indicated hierarchy. They wouldn't doff their hats to
Speaker 1: social superiors. Which is a big thing in those days.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't use the formal version of you as existed
Speaker 1: in those days. They'd only use the informal. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: even use the months of the year because they argued
Speaker 1: these were pagan I think, you know, it was so
Speaker 1: extreme things like this. Of course they wouldn't drink. But
Speaker 1: it's actually a de facto hierarchy. It's just it's dishonest,
Speaker 1: because of course there's a hierarchy. What happens is the
Speaker 1: more dominant people in the group inevitably will be the
Speaker 1: ones that get up and say things and in these
Speaker 1: silent meetings, and inevitably, inevitably and and so there's a
Speaker 1: de facto hierarchy. There are facto people in charge. If
Speaker 1: you were to do what's called a network analysis and anthropology,
Speaker 1: you'd soon find out who was in charge of every
Speaker 1: single one of these Quaker meeting these friends, friends meeting houses.
Speaker 1: So it's it's just it's dishonest, and it's wrapping yourself
Speaker 1: up in the in the cloak of equality and avoiding
Speaker 1: offense and harm, avoidance on whatever, whereas in reality there's
Speaker 1: an obvious hierarchy to it. But I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was first that came aware of. It was actually the
Speaker 1: first wedding I went to. I I was twelve years
Speaker 1: old and my friend my dad had a colleague. I
Speaker 1: don't know if the colleague. The colleague was of Indian extraction,
Speaker 1: and his wife was Norwegian that spoke very good English,
Speaker 1: and they're both living in the UK, and they had
Speaker 1: a Quaker wedding and then and they said, rather than
Speaker 1: bring us gifts, please bring us something that everybody can share,
Speaker 1: which I suppose is nice and fair enough, but there's
Speaker 1: something a bit kind of virtue signaling esque about this,
Speaker 1: isn't there. And so then we go to the wedding
Speaker 1: and it was to just sit there and make their
Speaker 1: vows in silence, and occasionally one man and it was
Speaker 1: one man, a very clearly socially dominant, quite tall, muscular
Speaker 1: man in his early sixties, we get up and say something, Oh,
Speaker 1: I just think love is so amazing, and it's amazing
Speaker 1: this gift God has given us or whatever. And then
Speaker 1: the mother of the bride, who was also I assume
Speaker 1: was also a Quaker, because she'd made very little effort
Speaker 1: with her appearance considering it was a daughter's wedding, and
Speaker 1: who was Norwegian. But then just get up and go
Speaker 1: hold hold, hold, hold the hold of holder, hold the
Speaker 1: hold of hold, translating it for the Norwegian guests. And
Speaker 1: this would go on throughout the hour. And then they
Speaker 1: were married, and I thought to myself, hang on a minute,
Speaker 1: this idea that we're all equal and sitting in silence. No,
Speaker 1: it's a very specific kind of guy. I actually thought
Speaker 1: to myself, Oh, he must be the vicar, because I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about Quaker asm I was twelve years old.
Speaker 1: He must be the vicar. But for some ready sits
Speaker 1: at the bath. Yes.
Speaker 2: So, friend of mine, Johann Kurz wrote a book Leaving
Speaker 2: a Legacy, which is primarily about tracking how families pass
Speaker 2: on wealth through generations. Right, so obviously he looks at,
Speaker 2: you know, the English nobility, and then as an American example,
Speaker 2: he tracks the sort of wasp aristocracy. But he makes
Speaker 2: a very int resting comparison between the you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of blue bloods of New England and what elite
Speaker 2: there was in Quaker country. And what he basically said
Speaker 2: is that you do not see the same sort of
Speaker 2: signals of wealth. You don't see as many of these
Speaker 2: grand estates you don't see fortunes past. Generationally, that does
Speaker 2: happen in those areas, but it tends to have occurred
Speaker 2: much later. Right, So for instance, you have you know,
Speaker 2: famous families like the Vanderbilts and others, but that was
Speaker 2: primarily a late nineteenth early twentieth century feature, whereas that
Speaker 2: had been happening from the beginning of places like Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: And he particularly talks about the Quaker ideas of sort
Speaker 2: of patrimony in secession, that they had very firm beliefs
Speaker 2: about distributing everything equally and well, much like Haiti, it
Speaker 2: didn't go particularly well.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Wealth tended to dissipate because instead of being concentrated enough
Speaker 2: to be useful, it was split out among everyone's descendants.
Speaker 2: And I think that again, if we're talking about that
Speaker 2: theme of radical equality, it's interesting to see how that
Speaker 2: affects something even down to how do rich people act.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's that's very interesting. So it implies that enforced
Speaker 1: equality will ultimately cause problems for you, and it's not
Speaker 1: it's not inherently a good thing. Now it from their perspective,
Speaker 1: it is inherently a good thing because it allows them
Speaker 1: to virtue signal and it allows them to covertly gain
Speaker 1: status or to covit or to use that COVID means
Speaker 1: to gain narcissistic supply, which they might see as a
Speaker 1: good in itself, and to feel better than other people.
Speaker 1: But in terms of the practicalities of running a society,
Speaker 1: it is clearly not a good thing. The Quakers would
Speaker 1: have opposed and did a posse. They refuse to fight
Speaker 1: their pacifists, so they go on about the terrors of
Speaker 1: the far right. Now they fund the far left. They've
Speaker 1: literally fund the extreme left, that group like in the UK,
Speaker 1: groups like Hope Not Hate and whatever. These Quaker organizations
Speaker 1: are funding them. But if the Quakers had there, if
Speaker 1: everybody was a Quaker or the Nazis would just have
Speaker 1: invaded Britain, wouldn't they, And Britain would have just would
Speaker 1: have been a national socialist state and King Edward the
Speaker 1: Eighth would have been the king and Oswald Moseley would
Speaker 1: have been the Prime Minister. That's what would have happened.
Speaker 1: Which is so if everyone does what they do, then
Speaker 1: the society would just be invaded by them. Just be
Speaker 1: Mighty's right, and society would just be invaded by the
Speaker 1: most dominant kind of warlike group. That is what would happen,
Speaker 1: which shows you that they are basically hypocrites, and that is,
Speaker 1: this is a specific niche that they've carved out in
Speaker 1: order to optimize their own good and their own status
Speaker 1: within the psychological constraints that they operate under. And it's
Speaker 1: very similar with the Amish, who are related to the
Speaker 1: Quake and of course live in Pennsylvania. They're theologically related
Speaker 1: to the Quakers. They're an of Baptists. The William penn
Speaker 1: invited those kinds of people to Pennsylvania as well. If
Speaker 1: everybody operated like the old Order armors from were all Pacifists,
Speaker 1: well then Pennsylvania would of course be invaded. And if
Speaker 1: everyone operated like them, and there were splits in the
Speaker 1: Quakers because of this, the United States of America would
Speaker 1: never have existed. It would just remain under the tyranny
Speaker 1: of King George. And there were Quakers that broke away.
Speaker 1: They did they called themselves New Quakers or something they
Speaker 1: called themselves during the Revolutionary War. Who are you know
Speaker 1: that the American States are, you know, God's own land.
Speaker 1: The American States are the new Godly Messiah, beacon on
Speaker 1: the hill. Whatever and we have to fight for it.
Speaker 1: We have to fight for it. And if we don't
Speaker 1: fight for it, we will lose it, and we won't
Speaker 1: be able to create this wonderful religious community of godly
Speaker 1: people that we want. We've got a fight for it.
Speaker 1: And of course they were thrown out of their meeting
Speaker 1: houses and whatever and and and created new Quaker sects.
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's, it's it's the whole purpose being that
Speaker 1: black and white having that idea. Oh no, we must
Speaker 1: be pacifist always. It is a means of covert or
Speaker 1: even COVID just expressing to people your utter goodness and
Speaker 1: and and hoping that that that will give you a
Speaker 1: certain amount of status and a certain amount of regard.
Speaker 1: But it's not practical. Not everyone can do that. And
Speaker 1: then if it did, it would everything would fall apart,
Speaker 1: which shows you the fundamental problem with Quaker and its
Speaker 1: ideas spreading throughout society. Prison reform. You mentioned it earlier.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Fry began this Nay Gurney as in Fries Chocolates,
Speaker 1: another chocolate company, uh began this uh this process in
Speaker 1: England and spread it to America. What does it mean?
Speaker 1: It means the prisons are just easier places to be.
Speaker 1: What goods that to society that the prison should deter people,
Speaker 1: Prisons should be in act justice on people. Prison would
Speaker 1: be nice places. But but the prison reform and it's
Speaker 1: it's every single left wing thing you can think of.
Speaker 1: And people go on about the Jews. You know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be Jews in it, very possibly in England if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for the Quakers. The quake. The Quakers had
Speaker 1: this were very proto Semitic, as are a lot of
Speaker 1: Protestant groups and that. And Cromwell was very impressed by
Speaker 1: George Fox. So he met him about three times. He
Speaker 1: was very impressed by him. He asked to see him
Speaker 1: all this kind of thing, even though he had in jail.
Speaker 1: He was very impressed by him and moved by him.
Speaker 1: I didn't suppose that Cromwell was a secret Quaker, but
Speaker 1: he was certainly sympathetic and it was and it was
Speaker 1: the and it was it was the quake because the
Speaker 1: Quakers were too love staated for someone like Cromwell. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the gentry that he was certainly sympathetic towards them,
Speaker 1: and uh and and they were they were sending missionaries
Speaker 1: over to Amsterdam to try and encourage Jews to Ashkenazi Jews,
Speaker 1: not sorry, Sophardi Jews to come to come to the UK,
Speaker 1: so that you could argue that there's quite a close relationship.
Speaker 1: The parallels with the Jews in the Quaker's quite interesting actually,
Speaker 1: because you both you have both groups that are outside
Speaker 1: the norm. Both are very tight knit groups that high
Speaker 1: levels of trust, which is what you need to develop
Speaker 1: things like banking and whatever, and and business and and
Speaker 1: both are groups that are excluded from the profession, from
Speaker 1: the professions, and from the universities and so forced into
Speaker 1: the world of business and commerce and so on. So
Speaker 1: the parallels are really are really quite interesting. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this group is it's unsustainable as a group wide ideology
Speaker 1: and if it happens, well, then you just get Eventually
Speaker 1: you're either you're best tolerated like the Armisha are today
Speaker 1: tolerated by the larger group, but but you can easily
Speaker 1: be you're completely reliant on them.
Speaker 2: Well it it genuinely is in a social sense, parasitic behavior.
Speaker 2: You were depending on the host for your sustenance, right,
Speaker 2: sort of bringing in the sort of blood stream of
Speaker 2: society while not contributing to its defense. And this is
Speaker 2: something that's it's quite easy to say about the Amish
Speaker 2: in wider culture because they are the Amish are not
Speaker 2: generally speaking regarded positively, especially by the people who live
Speaker 2: around them, because they tend to be clannish and difficult
Speaker 2: to deal with. They also act in a much it's
Speaker 2: sort of a minor version of the Somali problem as well.
Speaker 2: But with the Quakers, they function in a similar role,
Speaker 2: this sort of parasitic role, but have an outsized cultural influence.
Speaker 2: So in a lot of media. You know, a popular
Speaker 2: film a while back, Hacksaw Ridge, which was you know,
Speaker 2: telling the story of a conscientious objector in the Second
Speaker 2: World War who admittedly acted quite heroically he saved a
Speaker 2: number of men as a medic. But nonetheless, that is
Speaker 2: the wide public perception of Quakers to the point where.
Speaker 1: I believe I was going to say, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: make an excellent point. The Amish, I can say, even
Speaker 1: from my brief time spent in intercourse Pennsylvania and such
Speaker 1: like places, they're not very friendly, not not the old
Speaker 1: order harbors. With the Mennonites. I found the Mennonites perfect friendly.
Speaker 2: Oh, the med Knights are great yeah, but.
Speaker 1: The the they're probably passed just as well. But they're
Speaker 1: but the old order harbish. They don't seem to be
Speaker 1: very friendly, they don't seem to be very intelligent, and
Speaker 1: and you know they're kind of but they keep they
Speaker 1: keep out of things, as you say, they don't interfere
Speaker 1: in politics. They don't. They keep themselves themselves. They have
Speaker 1: their own kind of areas. And the worst is going
Speaker 1: to happen as you get stuck behind a horse and
Speaker 1: cart on a road you can't ever take it, or
Speaker 1: something driving in the country side. Fortunately, American roads are
Speaker 1: wider than the UK roads, so it's not that much
Speaker 1: of a problem. But but with the Quakers, it's a
Speaker 1: very similar relationship. It's a bit like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how a woman who who lives off you, who she
Speaker 1: doesn't work her herself, he'sn't doing herself. She just she
Speaker 1: just she just lives off you. And and the way
Speaker 1: that she manipulates you is by saying, oh, well, look
Speaker 1: I'm so helpless. You know, she brings out your desire
Speaker 1: to protect her or something like that. But but but
Speaker 1: but at this is what they're like. I'm a passiveist.
Speaker 1: I can't I'm helpless. But they're heavily interfere in a
Speaker 1: left wing direction in politics, up to and including funding
Speaker 1: extreme left groups that want to bring down or ordered
Speaker 1: traditional functioning society, and even just committing crimes. I mean
Speaker 1: there was there have been cases in the UK, and
Speaker 1: it was Quakers about breaking into airports and messing around
Speaker 1: with machinery and things like this. And when prosecuted for this,
Speaker 1: they turn around and say, oh, well, you're interfering with
Speaker 1: our right, our ability to worship, because they see their
Speaker 1: worship as involving following. They're inner light I following their conscience,
Speaker 1: and you're interfering with that, and therefore you're interfering with
Speaker 1: their worship. So you have this group that that has
Speaker 1: with I mean, yeah, there are some Quakers. Don't get me,
Speaker 1: don't misunderstand me. This is a this is a group.
Speaker 1: A whole group of people were talking about. There's some
Speaker 1: Quakers that don't apps some good. There are various Flams
Speaker 1: and Swan. I rather like them. Their English musical duo
Speaker 1: from the sixties and seventies, guy called Donald Swan. He
Speaker 1: was a Quaker in the war. Before he was a Quaker,
Speaker 1: he was a calm changed subjector drove an ambulance in
Speaker 1: very dangerous areas. So you know, let's not all of them,
Speaker 1: but but but that that's the the general movement among
Speaker 1: the Quakers is in that direction. It's left wing subversion.
Speaker 1: So it is biting the hand that eats it, that
Speaker 1: feeds it. It's biting the hand that feeds it. And
Speaker 1: the question is how hard will that hand be said
Speaker 1: to be bitten before it before it with draws the
Speaker 1: hand and says no. And the answers from the history
Speaker 1: of the Quakers is for some reason, because of their
Speaker 1: pacifism and because of their you know, they're good pr
Speaker 1: machine and whatever, is very very hard indeed.
Speaker 2: Well and and to that point, there are several prominent
Speaker 2: American Quaker charities. But just as an example, right, if
Speaker 2: you go to the website for the Friends Committee on
Speaker 2: National Legislation, right, and by the way, if you have
Speaker 2: a certain eye going through a lot of the revelations
Speaker 2: from the first year of DOGE, going around kind of
Speaker 2: tracking that network, you will find this organization and others
Speaker 2: throughout it. And some of the issues you know, would
Speaker 2: not surprise you, talking about you know, peace building, ending wars,
Speaker 2: which from the Quakers, you'd expect, But if you're a
Speaker 2: right winger, pick just about any issue you were passionate about.
Speaker 2: They're on the wrong side of it, right, So so
Speaker 2: they talk a lot about you know, electoral justice, criminal justice,
Speaker 2: immigration justice, gun violence, prevention, you know, all of these
Speaker 2: issues that you know, if you were all aware of
Speaker 2: how left wing activists work, you understand that just because
Speaker 2: those are a string of relatively positive words, they have
Speaker 2: a very different definition of justice than you do. So
Speaker 2: it is quite literally any issue that sort of engages
Speaker 2: the average.
Speaker 1: In the UK, they passed this rule stating that the
Speaker 1: definition of sex was biological. The legal definition of sex
Speaker 1: was biological, and therefore if single sex spaces are provided,
Speaker 1: that means biologically biological sex. And the Quakers have made
Speaker 1: it clear that in their friends' houses they will just
Speaker 1: ignore this and we'll just let transsexuals use female spaces
Speaker 1: whatever they made it. Absolutely they won't but they won't
Speaker 1: do that. They won't follow that. So even down to
Speaker 1: things like sexuality, which you would normally expect people that
Speaker 1: were religious to be quite conservative about, but no, they are,
Speaker 1: as the public Universal Friend gives is an example, No,
Speaker 1: they they are. They are not every vegetarianism. Uh, any
Speaker 1: issue you can possibly think of, they will they will
Speaker 1: take a left wing perspective, and which is why you
Speaker 1: don't get many right. Well, I mean, Richard Nixon was
Speaker 1: raised a Quaker, but I don't think he was a
Speaker 1: practicing Quaker, and.
Speaker 2: There wasn't particularly devout either.
Speaker 1: No, So that's that's about it. There's one obscure MP
Speaker 1: in the UK who was known as the dissenting Dissenter
Speaker 1: because he was right wing, but he was a Quaker,
Speaker 1: called rich Body as a member of part Conservative, of
Speaker 1: a part far right Conservative. But otherwise it's it's always,
Speaker 1: it's almost always this this, this left wing version on
Speaker 1: any issue, and in America as well and Australia just
Speaker 1: anywhere where they're present. If you go to a Quaker
Speaker 1: meeting house these days, you will probably see Palestine flags
Speaker 1: and rainbow flags in the in the windows.
Speaker 2: So, Ed, I am familiar with the sort of pro
Speaker 2: file of the American Quaker unfortunately I've come into contact
Speaker 2: with them before. But in your nation, at a very
Speaker 2: basic level, what are Quakers like, like, what part of
Speaker 2: society do they come from? How can we describe them?
Speaker 1: Well, I suppose they they're in there. Almost all religious
Speaker 1: people are middle class. These days, working class people don't
Speaker 1: tend to be involved in any any kind of organized religion,
Speaker 1: so they're probably likely to be lower middle indeed mainly
Speaker 1: probably upper middle class, often because they're going to be
Speaker 1: connected to these families, these industrialist families that emerge during
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution. The Fries they into they often all
Speaker 1: interrelated as well, the Fries, the round Trees, the Cadburys, uh,
Speaker 1: these these groups of the Lloyd's and and so on,
Speaker 1: all of these groups of interrelated people that are involved
Speaker 1: in Barclays, that are involved in banking, and that are
Speaker 1: involved in finance, and that are involved in industry. And
Speaker 1: so that's really the essence, that's the core of the Quakers.
Speaker 1: So upper middle class. I suppose you'd say that you
Speaker 1: occasionally get prominent people that come up that you find
Speaker 1: the Quakers in things like acting. There was a famous
Speaker 1: actor called Paul Eddington, for example, that was in something
Speaker 1: called Yes Minister and something called The Good Life. There's
Speaker 1: various other prominent actors and people like David the Herd
Speaker 1: of Blurs, Bangle Blur, a guy called David album Quaker.
Speaker 1: There's a Green Party member of Parliament that's Quaker. So
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's generally upper middle class, left wing
Speaker 1: sort of people's that's that's how they operate, that's the
Speaker 1: and their influence on society in terms of the influence
Speaker 1: of banking has been substantial. I mean, if you think
Speaker 1: about how in seventeen forty five that you have the
Speaker 1: pretenders of the throne, the Catholic line from James the
Speaker 1: second attend to the throne, you got very close to invading,
Speaker 1: invading the whole of England. They got as far south
Speaker 1: as Derby before that, which is in England before the
Speaker 1: middle before they turned tail and fled. And the city
Speaker 1: was was heavily influenced of course by both Jews, uh
Speaker 1: and and and also and and and and also Quakers,
Speaker 1: and they put a great deal of money into the
Speaker 1: into the campaign to ensure that that this this The Whigs,
Speaker 1: that those were the more liberal group, you know, didn't
Speaker 1: didn't permit this to happen, didn't permit this invasion that
Speaker 1: would have happened. That was supported by the High Tories,
Speaker 1: the Conservatives, those that were in favor of the King
Speaker 1: over parliament. So even then it's very liberal politics that
Speaker 1: they were by the stands of the day, that the
Speaker 1: Quakers were involved in them, were behind and were and
Speaker 1: were funding that. Nobody. Everyone really has a kind of
Speaker 1: positive view of them in the media. Nobody really talks
Speaker 1: about them. Nobody really discusses what they get up to
Speaker 1: and to the extent that they do. You just highlight
Speaker 1: examples of perfectly charming people that are Quakers, such as
Speaker 1: Donald Swan I mentioned earlier, or Oliver Postgate, who was
Speaker 1: behind these Children's a sort of puppet series. I put
Speaker 1: some Klangners, Paul Eddington, the acts I mentioned earlier, And
Speaker 1: there's there's some there's there's a sort of others that
Speaker 1: I favous Quakers that I listed my book. But as
Speaker 1: a rule, they're all quite they're all quite left wing.
Speaker 1: It's middle class left wing activism, of which is at
Speaker 1: these Palestine marches are a good example of which which
Speaker 1: happen every week. Uh And and a segment is going
Speaker 1: to be Quakers.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting dynamics in America that you see
Speaker 2: with Quakers, and this really is downstream, a very fundamental
Speaker 2: difference between your country and mind. America is still on
Speaker 2: a global scale quite religious, and so the Quakers, being
Speaker 2: both i've middle class and also quite progressive, exist in
Speaker 2: an interesting opposition to the unsophisticated religious morons in quotes,
Speaker 2: and so in an interesting way they define themselves in
Speaker 2: opposition to American evangelicals. So it is presented as sort
Speaker 2: of the thinking man's religion. You know, oh, you can
Speaker 2: still go to church, but now you are able to,
Speaker 2: you know, dispense with all of that nonsense obviously about
Speaker 2: you know, Jesus Christ in particular, but also the negative
Speaker 2: social stigma of being on the quote unquote wrong side
Speaker 2: of any progressive issue. And so I mentioned NPR earlier,
Speaker 2: but it very much is sort of that class. I
Speaker 2: know the people in this group, and they tend to
Speaker 2: be sort of like middling academic administrators, you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of people who run you know, not particularly prestigious
Speaker 2: programs at large state universities. But also many of them
Speaker 2: work in activism right in nngos at different charitable again
Speaker 2: quote unquote institutions, And who knows, who's to say if
Speaker 2: this is a function of being middle class or being Quaker,
Speaker 2: probably a little bit of both, but they genuinely despise
Speaker 2: the you know what's referred to as like the Chud
Speaker 2: or the Gamut, the kind of working class normal brits
Speaker 2: Er Americans. And that is a in my mind, defining feature,
Speaker 2: particularly as you know, you look into go onto these
Speaker 2: Quaker websites, read their statements on you know, gun violence,
Speaker 2: read their statements on war. It is all written in
Speaker 2: such a way as to distinguish yourself as morally superior
Speaker 2: to sort of the hoy POLOI the average man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the middle class. I mean basically what
Speaker 1: we're dealing with, if you want to talk about it. Sociologically,
Speaker 1: middle class people tend to combine intelligence with a kind
Speaker 1: of pro social personality. And there's an interesting study that
Speaker 1: I'm doing at the moment which is replicating other studies,
Speaker 1: which which finds that basically testoster occupational state is positively
Speaker 1: associated with intelligence, and it's negatively associated with testosterone, so
Speaker 1: that the higher statues of your occupation and lower on
Speaker 1: average testosterone is. So testosterone is masculine, it's associated with dominance,
Speaker 1: it's associated with drive whatever, and lotus osterone is femine.
Speaker 1: It's as being cooperative and or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So you can see how the middle class, the upper
Speaker 1: middle class are going to be basically quite quite highly intelligent,
Speaker 1: which makes you which means that you imbibe the current
Speaker 1: set of ideas and you absorb them and then you
Speaker 1: competively signal them. And the current set of ideas are
Speaker 1: left wing, so you competitively signal that. Basically, that's what
Speaker 1: you're more likely to do if you're middle class, For
Speaker 1: if you're intelligent and educated. And secondly, you're going to
Speaker 1: be relatively low testosterone if you're middle class, so you're
Speaker 1: going to be repelled by right wing kind of stuff
Speaker 1: perhaps for that reason as well to some extent, and
Speaker 1: you can see that Quagarism is particularly low testosterone, you know,
Speaker 1: Pacifism and and all this kind of thing, And so
Speaker 1: you're going to get a subgroup within the middle class
Speaker 1: to the extent that Quakerism is gets converts, which it does,
Speaker 1: but it's obviously partly herelitary as well, that I would
Speaker 1: think would be intelligent and very low testosterone and probably
Speaker 1: a little bit elevated therefore actually in neuroticism and anxiety
Speaker 1: and mental instability, and therefore for this subgroup, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it becomes attractive. There's interesting crossovers. A very famous Quaker
Speaker 1: in the UK is professor of Quaker studies at Birmingham
Speaker 1: University is called James Pink Dandelion. And this guy was
Speaker 1: a hippie and which is the lotus asterone peace man
Speaker 1: kind of kind of kind of person. Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: saw the parallels between Quakerism and hippidam eye peace and
Speaker 1: love and no democracy, you just make collective decisions and
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. And he found Quakerism very attractive
Speaker 1: and the divine and the divine light entered, entered, entered
Speaker 1: into him, and he decided that it's wrong that this
Speaker 1: idea that other people name me, who are the people
Speaker 1: to name me? And it's also patriarchal, So he renamed
Speaker 1: himself Pink Dandelion. But this is interesting, this idea of
Speaker 1: the self and that God is in me and so forth,
Speaker 1: I name myself, I define who I am. So it's that,
Speaker 1: as you say, it's that kind of wishy was she
Speaker 1: subset that are also, unlike a lot of hippies, a
Speaker 1: bit vaguely religious as well, they're kind of vaguely believing
Speaker 1: God and you and you can see that that subset,
Speaker 1: although many Quakers don't believe in God, and you can
Speaker 1: you can see that that subset is is drawn into
Speaker 1: into Quakerism.
Speaker 2: Well, and that that sort of renaming and redefining personal
Speaker 2: identity is a big part of the reason that the
Speaker 2: Quakerism and transgenderism or so, I mean, they're joined at
Speaker 2: the hip. And anecdotally, I know several people brought up
Speaker 2: in the Quaker Church, and the vast majority of them
Speaker 2: have transitioned. Some of them have just done a double
Speaker 2: swap where they were dating as men and women and
Speaker 2: are now dating as men and women, at which point
Speaker 2: it just seems like being straight with extra steps. But
Speaker 2: when you combine the sort of person who is involved
Speaker 2: in that organization to begin with, right, highly progressive, highly
Speaker 2: interested in social signaling, and that issue, I mean, having
Speaker 2: a transgender child is from that perspective perhaps the best
Speaker 2: way to accrue status. Also a for what degree there
Speaker 2: is a theological tradition of Quakerism, but will just use
Speaker 2: that term is based very much in the idea of
Speaker 2: self defining and name changing. Well, it's no shock that
Speaker 2: a large number of these children come out as being
Speaker 2: born in the wrong body. I mean, again, I only
Speaker 2: have anecdotes, but it's the numbers in that sample set
Speaker 2: of twenty odd individuals is dramatic. We're talking well over
Speaker 2: a majority.
Speaker 1: Fascinating, and it's not thinking that could even be quite
Speaker 1: good solved because that many Quakers.
Speaker 2: Especially because most of them lived in the same neighborhood, right,
Speaker 2: they were all, you know, on the same streets, so
Speaker 2: the environmental factors would be minimized at least to some degree.
Speaker 1: The ultimate way that you signal it is something like
Speaker 1: it's like you notice that you get very left wing
Speaker 1: middle class people, and they signal their left wing middle
Speaker 1: classes by adopting a non white child. And it's the ultimate,
Speaker 1: the ultimate form of social signaling, isn't it that they'll
Speaker 1: notice that you've got a child of a different race,
Speaker 1: or what a good person, what a kind person, what
Speaker 1: a committed person they are. But really they're socially signaling
Speaker 1: with the child. And the reason that they don't want
Speaker 1: to adopt a white child is because in general, these days,
Speaker 1: white children that are put up for adoption, Whereas it
Speaker 1: used to be, you know, a lawyer gets his secretary
Speaker 1: pregnant and introduceimacy is so unacceptable. The child's put up
Speaker 1: for adoption. Now it's going to be drug addicts and
Speaker 1: they and they know deep down that these traits are
Speaker 1: hereditary and the child is going to be of that
Speaker 1: basically psychopic, psychopathic, and they don't want it. Whereas whereas, whereas,
Speaker 1: whereas in South America or whatever, a child that gets
Speaker 1: put up for adoption, it's much more probably random, much
Speaker 1: much more that it's an unfair society. And you can
Speaker 1: still get some quite reasonable people that are very poor
Speaker 1: and they have to put their child up for adoption.
Speaker 1: So it's social signaling. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and and to that point, the communities that are
Speaker 2: over represented in adoption, at least in America, tend to
Speaker 2: be quite religious, and in my own religious community there's
Speaker 2: a large amount of adoption, and those dangers are well known.
Speaker 2: But the assumption is, you know what you were taking
Speaker 2: on what would be referred to in another era as
Speaker 2: a crack baby, because it is the right thing to do,
Speaker 2: and as you mentioned, there are very real consequences to that.
Speaker 2: I grew up with a lot of kids who were adopted,
Speaker 2: and sure some of them turned out fine. But to
Speaker 2: your point, many of those traits are hereditary, I mean
Speaker 2: the returning.
Speaker 1: Sorry sorry, well, I was just going to say that
Speaker 1: the one of the things of courses that went the
Speaker 1: Quake began, it was highly radical, highly highly radical and subversive,
Speaker 1: and there were certain dangers involved, and so that attracts
Speaker 1: a slightly different kind of person from what you'd get
Speaker 1: more recently. It's not gonna be the same kind of
Speaker 1: people when it was when it started. We're talking people
Speaker 1: that are probably very high naism and mixing this with
Speaker 1: psychopathy as well. It's risk taking. It's probably watered down
Speaker 1: quite a bit since, and it's stabilized, and it's created
Speaker 1: its own community and it's cast out those that are
Speaker 1: uncooperative and all this kind of thing in a way
Speaker 1: that it wouldn't. But if you look in the early Quakers,
Speaker 1: I mean they're openly espousing anti natalism in the form
Speaker 1: of Mother Anne and the Shakers. Well this was a
Speaker 1: breakaway Quaker group. She was a Quaker originally who then
Speaker 1: made her own even more extreme group, the Shakers, where
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to have you're not supposed to have children,
Speaker 1: and you even had the use of nudity that you
Speaker 1: get these Femen protests where these women go and take
Speaker 1: off their tops and right left wing slogans on their breasts.
Speaker 1: Well you even had that in the early Quakers. Cromwell
Speaker 1: for seen fifty I forget exactly what it was. And
Speaker 1: this woman goes into Westminster Hall where Cromwell is at prayer,
Speaker 1: and just takes all the clothes off and starts screaming
Speaker 1: at everybody about how blats from us and the religious
Speaker 1: they are. You get, you get things like that. So
Speaker 1: the early stage is the really extreme stuff that you
Speaker 1: get on the far left. Now you'd get among the Quakers.
Speaker 1: But this, of course lessons as we move on as
Speaker 1: it as it as it buvocratizes, I suppose to put
Speaker 1: it in Vapor's terms, and and becomes less radical, and
Speaker 1: becomes because it's older, and and and so sort of stabilizes.
Speaker 2: Anyway, you're going to say something brief aside, and then
Speaker 2: I have a relevant point.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 2: The Shakers are still around. There's one community left in Maine,
Speaker 2: and there are three of them, which means if anyone
Speaker 2: listening to this podcast wants to join, you only need
Speaker 2: three guys to take it over, which I don't know
Speaker 2: what you'd get, but it would at least be funny
Speaker 2: to see that organization taken over by exactly four right
Speaker 2: when guys off the internet. But on a more serious note,
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought that up, because the Quakers have
Speaker 2: a tradition of martyrdom because obviously, early on they were
Speaker 2: quite radical in an era where the way that you
Speaker 2: dealt with radical, annoying people was generally killing them or
Speaker 2: forcing them to leave, and so they have developed this
Speaker 2: self conception as the ultimate martyrs of society. We were
Speaker 2: too clean, too pure, too perfect for the outside world,
Speaker 2: and so they persecuted us. And albeit as you've said
Speaker 2: now it is a group of relatively normal, middle class
Speaker 2: people who are in no way persecuted by the system,
Speaker 2: they have kept that identity and kept that sort of
Speaker 2: self conception. And so when you look to modern protests
Speaker 2: when they are you know, getting beaten over the head
Speaker 2: with the truncheon for gluing themselves to some expensive fighter
Speaker 2: jet or poking holes in the road, it is connected
Speaker 2: to that broader tradition of you know, the war didn't
Speaker 2: really exist at the time, but of activism.
Speaker 1: Yes, sort of a persecution complex that they have maintained, which, interestingly,
Speaker 1: I think you could argue you have among the Jews,
Speaker 1: you could argue, well, you can see there's a good
Speaker 1: reason why they'd have that, considering events over the last
Speaker 1: eighty years. But but I think you do have that
Speaker 1: among among the Jews. It's a notion of their identity.
Speaker 1: They are persecuted people right from the beginning and enslaved people.
Speaker 1: And the Quakers follow on in that, which is not
Speaker 1: inconsistent with the philosemitism of a lot of extreme Protestant groups.
Speaker 1: Whereas you know, the Catholics took the view that will
Speaker 1: Catholicism is there and they've rejected it, and so they're bad,
Speaker 1: whereas the problems that the view is utterly corrupt, so
Speaker 1: they were they were quite right to reject it. So
Speaker 1: so that they're they're they're they're they're not that bad.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that that that persecution complex is there, That
Speaker 1: that idea that we have had to struggle against a
Speaker 1: hostile world. The world used to ban us from various profession,
Speaker 1: the world, the people used to do this, that and
Speaker 1: the other. So that that sense of being the most persecuted,
Speaker 1: it brings the most singled out for bad treatment, the most,
Speaker 1: the most that I talked about narcissism earlier, and I
Speaker 1: was speaking of it more in terms of grandiose narcissism,
Speaker 1: but you could look at it in terms of vulnerable
Speaker 1: narcissism with vulnerable nasism, which is a much more feminine thing.
Speaker 1: It's notally I am they are narcists. They feel they
Speaker 1: are superior to others, but they but they But the
Speaker 1: part of this is a feeling that I am superior
Speaker 1: because I've coped in the face of being the most persecuted,
Speaker 1: the most abused, the most beaten, the most messed around,
Speaker 1: and I've done this and like a burning martyr, and
Speaker 1: all the time I remained peaceful. And that tells you
Speaker 1: how just how ironically, just how superior I am. And
Speaker 1: so then you could argue going back to this idea
Speaker 1: of having to live with these people, that you're dealing with,
Speaker 1: this vulnerable narcissist who lives with you and behave like
Speaker 1: that and conveys that idea they are the most persecuted,
Speaker 1: and then also does things to mess up your life
Speaker 1: and mess up your society and make things difficult for
Speaker 1: you to the extent I mean everything. If we say
Speaker 1: I personally think this is true that the rise of
Speaker 1: women and female influence has done very bad things in
Speaker 1: terms of things like freedom of expression, things that you
Speaker 1: and I would be in favor of freedom of expression,
Speaker 1: freedom of association, freedom of scientific inquiry, because on average,
Speaker 1: again it's a bell curve, but on average, women will
Speaker 1: tend to put safety above freedom, safety and equality and
Speaker 1: everyone feeling looked after and validated above the pursuit of
Speaker 1: truth and that sort of thing. So that's what you
Speaker 1: could argue, that's one negative thing, very negative thing that
Speaker 1: Fairmnism has done. Who was a very feminist group right
Speaker 1: from the very beginning, the Quakers, even in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: The Quakers had very substantial numbers of female preachers, and
Speaker 1: they were in favor of basically a kind of sexual
Speaker 1: quality right from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: So you're entirely correct about that. I mean, even to
Speaker 2: this day, the vast majority of these communities, at least
Speaker 2: in my direct experience, they are led by women, either
Speaker 2: informally or formally. And you have this sort of you
Speaker 2: know what the poster would call rate the longhouse phenomena,
Speaker 2: where you have you know a number of these highly
Speaker 2: socially aware, you know, older women basically running it like
Speaker 2: a henhouse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure that's the case. And in general, liberal
Speaker 1: religiosity now is highly highly feminine. And we've just had
Speaker 1: a female Archbishop of Canterbury appointed in the Church of England.
Speaker 1: And that's that as a whole is a lot left
Speaker 1: wing than Quakerism. So I wouldn't be at all surprised
Speaker 1: by that. As I mentioned earlier, it uh mother Anne
Speaker 1: Mary Dyer, the wife of George Fox, was highly, highly
Speaker 1: influential as well. There's there's there's so many of them
Speaker 1: in its in the history of Quakerism of female influence,
Speaker 1: which shouldn't be surprising because it is it's kind of
Speaker 1: a feminizing religion that promotes kind of feminizing kind of
Speaker 1: ideas and is just I mean, there was a there
Speaker 1: was a particular instance. Was it sixteen sixteen, when was
Speaker 1: it sixty? What year, sixteen fifties? This guy just marches
Speaker 1: into Bristol and proclaims it's called James Naylor and proclaims
Speaker 1: himself as Christ and this is this is the New
Speaker 1: Palm Sunday, he says, and I'm Jesus. And then he
Speaker 1: has these two women with him, Martha and Hannah, and
Speaker 1: they were interrogated and they refuse they when they asked,
Speaker 1: what do you think he's Jesus, they refuse to say no.
Speaker 1: So that that was the fervor of the time that
Speaker 1: they genuinely believed that James Naylor was Jesus and that
Speaker 1: this was the Second Coming. There's this whole fascinating history
Speaker 1: with these people that that of of just left wing subversion.
Speaker 1: Every single level vegget first vegetarian society's Quaker anti slavery.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying slavery is a good thing, but for
Speaker 1: the history of humanity, the dominant group enslaves the subaltern group,
Speaker 1: and and and that's just how it is. And they
Speaker 1: put their own group above another group. That's what happens
Speaker 1: in evolutionary terms, that's what's adaptive. Of course, Quaker sexual equality,
Speaker 1: Quaker getting rid of corporal punishment as Quaker, just anything
Speaker 1: that is not conservative, it's always has a huge Quaker influence.
Speaker 1: And we have this online discourse on the right where
Speaker 1: it's just that everybody goes on about the Jews, and
Speaker 1: the Quakers kick above their weight to a huge extent.
Speaker 2: Well, another historical example is John Brown, who is this
Speaker 2: sort of hybrid of a preacher and a brigand he
Speaker 2: got tired of murder his way across Kansas and decided
Speaker 2: to lead a Haiti style slave revolt ironically enough, he
Speaker 2: was captured and then later hung by Robert E. Lee.
Speaker 2: But this was a sore subject at the time, obviously,
Speaker 2: because they were building tensions between the North and the South.
Speaker 2: And the radical abolitionists, those who believed that, you know,
Speaker 2: the slavery and the society it built must be entirely destroyed,
Speaker 2: were not only radically Quaker, but John Brown who said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to arm the slaves. I'm going to sort
Speaker 2: of salt the earth and kill every man, woman and
Speaker 2: child in this area. He was funded and defended by Quakers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he wasn't a Quaker himself, but he he
Speaker 1: used the I believe he used a farm in it
Speaker 1: was owned by a Quakers in base in Iowa or
Speaker 1: somewhere or Idaho, Iowa, say, let's say Iowa. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he had he had a great deal of support from Quakers. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and this was not this was way more than just
Speaker 1: freeing the slaves, as you say. This was this was
Speaker 1: just destroying what effectly the whole society and everything, and
Speaker 1: using violence to do so. So this is this is
Speaker 1: the kind of that's what they're prepared to do. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing there and that's what they do now.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're basically using their money and they have
Speaker 1: a lot of money with these Quaker groups like Roundery
Speaker 1: and Cabriy and whatever, to to to fund the far left,
Speaker 1: the most anti freedom woke, suppressive far left, that is
Speaker 1: what they are funding, like the Center for Counting Digital
Speaker 1: Hate that I mentioned at the beginning, that that would
Speaker 1: that would that would censor us and bring us into
Speaker 1: even more into in the in the UK, into a
Speaker 1: kind of Soviet Union than we're already in, and we
Speaker 1: already are quite far into it. With people being prosecuted
Speaker 1: for things, they getting emotional on Twitter, on Facebook and
Speaker 1: all of this kind of stuff. That's that's that's that's
Speaker 1: going on in the UK. That is beyond what you know,
Speaker 1: you find It would be extraordinary for you in America
Speaker 1: to have to deal with this because fortunately, I mean,
Speaker 1: the way your sense of self as a nation used
Speaker 1: to be that you were the true Anglo Saxons. That
Speaker 1: you now they've got a melting pot. But the idea,
Speaker 1: even up until the sixties, particularly in the Southern States,
Speaker 1: was the idea that you were the true Anglo Saxons
Speaker 1: and that you maintained the Anglo saxon traditional freedoms and
Speaker 1: in the face of tyranny, and and you know, a
Speaker 1: German king and and all all of all of this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And you've maintained the free speech, which
Speaker 1: we no longer have. You've maintained how it's called double jeopardy,
Speaker 1: which we no longer have. You've maintained jury trials, which
Speaker 1: are they think of getting trying to get rid of
Speaker 1: in England. Uh, you know, for various reasons, the psychology
Speaker 1: of the kind of people that would go and would
Speaker 1: emigrate like that, which is probably a bit eurotic and
Speaker 1: a bit unstable, I don't know, a bit cynical, skeptical,
Speaker 1: and various other reasons. You've being up against it being
Speaker 1: frontier whatever, be being killed, suffering. You know, you've maintained it,
Speaker 1: and we haven't. And part of what is behind us
Speaker 1: not maintaining it is subversive groups within us that try
Speaker 1: and bring about left wing tyranny essentially, and one of
Speaker 1: those is the is the Quakers. And yeah, so.
Speaker 2: Ed, I think it's a phenomenal note to wrap up on.
Speaker 2: What is the title of your book and where can
Speaker 2: people find it?
Speaker 1: Here is the book. It's called The Quaker Question, exposing
Speaker 1: the sect that really rules the world, and you can
Speaker 1: interpret that whichever where you wish to. But that's the book,
Speaker 1: and you can get at the moment the hard copies
Speaker 1: from the publisher Wifling's for various reasons they they want
Speaker 1: to put about themselves for the moment, and you can
Speaker 1: get the e version on Amazon.
Speaker 2: Well, that actually works out, because I was aware you
Speaker 2: had put out this book. I've not read it. I
Speaker 2: wasn't even aware of the title, but while I was
Speaker 2: thinking about it, I thought that Quaker Question would be
Speaker 2: a clever thing to name it.
Speaker 1: So apparently the allusion to Quaker Oats, which I'm.
Speaker 2: Just a brief aside, not actually connected. I believe the
Speaker 2: founders were not Quakers.
Speaker 1: That isn't that interesting. The attitude of the company was
Speaker 1: that the Quakers are so wholesome, so wholesome and lovely,
Speaker 1: that will name our oats Quaker Oats. But the company
Speaker 1: is not connected to the Quakers at all.
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, Ed, this is a fascinating discussion on politics.
Speaker 1: The influence on politics of big Oats is not to
Speaker 1: be underestimated. People.
Speaker 2: We again, Ed, this was was fascinating. Obviously, I will
Speaker 2: link to your substack as well as your YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: Highly recommend people check you out there. You've got a
Speaker 2: Twitter and then is there anywhere else People can find.
Speaker 1: You on YouTube Jolly Heretic on YouTube and then Twitter
Speaker 1: ap Jolly Herosic and then substack Jolly Heretic.
Speaker 2: Great, all of those will be linked. As far as
Speaker 2: my stuff, you can find me the Jay Burton Show
Speaker 2: on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you listen to podcasts. This
Speaker 2: is what I do. If you want to support me
Speaker 2: and get the episodes early with no ads, throw me
Speaker 2: a few bucks. I think I have it sent to
Speaker 2: the lowest requirement. It's not a lot of money on Patreon,
Speaker 2: substack or comb road again, ed, it's been great. Never
Speaker 2: won at home. Keep your head up. Good night,