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tiafa Hintu the ho is fhager latsa arab Jena unguia

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same day.

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Speaker 4: Terms and conditions apply, meaning man like this, man letting,

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butterfly flattini wa big ban in on the force.

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Speaker 5: Man it go cause a tree.

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Speaker 2: Fall, letting five thousand mile away, Man nobody see nobody else.

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Speaker 5: You know, need no man don't like you fall. Then

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you get back to collect, go back and dog pen.

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Speaker 6: All right, guys, got another Bagbie compilation coming out. Just

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to answer some questions on the front end. No, he's fine,

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there's nothing wrong with him. It's just we've had a

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lot of recordings, a lot of which are in the

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early part of my backlog. And also the audio is

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not very good. Now I can fix it, or at

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least make it better. This one is two parts, same

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as last time. Two honestly my favorite discussions. The first

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is a review of All the Kings Met by Robert Penmore.

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This is the book where I got my pseudonym, from

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where it came from. So if you're wondering the importance

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of that book to me, why I'm constantly referencing it.

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Check that out the second part. And this is relevant

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in kind of the series that I've been doing on

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the war in Iran. It's all about American evangelicalism, the

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problems with that movement, good things about it, because there

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are good things, you know in that world, and so

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that episode I think is more relevant than ever. As

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regards how many of these I'm doing normally, I like

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to keep it to sort of one a month. This

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is unusually close together for these kind of compilations, but

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I'm traveling. I'm on the road right now, and so

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in lieu of not giving you anything, figured, i'd, you know,

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provide some value by putting something out many of you

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haven't seen, but also making it sound better. Sure you

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can go back and find the old recordings, but my

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audio editing skills have gotten better, so in the old

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ones things would be unbalanced or hard to hear. This

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should fix that. So anyway, guys, we will be back

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to regularly scheduled programming. Got a lot of very exciting

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guests coming up, and so I appreciate you guys sticking around.

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Thank you and we'll be back soon. All right, George Bagby,

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welcome back to the show. How are you doing.

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Speaker 5: Hey, it's good to be back.

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Speaker 6: And I'm glad to have you. So tonight we're here

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to discuss a book that's been incredibly influential to bohem

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and I in real life and also is the source

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of my pseudonym. So we're here tonight to discuss All

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the King's Men by Robert Penwarren. So if you could,

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can you give us kind of a basic thumbnail sketch

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of the plot.

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Speaker 5: Definitely. This book gets pegged often as the fictionalization of

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the reign of Huey P. Long in Louisiana, and that's

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not a bad characterization. Robert Pinwarren like to push back

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against that characterization.

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Speaker 6: He liked to say that.

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Speaker 5: His characters stand alone, but he admit that he was

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directly inspired by the Long administration, and especially by Huey

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Long's mystery this assassin the Nation, which ended his law life.

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It's a national down here in Louisiana that don't accept

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the official story of that assassination. But the real hero

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of the piece is Jack Burden, who is the main character.

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He's the protagonist and Jack Burton is a newspaper reporter

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educated at LSU. He was previously a history graduate student,

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and he starts out and skeptic a jaded sort of

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cure for himself by reporting on the campaign of an

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upstart country politician named Willie Stark, a man who gets

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his start by exposing corruption at the low governor. Jack

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Burden covers his campaign and sees him into the governor's

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mansion and then is invited to join the Stark organization

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as a researcher. In that role, he's sent out to

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dig up dirt on the governor's opponents. So at this point,

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I'm gonna reveal the big twist in the plot and

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give the big boilers. Turns out that the governor's main

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opponents are Jack Burton's unknown father. Jack Burton thinks that

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he knows who his father is. It ends out the

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man that he thinks is his father is not actually

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his father, and he ends up blackmailing his own father

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and causing his own father to commit suicide, all at

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the behest of Governor Stark to destroy the credibility of

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the governor's opponents. In the process of this, Burden goes

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through a transformation in a really amazing way. This is

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the redemptive arc of the novel. Burden goes from a

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thorough going materialist skeptic to a believer in God once again,

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and this transformation is made through the suffering of Burden

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and also the characters that he most cares about. So

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the novel is particularly modern, but it is also refreshingly

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ancient in its in its plot and its devices to

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work out this spiritual suffering and redemption finally in the end.

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And it's for that reason also the fact that it's

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the novel of my hometown, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where it

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is set in large part, it's it's a great novel,

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novel of my native state. It's it's a novel full

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of Louisiana characters. It's a novel that draws on Louisiana history.

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It's a particularly a regional novel, one of the great

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Southern novels. It won the Politzer Prize in the forties.

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And it's it's one that has always spoken to me

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in a powerful way. I've always appreciated this book. We

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were talking just before the stream started, neither of for sure,

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just how many times we've read this novel at this point.

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This is one that's very close to me, so.

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Speaker 6: Obviously i'll echo everything you've said on it for a

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little bit of I guess personal background on when I

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read the book. If I'm not mistaken, I think I

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started reading it the summer after I graduated from high school,

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and then I believe I finished it my freshman year

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of college. And Warren's prose is great. You have a

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few segments on your YouTube channel where you describe or

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where you read passages from all the kings men, and

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his prose is beyond masterful. And there's one section which

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I believe you have on your channel where it's essentially

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the opener to the book where describes, you know, our

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main characters kind of whizzing along the Louisiana back or

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the Louisiana highways in a you know, in a fastcar.

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And that's one of those things where it's it always

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just you know, sends shivers down my spine every time

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I listen to it, and I get it. Look, that's

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an emotional reaction to it, but it's a it's a

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powerfully written book, and it's not only just a beautiful

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read in the sense that the you know, the actual

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construction of it is is well done. You know, he's

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he's a he's a master, but also, at least personally,

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I I feel a certain amount of resonance to the

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character of you know, Jack Burden that much like you said,

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he starts off this book as an incredibly cynical, kind

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of jaded character. You know, he's had this career as

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kind of a political hatchet man, you know, kind of

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doing a lot of you know, dirty work, you know,

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opposition research for you know, this kind of like charismatic

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louis a politician, and over the course of it, and

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not necessarily kind of smoothly either, you know, we see

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this character essentially make make peace with his his roots. Obviously,

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this is a you know, both a spoiler and and

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you know not a spoiler because it's not necessarily the

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most dramatic event in the book, but the ending of

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it essentially involves you know, our main character, you know,

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making peace with his father, making peace with his home,

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you know, returning to his ancestral home, and marrying essentially

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his his you know, high school sweetheart who he kind

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of walked out on an earlier date and life and

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that that kind of like returning home, even within kind

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of like the broader tragic narrative of Willie Stark. I

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find it incredibly, I guess, intoxicating. Do you see what

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I'm getting at there?

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Speaker 5: Absolutely? This is one of the aspects of it that

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makes it particularly Southern. It seems to me it's the

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relationship to home, and it's a characteristic American responses to heritage,

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to ancestry, to the baggage that our people left us.

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At the beginning of the novel, Burden is trying to

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escape it, and ironically, in trying to escape it, he

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is always overwhelmed by it. He's always dwelling on it.

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He's not at peace with his mother. For instance, his

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mother is kind of domineering. His mother is overly involved

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in his life and not adult level, and kind of

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disappointed in him that he's he's doing something as as

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a single man, you know, in his late twenties or something.

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He's not really interested in marrying and settling down or

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having a steady job, and his mother is always suggesting

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things to him, but he is. He is always trying

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to avoid his mother, but he's always thinking about her.

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She she pops up all the time, just in his

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stream of consciousness, and he's he is dominated by her

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in this unhealthy way because he dislikes her strongly. He

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does not understand her. Similarly, he is he's always drawn

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back to his boyhood home, but he doesn't like it.

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He's he's trying to escape it by going to the

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big city and seeks seeking after fame by getting his

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name in print, and yet he cannot escape his home.

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He cannot get past it. He's always drawn back to it,

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kind of outside of his inclinations and intentions. But it's

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later in the novel when he's actually able to make

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peace with his home and make peace with his family,

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even after he's done his family tremendous harm, that he

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finds peace for the first time for himself.

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Speaker 6: And he is not.

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Speaker 5: I guess he's not dragged down by those connections. Those

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connections at home are constructive for him. Finally, in the

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end he finds a healthy attitude towards them. And that's

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one of the aspects of the novel that I am

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always coming back to. The novel is very interested in

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our connection to our ancestors, our connection to our home

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place is and that's an aspect of it that is

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particularly Southern. Those themes come up in Southern literature very consistently.

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What is the healthy attitude?

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Speaker 6: And there's a there's a long section in this book

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that in my mind kind of divides it into two parts,

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in which it we kind of hear recounting of our

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I if I remember this correctly, of our our main

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character at at college, correct, yes, And then in this

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he kind of describes the one the people he meets

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at college, which I think that you and I have

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both met people who fit the description of his roommates

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to a t absolutely, but also that he essentially is

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kind of floundering for a thesis, you know, something to

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kind of complete his degree with. And so he finds

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a kind of an account of a I guess of

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a an ancestor of his Correct, they are related, I

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believe distantly, that's right.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, he's he's a direct descendant of a Civil War officer,

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a Southerner, of course.

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Speaker 6: And when he digs into this man's life, he essentially

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finds this this tale of exhorted scandal, and it's I

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could almost be read, you know, in and up itself.

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But through this kind of this we see this pattern

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of you know what would be called it in kind

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of the theological sense of like generational sin, you know,

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the idea that kind of not only is our actions

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harmful you know, to ourselves right there, they are morally

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incorrect actions, but they are you know, are are progeny

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because there's a you know, a theme throughout of you

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know of kind of of parentage and of you know, lineage.

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It's probably a better way to say it, multiple characters

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in the way that they relate to their fathers, the

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way that they relate to their family, and the way

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that someone's lineage kind of continues or fails to continue,

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you know, through their you know, through their children. Right

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And there's there's a really i guess complicated understanding of

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that in this book that I think is is almost

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kind of like unparallel. Do you see what I'm kind

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of stumbling around?

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Speaker 7: Yeah, it is grasping after whatever you're working towards. A

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Volkswagen commercial vehicle is with you all the way. It

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might be the crafter or transporter for carrying tools and

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the drive that goes with them, the caddy cargo or

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amarok for when the job and the journey matter equally,

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or the id buzz cargo to get excited for the future,

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then benefit from HB finance from zero percent and purchase

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contributions up to three thousand euro. Vokswagen commercial vehicles space

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Speaker 4: FBD doesn't stand for Friendly Business ducs or for the

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00:18:13,960 --> 00:18:22,200
freelance beak Bucks Department. FBD stands for support. We support

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00:18:22,279 --> 00:18:26,039
businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to

253
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talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we

254
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can support your business. FBD Insurance support, It's what we do.

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FBD Insurance PSC is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

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Speaker 5: And astrol connections connections to one's own male ancestors. And

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you're quite right. Warren is playing up this theme that

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weaknesses are communicated from generation to generation. But there's another

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aspect to it that comes out I think towards the end,

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after the Cathartic suffering of jack burden, where he sees

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some of the strengths of his ancestors, where previously he

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only saw their weaknesses. We see that especially, I think

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in the character of Anne Stanton, which is Jack's love

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interest of the girl that he first loved and the

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girl that he is finally with in the end. He's

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restored to her. In the end, she is also obsessed

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with her ancestors, but in another unhealthy way. This is

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something really great about the book because Robert pin Warren

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is not just going to browbeat us with characters that

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dislike their own ancestors. He gives us an example of

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someone with an unhealthy regard for her own anceset true

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and Stanton is portrayed as worshiping her dead father, holding

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him in an unhealthy regard, and in the course of

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the novel, her regard for her father is destroyed by

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information about a scandal. She and her brother both face

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a serious moral crisis when their picture of that they

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had of their father is destroyed in their in their

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imagination or in their fantasy, I should say, when when

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they get knowledge that their father was involved in a

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scandal and was morally culpable, even though it is understandable.

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Their father did not himself do something wrong. Instead, he

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covered for his friend who had done something wrong and

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did not allow he did not sacrifice his friend in

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a misplaced sense of loyalty, perhaps of being that being

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that Ann Stanton's father was the governor of Louisiana, he

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covered for his friend who had done something wrong, who

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had done something evil. His friend was Jack Burden's father,

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Judge Irwin. That was the fault, that was the scandal.

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He hid his friend's wrongdoing. And when Ann Stanton and

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Adam Stanton find out about that, they rethink the standards

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of their lives, and they they themselves compromise on high

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moral standards themselves. Ann Stanton starts an affair with Governor Stark.

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Adam Stanton compromises with Governor Stark and agrees to lead

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the new hospital program that Governor Stark is founding. Previously,

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he had refused to have anything to do with it

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out of a sense of moral purity.

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Speaker 6: Let's say.

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Speaker 5: So, Anne and Adam have this inflated notion about their ancestors,

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and when that notion is for first challenged, they lose

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their own sense of identity. It destroys them both in

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some way, it damages Ann and it ends up destroying

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Adam entirely. He ends up dying kind of as a

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result of that. So worshiping our ancestors and hating our

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ancestors are are both faults. We should not do either

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of those things. And that is one of one of

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the stories in the novel. That's that's one of the

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myths in the novel.

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Speaker 6: To me, it it almost feels like it was kind

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of written to us and our friends, because we're very

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much surrounded by a you know, a culture that despises

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our ancestors. Right. You see this very cleanly in the

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modern German. So I've been reading, you know, more Polkottfrete

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books about anti fascism, you know, as I've said a

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few times in the last couple episodes, but both in

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that book and also in my dealings with you know,

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kind of like modern Germans, you see the true pathology

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of kind of like hating and feeling this need to

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consistently like denigrate and erase your ancestors. As obviously we

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see that as you know, being kind of like I guess,

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destructive in evil. But I think that you know, much

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like the Stantons there is this kind of risk to

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be had in you know, over idealizing your your forefathers.

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And I think really you see this in kind of

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like the On one hand, there's kind of like the

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race worship, the ancestor worship that you see on some

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so you know, some parts of our movement. But also

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I think in the you know, in the kind of

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baby boomer constitution worship, you know, where essentially the founding

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fathers were, you know, modern day saints, you know, kind

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of the the aging civic religion of our of our grandparents.

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And obviously you need a healthy respect for your ancestors,

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and you know very much that we you know, in

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the end of this book, we see you know, our

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main characters kind of come to peace with the with

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their with their forefathers as as men, you know, kind

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of both both evil and good aspects of their of

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their personalities. And to me, I feel like there's kind

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of a cautionary tale, especially in the way that the

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stands relate to their father, you know, because being more

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traditionally minded and being more patriotically minded, we are kind

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of pre disposed towards you know, kind of the idolatry

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of our.

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Speaker 5: Ancestors certainly, so I certainly feel that I want to

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counteract the mindless hate that I here constantly directed towards

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anyone with old fashioned views, you know, any old person,

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anyone involved in certain things in my own country's history,

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or anyone pasted a certain point of history, and I

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want to give their side of things. That's that's part

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of what I do as a history teacher. I'm there

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to explain what people believed and to make them relatable.

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But I know that I'm I'm always tempted to overcompensate

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and to practice hagiography instead of giving nuanced views, and

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I am always aware of that. I want to give

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complete pictures and point out that none of them in

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these conflicts have up to date opinions by our standards.

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You know, none of them believe what people now believe

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about controversial topics. They're coming from their own place, and

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we have to we have to appreciate them for the

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standards of their time, rather than some anachronistic standard, as

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modern people are so tempted to do these days. But

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I agree with you that's one of the cautionary tales

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of the novel that we can't worship our ancestors. Worshiping

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our ancestors destroys them and destroys us. The healthy alter

364
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:04,000
native it's not to not to hate, not to flee,

365
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not to reject in in hating our parents, for instance,

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we're constantly thinking about our parents. We those that hate

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their parents, those that hate their their ancestors, by by extension,

368
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are consumed with thinking of them all the time. In

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some ways, they are more captives of their past than

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someone with a healthy attitude. But the novel it shows us,

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you know, hate, the hatred is a kind of captivity

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and an unhealthiness, and the worship is also a captivity,

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an unhealthiness, and both of them lead to destruction. Neither

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of them sets us free to be individuals. And at

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the end of the novel we see through through tragedy,

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through a Greek sinse of tragedy, the suffering that results

377
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from those hubristic beliefs. All the King's Men is a

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00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:16,000
tragedy in a classical sense, in a Greek sense. Warren

379
00:28:16,119 --> 00:28:21,319
certainly wanted us to know that about the book. It

380
00:28:21,599 --> 00:28:25,400
even had a previous form, a form that I don't

381
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,599
know if any of it actually survives. But Warren does

382
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:33,119
mention it several times. He originally composed it as a

383
00:28:33,319 --> 00:28:38,359
Greek style drama, even with a chorus that speaks in

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verse from time to time. It started out as a

385
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play and then turned into a novel. There is a

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curious aspect.

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Speaker 6: To it, no that is, and it is like many

388
00:28:53,839 --> 00:28:58,039
of like many Southern writers in particular, like I mean

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Faulkner's dripping in this in plannario or strip again this

390
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,359
there is kind of that sense of I guess, deep

391
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:09,480
attachment to I guess, the kind of like Western canon,

392
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you know throughout I I during the discussion on which

393
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:17,839
we have at this point beaten to death, and so

394
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:20,039
I only mean to mention it in passing kind of

395
00:29:20,079 --> 00:29:22,480
the American question, you know, the dialogue a month or

396
00:29:22,519 --> 00:29:26,599
so back to me at least that the contention that

397
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:29,599
there was, you know, such thing as American culture is

398
00:29:30,079 --> 00:29:32,720
perhaps most absurd when you look at you know, the

399
00:29:32,799 --> 00:29:36,079
literary you know, the literary field. Obviously, I would make

400
00:29:36,079 --> 00:29:39,680
the argument that film is the definitive American you know media.

401
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:43,279
But you know, Americans have, especially in kind of the

402
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:47,440
modern era, have a you know, a whole crop of incredibly,

403
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:52,720
incredibly prolific I guess, like writers and poets, and there's

404
00:29:52,839 --> 00:29:54,839
there's a lot to be to be mined from that.

405
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,000
So if you could, could you offer some type of

406
00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:01,319
I guess like inter duction In summary to the man

407
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:02,400
Robert Penmoren.

408
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Speaker 5: Yes, he's a literary giant of his time. He started

409
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:15,319
out as a group of a member of a group

410
00:30:15,359 --> 00:30:20,799
of poets in Nashville, Tennessee. He himself was from Kentucky

411
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:26,440
and he came down to Nashville for college and he

412
00:30:26,839 --> 00:30:30,000
joined a group of poets that styled themselves as the

413
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:36,359
Fugitive Poets, and that's where he began writing poetry. The

414
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:40,519
Fugitive Poets had a publication that was called The Fugitive

415
00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:46,079
and among them were people like Alan Tate and Donald Davidson,

416
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:52,359
other great Southern writers and poets. Among them were several

417
00:30:52,559 --> 00:30:57,279
men that became academics. I suppose Warren taught at the

418
00:30:57,359 --> 00:31:00,680
university for most of his life, but he is best

419
00:31:00,759 --> 00:31:06,720
known as a novelist and poet. The Fugitives ended up

420
00:31:07,319 --> 00:31:11,440
writing a famous book of essays called I'll Take My

421
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:17,279
Stand in the thirties during the depression. I'll Take My

422
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:20,680
Stand is a very interesting volume in that it is

423
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:27,440
a Southern agrarian perspective on federal reforms that are meant

424
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:33,119
to industrialize the country, and it is a rejection of

425
00:31:33,799 --> 00:31:41,079
the industrial consumerist way of life. The agrarians, of which

426
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:45,200
Warren was one of them, that they all ascribed to

427
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:51,359
an introductory statement in the volume and said that they

428
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:55,920
prefer the agrarian way of life over the industrial way

429
00:31:55,960 --> 00:32:00,759
of life. And they held up the American South not

430
00:32:01,079 --> 00:32:07,039
as a cultural backwater, not as a blighted region that's

431
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:11,599
outside of the mainstream, but as a region that is

432
00:32:11,839 --> 00:32:17,079
producing a great amount of high quality art and is

433
00:32:17,319 --> 00:32:24,519
culturally rich. They speak of the South's virtues and they

434
00:32:24,599 --> 00:32:27,559
say they want to preserve those things. They even go

435
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:29,720
as far as to make the argument that the South

436
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:35,680
is culturally rich and artistically productive because it has not

437
00:32:35,799 --> 00:32:39,799
been industrialized, the people in it have not been alienated.

438
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:45,920
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Speaker 5: Now, that's a really great theme. When we jump ahead

460
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:02,880
twenty years and Warren is writing All the King's Men

461
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:07,559
and winning the Politzer Prize for it. It was the

462
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:08,920
first Pulitzer.

463
00:34:08,559 --> 00:34:09,119
Speaker 6: Prize he won.

464
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:12,039
Speaker 5: He went on to win a Pulitzer for poetry and

465
00:34:12,559 --> 00:34:19,039
was named the Poet Laureate of the United States. I'm

466
00:34:19,079 --> 00:34:24,159
not sure who names those people. It's some governmental organization,

467
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:28,480
but Warren was the first man to hold that title.

468
00:34:30,119 --> 00:34:33,719
These days, I don't think that his poetry. I'm no

469
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:37,559
specialist on modernist American poetry. I don't know very much

470
00:34:37,599 --> 00:34:42,039
about Warren's poetry. I've mostly read his novel and his essays.

471
00:34:42,639 --> 00:34:46,119
He wrote several works of nonfiction, and that's where I

472
00:34:46,199 --> 00:34:50,960
know him best. He won the Politzer for I believe

473
00:34:51,039 --> 00:34:53,599
it was his second novel, All the King's Men. He

474
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:59,280
wrote a number of novels, and he went on to

475
00:35:00,119 --> 00:35:07,039
found a magazine while he taught at LSU. He founded

476
00:35:07,199 --> 00:35:11,920
the Southern Review. While he taught at LSU, he became

477
00:35:12,159 --> 00:35:18,159
good friends with Clianth Brooks and Robert Penwarren. He was

478
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:22,599
at least an acquaintance of Richard M. Weaver during his

479
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:28,119
time at LSU. He personally observed Huey Long while he

480
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,639
was at LSU, and was even accused of being in

481
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:37,960
cahoots somehow with Huey Long. People speculated that he was

482
00:35:38,039 --> 00:35:42,599
somehow in Long's pay, or was being corrupted with money

483
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:46,679
from Long or something. The truth is that long just

484
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,519
put some competent people in charge. That was one of

485
00:35:49,559 --> 00:35:55,719
his talents. He found good people for LSU and then

486
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:59,519
gave them as many resources as he could possibly spare,

487
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:04,639
and they did wonderful things with the resources. Hence, Clanth

488
00:36:04,679 --> 00:36:10,360
Brooks and Robert Pinwarren. Robert Pinwarren and Clanth Brooks also

489
00:36:10,599 --> 00:36:15,760
founded a school of literary criticism at LSU, which is

490
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:22,079
called the New Criticism. They wrote text books for English instructors,

491
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:26,800
wonderful books if you can find them. They're very difficult

492
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,760
to find. I'm down here in Baton Rouge, so I

493
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:35,400
have an easier time finding these things. But they wrote

494
00:36:35,519 --> 00:36:39,159
a book called Understanding Poetry, and they wrote another book

495
00:36:39,199 --> 00:36:42,559
called Understanding Literature, and in both of them they outline

496
00:36:43,119 --> 00:36:49,119
the New critical school. They're basically saying their position is

497
00:36:49,159 --> 00:36:54,039
actually very mild. It's not a radical position. They're saying,

498
00:36:54,679 --> 00:36:59,840
too many English teachers think they're teaching Shakespeare by giving

499
00:37:00,079 --> 00:37:05,440
a brief outline of Shakespeare's life and opinions and the

500
00:37:05,559 --> 00:37:10,000
dates in which he lived, when in fact they ought

501
00:37:10,079 --> 00:37:13,639
to be reading Shakespeare, they ought to just focus on

502
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:20,320
what the man wrote. So that's that's Robert Penwarren's new

503
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:24,239
criticism in a nutshell, it's not at all a radical position.

504
00:37:25,639 --> 00:37:31,920
New critics today might say, ignore the biography, the author

505
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,880
has nothing to do with the text. That's a very

506
00:37:36,039 --> 00:37:38,800
radical position, and that's not the position Robert pin Warren

507
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:45,119
and Clant Brooks took. But Robert Pinwarren was also very

508
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:50,519
interested in the civil rights movement and segregation in the South.

509
00:37:51,079 --> 00:37:52,519
Speaker 6: Some say this is.

510
00:37:54,039 --> 00:37:58,519
Speaker 5: A leftover or a guilty feeling that he had after

511
00:37:58,639 --> 00:38:02,400
his essay And I'll take My Stand. He wrote an

512
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:06,480
essay and I'll take My Stand entitled The Briar Patch,

513
00:38:07,679 --> 00:38:12,320
in which he offered a defense of Southern racial segregation

514
00:38:13,079 --> 00:38:19,000
in the nineteen thirties. They say his biographers say that

515
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,719
he spent most of the rest of his career back

516
00:38:24,639 --> 00:38:28,960
cracking on that. That I think that is correct. I

517
00:38:29,039 --> 00:38:31,639
think he did backtrack on that. But along the way

518
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:35,559
he offered us a really incredible book. And this would

519
00:38:35,559 --> 00:38:39,079
be the other major work by Robert Penwarren I would recommend,

520
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:43,719
and that is a wonderful book called Who Speaks for

521
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:48,719
the Negro. In that book, Robert Penwarren went around in

522
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:54,960
the early sixties and interviewed the who's who of black

523
00:38:55,079 --> 00:39:01,519
political leaders, rabble rousers, literary figures, and asked them all

524
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:08,719
the same questions and recorded his Injews, so you can

525
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:14,480
actually listen to him interviewing Malcolm X and Martin Luther

526
00:39:14,599 --> 00:39:18,000
King Jr. And he asked them all the same questions

527
00:39:18,159 --> 00:39:23,840
and they produce very interesting answers. And it's all about

528
00:39:23,960 --> 00:39:25,880
civil rights and segregation.

529
00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:26,039
Speaker 6: And things like that.

530
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 5: And the point of the book is that no single

531
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:41,280
black leader in the sixties is speaking for the whole race,

532
00:39:41,599 --> 00:39:45,280
and they all have radically different ideas about just what

533
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,199
they think is desirable. So that's one thing that you

534
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:52,239
can just take away from that book by Pyn Warren,

535
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:55,800
and it makes it a very stimulating read. I highly

536
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:56,360
recommend it.

537
00:39:58,559 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 6: One of the things that I I've always kind of

538
00:40:01,519 --> 00:40:04,880
admired about, I guess like Warren and you know, his

539
00:40:05,119 --> 00:40:09,159
his circle. It's just that there's there's something about what

540
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:12,519
it is to be American that is inherently contradictory. You know,

541
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:14,960
there's and I was even speaking to Thomas about this yesterday.

542
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:17,639
There's actually a lot of that in this book. You know,

543
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:21,880
this kind of tension between you know, the poll Americans have,

544
00:40:22,679 --> 00:40:25,199
you know, to the open road to wander to find

545
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:28,840
our own kind of like patch of no undiscovered country.

546
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:33,920
And then also this this tie to you know, our ancestors,

547
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:37,480
our home, where we're from. And one of the other

548
00:40:37,599 --> 00:40:42,800
kind of splendid contradictions in America is that, you know,

549
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:47,599
kind of the most backwater, the lowest GDP, you know,

550
00:40:47,679 --> 00:40:50,639
the lowest you know, standard of living. You know, if

551
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:52,840
if you consider those things to be, you know, the

552
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:56,760
proper metrics by which to judge a culture, sections of

553
00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:59,800
our of our country produces by far our best writers.

554
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:01,679
And to me, that's always been kind of one of

555
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:05,480
those I guess, kind of quirks of America. And I've

556
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:08,599
always enjoyed, you know that, the fact that, and don't

557
00:41:08,599 --> 00:41:10,480
get me wrong, there are a great many writers from

558
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:12,800
the Northeast, you know, a great many you know, writers

559
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:16,400
from California as well, but so many of our you know,

560
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:19,480
our best and brightest, they're from the rural South. And

561
00:41:19,559 --> 00:41:22,719
I've always I've always really enjoyed that. One of the

562
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,880
other things that I think is interesting in an area

563
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:27,559
that you can really glean some wisdom from this book

564
00:41:27,679 --> 00:41:30,119
is this is a political novel, not in the sense

565
00:41:30,159 --> 00:41:32,440
that he's trying to prove some grand political point, but

566
00:41:33,199 --> 00:41:37,280
the drama is a direct result of politics. So if

567
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:41,280
you could, I guess, kind of describe some of the

568
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:44,119
political lessons that can be pulled from this book. Do

569
00:41:44,199 --> 00:41:45,400
you have anything on the top of your head.

570
00:41:47,599 --> 00:41:49,559
Speaker 5: Yeah, we could. We could just start at the beginning

571
00:41:49,679 --> 00:41:54,320
of it. We see at the start of the novel

572
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:56,639
the framing of the characters.

573
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:06,679
Speaker 6: O begbe you dropped out for a little bit. Well,

574
00:42:06,679 --> 00:42:09,199
if he doesn't come back for a little bit, I

575
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:13,119
can hand or handle at least the point where he's going. So,

576
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:16,079
like I said, the cold not the cold open, the

577
00:42:16,119 --> 00:42:19,719
open opening of this book starts with our characters essentially

578
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:22,599
traveling along the highway, you know, in an expensive car,

579
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:25,800
you know, the whole the whole you know, party is

580
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:31,599
essentially going to Willy Stark's hometown. Willy Stark is the

581
00:42:31,639 --> 00:42:34,639
governor of an unnamed state that is essentially Louisiana, and

582
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:37,440
he's going back to the you know, the low rent,

583
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:43,559
you know, rural town where he's from. And it opens

584
00:42:43,639 --> 00:42:46,239
but essentially him just wandering into town and he's we

585
00:42:46,599 --> 00:42:48,960
know that this man is a celebrity, is an absolute

586
00:42:49,119 --> 00:42:53,679
star of the political scene, because we know that he

587
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:55,960
has you know, has posters everywhere in town. You know,

588
00:42:56,039 --> 00:43:00,199
there's one that's described as six times life size. And

589
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:03,920
from this we we kind of learned a lesson that

590
00:43:04,199 --> 00:43:07,840
I guess we could have learned from watching Hillary Clinton,

591
00:43:08,039 --> 00:43:12,920
the which you dropped out up until just now, so

592
00:43:13,039 --> 00:43:17,400
I caught people up to the moment in which uh,

593
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:21,760
Willie is back at his hometown kind of preparing to

594
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:23,480
give a speech to the people he grew up with.

595
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:26,039
So sorry you dropped out for about ninety seconds though,

596
00:43:29,519 --> 00:43:39,760
are you still there? Bagbe well? Uh until he comes back?

597
00:43:42,159 --> 00:43:42,280
Speaker 10: Uh?

598
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:48,440
Speaker 6: Oh, dear, this is quite awkward now. Uh anyway, I

599
00:43:48,519 --> 00:43:51,079
hope that you know, the Bagbee comes back because you know,

600
00:43:51,119 --> 00:43:52,719
this would be better as a discussion, you know, it

601
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:57,320
would be as a u as a monologue. But from

602
00:43:57,400 --> 00:43:59,760
that we see that this man is kind of a

603
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:02,760
I don't want to say manipulator, but sort of a

604
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,880
mass a master manipulator. And then his his political persona

605
00:44:07,039 --> 00:44:11,440
is essentially a different part of him. So the way

606
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:14,440
that Burden describes, you know, in kind of his behind

607
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:16,519
his you know, behind his eyes, the way that he

608
00:44:16,679 --> 00:44:21,039
sees WILLI is that his almost a new person takes

609
00:44:21,119 --> 00:44:23,559
over him, you know, gone is kind of this, you know,

610
00:44:23,679 --> 00:44:27,440
kind of like flabby you know obviously you know, well

611
00:44:27,559 --> 00:44:30,719
fed politician, and he becomes again this kind of like

612
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:35,719
honest hometown, I guess, farm boy. And so we see

613
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:39,079
very much that even in the way he transforms himself

614
00:44:39,119 --> 00:44:42,199
into the situation, he's fundamentally a you know, political survivor

615
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:45,360
and a political animal. So I guess that that's that's

616
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:47,719
kind of what the opener tells us. I Bagby may

617
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:49,320
be getting in a wider point, but if so, I

618
00:44:50,199 --> 00:44:52,639
I can't hear it to me. If you guys want

619
00:44:52,639 --> 00:44:54,199
to hear a kind of a summary of it, I

620
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:57,760
would describe All the Kings Men Is as a novelization

621
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:03,599
of the populist delusion. Oh you're back. Okay, you dropped

622
00:45:03,599 --> 00:45:05,159
out for a little bit and I had kind of

623
00:45:05,679 --> 00:45:08,119
damped to make back up. Do you want to do

624
00:45:08,159 --> 00:45:09,880
you want to address the point that he brought up initially,

625
00:45:10,199 --> 00:45:11,840
because we I lost almost the whole thing.

626
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 5: I'm very sorry about that. Yeah, you were saying that

627
00:45:17,679 --> 00:45:21,480
that it concerns populism, and I think that that is

628
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:27,960
very much the theme the governor character. Willie Stark is

629
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:33,280
the character's name is obviously modeled after Huey Long, and

630
00:45:34,039 --> 00:45:40,239
people frequently take the novel as the fictionalized version of

631
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:44,440
the Huey Long story. Now, there are many differences involved,

632
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:48,800
and Warren always wanted to stress he was kind of

633
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:53,119
he was kind of amused that people bought his novel

634
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,280
and and read and enjoyed his novel when they were

635
00:45:56,400 --> 00:46:00,119
actually looking for something about Huey Long. And he he

636
00:46:00,199 --> 00:46:02,880
wanted them to know that this was not the place

637
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:05,119
to go. If you wanted to find out about Huey Long,

638
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:10,920
you needed to read biography. But Huey Long is this

639
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:15,480
great American populist character, and he may be one of

640
00:46:15,559 --> 00:46:21,039
the best examples of a success in populism. He certainly

641
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:25,440
is that in the historical memory of people here in Louisiana.

642
00:46:26,039 --> 00:46:32,159
He remains a very controversial figure, but Louisianians cannot deny

643
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:37,840
that the man did an awful lot by disregarding the

644
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:44,280
rules of the system. Willie Stark is doing that very frankly.

645
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:49,199
In this novel. Willie Stark gets his start in politics

646
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:54,679
by exposing corruption at a local level that results in

647
00:46:54,840 --> 00:47:00,400
the schoolhouse being built with substandard bricks. What happened is

648
00:47:00,519 --> 00:47:06,079
a fire escape collapses and several children are maimed and

649
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:13,639
killed as a result, and this catapults Willie Stark, the

650
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:21,360
character in the novel, to prominence statewide. In the process

651
00:47:21,719 --> 00:47:28,239
of this, Stark is tempted by a big city politico

652
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:33,159
to run for governor and has offered funding to do so.

653
00:47:34,199 --> 00:47:38,719
So Stark begins his political career by running for governor,

654
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:44,079
kind of jumping from a minor functionary in local government

655
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:49,639
to a race for the governor, and realizes along the

656
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:54,519
way that he was set up to split the opposition

657
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:58,719
to the big city candidate. So he was running to

658
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:07,239
split the rural vote. And Stark is made wise to

659
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:13,800
political realities, and rather than bow out out of a

660
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:19,599
sense of idealism, he decides to become a machiavellian, and

661
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:24,519
in doing so he he is ruthless with his enemies

662
00:48:25,599 --> 00:48:30,280
and seeses power and is not in the least concerned

663
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:34,559
about the rules of the game. In doing so, kind

664
00:48:34,599 --> 00:48:38,280
of disregards the rules of the game and becomes an

665
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:44,440
authoritarian figure with a populist mandate. So you could say

666
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:46,360
it's a story of populism.

667
00:48:46,679 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 6: You know.

668
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:51,800
Speaker 5: He is catapulted into power by promising the masses all

669
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:56,719
sorts of all sorts of handouts, you might say, but

670
00:48:57,360 --> 00:49:02,039
he gets the power and uses is the power for

671
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:08,880
particular ends and gets valuable things done in along the way.

672
00:49:10,199 --> 00:49:15,000
So I think it's a mixture of political realities. It's

673
00:49:15,039 --> 00:49:23,239
certainly a realistic political novel about backroom deals, about blackmail

674
00:49:24,199 --> 00:49:28,000
to get one's way in politics. All of these things

675
00:49:28,119 --> 00:49:31,559
were actually done during the long administration, and that is

676
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:34,440
one of the things that that keeps him in our

677
00:49:34,559 --> 00:49:40,119
minds and still inspires us or horrifies us about the

678
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:40,800
man today.

679
00:49:43,559 --> 00:49:45,199
Speaker 6: One of the other themes that I find in this

680
00:49:45,639 --> 00:49:48,800
and your description of Stark's career, you know, is one

681
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:51,440
version of this, but we see it multiple times, is

682
00:49:51,519 --> 00:49:54,679
this idea that you can't change the system.

683
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:59,079
Speaker 11: The system changes you only on Irish beef, only the

684
00:49:59,159 --> 00:50:02,760
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685
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:06,159
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686
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687
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688
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692
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693
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694
00:50:37,159 --> 00:50:40,079
Speaker 6: So obviously, in the first instance, we see, you know,

695
00:50:40,199 --> 00:50:44,440
will we transform from kind of this this kind of

696
00:50:44,519 --> 00:50:48,679
like wide eyed, you know, naive you know, young men

697
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:52,920
who essentially believes that he can fix the corruption, you know,

698
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:55,280
and by writing a better speech, you know, and by

699
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:57,719
campaigning extra hard and going to the people that he

700
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:00,719
can he can do it and we can really succeed

701
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:05,440
at it. And then there's a there's another major character

702
00:51:05,559 --> 00:51:08,800
who you know is present throughout it. There's kind of

703
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:13,400
this eternal, you know, cockroach like character of Tiny Duffy,

704
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:17,039
who has described as this kind of like corpulently disgusting,

705
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:21,280
you know, sweaty banker. And essentially this character is a

706
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:24,280
you know, political survivor. He's there before Willy, you know,

707
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,599
he offers Willy kind of his first hand up after

708
00:51:26,679 --> 00:51:29,320
his defeat. You know, he's there through the entire book,

709
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:32,599
and then after, you know, when when Stark is you know,

710
00:51:32,679 --> 00:51:36,480
eventually killed. He's still there. And and not only does

711
00:51:36,519 --> 00:51:38,559
will he kind of make this initial sacrifice of his

712
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:42,440
kind of like naive morals. We see that he knows

713
00:51:42,519 --> 00:51:45,599
that he's made these sacrifices, but he he thinks it's

714
00:51:45,599 --> 00:51:47,840
all going to be, you know, redeemed by the fact

715
00:51:47,880 --> 00:51:50,800
that he's building this hospital. You know we mentioned before,

716
00:51:51,079 --> 00:51:53,559
there's kind of like big beautiful hospital that will you know,

717
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:57,199
essentially serve as as a public service to to to

718
00:51:57,360 --> 00:51:59,400
reward the people who propelled him into.

719
00:52:00,159 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 5: And it will outlast him. Yes, it will be a legacy,

720
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:07,519
his legacy. It's it's going to be his clayos right,

721
00:52:07,639 --> 00:52:08,719
his glory.

722
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:13,159
Speaker 6: And you know, being that it's a it's a tragedy

723
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:15,119
and that you know, it is very much a you know,

724
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:18,000
I guess the rebuke of the populist delusion. We see

725
00:52:18,039 --> 00:52:20,639
that this dream, you know, all of the sacrifices he

726
00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:25,239
made in order to secure his glory essentially removed any

727
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:27,960
possibility of him actually having it. Not only do we

728
00:52:28,039 --> 00:52:31,920
see this happen in our you know, in Willie Stark's case,

729
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:37,159
but also you know Adam Stanton and you know, essentially

730
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:42,920
extremely moralistic, a very kind of principled brother who is

731
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:46,320
a you know, a world class doctor, and understandably because

732
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:49,760
of the disgrace brought on his family, he hates Willie

733
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:53,599
Stark and refuses to work with him until essentially, again,

734
00:52:53,679 --> 00:52:56,239
like as you've said, through this kind of disillusion, he

735
00:52:56,320 --> 00:53:02,480
agrees to. He agrees to essentially, you know, make a

736
00:53:02,559 --> 00:53:05,000
deal to work within the system. You know, the idea

737
00:53:05,039 --> 00:53:06,679
that like, well, you know what if I just you know,

738
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:09,800
stick to my principles within the system, you know, it

739
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:11,800
will all work out. And in all of these cases

740
00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:14,920
we see that whatever the system is, the house always went,

741
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,440
you know, to muse a cliche, And I think that

742
00:53:17,519 --> 00:53:21,840
there is very much a kind of a literary rebuke

743
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:23,039
of populism in this book.

744
00:53:25,519 --> 00:53:30,199
Speaker 5: Yeah, because the system corrupts everyone who is absorbed by it.

745
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:33,719
I'm thinking of of all the major characters, and they

746
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:40,559
and they are the winners, right, Sadie Burke, Adam Stanton,

747
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:48,159
Willie Stark, all of them that seek after the power court,

748
00:53:48,599 --> 00:53:54,360
the levers of power. They do get various things that

749
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:57,920
they want, but it takes more out of them than

750
00:53:58,159 --> 00:54:01,000
they get in return. It ends up destroying most of

751
00:54:01,039 --> 00:54:01,800
these characters.

752
00:54:03,599 --> 00:54:06,639
Speaker 6: And I think that there's a there's a truth in that.

753
00:54:06,880 --> 00:54:10,400
And look, I understand I've personally gotten a lot from

754
00:54:12,039 --> 00:54:14,760
you know, the elite theorists and I have. You know,

755
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:19,360
I am fully convinced by many of their arguments. But

756
00:54:19,519 --> 00:54:23,400
the idea that you know, kind of the power and

757
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:28,360
you know, creating an exception is a something that doesn't

758
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:31,800
damage you, I think is really naive obviously, kind of

759
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:34,239
like the libertarian and the liberal conception of power is

760
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:35,960
a limited one. You know, it's not a it's one

761
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:40,079
that's designed to make you lose. But on the other end,

762
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:42,880
this kind of like converse position that I'm not really

763
00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:46,159
sure anyone holds. But you know, people do seem to

764
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,320
kind of a spouse that, you know, like, well, if

765
00:54:49,360 --> 00:54:52,119
we just just grab power, you know, I am going

766
00:54:52,199 --> 00:54:54,039
to be the one who wields it for good and

767
00:54:54,119 --> 00:54:57,280
fair enough, like someone needs to do it. But it

768
00:54:57,400 --> 00:54:59,880
is a it is a corrosive thing, especially on kind

769
00:54:59,880 --> 00:55:03,119
of the you know, at the individual level. And I

770
00:55:03,159 --> 00:55:04,679
don't mean to come off as you know, an overly

771
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:06,840
softer idealistic person in this, but I think that there

772
00:55:06,920 --> 00:55:09,760
is also a kind of a cautionary tale both against

773
00:55:09,760 --> 00:55:13,000
the kind of naive populism of oh, we'll just vote

774
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:15,159
in the guy and he'll fix it all. But also

775
00:55:15,239 --> 00:55:19,519
the idea that you can you can hold power without

776
00:55:19,559 --> 00:55:21,079
fundamentally changing who you are.

777
00:55:23,079 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 5: Well, it's It's one of the great things about the

778
00:55:25,559 --> 00:55:28,039
novel is that you can read it in several ways,

779
00:55:28,519 --> 00:55:31,719
so you could read it with Willie Stark as the

780
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:36,920
main character. And that that, incidentally is my problem with

781
00:55:37,159 --> 00:55:41,519
the movie versions of the novel. Is they sideline Jack

782
00:55:41,599 --> 00:55:44,320
Burden in some way or the other when Jack Burden

783
00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:50,199
is obviously the main character. I'm I will contend to

784
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:52,239
the point I know the novel well, I mean it

785
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:57,519
is from Burden's perspective, and his character arc is the

786
00:55:57,639 --> 00:56:01,159
meaningful one in the novel, or the predominant one. But

787
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:05,400
you could read it as a tragic story about Willie

788
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:10,119
Stark and and in the end Stark himself is destroyed.

789
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:16,400
I think the novel does tell a tragic story about

790
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:21,360
Willy Stark, kind of like Julius Caesar tells a tragic

791
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:24,880
story about Caesar, and it tells a tragic story about Brutus.

792
00:56:25,119 --> 00:56:27,400
But which of the two should you pay attention to.

793
00:56:28,559 --> 00:56:32,679
Brutus is around for the final act, Caesar is gone

794
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:37,719
very early. Similarly, I would I would argue that that

795
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:41,119
all the King's men, let's let's pay attention to Jack

796
00:56:41,159 --> 00:56:47,360
Burden primarily. But what does Willy Stark sacrifice in order

797
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:52,440
to get things done in Louisiana? He sacrifices being a husband,

798
00:56:52,599 --> 00:57:01,679
He sacrifices being a father. His religious convictions, such as

799
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:06,679
they are, they're reduced to rhetoric in his speeches. It's

800
00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:09,679
not something that he actually embodies in his life anymore.

801
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:16,079
He does actually do things, and I think he trades

802
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:20,239
the other goods of life. I think he trades being

803
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:25,400
a husband, being a father, being a man with real

804
00:57:25,519 --> 00:57:30,440
convictions and something beyond him, beyond himself. Convictions and truth,

805
00:57:30,559 --> 00:57:38,400
convictions in God, convictions of integrity, traditional ideas about character.

806
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:42,400
He sacrifices those things. And that is one of the

807
00:57:42,519 --> 00:57:46,159
magnificent things about the novel is you see those points

808
00:57:46,519 --> 00:57:51,800
on which Willie Stark sacrificed the values that he formally

809
00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:56,199
held for the sake of power, for the sake of

810
00:57:56,360 --> 00:58:01,440
getting things done. In politics, he starts an affair with

811
00:58:01,719 --> 00:58:08,559
a fixer named Sadie Burke, and her expertise makes him governor.

812
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:18,360
He maintains a relationship with his wife. For the sake

813
00:58:18,400 --> 00:58:23,760
of appearances, he moves her out into the country. He

814
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:31,880
spoils and indulges his son rather than discipline him. He

815
00:58:31,960 --> 00:58:34,880
wants his son to be a star football player, and

816
00:58:36,719 --> 00:58:38,800
his son does become a star football player, but his

817
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:42,480
son is spoiled and destroys himself. In the end, his

818
00:58:42,599 --> 00:58:49,239
son does die, and of course Willie Stark does have

819
00:58:49,599 --> 00:58:52,840
a long list of accomplishments by the end of his life,

820
00:58:54,000 --> 00:58:55,360
but he is also.

821
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 6: Murdered through.

822
00:58:59,199 --> 00:59:02,159
Speaker 5: The evil choice is that he made. The choices that

823
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:06,360
he made come back and haunt him and inspire his

824
00:59:06,599 --> 00:59:13,760
enemy to kill him in the end. So it's it

825
00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:17,760
makes me think of Homer, and it's kind of coincidental.

826
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:21,119
I was reading this part of the Iliad today to

827
00:59:21,239 --> 00:59:26,280
my students. At the end of the Iliad, Hector realizes

828
00:59:26,440 --> 00:59:32,079
that he's alone to face Achilles in their final duel together.

829
00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:35,519
Hector thought that his brother was standing beside him, but

830
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:40,880
Pallas Athena tricked him, and rather than turn and run

831
00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:45,320
at the last Hector resolves that he will he will stand,

832
00:59:46,079 --> 00:59:50,599
he will receive Achilles blow. Hector has just shot his

833
00:59:51,119 --> 00:59:55,719
javelin and missed, and he says, now, I will I

834
00:59:55,800 --> 01:00:01,079
will do something great that future generations will remember me by,

835
01:00:02,159 --> 01:00:05,400
and if necessary, I will die. And of course that's

836
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:11,519
exactly what happens. Achilles throws another spear and mortally wounds Hector,

837
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:17,079
and Hector does die there. But Hector in that scene

838
01:00:17,199 --> 01:00:22,880
shows us that Greek value of claos of glory, immortal

839
01:00:23,039 --> 01:00:29,800
fame that survives death, people will remember, and strangely, that

840
01:00:30,199 --> 01:00:36,639
is a real legacy of these political actors that go

841
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:44,760
in and unscrupulously sees power, manipulating their enemies, doing things

842
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:49,639
that couldn't otherwise be done without Without this very high

843
01:00:49,719 --> 01:00:52,159
handed and authoritarian.

844
01:00:52,840 --> 01:00:53,239
Speaker 6: Tactic.

845
01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:58,800
Speaker 5: Say what you want about Huey Long, people still care

846
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:05,320
about him. What what other politician from re evokes such

847
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:11,559
passionate opinion, loyalty and conversation. Now, granted, you probably need

848
01:01:11,599 --> 01:01:15,639
to be in Louisiana for that, but I still would

849
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:19,840
would uh would claim Huey Long is unique among American

850
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:23,840
politicians for that reason. People care about him down here,

851
01:01:25,199 --> 01:01:28,159
Down here in Louisiana, people still talk about Huey Long.

852
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:36,000
Go to a Louisiana diner and mention something related to Long,

853
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:40,159
you'll find everyone has an opinion, and people are happy

854
01:01:40,239 --> 01:01:47,719
to talk about him. He's still inspiring. Strangely enough, h

855
01:01:48,719 --> 01:01:53,519
I know, uh, just just looking from the perspective of

856
01:01:53,639 --> 01:01:59,440
dead politicians, how many politicians would crave that sort of fame.

857
01:02:00,519 --> 01:02:06,519
You know, generations after they have gone to rest, people

858
01:02:06,599 --> 01:02:11,880
still cross the bridges that Huey Long built today. Thousands

859
01:02:11,920 --> 01:02:14,360
of people cross them every day. And no one in

860
01:02:14,519 --> 01:02:19,679
Louisiana could imagine living in Louisiana without those things that

861
01:02:19,840 --> 01:02:22,960
Huey Long built that we're still using today, we're still

862
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:29,079
getting mileage out of so long after his death. That's

863
01:02:29,119 --> 01:02:32,000
a really incredible legacy. And he was an unscrupulous guy.

864
01:02:32,800 --> 01:02:36,320
He was a ruthless guy. He was an immoral man.

865
01:02:36,719 --> 01:02:41,239
He was gross, he was vulgar, he was all of

866
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:46,440
those things. He was very colorful, he's he's really very amusing,

867
01:02:47,199 --> 01:02:52,519
lots of fun, and he's well portrayed in All the

868
01:02:52,599 --> 01:02:56,199
King's Men, fictionalized if you will, in All the King's Men.

869
01:02:57,920 --> 01:03:01,880
But he I don't know, does he gain the world

870
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:05,440
and he loses his soul? It looks like that kind

871
01:03:05,480 --> 01:03:13,000
of story. Maybe politics, effective politics isn't possible without that.

872
01:03:13,280 --> 01:03:17,880
No saint could Long remain a politician. I'm reminded of

873
01:03:18,559 --> 01:03:22,599
Edward the Confessor. Saint Edward the Confessor, who was said

874
01:03:22,679 --> 01:03:28,519
to be indifferent to a man who was robbing him.

875
01:03:30,000 --> 01:03:32,920
A thief was caught in the king's chambers with a

876
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:39,039
bag of gold, and Edward the Confessor let him go. Now,

877
01:03:39,119 --> 01:03:43,239
that's the action of a saint to forgive your enemies,

878
01:03:44,239 --> 01:03:48,599
but it's not the action of an effective politician. You

879
01:03:49,079 --> 01:03:52,360
may remember, the kingdom fell apart after Edward the Confessor.

880
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:56,000
He was a sainted king. He is a saint, but

881
01:03:56,480 --> 01:04:02,599
maybe he wasn't the best ruler. And I I agree

882
01:04:02,639 --> 01:04:05,800
with everything you said there. Now we're we're coming up

883
01:04:05,840 --> 01:04:10,039
on time, and uh, I don't mean to completely ambush you,

884
01:04:10,199 --> 01:04:11,639
but I have a little bit more to say. But

885
01:04:11,679 --> 01:04:13,599
while I'm doing that, do you think there's a passage

886
01:04:13,639 --> 01:04:15,400
you could find to you know, read out from the

887
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:17,360
book to kind of offer people a taste of the pros?

888
01:04:18,360 --> 01:04:22,239
Speaker 6: Absolutely? Yes, all right, and I can you know, talk

889
01:04:22,320 --> 01:04:24,079
for a minute or two kind of my concluding thoughts

890
01:04:24,119 --> 01:04:28,800
on it. I think for me, there there's multiple ways

891
01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:33,679
of you know, absorbing a lesson, and obviously the you know,

892
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:36,159
reading a nonfiction book is one way you know, having

893
01:04:36,199 --> 01:04:38,079
a discussion about it is another if you kind of

894
01:04:38,119 --> 01:04:41,199
look like course it into your own I guess like

895
01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:44,440
way of understanding. But to me, absorbing something narratively is

896
01:04:45,639 --> 01:04:47,719
is really like if I can, if I can name

897
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:49,760
kind of the important turning points in the way I

898
01:04:49,800 --> 01:04:52,480
thought of things. Many of them were concepts that I

899
01:04:52,519 --> 01:04:57,800
didn't necessarily get from nonfiction. I got it in a

900
01:04:57,880 --> 01:05:01,239
narrative form. And to me, so much of how I

901
01:05:01,280 --> 01:05:03,039
think about the world, of how I think about the

902
01:05:03,079 --> 01:05:06,000
way we relate to you know, our past and our

903
01:05:06,960 --> 01:05:10,840
our descendants is tied up in this book. In addition

904
01:05:10,920 --> 01:05:13,400
to that, it's also just very good heart and I

905
01:05:13,440 --> 01:05:16,000
think that if you know, either you are American or

906
01:05:16,079 --> 01:05:19,239
you want to understand Americans more, this book is a

907
01:05:19,280 --> 01:05:21,599
great way to do it. It's it's not an obscure

908
01:05:21,639 --> 01:05:23,800
book by any means, but it's definitely not one that's

909
01:05:23,840 --> 01:05:25,800
read well enough. And I think that if you're interested

910
01:05:25,840 --> 01:05:30,239
in you know, anything I guess like vaguely political or

911
01:05:30,280 --> 01:05:32,760
anything to do with American culture, I really can't recommend

912
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:35,400
it enough. So I guess that's my final, uh final

913
01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:36,320
description of the book.

914
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:42,239
Speaker 5: Well, I happened across the passage where Willie Stark is

915
01:05:42,639 --> 01:05:47,719
talking to Jack about his legacy, what he wants his

916
01:05:47,840 --> 01:05:55,119
legacy to be. Strangely enough, the reference here what Pyn

917
01:05:55,199 --> 01:05:59,199
Warren was thinking of was Huey Long's foundation of the

918
01:05:59,320 --> 01:06:04,320
charity Hostilespital, which is still an institution in Louisiana today,

919
01:06:04,440 --> 01:06:06,840
and it's something that people still care very much about.

920
01:06:09,360 --> 01:06:14,000
But this is the Willy Stark medical Center that he's

921
01:06:14,079 --> 01:06:17,960
talking about. So in this scene of Jack and Willy

922
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:22,599
are talking together at the Governor's mansion and Willy has

923
01:06:22,679 --> 01:06:27,280
had several drinks. So Willy is saying that he does

924
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:32,119
not want his cronies to fix up a corrupt deal

925
01:06:32,239 --> 01:06:36,159
with a construction company for the hospital. He wants it

926
01:06:36,280 --> 01:06:40,519
all to be He wants the whole thing to be

927
01:06:40,679 --> 01:06:44,480
clean and straightforward. He does not want any corruption involved.

928
01:06:46,280 --> 01:06:49,320
So what do you expect, I asked, there's six million

929
01:06:49,440 --> 01:06:53,199
dollars involved. Did you ever see the flies stay away

930
01:06:53,239 --> 01:06:57,039
from the churn at churning time? He'd better stay away

931
01:06:57,079 --> 01:07:02,719
from this churn. Well, he's just being logical. Obviously. Larson

932
01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:06,280
is ready to sell out McMurphy for a contract. He

933
01:07:06,599 --> 01:07:11,199
is a competent builder. He lunged up from his sitting position,

934
01:07:11,599 --> 01:07:15,840
he stared at me and demanded, are you in on this? Oh,

935
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:18,880
it's nothing to me, I said, and shrugged. You can

936
01:07:18,960 --> 01:07:20,880
build it with your bare hands for all of me.

937
01:07:21,800 --> 01:07:25,519
I merely said that, given his premises, Tiny is logical.

938
01:07:26,679 --> 01:07:30,679
Can't you understand, he demanded, searching my face. Damn it,

939
01:07:30,960 --> 01:07:36,559
Can't you understand either? I understand what I understand. Can't

940
01:07:36,599 --> 01:07:40,280
you understand? He demanded, and heaved up from the couch,

941
01:07:40,920 --> 01:07:42,719
and the instant he was on his feet. From the

942
01:07:42,760 --> 01:07:45,679
slight sway of his posture, I knew he had been drinking.

943
01:07:46,559 --> 01:07:48,960
He stepped to me and seized my lapel and shook

944
01:07:49,039 --> 01:07:51,719
me a little, fixing his eyes upon my face. Now

945
01:07:51,840 --> 01:07:54,400
close to him, I could see that they were bloodshot,

946
01:07:55,119 --> 01:07:59,280
and saying, can't you understand either, I'm building that place,

947
01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:01,719
the best in the country, the best in the world,

948
01:08:02,199 --> 01:08:04,480
and a bugger like Tiny is not gonna mess with it,

949
01:08:05,039 --> 01:08:06,960
and I'm not gonna and I'm going to call it

950
01:08:07,320 --> 01:08:10,440
the Willie Stark Hospital, and it will be there a

951
01:08:10,639 --> 01:08:13,000
long time after I'm dead and gone, and you were

952
01:08:13,079 --> 01:08:15,440
dead and gone, and all those sons of bitches are

953
01:08:15,480 --> 01:08:18,920
dead and gone, and anybody, no matter if he hasn't

954
01:08:18,960 --> 01:08:22,439
got a dime, can go there and will vote for you.

955
01:08:23,199 --> 01:08:28,399
I said, I'll be dead. He said, and you'll be dead.

956
01:08:29,079 --> 01:08:30,840
And I don't care whether he votes for me in

957
01:08:31,159 --> 01:08:34,880
or not. He can go in there and bless your name,

958
01:08:35,439 --> 01:08:39,720
I said, damn it. He shook me hard, crumpling my

959
01:08:39,840 --> 01:08:43,000
lapel in his big hand. You stand there grinning like that.

960
01:08:43,520 --> 01:08:46,079
Get that grin off your face, get it off or

961
01:08:46,119 --> 01:08:49,880
all listen. I said, I'm not any of your scum,

962
01:08:50,520 --> 01:08:55,600
and I'm still grinning when I please Jack, Hell, Jack,

963
01:08:55,880 --> 01:08:56,560
you don't know.

964
01:08:57,840 --> 01:08:58,960
Speaker 6: I'd you know.

965
01:08:59,119 --> 01:09:02,880
Speaker 5: I don't mean that. It's just you stand there in grin.

966
01:09:03,359 --> 01:09:07,399
Damn it. Can't you understand, can't you? He held the

967
01:09:07,479 --> 01:09:10,159
lapel and thrust his big face at me, his eyes

968
01:09:10,279 --> 01:09:14,199
gouging in the mind, saying, can't you Can't you see

969
01:09:14,199 --> 01:09:17,039
I'm not gonna let those bastards muck with it the

970
01:09:17,159 --> 01:09:20,960
Willie Stark Hospital, can't you see? And I'm going to

971
01:09:21,039 --> 01:09:25,439
get me the best damn man there is to run it, Yes, sir,

972
01:09:25,760 --> 01:09:28,520
the best there is, Yes, sir. Up in New York.

973
01:09:28,760 --> 01:09:29,840
They told me to get him.

974
01:09:30,439 --> 01:09:31,159
Speaker 6: He was the man.

975
01:09:31,880 --> 01:09:36,960
Speaker 5: And Jack, you, yeah, I asked, you're gonna get him.

976
01:09:38,199 --> 01:09:41,680
I disengaged from his grasp on my lapel, straightened it

977
01:09:42,159 --> 01:09:47,279
and dropped into a chair. Get who, I asked, doctor Stanton?

978
01:09:47,479 --> 01:09:52,640
He said, doctor Adam Stanton. I almost bounced right out

979
01:09:52,680 --> 01:09:55,399
of my chair. The ash off my cigarette fell down

980
01:09:55,439 --> 01:09:59,520
my shirt front. How long have you been having these symptoms?

981
01:09:59,600 --> 01:10:05,000
I asked, you've been seeing any pink elephants? You get Stanton?

982
01:10:05,399 --> 01:10:10,520
He said, you were hearing voices. I said, you get him,

983
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:15,960
he repeated dourly. Boss, I said, Adam is an old

984
01:10:16,039 --> 01:10:19,199
pal of mine. I know him like a brother, and

985
01:10:19,359 --> 01:10:23,119
I know he hates your guts. I'm not asking him

986
01:10:23,159 --> 01:10:26,159
to love me. I'm asking him to run my hospital.

987
01:10:26,439 --> 01:10:28,800
I'm not asking anybody to love me, not even you.

988
01:10:32,600 --> 01:10:36,399
So this is a fateful choice made in the novel,

989
01:10:37,039 --> 01:10:42,319
both for Jack and for Willie. Jack ends up revealing

990
01:10:42,439 --> 01:10:45,720
to Adam that his father was involved in a scandal.

991
01:10:47,399 --> 01:10:52,279
He reveals that to Adam, and Adam agrees to work

992
01:10:52,319 --> 01:10:58,159
for the governor, and Adam eventually murders the governor.

993
01:11:00,880 --> 01:11:03,399
Speaker 6: Again, if we haven't convinced you yet, you guys have

994
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:06,439
to check out this book. It's old enough that you

995
01:11:06,520 --> 01:11:09,479
can find good old hardcover copies for just a few

996
01:11:09,520 --> 01:11:14,000
dollars and if you're really an absolute, you know, illiterate fool.

997
01:11:14,039 --> 01:11:17,800
I'm sure there's a good enough audiobook somewhere around. But anyway,

998
01:11:17,840 --> 01:11:19,239
I don't know how much more I have to add,

999
01:11:19,680 --> 01:11:23,520
especially after such a powerful reading. But uh thatg Bee,

1000
01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:25,079
Before we wrap this up, do you have anything you

1001
01:11:25,119 --> 01:11:26,800
wanna you wanna plug of yours?

1002
01:11:28,760 --> 01:11:34,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm I'm working on my latest audio book. When

1003
01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:37,720
that drops, I'll be sure to make it public so

1004
01:11:37,840 --> 01:11:40,119
that everyone knows where to get it. It's a book

1005
01:11:40,279 --> 01:11:46,880
on John C. Calhoun, so another Southerner. I'm gradually adding

1006
01:11:47,000 --> 01:11:50,760
content to the YouTube page. I'm probably going to try

1007
01:11:50,840 --> 01:11:53,319
to record something else before I turn in tonight, so

1008
01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:55,560
there may be a new recording on there soon. I've

1009
01:11:55,560 --> 01:12:01,119
got something all picked out, but not much else. I

1010
01:12:01,199 --> 01:12:04,680
do have a telegram channel, I don't know. Did you

1011
01:12:04,920 --> 01:12:05,760
post a link to that?

1012
01:12:06,880 --> 01:12:09,399
Speaker 6: If you give me just a few seconds, I can I.

1013
01:12:09,920 --> 01:12:10,760
Speaker 5: Oh, that would be awesome.

1014
01:12:12,319 --> 01:12:14,439
Speaker 6: I am oh sorry, carry on, Bagbie.

1015
01:12:14,439 --> 01:12:16,880
Speaker 5: I'm still learning how to do these things.

1016
01:12:18,680 --> 01:12:22,319
Speaker 6: Now. I will admit I'm also not exactly the most

1017
01:12:22,560 --> 01:12:26,239
I'm sure as everyone who is who's watched one of

1018
01:12:26,279 --> 01:12:29,079
my streams knows by now, I'm not exactly the most

1019
01:12:30,319 --> 01:12:34,760
I guess the most technologically advanced. It'll take me a

1020
01:12:34,800 --> 01:12:37,239
little bit. I will add the link to Bagby's telegram

1021
01:12:37,800 --> 01:12:39,319
in the description. I don't have it off the top

1022
01:12:39,319 --> 01:12:41,159
of my head. One thing I will say, I don't

1023
01:12:41,159 --> 01:12:43,000
know if this is a faux pas to say it,

1024
01:12:43,720 --> 01:12:48,560
but this year, independently, both Bagbee and I will be

1025
01:12:48,640 --> 01:12:51,800
appearing on you know, at Millennial Woes, you know, end

1026
01:12:51,800 --> 01:12:54,279
of the year Millennial Streams. I don't know what either

1027
01:12:54,279 --> 01:12:55,720
of us are going to talk about yet, but you'll

1028
01:12:55,720 --> 01:12:57,359
be able to hear both of us there. So if

1029
01:12:57,399 --> 01:12:59,239
you want more content from us, be sure to check

1030
01:12:59,279 --> 01:13:01,199
those out. I'm sure it'll be you know, at least

1031
01:13:01,239 --> 01:13:04,359
one good discussion between the two of us. This show

1032
01:13:04,439 --> 01:13:07,800
will obviously be available on YouTube, will also be up

1033
01:13:07,840 --> 01:13:10,600
as a podcast on Apple and Spotify. And the way

1034
01:13:10,640 --> 01:13:14,760
that this works is that the most recent ten episodes

1035
01:13:14,800 --> 01:13:18,159
are always available on Apple, Spotify, anywhere you listen to podcasts,

1036
01:13:18,560 --> 01:13:20,760
but after they fall out of that top ten, they

1037
01:13:20,840 --> 01:13:23,319
do go behind to paywall at my substack, and I

1038
01:13:23,439 --> 01:13:25,279
realize it. It's not a huge thing, but it's a

1039
01:13:25,319 --> 01:13:28,239
little bit of way for me to subsidize the cost

1040
01:13:28,319 --> 01:13:30,359
of the show. I do enjoy it, but as we

1041
01:13:30,479 --> 01:13:33,520
get into more, As we get into more, I guess,

1042
01:13:33,560 --> 01:13:36,720
like esoteric topics, Susan gets less and less happy with me,

1043
01:13:36,880 --> 01:13:38,880
and so it's a good way for me to kind

1044
01:13:38,880 --> 01:13:41,479
of insulate myself from that. But again, like I said,

1045
01:13:41,479 --> 01:13:44,399
if I haven't convinced you yet, read this book, it's good.

1046
01:13:44,600 --> 01:13:47,359
It'll make you a better man or woman, I guess

1047
01:13:47,399 --> 01:13:49,840
because there are women who listen to the show. And anyway, guys,

1048
01:13:50,520 --> 01:13:53,119
keep your head up. The life can't last forever. Good night,

1049
01:13:54,359 --> 01:13:56,279
all right. Before I welcome on our guest, I want

1050
01:13:56,319 --> 01:13:59,159
to provide a little bit of background to this. So

1051
01:13:59,399 --> 01:14:02,000
I try to avoid, you know, Twitter drama on these

1052
01:14:02,119 --> 01:14:05,760
because you know, Twitter's largely a waste of time. But

1053
01:14:05,960 --> 01:14:09,600
I feel like this was an interesting interaction. So there's

1054
01:14:09,640 --> 01:14:12,520
this documentary coming out produced by a you know, a

1055
01:14:12,600 --> 01:14:18,319
sexually ambiguous evangelical pastor megachurch pastor from Austin, Texas called

1056
01:14:18,399 --> 01:14:21,319
nineteen forty six, and he produced this video kind of

1057
01:14:21,319 --> 01:14:23,039
shot in the in the style of a you know,

1058
01:14:23,199 --> 01:14:26,560
TikTok clock, you know, talking to the camera about this

1059
01:14:26,960 --> 01:14:31,279
this documentary he's creating called nineteen forty six, and the

1060
01:14:31,359 --> 01:14:35,560
thesis of this documentary is that the word homosexuality didn't

1061
01:14:35,600 --> 01:14:39,359
appear in the Bible until nineteen forty six, and he

1062
01:14:39,479 --> 01:14:43,399
argues that it's a mistranslation, the conclusion obviously being therefore,

1063
01:14:43,479 --> 01:14:48,800
that there's nothing wrong with, you know, homosexual activity. And

1064
01:14:49,119 --> 01:14:51,960
so I made some snarky comment, you know, kind of

1065
01:14:52,000 --> 01:14:54,520
dunking on this guy, because well, that's really what's Twitter

1066
01:14:54,680 --> 01:14:57,840
it's for. And I don't take it particularly seriously, but

1067
01:14:58,359 --> 01:15:01,399
a major influence of min you know, someone I've been

1068
01:15:01,439 --> 01:15:04,640
in talks to eventually record an episode with Dave or

1069
01:15:04,680 --> 01:15:09,319
the distributist responded in a really insightful way. And I'll

1070
01:15:09,399 --> 01:15:11,960
read through the thread after I welcome on, my guest.

1071
01:15:12,039 --> 01:15:14,399
But it struck me not only because it was incredibly insightful,

1072
01:15:14,520 --> 01:15:17,920
but because it mirrored a conversation that what George Bagbye

1073
01:15:17,960 --> 01:15:21,039
and I had a few months ago. And so with

1074
01:15:21,239 --> 01:15:23,439
that thread running through my mind and kind of thinking

1075
01:15:23,520 --> 01:15:26,520
back to a conversation that we had, George, I really

1076
01:15:26,560 --> 01:15:32,840
wanted to discuss essentially why evangelicals become progressives, you know,

1077
01:15:32,960 --> 01:15:35,119
why these you know, children who are in many ways

1078
01:15:35,239 --> 01:15:38,239
raised in the most conservative households in America, you know,

1079
01:15:38,359 --> 01:15:42,159
become foot soldiers of the regime because and I don't

1080
01:15:42,159 --> 01:15:43,560
want to just suck up all the year in the room.

1081
01:15:43,640 --> 01:15:45,319
But one of the things that we see is that

1082
01:15:45,439 --> 01:15:48,920
despite people like us having an amazing advantage when it

1083
01:15:49,000 --> 01:15:53,720
comes to birth rate, you know, this this machine, these progressives,

1084
01:15:53,760 --> 01:15:58,920
they reproduce not biologically but essentially by stealing other people's children.

1085
01:15:59,199 --> 01:16:01,039
And so we wanted to and well where does that

1086
01:16:01,159 --> 01:16:03,199
come from? You know, why does that happen? Is this

1087
01:16:03,279 --> 01:16:07,439
a new phenomena? So, George, indeed, do you want to

1088
01:16:07,479 --> 01:16:09,920
before we get into this, just introduce yourself for the

1089
01:16:09,960 --> 01:16:11,960
people who aren't familiar with your work.

1090
01:16:12,960 --> 01:16:18,159
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm George Bagbee. I am a teacher. I'm something

1091
01:16:18,239 --> 01:16:24,279
of an amateur historian. I teach high school, and I

1092
01:16:24,359 --> 01:16:30,279
have a telegram channel called Bagbe's Corner. I'm slowly producing

1093
01:16:30,359 --> 01:16:33,680
content there, but my major work is in audio books.

1094
01:16:34,439 --> 01:16:39,159
I'm recording audiobooks right now actually, and hope to have

1095
01:16:39,439 --> 01:16:41,960
more to say on the subject in the near future.

1096
01:16:46,119 --> 01:16:48,920
Speaker 6: What can think were coming on? And sorry I accidentally

1097
01:16:48,960 --> 01:16:52,760
had myself muted. I've been informed that my clicking and

1098
01:16:53,119 --> 01:16:54,880
typing the background is a little bit disruptive, so I

1099
01:16:55,000 --> 01:16:58,960
trying to get better about muting myself. But anyway, so

1100
01:16:59,520 --> 01:17:02,680
if you could, could you, I guess, summarize the conversation

1101
01:17:02,840 --> 01:17:04,840
you and I had because this is something that we'd

1102
01:17:04,920 --> 01:17:06,520
brought up, And obviously I'm not asking you for a

1103
01:17:06,560 --> 01:17:08,439
blow by blow, but I guess if you could just

1104
01:17:08,800 --> 01:17:12,199
describe to you know, the people listening, you know, like

1105
01:17:12,279 --> 01:17:14,159
what we brought up and why it was something we

1106
01:17:14,239 --> 01:17:14,920
were thinking about.

1107
01:17:16,159 --> 01:17:21,000
Speaker 5: Indeed, it's it's a major concern, especially for an educator

1108
01:17:22,239 --> 01:17:26,800
like myself. I'm in private Christian schools. I've been working

1109
01:17:27,159 --> 01:17:31,399
there for almost ten years, and one of the key

1110
01:17:32,000 --> 01:17:36,159
mission aspects of a school like mine is to preserve

1111
01:17:36,279 --> 01:17:38,720
the faith of the students that are sent to us.

1112
01:17:40,119 --> 01:17:45,560
And that's obviously an ecumenical project for most everybody. I

1113
01:17:45,600 --> 01:17:48,520
suppose even even a Catholic school is going to have

1114
01:17:49,399 --> 01:17:53,720
Protestant students these days, especially especially down in Louisiana where

1115
01:17:53,760 --> 01:17:56,520
we have a big Protestant population. The Catholic schools don't

1116
01:17:56,520 --> 01:17:59,119
turn them away, so it's a it's kind of an

1117
01:17:59,159 --> 01:18:05,119
ecumenical prom But something you and I have in common

1118
01:18:05,560 --> 01:18:10,760
is we've both been to private Christian schools. Both of

1119
01:18:10,920 --> 01:18:14,479
us have graduated from such schools, and both of us

1120
01:18:14,560 --> 01:18:18,960
have seen a lot of our classmates fall away entirely

1121
01:18:19,079 --> 01:18:24,880
from the faith and join up in instead of the faith,

1122
01:18:26,439 --> 01:18:30,760
with a progressive religion in its place. So I've seen

1123
01:18:30,760 --> 01:18:35,640
a lot of my classmates go woke and even had

1124
01:18:35,880 --> 01:18:41,199
even had like professional problems with like continuing to be

1125
01:18:41,319 --> 01:18:45,000
in contact with some of them, because they're the sorts

1126
01:18:45,039 --> 01:18:48,960
of people that could denounce you publicly. They're the kinds

1127
01:18:48,960 --> 01:18:52,119
of people who adocs you and think that they were

1128
01:18:52,239 --> 01:18:58,039
doing God a service, right, So it's a serious problem.

1129
01:18:58,079 --> 01:18:58,239
Speaker 8: I know.

1130
01:18:58,319 --> 01:19:00,399
Speaker 5: I've seen a lot of my students fall away from

1131
01:19:00,439 --> 01:19:06,640
the faith, and it's ultimately against my goals for every

1132
01:19:06,680 --> 01:19:09,159
class that I teach, Like I really want to encourage

1133
01:19:09,239 --> 01:19:13,079
the faith of my students. That's something that I'm deeply

1134
01:19:13,239 --> 01:19:16,640
interested in. I couldn't imagine what it's like to teach

1135
01:19:16,680 --> 01:19:21,279
for a secular school because I'm always trying to encourage

1136
01:19:21,279 --> 01:19:22,399
the faith of my students.

1137
01:19:24,600 --> 01:19:29,239
Speaker 6: Well, and to me, they're kind of a multitude of different,

1138
01:19:29,479 --> 01:19:33,399
shall we say, negative results. You know, either there is

1139
01:19:33,520 --> 01:19:38,039
the you know, the de rascimization di ration. Yeah, that's

1140
01:19:38,039 --> 01:19:41,039
a hard word to say, but essentially the the you know,

1141
01:19:41,159 --> 01:19:44,239
kind of becoming just a non entity, you know, someone

1142
01:19:44,279 --> 01:19:46,800
who is non religious, you're not really interested in the

1143
01:19:46,840 --> 01:19:48,720
great discussion, just kind of fades into kind of a

1144
01:19:48,760 --> 01:19:52,279
background consumer. Obviously that's negative, but that's not particularly what

1145
01:19:52,359 --> 01:19:55,960
we're discussing. But there are two things that are equivalently

1146
01:19:56,079 --> 01:20:00,199
bad but different in result. I think. So one there

1147
01:20:00,359 --> 01:20:02,720
is kind of the full conversion, you know, I have

1148
01:20:03,079 --> 01:20:07,520
fully left Christianity and now I am a you know, materialist, atheist,

1149
01:20:07,640 --> 01:20:10,920
social justice warrior, you know. And then that said, obviously

1150
01:20:10,960 --> 01:20:14,079
that's a negative result. But the other one, and maybe

1151
01:20:14,600 --> 01:20:17,199
at least in my mind, this might be a newer phenomenon.

1152
01:20:17,560 --> 01:20:20,199
It corrects me if I'm wrong, but it's this odd

1153
01:20:21,119 --> 01:20:24,439
blending kind of creating this new syncratic religion of you know,

1154
01:20:24,479 --> 01:20:28,720
all the trappings of you know, American evangelicalism. You know,

1155
01:20:28,800 --> 01:20:30,880
we meet in a big aluminum building. You know, we

1156
01:20:31,000 --> 01:20:34,119
listen to praising worship music. You know, the language of

1157
01:20:34,319 --> 01:20:36,560
that culture, you know, which you've grown up about it,

1158
01:20:36,640 --> 01:20:38,079
you know, you know the words, you know, you know

1159
01:20:38,159 --> 01:20:42,720
the lingo, but mixed with social justice talking points. So

1160
01:20:43,760 --> 01:20:45,560
for instance, right and and I know many of these

1161
01:20:45,560 --> 01:20:48,399
people because I you know, I live near a large

1162
01:20:48,439 --> 01:20:53,039
evangelical university, and the people that I'm close with are

1163
01:20:53,119 --> 01:20:56,079
kind of what would be in another context like art kids.

1164
01:20:56,680 --> 01:20:58,920
You know, people who you know are very you know

1165
01:20:59,079 --> 01:21:02,039
interested in the you know, the newest music, the newest fashion,

1166
01:21:02,520 --> 01:21:05,560
you know, dressing well, being creative, and obviously that comes

1167
01:21:05,640 --> 01:21:08,720
with a certain you know, set of social belieds. And well,

1168
01:21:08,840 --> 01:21:12,920
certainly some of them have fully rejected Christianity. There's another,

1169
01:21:13,319 --> 01:21:17,000
I guess significant section of them that is essentially just

1170
01:21:17,079 --> 01:21:19,199
mixed it fifty to fifty. You know. So I had

1171
01:21:19,239 --> 01:21:21,600
a conversation in a bachelor party with a guy who admittedly,

1172
01:21:21,720 --> 01:21:24,079
like I like quite a bit, but he basically told

1173
01:21:24,159 --> 01:21:27,079
me he was a out and out universalist. You know,

1174
01:21:27,199 --> 01:21:30,439
he believed that, you know, anyone could achieve salvation as

1175
01:21:30,479 --> 01:21:33,000
long as they were you know, a good enough person.

1176
01:21:33,439 --> 01:21:36,079
And obviously that's not a new idea, but this idea

1177
01:21:36,159 --> 01:21:38,640
that you know, that kind of like the greatest evil

1178
01:21:39,239 --> 01:21:40,960
as a you know, as a Christian, as a religious

1179
01:21:41,000 --> 01:21:44,520
person is to be you mean, or racist or inconsiderate

1180
01:21:44,560 --> 01:21:47,079
in any way. And that the real kind of mission

1181
01:21:47,119 --> 01:21:49,880
of the church, which is again not a particularly new idea.

1182
01:21:50,720 --> 01:21:53,880
In other forms is to kind of champion social causes,

1183
01:21:55,159 --> 01:21:58,039
but all still cashed in the you know, the cultural

1184
01:21:58,159 --> 01:22:02,119
imagery of like the Negachurch, which is just an odd

1185
01:22:02,319 --> 01:22:04,159
mix for me and so well. I do think that

1186
01:22:04,239 --> 01:22:06,560
each of these are problems, they are subtly different ones.

1187
01:22:08,239 --> 01:22:11,600
Speaker 5: Yes, I agree, you know, I really do have much

1188
01:22:11,720 --> 01:22:20,239
more respect for the the student, the college graduate, whoever

1189
01:22:20,359 --> 01:22:26,640
he is, who openly embraces communism, who reads his marks

1190
01:22:27,319 --> 01:22:31,359
and says this is the message, finally, this is the

1191
01:22:31,479 --> 01:22:36,880
doctrine that will save the world, and advocates for revolution

1192
01:22:38,159 --> 01:22:41,039
and says, yes, we must suffer and buy the suffering.

1193
01:22:41,119 --> 01:22:45,239
We shall purge away the evil that afflicts our society,

1194
01:22:45,359 --> 01:22:50,039
and this sacrifice is worth it. Right, That's a manly doctrine.

1195
01:22:51,439 --> 01:22:56,560
It's wrong, it's murderous, right, but at least it's manly.

1196
01:22:58,239 --> 01:23:04,800
And I feel I feel contempt ultimately for the soft

1197
01:23:05,159 --> 01:23:09,239
bourgeois who just wants to be respectable, who thinks that

1198
01:23:10,119 --> 01:23:16,760
being mean is the worst thing. These people deserve to

1199
01:23:16,920 --> 01:23:20,680
have their houses burned by angry mobs with no policeman

1200
01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:26,079
to save them. They really do, and it's and it's insufferable.

1201
01:23:26,600 --> 01:23:32,760
I'm I'm sick of the softness that corrupts religion. It

1202
01:23:32,920 --> 01:23:34,680
really is very contemptible.

1203
01:23:37,079 --> 01:23:39,079
Speaker 6: Well, and I think the other thing is there's a

1204
01:23:39,119 --> 01:23:46,239
part of it that is incredibly incredibly feminized. Say what

1205
01:23:46,279 --> 01:23:48,439
you will about Cromwell, you know, like he might have

1206
01:23:48,479 --> 01:23:51,399
been a monster, but he was by no means feminine.

1207
01:23:51,720 --> 01:23:53,760
You know, he was incredibly masculine figure. You know, say

1208
01:23:53,800 --> 01:23:55,920
what you will about Calvin, he wasn't exactly a coward,

1209
01:23:56,640 --> 01:24:00,279
that's right. Aside all theological differences which I am, you know,

1210
01:24:00,359 --> 01:24:04,079
neither trained nor inclined to get into, but there's this thing,

1211
01:24:04,439 --> 01:24:11,119
and it's this inversion where they impose female social dynamics

1212
01:24:11,239 --> 01:24:15,560
into male spaces. So so I remember, you know, there's

1213
01:24:15,640 --> 01:24:21,000
this this kind of obsession with crying, you know, so

1214
01:24:21,319 --> 01:24:24,479
you saw this very early in the political context with

1215
01:24:24,600 --> 01:24:27,640
figures like Bill Clinton, right, like Bill Clinton could cry

1216
01:24:27,680 --> 01:24:30,640
on command, you know, crocodile tears? Did he kind of?

1217
01:24:30,920 --> 01:24:34,239
Oh yeah, it was. I know this so cited because

1218
01:24:34,239 --> 01:24:36,880
I've been listening to hours and hours of Bowden lectures

1219
01:24:36,880 --> 01:24:40,119
while working my dead end factory job, which I guess

1220
01:24:40,119 --> 01:24:42,359
is the productive use of my time. But so that's

1221
01:24:42,399 --> 01:24:45,000
obviously in a political context, but in a specific like

1222
01:24:45,079 --> 01:24:47,720
social context. I meet you know, guys who are young,

1223
01:24:47,760 --> 01:24:50,840
and they're kind of you know, mid to early twenties.

1224
01:24:51,720 --> 01:24:54,840
And there was even a thing where it's like people

1225
01:24:55,039 --> 01:24:59,119
people say phrases like, oh, like men don't cry or

1226
01:24:59,199 --> 01:25:01,560
you should just cry, you know, saying that men don't cry, Well,

1227
01:25:01,560 --> 01:25:05,279
that's toxic. You know, that's that's repressive. And this idea

1228
01:25:05,399 --> 01:25:07,319
that kind of like, well, as a man, what you

1229
01:25:07,399 --> 01:25:12,840
should do is kind of ate these female social dynamics.

1230
01:25:13,239 --> 01:25:16,199
You know, that's very you know, emotional, very relational. It's

1231
01:25:16,279 --> 01:25:18,600
very much kind of like touch and feely, and it's

1232
01:25:18,760 --> 01:25:21,560
incredibly alienating if you've never interact with it. It's very

1233
01:25:21,680 --> 01:25:24,640
very odd. And so my point is to not to

1234
01:25:24,800 --> 01:25:27,359
just you know, endlessly complain about people. I know, is

1235
01:25:27,439 --> 01:25:29,960
that I fully agree with you that there is something

1236
01:25:30,039 --> 01:25:35,680
kind of defiant and honest about saying, well, you know what, like,

1237
01:25:36,439 --> 01:25:39,880
screw you, dad, I'm a communist now I've read Marx,

1238
01:25:40,199 --> 01:25:42,000
you know whatever, you think, I'm the opposite of that.

1239
01:25:42,560 --> 01:25:45,840
But there's this weird kind of redirection of you know,

1240
01:25:45,920 --> 01:25:48,520
rebellion that I can't stand, which is like, well, screw you, dad,

1241
01:25:49,600 --> 01:25:52,760
And it very much. Is the it's like a gen

1242
01:25:53,000 --> 01:25:55,279
X version of rebellion, you know, where it's like, well,

1243
01:25:55,319 --> 01:25:57,960
you you were a sellout. You know, you didn't see

1244
01:25:58,000 --> 01:26:01,199
the true message of the gospel. The true message of

1245
01:26:01,239 --> 01:26:05,680
the gospel is well social justice, you know. And I

1246
01:26:05,720 --> 01:26:10,079
think part of it is just you know, basic rebellion.

1247
01:26:10,520 --> 01:26:12,079
And I think there's another part of it, which is

1248
01:26:12,119 --> 01:26:15,880
that and I want to read Dave's you know, threat

1249
01:26:15,920 --> 01:26:17,279
on this because it's quite good. Is part of it

1250
01:26:17,439 --> 01:26:19,880
is just that, you know, these people who are so

1251
01:26:20,039 --> 01:26:24,600
addicted to respectability. The reason they dislike their parents in

1252
01:26:24,680 --> 01:26:28,239
many cases is because their parents aren't respectable anymore. You know,

1253
01:26:28,319 --> 01:26:32,640
their parents are, if not in literal terms and kind

1254
01:26:32,640 --> 01:26:35,640
of you know, functional terms, are baby boomers. You know,

1255
01:26:35,680 --> 01:26:39,119
they're Republicans, and that's not cool, that's not respectable. And

1256
01:26:39,520 --> 01:26:44,640
so they have this deep, I guess religious yearning. You know,

1257
01:26:44,680 --> 01:26:47,359
they were raised in these conservative religious communities, and so

1258
01:26:47,479 --> 01:26:49,560
it's like, on one hand, I feel sympathy for that,

1259
01:26:50,199 --> 01:26:53,039
but they're so desperate to be kind of liked by

1260
01:26:53,079 --> 01:26:55,880
the broader culture that they're willing to sacrifice all of it,

1261
01:26:56,000 --> 01:26:59,439
but the trappings, in order to retain that respectability.

1262
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:06,520
Speaker 5: Absolutely, there is a real ritual of submission to power

1263
01:27:07,399 --> 01:27:11,760
that's involved with all of this. I saw a friend

1264
01:27:11,800 --> 01:27:15,600
of mine this evening and he saw a toy in

1265
01:27:15,720 --> 01:27:19,560
my house that happened to have the blue and yellow

1266
01:27:19,960 --> 01:27:23,600
that looked like the Ukrainian flag, And he said, oh,

1267
01:27:23,680 --> 01:27:26,640
that's Is this toy somehow connected? And I said no, no,

1268
01:27:27,039 --> 01:27:30,159
I would never want to be mistaken for a homosexual,

1269
01:27:30,199 --> 01:27:35,760
of course. And we talked about people signaling their support

1270
01:27:35,920 --> 01:27:41,039
for various social causes when it does not demonstrate any knowledge,

1271
01:27:41,920 --> 01:27:45,680
it does not demonstrate any kind of sacrifice, any real

1272
01:27:45,800 --> 01:27:49,399
form of commitment. You know, the virtue signaling that we

1273
01:27:49,560 --> 01:27:53,680
see in social media is the perfect example of that.

1274
01:27:53,960 --> 01:27:58,079
You know, you post an emoji or something that fits

1275
01:27:58,199 --> 01:28:01,520
with a certain occasion, you know, a symbol or something,

1276
01:28:02,279 --> 01:28:05,479
and that puts you on the side of what is fashionable.

1277
01:28:06,199 --> 01:28:09,439
And we see an incredible amount of posturing these days

1278
01:28:09,479 --> 01:28:13,680
that does not involve any real sacrifice, any real action,

1279
01:28:14,880 --> 01:28:18,920
and it is it is a passive posturing that earns

1280
01:28:19,279 --> 01:28:23,239
credibility or it I think I think it was Jarvin

1281
01:28:23,399 --> 01:28:27,520
that said people are signaling to show that they love power,

1282
01:28:27,640 --> 01:28:31,359
they worship power wherever the power lies. They are in

1283
01:28:31,399 --> 01:28:36,279
allegiance to it. And we certainly see a lot of

1284
01:28:36,359 --> 01:28:39,920
that when people mouth the slogans, even if it is

1285
01:28:40,800 --> 01:28:44,880
anesthetical to their Christian belief even if it is contrary

1286
01:28:44,960 --> 01:28:48,680
to what all Christians have professed up until now.

1287
01:28:50,319 --> 01:28:52,399
Speaker 6: And I think the thing and I want to read,

1288
01:28:52,640 --> 01:28:54,760
you know, Dave's comments on that, because it's a good

1289
01:28:54,800 --> 01:28:59,880
framing device. But there's something to me incredibly irritating. And

1290
01:29:00,119 --> 01:29:02,119
I have an episode coming out, it will probably come

1291
01:29:02,159 --> 01:29:04,640
out on Thanksgiving Day that I recorded just recently with

1292
01:29:05,039 --> 01:29:08,039
Raging Mandrel about this that one of my least favorite

1293
01:29:08,079 --> 01:29:12,439
things about progressives and progressive Christians have adopted this. It

1294
01:29:12,600 --> 01:29:16,960
is this eternal need to see yourself as being out

1295
01:29:17,000 --> 01:29:21,199
of power, as being downtrodden, as being rebellious. And you

1296
01:29:21,239 --> 01:29:23,439
see this in media very clearly, like the fact that

1297
01:29:24,159 --> 01:29:27,680
you know, you know Ukrainian Flag, you know libs, you

1298
01:29:27,720 --> 01:29:30,199
know the people you know essentially you know, the odd

1299
01:29:30,239 --> 01:29:34,199
amalgamation of you know, social issues and neocons that essentially

1300
01:29:34,319 --> 01:29:37,840
control the entire apparatus of the most powerful empire in

1301
01:29:37,840 --> 01:29:40,479
the world. You know, are obsessed with these symbols of

1302
01:29:40,560 --> 01:29:44,159
themselves as the rebellion, as the resistance as the underground

1303
01:29:44,399 --> 01:29:46,840
and despite the fact that by any objective measures they want.

1304
01:29:47,720 --> 01:29:51,920
And you see this in kind of like progressive Christianity.

1305
01:29:52,279 --> 01:29:54,399
So there's this book and this woman and I can't

1306
01:29:54,399 --> 01:29:57,119
remember her name, but I despise her. It's called Jesus

1307
01:29:57,199 --> 01:30:00,279
and John Wayne, and it's this idea that well, and

1308
01:30:00,319 --> 01:30:02,840
it's a very Protestant idea in a negative sense. We're

1309
01:30:02,920 --> 01:30:06,840
this idea that well, the Jesus of the original Christians,

1310
01:30:06,880 --> 01:30:09,399
well it was always the kind of like touchy feely,

1311
01:30:09,960 --> 01:30:12,159
you know, feminized Jesus, the one that you see in

1312
01:30:12,199 --> 01:30:14,319
the third part of Canticle for Leebo Whits, you know,

1313
01:30:14,399 --> 01:30:19,560
the kind of like horrifyingly you know, ef feminine, you know,

1314
01:30:19,760 --> 01:30:22,079
corporate Jesus. You know that, the one that in the

1315
01:30:22,119 --> 01:30:26,039
book at least is you know, placed over the eugenics camp. Well,

1316
01:30:26,159 --> 01:30:28,520
well that's the real one. And really what happened is

1317
01:30:29,000 --> 01:30:31,760
the original sin of America, you know, the original sin

1318
01:30:31,840 --> 01:30:36,319
of kind of like white you know, founding stock Americans. Well,

1319
01:30:36,319 --> 01:30:38,720
they were just mean people, you know, and they decided

1320
01:30:38,720 --> 01:30:41,880
that well, well, Jesus was a cowboy, you know, Jesus

1321
01:30:42,079 --> 01:30:46,399
liked guns and Republicans and before that everything was fine,

1322
01:30:46,439 --> 01:30:49,640
and really, if we just if we just de republicanized

1323
01:30:49,800 --> 01:30:53,439
Jesus will be fine. You know, we could keep our

1324
01:30:53,520 --> 01:30:56,119
religion in our social justice too. And to me that

1325
01:30:56,359 --> 01:30:58,880
that just drives me up the wall because it's such

1326
01:30:58,920 --> 01:31:02,079
an obvious mystery of history. So I want to read

1327
01:31:02,159 --> 01:31:04,279
Dave's thread because he does a good job of kind of,

1328
01:31:04,840 --> 01:31:09,000
you know, countering my less productive inclinations in this thread.

1329
01:31:09,000 --> 01:31:11,319
And I realized it's difficult to translate, you know, a

1330
01:31:11,359 --> 01:31:13,760
Twitter thread into you know, the spoken word, but I'll

1331
01:31:13,760 --> 01:31:16,840
give it my best bet. And so for reference again,

1332
01:31:17,119 --> 01:31:20,720
this is me responding to a progressive evangelical, you know,

1333
01:31:20,880 --> 01:31:25,199
hyping his upcoming documentary about how the idea that Christians

1334
01:31:25,279 --> 01:31:28,960
didn't agree or didn't or the idea that Christians condemn

1335
01:31:29,000 --> 01:31:31,920
homosexuality is an innovation, something that happened in the year

1336
01:31:32,239 --> 01:31:36,079
nineteen forty six, hence the name nineteen forty six. So

1337
01:31:36,159 --> 01:31:38,560
he replies to me, I am less interested in the

1338
01:31:38,640 --> 01:31:41,119
BS arguments here. They don't even hold up when this

1339
01:31:41,199 --> 01:31:44,279
guy argues it gets internet anons. I am more interested

1340
01:31:44,319 --> 01:31:47,600
in where people like this come from. My impressions is

1341
01:31:47,680 --> 01:31:52,079
that they are one former red state evangelicals with rascinated,

1342
01:31:52,399 --> 01:31:57,199
winsome Christianity. Two went to university when it was still

1343
01:31:57,279 --> 01:32:01,000
minimally capable of making an argument, got bts vote, or

1344
01:32:01,079 --> 01:32:03,600
three spent the rest of their life trying to derive

1345
01:32:03,720 --> 01:32:08,479
some syncratic heresy with progressivism. So I think those are three,

1346
01:32:09,159 --> 01:32:13,359
you know, I guess particularly you know, like accurate diagnoses.

1347
01:32:13,640 --> 01:32:16,399
So if you could kind of describe, you know, your

1348
01:32:16,720 --> 01:32:19,199
experience in Christian private schools and kind of like where

1349
01:32:19,319 --> 01:32:23,159
you saw people get kind of sucked into, you know,

1350
01:32:23,279 --> 01:32:24,119
this belief system.

1351
01:32:25,520 --> 01:32:32,600
Speaker 5: Indeed, I came out of a kind of traditionalist Southern

1352
01:32:32,720 --> 01:32:38,640
Baptist upbringing where our most formative church, the church that

1353
01:32:38,800 --> 01:32:42,399
we most fit in with, was a very hymn centered

1354
01:32:42,680 --> 01:32:46,680
Baptist church. So we we sang lots of hymns there

1355
01:32:46,720 --> 01:32:51,720
were there were very good musicians, and we we knew

1356
01:32:51,760 --> 01:32:54,680
all the old songs and we would sing them corporately.

1357
01:32:55,000 --> 01:32:58,039
It was it was still this, uh, this wonderful hold

1358
01:32:58,119 --> 01:33:01,359
over of an older kind of civilization where people knew

1359
01:33:01,359 --> 01:33:04,479
how to sing and we had that in place of creeds.

1360
01:33:05,600 --> 01:33:09,000
But it had one of the one of the upsides

1361
01:33:09,039 --> 01:33:13,840
of that Baptists not traditionally saying things like the Nicene

1362
01:33:13,880 --> 01:33:17,640
Creed or the Apostles Creed. And it's possible Baptists have

1363
01:33:17,840 --> 01:33:22,359
some catechism somewhere, but it's not something certainly not well

1364
01:33:22,439 --> 01:33:26,520
known from my circles where I came from. The hymns

1365
01:33:26,680 --> 01:33:30,560
gave us our statement of faith. The hymns gave us

1366
01:33:30,600 --> 01:33:39,520
our doctrines. I went to a Baptist college, and I'd

1367
01:33:39,560 --> 01:33:42,319
already gathered by this point in my life that I

1368
01:33:42,439 --> 01:33:47,560
came from a very very special hold over of an

1369
01:33:47,800 --> 01:33:54,239
older kind of expression of Baptist faith and worship. But

1370
01:33:54,439 --> 01:33:58,760
at the college, they wanted things to be upbeat, they

1371
01:33:58,840 --> 01:34:03,880
wanted things to be moized, and so there were no hymns.

1372
01:34:04,560 --> 01:34:08,600
It was all the praise and worship music. So this

1373
01:34:09,079 --> 01:34:14,319
corresponds with what you were talking about, the winsome Christianity,

1374
01:34:15,640 --> 01:34:19,680
the Christianity that's actually designed to appeal primarily to those

1375
01:34:19,720 --> 01:34:25,159
who are not Christians. So it's a special kind of

1376
01:34:25,560 --> 01:34:32,239
window dressing, if you will. It doesn't even cultivate the insiders.

1377
01:34:32,319 --> 01:34:37,279
It does not even cultivate and reassure and strengthen those

1378
01:34:37,279 --> 01:34:42,439
who are already initiated. It's designed to look like a

1379
01:34:42,560 --> 01:34:47,520
rock concert, look like it's people having fun to those

1380
01:34:47,560 --> 01:34:50,720
who have no idea what's going on. So the praise

1381
01:34:50,760 --> 01:34:57,399
and worship music is like bad nineties rock or I

1382
01:34:57,439 --> 01:35:00,119
don't know, would it be bad two thousands rock? I

1383
01:35:00,199 --> 01:35:00,520
don't know.

1384
01:35:00,720 --> 01:35:03,479
Speaker 6: Well to quote my favorite ever, you know, King of

1385
01:35:03,520 --> 01:35:05,800
the Hill quote, you know, you didn't make rock and

1386
01:35:05,960 --> 01:35:09,359
roll better, or you didn't make Christianity cooler, you made

1387
01:35:09,439 --> 01:35:11,960
rock and roll warse Yes, you know, And that's very

1388
01:35:12,039 --> 01:35:14,000
much what it is, you know. And I like that

1389
01:35:14,079 --> 01:35:16,720
show because it in addition to just being amusing, you know,

1390
01:35:16,760 --> 01:35:18,319
there's a lot of kind of deep insights in it.

1391
01:35:19,119 --> 01:35:24,439
And there's this this term from I want to say,

1392
01:35:24,479 --> 01:35:26,439
it's it's not.

1393
01:35:26,600 --> 01:35:29,359
Speaker 12: Just that the next storm could destroy everything a Wamahoo

1394
01:35:29,479 --> 01:35:32,479
and her family have built. It's not just that she

1395
01:35:32,600 --> 01:35:36,000
supports three generations of her family on sixty cent a day.

1396
01:35:36,680 --> 01:35:40,079
In Rwanda, poverty and climate change hit women and children

1397
01:35:40,159 --> 01:35:44,159
the hardest. And it's not just please support the Trokra

1398
01:35:44,239 --> 01:35:46,920
box appeal this lent because it's not just a box,

1399
01:35:47,640 --> 01:35:51,239
it's a lifeline. Visit Trokri dot org or call eighteen

1400
01:35:51,319 --> 01:35:54,760
hundred four weight four weight Trokra Together.

1401
01:35:54,560 --> 01:35:59,039
Speaker 6: For a just world. I want to say it's Neil Postman,

1402
01:35:59,520 --> 01:36:01,279
but I might be you're wrong on that who He

1403
01:36:01,359 --> 01:36:04,720
basically describes the false trap of relevance. You know, this

1404
01:36:04,880 --> 01:36:08,680
idea that well, if you just appeal to people, you know,

1405
01:36:08,720 --> 01:36:10,760
you'll win them over, you know, you'll get the fifty

1406
01:36:10,800 --> 01:36:15,760
plus one magical percent and everything will be fine. And

1407
01:36:15,880 --> 01:36:20,840
obviously look like there is a if you come to

1408
01:36:20,920 --> 01:36:23,199
the average person, you know, with this kind of like

1409
01:36:23,359 --> 01:36:26,640
Ivory Tower, incredibly in depth theology just off to that.

1410
01:36:27,840 --> 01:36:30,199
You know, people and I include myself in this number,

1411
01:36:30,279 --> 01:36:32,720
will look at you and basically ask you, well, one,

1412
01:36:32,800 --> 01:36:34,279
what does that mean? And too why do I care?

1413
01:36:34,399 --> 01:36:36,399
So I'm not saying that we you know, essentially front

1414
01:36:36,439 --> 01:36:39,520
load you know, the most complicated pieces of doctrine. But

1415
01:36:39,640 --> 01:36:42,079
on the other end, it's like, well, and this is

1416
01:36:42,239 --> 01:36:44,199
very much what you see with this, you know, kind

1417
01:36:44,239 --> 01:36:47,359
of desperate move to integrate you know, progressive talking points

1418
01:36:47,399 --> 01:36:51,880
into Christianity. It's like, well, if you're trying to be progressive, like,

1419
01:36:51,960 --> 01:36:53,680
why don't I just go with the people who are

1420
01:36:53,720 --> 01:36:55,640
really progressive? You know, why don't I go with the

1421
01:36:55,720 --> 01:36:57,760
uncut stuff? You know? Why do I have to like

1422
01:36:57,880 --> 01:36:59,640
kind of faugh around with all the other stuff you've

1423
01:37:00,079 --> 01:37:04,039
kind of kept in the back. And look like if

1424
01:37:04,079 --> 01:37:07,319
this experiment worked, surely we would have seen it work,

1425
01:37:08,039 --> 01:37:11,239
you know. But we've been doing this. I mean, I

1426
01:37:11,279 --> 01:37:12,960
don't know when you would say the earliest moment is,

1427
01:37:13,039 --> 01:37:14,960
but I mean everyone's been hit by this. You know

1428
01:37:15,000 --> 01:37:18,119
what the possible exception you know of the Orthodox and

1429
01:37:18,239 --> 01:37:21,720
I mean, if it's working, you'd be you'd be hard

1430
01:37:21,760 --> 01:37:23,760
pressed to convince me. But anyway, carry on.

1431
01:37:25,520 --> 01:37:27,920
Speaker 5: Well, I think that there there was some kind of

1432
01:37:28,000 --> 01:37:34,399
connection with Protestant tradition in America, and in particular the

1433
01:37:34,600 --> 01:37:43,359
Revivalist tradition. A second grade awakening evangelist. I believe he

1434
01:37:43,479 --> 01:37:48,399
was Presbyterian. Charles Spurgeon was Spurgeon Presbyteria.

1435
01:37:49,399 --> 01:37:51,239
Speaker 6: I'm not sure on that. I can look it up

1436
01:37:51,239 --> 01:37:52,800
in a minute, but I don't know if it topped

1437
01:37:52,800 --> 01:37:54,119
my head. Well, he was.

1438
01:37:54,319 --> 01:37:58,079
Speaker 5: He was deeply involved with the founding of Uberlin College

1439
01:37:58,319 --> 01:38:01,479
in Ohio. Yeah, and that's been the center of all

1440
01:38:01,640 --> 01:38:06,199
kinds of progressive weirdness for a long time. But Charles

1441
01:38:06,239 --> 01:38:08,119
Spurgeon was a Revivalist preacher.

1442
01:38:08,680 --> 01:38:10,520
Speaker 6: I should say it just as a note before you

1443
01:38:10,520 --> 01:38:10,880
get along.

1444
01:38:10,920 --> 01:38:11,119
Speaker 1: He was.

1445
01:38:11,720 --> 01:38:14,560
Speaker 6: He was a particularist Baptist, which I don't know that way,

1446
01:38:15,199 --> 01:38:15,800
just to say.

1447
01:38:17,119 --> 01:38:20,279
Speaker 5: Well, how about that. Okay, I'm going to note that

1448
01:38:20,359 --> 01:38:24,840
away because I wasn't sure of that. Charles Spurgeon preached

1449
01:38:25,399 --> 01:38:29,439
revival meetings and traveled the country as as a big

1450
01:38:29,640 --> 01:38:33,279
tent evangelist. You know, he would have he would have

1451
01:38:33,399 --> 01:38:38,239
temporary moving buildings and he'd preach sermons and everyone come

1452
01:38:38,279 --> 01:38:42,399
out and hear Charles Spurgeon. And Spurgeon openly advocated for

1453
01:38:43,600 --> 01:38:51,800
emotional manipulation to increase commitments to convert at the ends

1454
01:38:52,000 --> 01:38:59,439
of his meetings because he said what ultimately mattered was

1455
01:39:00,279 --> 01:39:07,359
a emotional romantic commitment at the end of an experience

1456
01:39:07,680 --> 01:39:11,760
at a revival meeting, and it was not the life

1457
01:39:11,920 --> 01:39:15,520
that would follow it. So you wanted to get people

1458
01:39:15,560 --> 01:39:17,840
to commit, you wanted to baptize them, and then of

1459
01:39:17,920 --> 01:39:21,399
course the revival meeting would move on. Now he has

1460
01:39:21,479 --> 01:39:25,359
a lot of other ideas too, but what really struck

1461
01:39:25,479 --> 01:39:29,960
me about his thought was he said, emotionally manipulating people

1462
01:39:30,479 --> 01:39:34,800
in the heat of the moment was worthwhile because that

1463
01:39:35,399 --> 01:39:39,560
decision that you can ring out of them at that

1464
01:39:39,800 --> 01:39:44,199
moment of crisis is what ultimately matters. Not what they

1465
01:39:44,279 --> 01:39:47,800
do with their life from that point on. And so

1466
01:39:48,319 --> 01:39:52,600
he ushered in a number of traditions that I certainly

1467
01:39:52,720 --> 01:39:57,640
saw as a Baptist, and I was not his particular

1468
01:39:58,000 --> 01:40:03,600
variety of Baptists, but I saw it plenty in the

1469
01:40:03,680 --> 01:40:08,159
Baptist setting, where there would be a very emotional appeal

1470
01:40:08,359 --> 01:40:13,079
at the end of a service. Some some pastors try

1471
01:40:13,079 --> 01:40:15,279
to make it a point to do it at the

1472
01:40:15,479 --> 01:40:18,920
end of every single sermon that they preached. They would

1473
01:40:18,960 --> 01:40:23,159
make an emotional appeal and call for people to come

1474
01:40:23,279 --> 01:40:27,399
down to the altar and to commit themselves to Christ

1475
01:40:27,520 --> 01:40:31,560
or recommit themselves to Christ. And they would call these

1476
01:40:31,680 --> 01:40:37,640
things conversions and report them and you know, give anecdotes

1477
01:40:37,680 --> 01:40:42,279
about them. It was it was like a major career

1478
01:40:42,359 --> 01:40:45,720
achievement for them to have these things, and they were

1479
01:40:45,920 --> 01:40:50,279
they were promoted. So as as a result of that,

1480
01:40:50,680 --> 01:40:58,720
I I believe that the worship services themselves got debased,

1481
01:40:59,800 --> 01:41:06,119
and they invested more and more in emotional appeals and

1482
01:41:06,520 --> 01:41:12,520
less and less in enduring substance. So this is something

1483
01:41:12,600 --> 01:41:17,439
that I've noticed with my Protestant students for many years now,

1484
01:41:18,119 --> 01:41:20,520
and this is something you may you may also remember

1485
01:41:21,520 --> 01:41:25,720
in my literature class when I would teach Dante, I

1486
01:41:26,159 --> 01:41:30,439
would always emphasize that Christians believe in the resurrection of

1487
01:41:30,479 --> 01:41:35,600
the dead. We believe that after death are our bodies

1488
01:41:35,640 --> 01:41:39,359
are resurrected by God and we will be in our

1489
01:41:39,479 --> 01:41:42,119
flesh and blood once again. We will be raised from

1490
01:41:42,159 --> 01:41:45,920
the dead, just like Jesus was. And it never fails.

1491
01:41:46,039 --> 01:41:52,600
Every single year when I teach my h my students

1492
01:41:52,680 --> 01:41:56,840
in high school, I find a bunch of Protestant students

1493
01:41:57,239 --> 01:42:02,119
that are floored by that message because they have never

1494
01:42:02,199 --> 01:42:06,640
heard it before. I have a lot of Presidant students.

1495
01:42:07,439 --> 01:42:12,840
I have students invariably every single year when I teach

1496
01:42:12,960 --> 01:42:19,000
that lesson, they will be struck by it as something novel.

1497
01:42:20,359 --> 01:42:23,640
They aren't sure that Christians actually believe that. They will

1498
01:42:23,760 --> 01:42:28,920
argue with me. But it never fails every single year.

1499
01:42:29,920 --> 01:42:34,600
And there's something very shallow about what's going on in

1500
01:42:34,760 --> 01:42:37,840
those churches. So certainly part of the problem is the

1501
01:42:37,920 --> 01:42:42,479
worship's style, which is fundamentally an unseerious thing. To go

1502
01:42:42,720 --> 01:42:47,960
to church and to sing these what we called them,

1503
01:42:48,279 --> 01:42:56,039
happy clappy songs. I went to school chapel three mornings

1504
01:42:56,079 --> 01:43:00,880
a week for at least two years. Was I doing

1505
01:43:00,920 --> 01:43:04,039
it for three years. I forget, but I sang the

1506
01:43:04,079 --> 01:43:08,199
praise and worship service, or I at least heard those

1507
01:43:08,319 --> 01:43:13,000
songs for two years, three days a week during the

1508
01:43:13,039 --> 01:43:17,880
school year. And eventually I started taking tallies of how

1509
01:43:18,039 --> 01:43:21,600
many songs we sang and how many times we sang them,

1510
01:43:22,960 --> 01:43:26,039
and I had a list in my pocket, and I

1511
01:43:26,039 --> 01:43:28,840
would keep tallly marks on that list. And I found

1512
01:43:28,880 --> 01:43:32,319
out that we were singing from a list of fifteen

1513
01:43:32,439 --> 01:43:39,640
songs three days a week. My list was only fifteen

1514
01:43:39,720 --> 01:43:42,520
songs long. And then I started talllying them out, and

1515
01:43:42,560 --> 01:43:45,800
we would sing the same song, you know, fifteen times.

1516
01:43:46,560 --> 01:43:51,640
And these were very shallow songs like Jesus, I love you,

1517
01:43:51,840 --> 01:43:53,600
I love you, I love you, Jesus, I love you

1518
01:43:54,680 --> 01:43:56,359
all the time, all the time.

1519
01:43:56,439 --> 01:43:56,800
Speaker 6: I love you.

1520
01:43:58,199 --> 01:44:02,720
Speaker 5: Right, there's just no context. I mean as a as

1521
01:44:02,880 --> 01:44:10,640
a exclamation of commitment and piety. That works, right, that's

1522
01:44:10,680 --> 01:44:13,840
a prayer that's fit for my five year old daughter.

1523
01:44:14,680 --> 01:44:15,359
Speaker 6: She praised that.

1524
01:44:17,119 --> 01:44:20,359
Speaker 5: But that's not the prayer fit for a mind. Right,

1525
01:44:20,640 --> 01:44:28,560
that's not maturity, that's not sobriety. So unfortunately we have

1526
01:44:28,800 --> 01:44:32,520
we have an awful lot of people. For all I know,

1527
01:44:32,640 --> 01:44:36,000
it's it's coming from from Catholic backgrounds as well. I know,

1528
01:44:36,159 --> 01:44:40,520
I know there's kind of praise music that's that's current

1529
01:44:40,680 --> 01:44:46,399
with Catholic churches. But there there are an awful lot

1530
01:44:46,439 --> 01:44:49,079
of people in American Christianity I who do not have

1531
01:44:49,279 --> 01:44:51,880
depth in their faith. They are not informed about what

1532
01:44:52,079 --> 01:44:56,960
Christians actually believe about things. And when they go to college,

1533
01:44:57,039 --> 01:45:01,479
even when they go to Christian college, they encounter depth

1534
01:45:02,079 --> 01:45:08,239
in their subject matter that may trump everything they've ever

1535
01:45:08,359 --> 01:45:12,960
heard in church before. I mean, you mentioned your you're

1536
01:45:13,000 --> 01:45:18,560
a sophisticated coffee shop set. The creative people, the writers,

1537
01:45:18,640 --> 01:45:23,640
the artistic people, and they go into leftism, or they

1538
01:45:24,239 --> 01:45:27,560
grab leftist stuff and they bring it into a Christian context.

1539
01:45:30,359 --> 01:45:30,760
Speaker 6: I I.

1540
01:45:32,720 --> 01:45:38,800
Speaker 5: Must admit a real sympathy with them in that they

1541
01:45:39,399 --> 01:45:44,800
have found something that's some it's something that calls for

1542
01:45:44,880 --> 01:45:51,279
some kind of sacrifice. Maybe right the ideological ones, okay,

1543
01:45:51,960 --> 01:45:54,880
I have I have a genuine sympathy for the neopagans.

1544
01:45:57,119 --> 01:46:05,600
Neopagans that grow up in the debased, you know, unimaginative, uh,

1545
01:46:06,159 --> 01:46:11,000
happy clappy worship service, and then they find the Greek

1546
01:46:11,079 --> 01:46:18,479
tragedies or they find the poetic eda. Right, they find

1547
01:46:19,079 --> 01:46:22,600
something that's transcendently beautiful for the first time in their lives.

1548
01:46:25,159 --> 01:46:27,760
I mean, something outside of the Bible. But they they

1549
01:46:28,119 --> 01:46:33,600
have to imagine those texts. Those texts don't don't sit,

1550
01:46:34,880 --> 01:46:40,640
you know, uh comfortably for the Christian reader. He has

1551
01:46:40,760 --> 01:46:43,640
to put imagination into what the chorus is doing in

1552
01:46:43,760 --> 01:46:48,520
the in the Greek tragedy, so he sees, you know, uh,

1553
01:46:49,039 --> 01:46:55,520
a vital paganism, oh a uh, A way of belief

1554
01:46:55,640 --> 01:47:00,319
that fights back against the world. That's what I see

1555
01:47:00,359 --> 01:47:05,920
what I read Sophocles genuinely. I mean I am an

1556
01:47:06,039 --> 01:47:09,960
I am an Orthodox Christian, but I have a genuine

1557
01:47:10,000 --> 01:47:12,479
respect for the neo Pagans because it's a it's a

1558
01:47:12,800 --> 01:47:19,880
real reaction against the decadence, the idiocy of our times.

1559
01:47:22,319 --> 01:47:25,920
Speaker 6: And and others. You know, what do they have? Do

1560
01:47:26,039 --> 01:47:27,159
they do? They have the.

1561
01:47:28,000 --> 01:47:29,640
Speaker 5: Sunday's School flannel graph?

1562
01:47:31,439 --> 01:47:31,560
Speaker 1: Right?

1563
01:47:31,720 --> 01:47:35,199
Speaker 5: Is that the extent of religious expression that they have

1564
01:47:35,560 --> 01:47:45,359
in their artistic tradition. It's impoverished, the whitewashed church.

1565
01:47:47,159 --> 01:47:48,399
Speaker 6: No, it's stripped away.

1566
01:47:48,600 --> 01:47:51,800
Speaker 5: Any Anyone that goes to Europe and sees the heritage

1567
01:47:52,920 --> 01:47:57,680
will feel alienated and ought to feel impoverished, ought to

1568
01:47:57,720 --> 01:48:02,039
feel that they've lost something They've lost something incredibly beautiful

1569
01:48:02,119 --> 01:48:04,560
and transcendent and valuable, and they ought to be reaching

1570
01:48:04,640 --> 01:48:05,079
out for it.

1571
01:48:05,720 --> 01:48:07,079
Speaker 6: And and where might they go.

1572
01:48:08,600 --> 01:48:10,439
Speaker 5: They might go to the art class, they might go

1573
01:48:10,520 --> 01:48:14,039
to the art department. Right, they might go into humanities,

1574
01:48:14,159 --> 01:48:20,840
which is overwhelmingly leftist, God help us. But there there,

1575
01:48:21,439 --> 01:48:24,479
there's there's still something alive in them, in that, in

1576
01:48:24,600 --> 01:48:30,560
that rebellion, that that I I still cherish in them.

1577
01:48:30,640 --> 01:48:32,880
I I wish that I could give them the real

1578
01:48:33,079 --> 01:48:40,000
thing instead of, you know, the the leftist resentment, which

1579
01:48:40,119 --> 01:48:43,039
is really all all that the left can offer. In

1580
01:48:43,159 --> 01:48:47,720
the humanities, it's just an overwhelming resentment. It's just a

1581
01:48:47,880 --> 01:48:52,479
deep or more profound kind of alienation. So they feel

1582
01:48:52,560 --> 01:48:58,479
melancholy and profound in that alienation, and they feel like

1583
01:48:58,600 --> 01:49:02,800
they've they've really grew abb something that's mature, They've really

1584
01:49:02,880 --> 01:49:08,359
grabbed something that's serious, and they're they're also mainstream now

1585
01:49:08,479 --> 01:49:13,760
now they're respectable. I think that American evangelicalism, I think

1586
01:49:13,800 --> 01:49:17,199
they really could raise their children in that environment. That

1587
01:49:17,439 --> 01:49:20,960
and by the way, what I'm referring to that's before

1588
01:49:21,159 --> 01:49:25,479
the praise music regimen, which is very new. Okay, it

1589
01:49:25,600 --> 01:49:29,479
wasn't so long ago. All Christian denominations had their hymn books.

1590
01:49:30,840 --> 01:49:33,479
Even the Unitarian Universalists.

1591
01:49:32,800 --> 01:49:33,680
Speaker 6: Have their ham books.

1592
01:49:33,880 --> 01:49:36,199
Speaker 5: They're hymn books. You know that they sang out of.

1593
01:49:38,960 --> 01:49:41,640
It's it's a new UH. It's a new phenomenon the

1594
01:49:41,880 --> 01:49:45,680
the UH praise and worship music, which which I think

1595
01:49:45,800 --> 01:49:48,439
is very important. I really do think that the UH

1596
01:49:49,159 --> 01:49:53,800
artistic aspect is extremely important, especially because it's so impoverished

1597
01:49:53,840 --> 01:49:59,800
and anti intellectual. But UH, those people they came out

1598
01:49:59,880 --> 01:50:02,960
of of something that really was lame in its expression,

1599
01:50:04,000 --> 01:50:06,439
if not in its actual content. I mean, if they

1600
01:50:06,520 --> 01:50:08,960
if they actually looked into what Baptists believe, they could

1601
01:50:09,000 --> 01:50:15,720
see that it was far more serious. But they came

1602
01:50:15,800 --> 01:50:22,000
to school and wanted to ally themselves with what was respectable.

1603
01:50:22,840 --> 01:50:26,279
There was a time when being a Baptist in America

1604
01:50:26,439 --> 01:50:29,840
is far more respectable than it is being a Baptist now.

1605
01:50:30,279 --> 01:50:36,960
Being a Baptist now is genuinely countercultural. You want a

1606
01:50:37,119 --> 01:50:46,159
real rebel, a college graduate who remains a Baptist. But

1607
01:50:46,319 --> 01:50:50,680
I'm telling you, there are very very few people that

1608
01:50:51,319 --> 01:51:00,920
can be so strong minded. It takes a real living

1609
01:51:01,199 --> 01:51:06,479
fish to go against the current of the time. And

1610
01:51:07,880 --> 01:51:11,680
that's a special elite anymore. It used to be easy.

1611
01:51:11,800 --> 01:51:13,600
It used to be that you could send your kids

1612
01:51:13,680 --> 01:51:15,760
to school. Used to be you could send your kids

1613
01:51:15,800 --> 01:51:17,479
to the Baptist school. Used to be you could send

1614
01:51:17,520 --> 01:51:19,399
your kids to the Baptist college and they would come

1615
01:51:19,399 --> 01:51:23,479
out the other side as Baptists. It didn't work for me,

1616
01:51:24,680 --> 01:51:28,479
and it didn't work for most of my classmates. I

1617
01:51:28,640 --> 01:51:33,319
lament that it ought to work. It's reasonable, but it doesn't.

1618
01:51:34,880 --> 01:51:36,560
Speaker 6: So there's something I want to get into, and that

1619
01:51:36,720 --> 01:51:38,920
was it was beautifully said. There was a lot in

1620
01:51:39,039 --> 01:51:45,319
there is that there's this kind of inherent pragmatism to

1621
01:51:46,399 --> 01:51:51,199
Americans in particular, and it's both a blessing and a curse.

1622
01:51:51,840 --> 01:51:54,640
You know. On one hand, it's incredibly useful obviously, you know,

1623
01:51:54,880 --> 01:51:57,880
being pragmatic is useful, you know, and any number of

1624
01:51:57,960 --> 01:52:01,119
like kind of you know, real world situation. But I

1625
01:52:01,199 --> 01:52:04,920
think that that kind of pragmatic Puritan tradition of like,

1626
01:52:04,960 --> 01:52:06,600
oh well, let's just strip it down to the things

1627
01:52:06,680 --> 01:52:08,880
that matter, you know, like we don't need all the extras,

1628
01:52:09,359 --> 01:52:11,279
you know, we'll just we'll take it to the core,

1629
01:52:11,399 --> 01:52:16,439
to the root of it. Absolutely has just demolished religious

1630
01:52:16,479 --> 01:52:19,760
worship because the problem with religious worship is that it's

1631
01:52:19,840 --> 01:52:24,359
not it's pre rational. You know, faith is pre rational.

1632
01:52:24,760 --> 01:52:27,840
You can't reason your right way into faith. And if

1633
01:52:27,880 --> 01:52:30,119
we're talking about you know, Protestants who really get this,

1634
01:52:30,239 --> 01:52:33,960
you've got care Caguard, like careker Guard understands this dramatically.

1635
01:52:34,560 --> 01:52:36,880
You know that the theology is kind of a limited

1636
01:52:37,199 --> 01:52:39,239
you know, in a certain context, is of limited use.

1637
01:52:40,239 --> 01:52:43,960
But nonetheless that everything in the kind of you know,

1638
01:52:44,039 --> 01:52:47,800
like a certain subset of American Protestantism is focused on

1639
01:52:49,560 --> 01:52:52,920
essentially min maxing, you know, so like cutting out everything

1640
01:52:53,000 --> 01:52:57,800
that isn't essential and maximizing for X variable. Well, we

1641
01:52:57,840 --> 01:53:00,239
want to get the most people in, you know, to

1642
01:53:00,279 --> 01:53:04,399
be the most X, the most y. And when it's left,

1643
01:53:04,920 --> 01:53:07,159
it's left. It's just incredibly like you said, it's like

1644
01:53:07,199 --> 01:53:09,199
weak cruel, you know, there's almost nothing left to it.

1645
01:53:10,319 --> 01:53:13,319
And I very much feel sympathy for the fact that,

1646
01:53:13,680 --> 01:53:15,159
you know, for a lot of people, they're kind of

1647
01:53:15,239 --> 01:53:21,119
brought up in this very like nebulous informal you know,

1648
01:53:21,199 --> 01:53:25,119
system of beliefs where everything is is kind of vague platitudes,

1649
01:53:25,560 --> 01:53:27,720
you know, like everything is just kind of vaguely expressed.

1650
01:53:27,760 --> 01:53:31,159
There's nothing explicitly stated, and then kind of the first

1651
01:53:31,239 --> 01:53:34,399
moment that they you know, they feel some resistance, you know,

1652
01:53:34,439 --> 01:53:37,560
the first time they get punched in the nose. Why

1653
01:53:37,560 --> 01:53:40,800
either it demolishes them, you know, it just completely you know,

1654
01:53:40,880 --> 01:53:42,720
knocks them back on their ass. And there's you know

1655
01:53:42,880 --> 01:53:46,760
again there's the different you know past we've outlined, or

1656
01:53:46,880 --> 01:53:49,960
there's this equally incorrect thing that we've seen. And this

1657
01:53:50,079 --> 01:53:52,960
is much this is less and less a you know,

1658
01:53:53,039 --> 01:53:55,000
a path, but was much more common in kind of

1659
01:53:55,000 --> 01:53:57,640
the era of the moral majority. But it's it's kind

1660
01:53:57,680 --> 01:54:00,960
of commitment to you know, closing your eyes and plugging

1661
01:54:01,000 --> 01:54:04,159
your ears. You know, it's like, no, it's not that's

1662
01:54:04,199 --> 01:54:07,520
not true. I don't believe it. You're like, you must

1663
01:54:07,600 --> 01:54:10,600
be X, you must be why you know this this

1664
01:54:10,880 --> 01:54:16,920
kind of just reflexive, you know, rejection of any of

1665
01:54:17,000 --> 01:54:20,560
any criticism. And the problem is, Okay, maybe that works

1666
01:54:20,600 --> 01:54:22,720
for one generation, you know, maybe that worked for the

1667
01:54:22,800 --> 01:54:25,560
Baby boomers, maybe that worked for Gen X, but it

1668
01:54:25,720 --> 01:54:28,760
doesn't work for your kids. You know, if you raise

1669
01:54:28,840 --> 01:54:30,399
your kids in that atmosphere, they.

1670
01:54:30,359 --> 01:54:34,439
Speaker 5: Will reminds me something of what you're saying there about.

1671
01:54:34,199 --> 01:54:39,560
Speaker 6: The ah bag Bay you dropped out for a little bit.

1672
01:54:41,279 --> 01:54:44,359
I should be back soon. He has buy you internet,

1673
01:54:44,479 --> 01:54:48,600
so occasionally it drops out. If I can vamp for

1674
01:54:48,600 --> 01:54:51,520
a little bit until he until he drops back in.

1675
01:54:54,039 --> 01:54:54,239
Speaker 4: To me.

1676
01:54:54,319 --> 01:54:58,239
Speaker 6: At least there's this there's this dynamic. And I used

1677
01:54:58,279 --> 01:55:01,479
an analogy when you were prepping for this show. Let

1678
01:55:01,560 --> 01:55:02,880
me know if you guys can hear me. By the way,

1679
01:55:02,880 --> 01:55:04,800
I just send something into chat so I know it's

1680
01:55:04,800 --> 01:55:10,720
not on my end where essentially, yeah, I should be good.

1681
01:55:11,720 --> 01:55:14,920
Where essentially it's if I can describe it, it's very

1682
01:55:15,000 --> 01:55:18,680
much like you know, medieval siege warfare, you know, where

1683
01:55:18,720 --> 01:55:23,640
you would instead of knocking down the walls, well maybe

1684
01:55:23,720 --> 01:55:26,640
you okay, good, Okay, I am good, So it's on

1685
01:55:26,720 --> 01:55:28,319
back these ends, all right? That makes me feel better.

1686
01:55:28,680 --> 01:55:30,960
So essentially what you would do is okay, I'll let

1687
01:55:31,039 --> 01:55:33,039
him back in when he pops, when he comes back up.

1688
01:55:33,720 --> 01:55:36,039
What what they would do or allegedly do is well,

1689
01:55:36,039 --> 01:55:37,800
there are two ways to take a castle in a siege.

1690
01:55:38,159 --> 01:55:39,840
Now you can either you can knock down the walls.

1691
01:55:40,319 --> 01:55:42,159
You know you can. You can throw fire bombs over

1692
01:55:42,199 --> 01:55:46,000
the walls and burn it out well, or you can

1693
01:55:46,039 --> 01:55:48,840
throw a dead cow over the walls. And fair enough,

1694
01:55:48,960 --> 01:55:51,680
when the dead cow hits the ground, it doesn't kill anyone,

1695
01:55:52,680 --> 01:55:54,840
but it starts to spread rot. And George, I'll let

1696
01:55:54,840 --> 01:55:56,000
you on a little bit. I just want to finish

1697
01:55:56,039 --> 01:55:59,760
this thought. But what it does is it spreads sickness,

1698
01:56:00,039 --> 01:56:03,119
bred disease, It spreads malaise, you know. And when there's

1699
01:56:03,479 --> 01:56:05,439
the people on the wall aren't paying attention, you know,

1700
01:56:05,479 --> 01:56:07,479
they're not cleaning up the mess. They're not making sure

1701
01:56:07,520 --> 01:56:11,000
that no one gets sick. These parents who had good

1702
01:56:11,079 --> 01:56:13,199
cultural instincts, you know, the instincts that wait a minute,

1703
01:56:13,199 --> 01:56:15,680
the elite, the people in control, they don't have our

1704
01:56:15,720 --> 01:56:20,600
best interest. Well, they reacted in a way that made sense.

1705
01:56:20,640 --> 01:56:22,000
They said, oh, I want to get away from that.

1706
01:56:22,239 --> 01:56:25,119
I don't want my kids interacting with it. And while

1707
01:56:25,159 --> 01:56:27,800
that's understandable, what it did is they their kids were

1708
01:56:27,840 --> 01:56:33,239
never prepared. So essentially they they let this rot, you know,

1709
01:56:33,520 --> 01:56:36,520
go behind their back lines. And so what we've seen

1710
01:56:36,680 --> 01:56:39,319
is obviously, whereas before a lot of times it didn't

1711
01:56:39,359 --> 01:56:41,680
hit till college, you know, it didn't hit till they

1712
01:56:41,760 --> 01:56:45,079
interaction with the real world, what now is happening, you know,

1713
01:56:45,199 --> 01:56:46,960
more and more over the kind of the era of

1714
01:56:47,000 --> 01:56:49,880
the Internet is the Internet has essentially allowed you know,

1715
01:56:49,960 --> 01:56:53,800
our enemies to seed their ideology behind enemy lines, so

1716
01:56:53,920 --> 01:56:58,439
to speak. And so this problem, you know, where these

1717
01:56:58,479 --> 01:57:02,479
people who are you know I have almost no firm beliefs,

1718
01:57:02,520 --> 01:57:06,039
They have almost no tradition to rely on. It's affecting

1719
01:57:06,079 --> 01:57:08,680
them at you know, a younger and younger age. You know,

1720
01:57:08,800 --> 01:57:11,840
sometimes even before you know, you as the teacher and

1721
01:57:11,880 --> 01:57:14,560
you as the parent can can get to them. And

1722
01:57:14,760 --> 01:57:16,439
so obviously, Dagbie, I want to let you get back

1723
01:57:16,439 --> 01:57:19,279
to what you were saying. But this problem is it's

1724
01:57:19,319 --> 01:57:23,159
getting worse in many ways. And obviously it affects the

1725
01:57:23,520 --> 01:57:26,520
you know, the mass market, you know, aluminum building, you know,

1726
01:57:26,680 --> 01:57:29,640
rock and roll, evangelicals, but it's also started to hit

1727
01:57:29,680 --> 01:57:32,039
the places you'd assume it wouldn't, you know. It's like

1728
01:57:32,119 --> 01:57:35,239
the Christian you know, classical movement. You know, these schools

1729
01:57:35,279 --> 01:57:36,880
where kids are taught, you know, they're kind of like

1730
01:57:36,920 --> 01:57:40,560
the rich Western tradition. You know. Okay, fair enough, you

1731
01:57:40,600 --> 01:57:42,720
have them in school for eight hours a day, but

1732
01:57:42,800 --> 01:57:45,039
if they're on TikTok for twelve hours, you know the

1733
01:57:45,079 --> 01:57:46,800
rest of the time. I realized the math doesn't add up,

1734
01:57:46,800 --> 01:57:48,319
but bear with me, you know, if they're on their

1735
01:57:48,359 --> 01:57:52,399
phone the entire time getting you know, essentially like like

1736
01:57:52,479 --> 01:57:55,159
the sissy hypno from TikTok or from you know, their

1737
01:57:55,239 --> 01:57:59,680
social media. It's it's debilitating. So anyway bagbe to get

1738
01:57:59,720 --> 01:58:00,359
back point.

1739
01:58:01,439 --> 01:58:06,079
Speaker 5: Indeed, sorry for the interruption. One of the problems is

1740
01:58:06,199 --> 01:58:10,079
that a lot of people go to go to high school,

1741
01:58:10,119 --> 01:58:12,279
they go to the private high school, the Christian high school,

1742
01:58:12,279 --> 01:58:19,279
their college, and they are unlettered. They are it's not

1743
01:58:19,640 --> 01:58:21,880
to say that they can't read, but they are not

1744
01:58:22,199 --> 01:58:28,680
literate in any meaningful sense. They are unread. And something

1745
01:58:28,720 --> 01:58:32,319
that I saw repeatedly that really made an impression on me.

1746
01:58:34,000 --> 01:58:34,279
Speaker 4: I have.

1747
01:58:34,720 --> 01:58:37,279
Speaker 5: I have practically everything I need for a double major.

1748
01:58:37,479 --> 01:58:41,640
I took so many classes in English, and I took

1749
01:58:41,720 --> 01:58:44,439
more classes in English than I did in History when

1750
01:58:44,520 --> 01:58:47,600
all was said and done. But one of the classes

1751
01:58:47,640 --> 01:58:51,239
in English I never did take was critical theory or

1752
01:58:51,479 --> 01:58:58,159
literary criticism. It's it's practically the same thing. I knew

1753
01:58:58,319 --> 01:59:04,199
how to use critical theories to write papers because that's

1754
01:59:04,239 --> 01:59:07,600
what you do in English, and that's what English academic

1755
01:59:07,720 --> 01:59:13,119
journals are. There is the Freudian, there is the neo colonialist.

1756
01:59:15,359 --> 01:59:20,720
There's the new critic, there's the Marxist. You know, they're

1757
01:59:20,720 --> 01:59:24,359
all the different ideologies that you use to explain what

1758
01:59:24,560 --> 01:59:26,880
a piece of literature means. And then if you want

1759
01:59:26,920 --> 01:59:31,600
to be very clever, you will combine the feminist with

1760
01:59:31,960 --> 01:59:38,439
the Freudian, and you'll have like a combined hybrid ideology

1761
01:59:38,880 --> 01:59:42,520
to criticize your paper with, or to criticize your literature with.

1762
01:59:44,640 --> 01:59:48,039
But I saw so many of my classmates who and

1763
01:59:48,159 --> 01:59:52,920
these are these are better read people. They're English majors, right.

1764
01:59:53,159 --> 01:59:56,039
This was a four hundred level class. But I saw

1765
01:59:56,159 --> 02:00:00,920
so many of my classmates go into that class and

1766
02:00:01,079 --> 02:00:08,680
come out the other side disillusioned, broken, questioning their faith.

1767
02:00:10,479 --> 02:00:14,119
I saw several people go into that class and come

1768
02:00:14,159 --> 02:00:17,279
out the other side some form of social justice warrior.

1769
02:00:20,359 --> 02:00:27,279
And I attribute this strongly to the fact that we

1770
02:00:27,479 --> 02:00:32,119
don't know who our own writers are, and we are

1771
02:00:32,239 --> 02:00:36,920
not loyal to the ideas of the people who are

1772
02:00:36,960 --> 02:00:41,600
actually on our side, and we go into so many

1773
02:00:41,680 --> 02:00:43,720
of so many of our students go into classes like

1774
02:00:43,800 --> 02:00:46,760
this and they read Marks for the first time and

1775
02:00:46,880 --> 02:00:52,119
he's a good writer, and he has compelling ideas, and

1776
02:00:52,239 --> 02:00:57,880
he's talking about real problems, and they're like, Wow, that's persuasive.

1777
02:01:00,000 --> 02:01:02,680
They don't have anyone to compare them to. They go

1778
02:01:02,840 --> 02:01:06,479
and read you know, Simone de Beauvoir for the first time,

1779
02:01:12,199 --> 02:01:16,279
pardon me. They don't have anyone to compare them to.

1780
02:01:17,479 --> 02:01:22,680
They don't have anyone to reput with, and they're overwhelmed.

1781
02:01:27,479 --> 02:01:29,359
Speaker 6: What I think that the double problem with this is

1782
02:01:29,399 --> 02:01:32,239
not only does it, you know, does it take people

1783
02:01:32,279 --> 02:01:34,840
away from your camp so to speak, is that it

1784
02:01:34,920 --> 02:01:37,279
takes the best and brightest, you know, it takes the

1785
02:01:37,359 --> 02:01:39,960
people who are interested in ideas, who are interested in

1786
02:01:40,039 --> 02:01:43,159
wrestling with things, you know, the people who ideally would

1787
02:01:43,199 --> 02:01:48,159
be your intellectual class, you know, your ruling class. And

1788
02:01:48,279 --> 02:01:50,680
it's very much like the Probably one of the most

1789
02:01:50,800 --> 02:01:53,319
devious things about the system is that not only does

1790
02:01:54,520 --> 02:01:55,840
you know whatever you want to say, you know, g

1791
02:01:56,039 --> 02:01:59,520
n C, the GAE, not only does it you know,

1792
02:02:00,079 --> 02:02:03,279
hackets enemies. Not only does it you know, sabotage them,

1793
02:02:04,399 --> 02:02:06,880
but it steals their best and brightest and kind of

1794
02:02:07,119 --> 02:02:11,159
you know, sublimates them, you know, into itself. You know,

1795
02:02:11,520 --> 02:02:14,479
it brings you know, the the cream of the crop

1796
02:02:14,680 --> 02:02:17,560
out of you know, these potential opposition groups, you know,

1797
02:02:17,640 --> 02:02:20,279
and turns them into you know, foot soldiers of the regime,

1798
02:02:20,720 --> 02:02:22,760
you know, whether full throated ones you know in the

1799
02:02:22,840 --> 02:02:25,800
case you know of you know, the preacher's kids who

1800
02:02:25,840 --> 02:02:29,199
become commis or is these kind of you know, fellow

1801
02:02:29,279 --> 02:02:33,560
travelers who are you know, communists, you know gender communists

1802
02:02:33,720 --> 02:02:35,920
in all but nate, you know, like all right, fair enough.

1803
02:02:36,039 --> 02:02:37,880
You know, maybe you go to church and maybe you

1804
02:02:37,960 --> 02:02:40,760
know you sing some you know, incredibly vague music that's

1805
02:02:41,760 --> 02:02:46,199
at least, you know, tangentially related to Christianity. But you know,

1806
02:02:46,279 --> 02:02:48,199
the real meat of it, the real marrow of that is,

1807
02:02:48,880 --> 02:02:50,239
you know, progressive social points.

1808
02:02:51,640 --> 02:02:55,640
Speaker 5: Well, we we cannot get away from the fact that

1809
02:02:56,119 --> 02:03:01,439
we're going to get Catechism from someone and we will

1810
02:03:01,680 --> 02:03:09,560
have institutional loyalties. I think it doesn't it doesn't really

1811
02:03:09,720 --> 02:03:15,359
matter how isolated one claims to be, what kind of

1812
02:03:15,399 --> 02:03:21,159
a social outcast one one portends to be. We are

1813
02:03:22,119 --> 02:03:27,079
members of groups, We have loyalties, we have things that

1814
02:03:27,199 --> 02:03:33,159
we believe that correspond with those group beliefs. A big,

1815
02:03:33,319 --> 02:03:38,399
a big talking point in education is critical thinking. Parents

1816
02:03:38,560 --> 02:03:41,399
everywhere will say, oh, I want my I want my

1817
02:03:41,640 --> 02:03:47,680
kid to think for themselves. But we we thinks as

1818
02:03:47,800 --> 02:03:52,000
members of groups, and you want your people to know

1819
02:03:52,239 --> 02:03:56,760
what your group has to say. So if you don't

1820
02:03:56,920 --> 02:04:02,279
want your kid to become a third wave feminist or

1821
02:04:02,359 --> 02:04:07,159
whatever they are, now, you need to give them the

1822
02:04:07,359 --> 02:04:10,680
retorts of that catechism.

1823
02:04:12,039 --> 02:04:12,960
Speaker 6: What do you believe?

1824
02:04:13,159 --> 02:04:16,439
Speaker 5: Do you believe that there's such a thing as healthy masculinity?

1825
02:04:17,720 --> 02:04:21,319
Then tell your kid what it is, make sure they

1826
02:04:21,399 --> 02:04:23,399
know it, and give them good people to read on

1827
02:04:23,520 --> 02:04:27,239
the subjects so that they don't question at all the

1828
02:04:27,399 --> 02:04:32,399
very first challenge that they meet. You want your kid

1829
02:04:32,720 --> 02:04:38,720
to believe what your faith teaches, then find who gave

1830
02:04:38,880 --> 02:04:44,600
you that particular belief set get the catechism. You know,

1831
02:04:44,680 --> 02:04:47,840
if you're a Lutheran, you ought to know the Lutheran Catechism.

1832
02:04:48,439 --> 02:04:50,560
You ought to have it. Your kids ought to know it,

1833
02:04:50,640 --> 02:04:53,520
You ought to have them memorize it. Right now. That's

1834
02:04:53,640 --> 02:04:57,039
easier with confessions that actually do have catechisms and creeds

1835
02:04:57,119 --> 02:05:02,000
because that work has been done. But there is there's

1836
02:05:02,319 --> 02:05:06,279
something more insiduous going on that we that we need

1837
02:05:06,399 --> 02:05:08,960
to know about, we need to be aware of, and

1838
02:05:09,119 --> 02:05:13,279
that is the rot in the academy. We have seen

1839
02:05:13,359 --> 02:05:16,039
it because we've we've gone to school recently, and we

1840
02:05:16,199 --> 02:05:20,479
know what things are like even at a at a

1841
02:05:20,640 --> 02:05:25,359
very thoroughly Baptist. You know, they would have called themselves

1842
02:05:25,439 --> 02:05:31,239
a traditional Baptist school with pretty high standards for their faculty.

1843
02:05:31,399 --> 02:05:35,319
Like I want to be clearer, like, my faculty were great.

1844
02:05:36,199 --> 02:05:39,319
My faculty are why I'm doing what I'm doing now

1845
02:05:40,399 --> 02:05:44,239
and why I maintained my faith through the experience as well.

1846
02:05:45,680 --> 02:05:50,640
They were excellent teachers, and you and I both know professors.

1847
02:05:51,800 --> 02:05:53,479
Speaker 6: That that fit this description. Well.

1848
02:05:56,680 --> 02:05:59,439
Speaker 5: Even so, even in that kind of environment, people were

1849
02:05:59,520 --> 02:06:04,520
falling away, forced to read the woke stuff because there's

1850
02:06:04,640 --> 02:06:06,840
there's no other way to go through the academy these days,

1851
02:06:06,920 --> 02:06:12,000
they still fell away, And I am I'm convinced it's

1852
02:06:12,079 --> 02:06:15,079
because they did not have any loyalty to anything better.

1853
02:06:16,279 --> 02:06:19,479
They didn't have any loyalty to what their parents actually

1854
02:06:19,680 --> 02:06:23,640
wanted them to believe, and they didn't they didn't actually

1855
02:06:23,800 --> 02:06:27,039
have good writers that would explain that to him.

1856
02:06:29,399 --> 02:06:32,640
Speaker 6: So and I fully believe, I fully agree with you.

1857
02:06:32,720 --> 02:06:34,520
I just want to clarify one things. I'm seeing some

1858
02:06:34,640 --> 02:06:37,439
confusion in chat and I realized this is a specialized term,

1859
02:06:38,159 --> 02:06:42,479
is that a catechism is essentially a formalized statement of belief.

1860
02:06:42,680 --> 02:06:45,119
You know, a creed is we believe this, you know,

1861
02:06:45,199 --> 02:06:47,600
the most most popular, the most common ones to be

1862
02:06:47,680 --> 02:06:49,680
the Niceinge Creed, the Philippine Creed. You can read on

1863
02:06:49,920 --> 02:06:52,840
history of your own, but those are kind of litmus

1864
02:06:52,920 --> 02:06:55,279
tests for are you a Christian? Yes or no? You know,

1865
02:06:55,399 --> 02:06:58,239
like do you hold these beliefs? And what a catechism is?

1866
02:06:58,359 --> 02:07:02,760
And it's essentially a series of you know, questions and answers,

1867
02:07:03,039 --> 02:07:06,119
you know, very helpful for things like this, like, for instance,

1868
02:07:06,399 --> 02:07:08,479
the Westminster Catechism. I believe the first one is what

1869
02:07:08,640 --> 02:07:11,119
is Man's chief? At well, it's Man's chief and just

1870
02:07:11,239 --> 02:07:13,079
to glorify God, you know, so on and so forth

1871
02:07:13,560 --> 02:07:17,000
and so enjoy Him forever exactly. And so that's helpful

1872
02:07:17,079 --> 02:07:19,119
both as like a you know, an fa Q page

1873
02:07:19,239 --> 02:07:21,640
like well, okay, well what do I think? And you

1874
02:07:21,720 --> 02:07:23,640
know that you're religiously or can say like all right,

1875
02:07:23,680 --> 02:07:25,680
well we've written down a whole lot of those, you know,

1876
02:07:25,720 --> 02:07:28,960
and it doesn't doesn't really hold for every situation imaginable,

1877
02:07:29,000 --> 02:07:30,319
but it can get you a lot of the way there.

1878
02:07:31,039 --> 02:07:33,239
And the way it's it's set up is in a

1879
02:07:33,279 --> 02:07:36,640
way that's designed to be something you can memorize, you know,

1880
02:07:36,680 --> 02:07:38,880
it's designed to be something you can teach children and

1881
02:07:39,000 --> 02:07:42,520
look like is it dogmatic? Yes, by definition it is dogma,

1882
02:07:43,159 --> 02:07:45,159
you know. But the problem is, like if you're going

1883
02:07:45,239 --> 02:07:51,159
to you can't go through life without being indoctrinated, so

1884
02:07:51,279 --> 02:07:54,720
to speak. That's right, if you leave nothing there, it's

1885
02:07:54,800 --> 02:07:56,640
not like you will become you know, this kind of

1886
02:07:56,720 --> 02:07:59,560
like blank slate, you know, this fully realized human. You'll

1887
02:07:59,560 --> 02:08:02,920
become your own. That's that's false, that's a lie. You

1888
02:08:02,960 --> 02:08:06,640
will become someone else's man, you know. And so really

1889
02:08:06,760 --> 02:08:08,880
like either you have to fill it if it's empty

1890
02:08:08,960 --> 02:08:11,239
now or it's full of you know, like horrible bad

1891
02:08:11,560 --> 02:08:14,640
you know, culturally progressive ideas that are rotting you or

1892
02:08:14,720 --> 02:08:17,640
in the case of you know, the children you either

1893
02:08:17,720 --> 02:08:20,520
have or will have, like it's your job to fill it.

1894
02:08:21,159 --> 02:08:23,960
And one of the things that I I really do

1895
02:08:24,079 --> 02:08:27,319
feel a lot of sympathy for, you know, the silent

1896
02:08:27,439 --> 02:08:30,279
generation and a little bit older you know, I guess

1897
02:08:30,399 --> 02:08:32,399
there aren't many left of the Greatest Generation, but when

1898
02:08:32,399 --> 02:08:33,960
I talk to people of that, you know, that pre

1899
02:08:34,119 --> 02:08:38,600
Baby Boomer generation, many of their children became you know,

1900
02:08:38,680 --> 02:08:41,239
kind of like the godless hippies, you know, the you know,

1901
02:08:41,359 --> 02:08:44,800
the just urrascinated consumers that we, you know, kind of

1902
02:08:44,840 --> 02:08:47,880
associate with the baby boomer generation. But many of those

1903
02:08:47,880 --> 02:08:50,880
people are just a little bit older their parents, and

1904
02:08:50,960 --> 02:08:52,840
I've talked to a lot of them have this incredibly.

1905
02:08:54,680 --> 02:08:56,840
They feel very confused. It's like, well, where did it

1906
02:08:56,920 --> 02:08:59,520
go wrong? And I've talked to them, you know, like

1907
02:08:59,600 --> 02:09:02,960
I've you know, not my grandparents at little bit young,

1908
02:09:03,000 --> 02:09:05,600
but my friend's grandparents, and they say things like, well,

1909
02:09:07,239 --> 02:09:09,840
I never I was never taught this explicitly. You know,

1910
02:09:09,960 --> 02:09:11,840
everyone just did it. You know, no one ever had

1911
02:09:11,880 --> 02:09:15,159
to explain it to me, and fair enough, right, like

1912
02:09:15,239 --> 02:09:18,199
if you lived in a country that demographically, that religiously

1913
02:09:18,359 --> 02:09:20,960
that you know, economically, you know, there was a wide

1914
02:09:21,000 --> 02:09:23,760
degree of agreement and kind of the standard of the road,

1915
02:09:23,840 --> 02:09:27,039
you know, like middle of the standard, middle of the

1916
02:09:27,119 --> 02:09:31,720
road position was at least fairly conservative, fairly traditional. You

1917
02:09:31,840 --> 02:09:35,279
probably could, you know, when every cultural institution was mouthing

1918
02:09:35,359 --> 02:09:38,800
your platitude, was mouthing your opinions. You know you didn't

1919
02:09:38,880 --> 02:09:42,119
have to. But now, like, I mean, can you name

1920
02:09:42,159 --> 02:09:46,159
one institution our friend's control can maybe the meed this institute,

1921
02:09:47,039 --> 02:09:49,880
I mean maybe kind of Twitter. Even then that's that's

1922
02:09:49,920 --> 02:09:54,239
a question mark, and so like it. It very much

1923
02:09:54,560 --> 02:09:56,840
now more than ever, has to be an active choice.

1924
02:09:56,880 --> 02:09:59,199
You have to put something there, because if you don't,

1925
02:09:59,359 --> 02:10:02,279
someone will. And the person who will, what to quote

1926
02:10:02,279 --> 02:10:04,720
Sam Hyde, they want you dead, and they're going to

1927
02:10:04,800 --> 02:10:05,279
laugh about it.

1928
02:10:07,760 --> 02:10:11,199
Speaker 5: And and this is the treachery that that I was

1929
02:10:11,359 --> 02:10:15,239
I was intending to say something about. Previously, this, this

1930
02:10:15,399 --> 02:10:22,520
kind of academic institutional rot took root in seminaries like

1931
02:10:22,760 --> 02:10:27,880
earlier than it than it dominated the regular universities, like

1932
02:10:27,920 --> 02:10:33,960
the undergraduate institutions. It was easier to find conservative programs

1933
02:10:34,239 --> 02:10:41,680
in the humanities, say an older generation of traditional professors

1934
02:10:41,800 --> 02:10:44,680
that wanted to teach their kids the history of the

1935
02:10:44,760 --> 02:10:47,880
United States and didn't want their kids hating it at

1936
02:10:47,920 --> 02:10:51,479
the end of the lessons. It was easier to find

1937
02:10:51,520 --> 02:10:57,439
those than it was, you know, the the unwoke seminary

1938
02:10:58,079 --> 02:11:02,920
in the mainline Protestant churches. And there was there was

1939
02:11:02,960 --> 02:11:06,800
a war that was fought in these seminaries, a you know,

1940
02:11:06,920 --> 02:11:12,760
a kind of of of scholarly war, religious war, theological

1941
02:11:12,880 --> 02:11:18,800
conflict between the liberals and the conservatives, and very famously

1942
02:11:19,000 --> 02:11:23,159
the Baptists managed to take over a number of their

1943
02:11:23,199 --> 02:11:28,880
seminaries from left leaning professors. But that's that's one of

1944
02:11:28,920 --> 02:11:31,840
the reasons why the Baptists remain one of the more

1945
02:11:31,960 --> 02:11:36,640
populist Christian denominations today. It seems to me, I'm not

1946
02:11:36,760 --> 02:11:40,920
a Baptist anymore, but I'm inclined to think well of Baptists,

1947
02:11:42,279 --> 02:11:45,079
and I kind of like cheering for their side on things.

1948
02:11:45,159 --> 02:11:51,760
But my point is that people coming out of Christian

1949
02:11:51,880 --> 02:11:57,079
churches these days are likely trained by pastors and priests

1950
02:11:57,279 --> 02:12:02,600
with leftist leanings. So I have students come to me

1951
02:12:02,720 --> 02:12:05,479
in my classes all the time, and they will write

1952
02:12:05,600 --> 02:12:10,720
in their essays that diversity is our strength and the

1953
02:12:10,840 --> 02:12:15,399
real social problems inequality. We have to sacrifice to get

1954
02:12:15,479 --> 02:12:19,079
rid of inequality, you know. Or they will say that

1955
02:12:19,439 --> 02:12:25,520
racism is the supreme evil, and certainly they're getting some

1956
02:12:25,640 --> 02:12:29,399
of these things from church. This is just how people

1957
02:12:29,520 --> 02:12:32,840
talk these days. This is what I mean by catechism.

1958
02:12:33,000 --> 02:12:37,680
Everyone gets their catechism. Everyone knows what they should believe

1959
02:12:38,079 --> 02:12:42,560
about different things. They are given supreme values, they are

1960
02:12:42,640 --> 02:12:46,880
given slogans, they are given dogmas that they do not

1961
02:12:47,079 --> 02:12:55,000
dissent from. And that's what those terms are. Inequality, chauvinism,

1962
02:12:55,640 --> 02:12:58,840
you know, men that are that are putting women down

1963
02:12:59,000 --> 02:13:05,399
or something treating them as women, or something inequality. These

1964
02:13:05,479 --> 02:13:08,479
are these are the talking points. These are the social

1965
02:13:08,600 --> 02:13:12,800
values that that people frequently do get in church. But

1966
02:13:12,880 --> 02:13:15,800
at any rate, you know, the Christian college student is

1967
02:13:15,880 --> 02:13:19,600
going to take the critical theory class, as as all

1968
02:13:19,680 --> 02:13:23,760
English majors do, and they will encounter people who are

1969
02:13:23,960 --> 02:13:30,920
actually after those supreme values, because those are the people

1970
02:13:31,279 --> 02:13:37,319
that that gave the left those talking points. Those are

1971
02:13:37,359 --> 02:13:42,279
the people that proposed revolutionary solutions to bring about that

1972
02:13:42,520 --> 02:13:45,760
social order that they desired. And so when when these

1973
02:13:45,800 --> 02:13:48,920
students go and you know, read the feminists for the

1974
02:13:49,000 --> 02:13:54,479
first time, read the Marxists for the first time, they see, oh, well,

1975
02:13:54,760 --> 02:13:59,520
this is actually serious. This is more than than singing

1976
02:13:59,640 --> 02:14:04,000
the have be clappy praise music and and hoping that

1977
02:14:04,479 --> 02:14:09,079
that God's going to bring about the the ennobling of

1978
02:14:09,119 --> 02:14:17,479
the proletariat right, the liberation of women. The Simon de

1979
02:14:17,560 --> 02:14:20,520
Beauvoir knows knows what to do about these things, Marx

1980
02:14:20,640 --> 02:14:23,159
knows what to do about these things. Why not follow

1981
02:14:23,239 --> 02:14:28,279
them instead? This is actually serious stuff. Let's save the world,

1982
02:14:28,399 --> 02:14:33,560
let's be serious about it. And I know they're signaling

1983
02:14:33,640 --> 02:14:36,399
to power and I know this is a submissive and

1984
02:14:37,159 --> 02:14:41,760
disgusting thing for them to do. Yes, I do. But

1985
02:14:42,000 --> 02:14:45,960
I'm I'm thinking about my my old classmates, the people

1986
02:14:46,039 --> 02:14:47,720
that I know, and the people that I that I

1987
02:14:47,840 --> 02:14:53,399
still love and I still pray for them. I'm thinking

1988
02:14:53,439 --> 02:14:58,279
about the choices that they made, and there's something reasonable

1989
02:14:58,399 --> 02:15:02,720
there considering where they came from. There's something reasonable there there.

1990
02:15:03,479 --> 02:15:08,760
Their choice to join the enemy, you know, from our perspective,

1991
02:15:10,079 --> 02:15:14,119
to to uh surrender everything that they'd brought up, been

1992
02:15:14,199 --> 02:15:19,399
brought up to believe is a rational choice given those premises,

1993
02:15:20,439 --> 02:15:23,439
and they didn't know any better. No one ever gave

1994
02:15:23,520 --> 02:15:27,039
them someone to fight back against the world. This is

1995
02:15:27,239 --> 02:15:30,600
this is why I love that Flannery O'Connor quote so much.

1996
02:15:31,720 --> 02:15:35,760
She said, push against the world as hard as it

1997
02:15:35,800 --> 02:15:36,600
pushes against you.

1998
02:15:38,479 --> 02:15:39,560
Speaker 6: We have to do that.

1999
02:15:41,359 --> 02:15:44,960
Speaker 5: I mean, is it just me or or can't you

2000
02:15:45,119 --> 02:15:50,359
tell where the world is pushing you lately? If the

2001
02:15:50,520 --> 02:15:53,439
pressure has been on, especially in the last few years,

2002
02:15:53,880 --> 02:15:55,239
I know I felt it strongly.

2003
02:15:57,680 --> 02:16:01,840
Speaker 6: No, I I definitely agree. And I think that for

2004
02:16:02,000 --> 02:16:05,079
men especially, you know, and I brought up earlier that

2005
02:16:05,159 --> 02:16:09,920
a lot of this is of like poisonously feminized is

2006
02:16:10,000 --> 02:16:14,600
that there's a real desire for rigor, you know, there's

2007
02:16:14,640 --> 02:16:18,720
a desire to do something difficult. And I think that

2008
02:16:18,800 --> 02:16:21,119
almost a lot of not even almost, I think that

2009
02:16:21,159 --> 02:16:24,159
a lot of these things are too easy. You know.

2010
02:16:24,239 --> 02:16:25,720
It's like, well, what's the point of me doing this?

2011
02:16:25,840 --> 02:16:28,359
It requires nothing of me, you know, I just go

2012
02:16:28,560 --> 02:16:31,640
into a big warehouse, you know, sit for an hour

2013
02:16:31,680 --> 02:16:35,000
and fifteen minutes and go home. You know, it's a

2014
02:16:35,159 --> 02:16:38,520
very passive experience. It doesn't need anything from me. And

2015
02:16:38,559 --> 02:16:40,799
I think, especially for young men, there is this desire

2016
02:16:40,879 --> 02:16:43,639
to be challenged, to be I guess, to have something

2017
02:16:43,719 --> 02:16:47,479
required of you, you know, and especially in a society

2018
02:16:47,520 --> 02:16:52,319
that is you know, widely bereft of hardship, bereft of challenge,

2019
02:16:52,360 --> 02:16:55,760
and bereft of vigor. Like it's it's no shock that,

2020
02:16:56,200 --> 02:16:57,920
you know, when we do see kind of growth in

2021
02:16:58,000 --> 02:16:59,920
the Christian community, you know, especially on the e right,

2022
02:17:00,959 --> 02:17:03,760
you know, it tends to be these it tends to

2023
02:17:03,879 --> 02:17:10,040
be these these much more like spiritually rigorous you know communities,

2024
02:17:10,120 --> 02:17:14,079
right Like there's no secret that the that the you know,

2025
02:17:14,120 --> 02:17:16,040
at least on the on the internet, right like the

2026
02:17:16,719 --> 02:17:20,159
community of like online you know, right wing orthow bros

2027
02:17:20,280 --> 02:17:22,399
Is you know, growing quickly, you know, And I think

2028
02:17:22,440 --> 02:17:24,520
a big part of that is that and I don't

2029
02:17:24,520 --> 02:17:28,159
mean to say this flippantly that uh, you know, if

2030
02:17:28,159 --> 02:17:31,360
you're if you're going to committed you know, conservative Orthodox parish,

2031
02:17:31,479 --> 02:17:34,680
like there's a lot to do. You know, it takes

2032
02:17:34,680 --> 02:17:36,520
a lot of your time. You know, you're you're not

2033
02:17:36,680 --> 02:17:39,280
just sitting there, you know, wandering off like you've got

2034
02:17:39,399 --> 02:17:40,920
to get up, you got to sit down, You've got

2035
02:17:41,040 --> 02:17:43,920
to you know, go through a lot. And even within

2036
02:17:44,000 --> 02:17:46,399
that right, like that's a small community that requires something

2037
02:17:46,440 --> 02:17:48,600
to do. And I think that this idea that oh

2038
02:17:48,719 --> 02:17:51,719
we'll grow by making it even easier, it's just so

2039
02:17:51,920 --> 02:17:54,719
completely backwards, you know, that's not what this time calls for.

2040
02:17:55,479 --> 02:17:58,879
And I think that much like about and talking about

2041
02:17:59,159 --> 02:18:01,799
you know, the miss that's grown up around you know,

2042
02:18:01,879 --> 02:18:06,600
the radical right, because it is it is truly disruptive,

2043
02:18:06,600 --> 02:18:11,000
it is truly rebellious. I think that we see the

2044
02:18:11,040 --> 02:18:14,559
same thing about these kind of like ultra traditionalist religious sects.

2045
02:18:14,600 --> 02:18:15,799
If you see what I'm getting.

2046
02:18:15,520 --> 02:18:20,959
Speaker 5: At, absolutely, well, you're you're talking about my crowd there.

2047
02:18:21,120 --> 02:18:27,079
That was that was certainly my path and I have

2048
02:18:28,440 --> 02:18:32,959
memories of rebelling against my school in a certain way.

2049
02:18:34,280 --> 02:18:38,239
I was talking about the praise and worship sessions in chapel.

2050
02:18:39,600 --> 02:18:41,959
After a while of doing that, I started taking the

2051
02:18:42,000 --> 02:18:45,159
Book of Common Prayer with me, and I had had

2052
02:18:45,479 --> 02:18:49,319
I'd been going to an Anglican group for a while,

2053
02:18:49,399 --> 02:18:53,000
and we were singing the liturgies from the old Book

2054
02:18:53,040 --> 02:18:55,840
of Common Prayer. And I would take that Book of

2055
02:18:55,920 --> 02:19:00,559
Common Prayer into the school chapel service, which was held

2056
02:19:00,600 --> 02:19:05,159
in the basketball stadium. So there's nothing, there's nothing intiment

2057
02:19:05,399 --> 02:19:09,799
or sacred about the space, you know. It was a

2058
02:19:09,879 --> 02:19:13,120
really ugly, utilitarian sort of space. But I would take

2059
02:19:13,159 --> 02:19:15,799
out the Book of Common Prayer and I would sing

2060
02:19:16,280 --> 02:19:20,319
the liturgies and I would sing the Creed while they

2061
02:19:20,360 --> 02:19:24,680
were singing the happy clappy praise music. And that was

2062
02:19:25,120 --> 02:19:27,239
kind of my way of pushing back against it, Like

2063
02:19:28,559 --> 02:19:31,319
this stuff is excellent, this stuff is beautiful. This tells

2064
02:19:31,360 --> 02:19:36,520
me what Christians believe, right, and obviously this other stuff doesn't.

2065
02:19:37,159 --> 02:19:39,399
So even even way back in school then I was

2066
02:19:39,479 --> 02:19:43,159
pushing back against it. But you're absolutely right, Like the

2067
02:19:45,000 --> 02:19:48,440
scene in our sphere is defined by a lot of

2068
02:19:48,520 --> 02:19:53,079
people going into something that makes some kind of demand

2069
02:19:53,440 --> 02:20:01,520
of them and the megachurches these days, the mainstream, so

2070
02:20:01,639 --> 02:20:05,479
many of them. They call themselves non denominational, now, which

2071
02:20:07,319 --> 02:20:11,360
I mean no offense to anyone there, but it seems

2072
02:20:11,520 --> 02:20:16,479
like it's a nonsensical sort of designation, Like what does

2073
02:20:16,559 --> 02:20:20,479
that mean? It means nothing. Every non denom could believe

2074
02:20:20,559 --> 02:20:24,079
something radically different than the other. There is no central organization,

2075
02:20:25,479 --> 02:20:29,440
no tradition. And I suppose it's designed to maximize appeal,

2076
02:20:29,639 --> 02:20:35,200
but doesn't it also increase the shallowness of it? I

2077
02:20:35,280 --> 02:20:40,879
don't really know what I'm talking about, admittedly, but these

2078
02:20:40,959 --> 02:20:45,040
other groups, Eastern Orthodoxy, which is which I am in

2079
02:20:45,879 --> 02:20:53,719
Roman Catholicism, has a story. You can identify them in history, right.

2080
02:20:53,799 --> 02:20:59,200
You can identify them with national groups, with kingdoms. There

2081
02:20:59,479 --> 02:21:06,000
are thousands of years to reference. They have a correspondence

2082
02:21:06,120 --> 02:21:09,959
with the ancient world. They actually identify philosophers in the

2083
02:21:10,000 --> 02:21:13,920
ancient world that they like, right, that have some influence

2084
02:21:14,000 --> 02:21:18,040
on the way that they see things. They've they've christianized them,

2085
02:21:19,079 --> 02:21:25,399
like like Thomas Aquinas christianized Aristotle. And that's that's a

2086
02:21:25,440 --> 02:21:28,399
compelling story. You were part of something so much bigger

2087
02:21:29,120 --> 02:21:33,479
than your own, you know, little American experience you know,

2088
02:21:33,600 --> 02:21:38,600
something that goes back into into ancient times, and that's

2089
02:21:38,760 --> 02:21:41,440
very meaningful, and also you're required to do something and

2090
02:21:41,559 --> 02:21:46,000
it's difficult, right. One of the things that really speaks

2091
02:21:46,040 --> 02:21:49,360
to me from that tradition is the parallelism of it.

2092
02:21:50,559 --> 02:21:55,399
In Orthodoxy, we have a religious calendar and that is

2093
02:21:55,520 --> 02:22:00,280
distinct from the secular calendar. We actually determine dates on

2094
02:22:00,440 --> 02:22:05,559
our religious calendar differently because it's so old. It's actually

2095
02:22:05,760 --> 02:22:12,479
Julian in origin, and so it has some practical problems, right,

2096
02:22:12,520 --> 02:22:15,120
because it doesn't have leap years and stuff, So it

2097
02:22:15,280 --> 02:22:20,159
gets a little confused that way. But we're always talking

2098
02:22:20,239 --> 02:22:26,799
about the designation on our religious calendar, which is distinct

2099
02:22:26,879 --> 02:22:32,360
from the secular calendar. The religious calendar is very important

2100
02:22:32,399 --> 02:22:35,520
to us and it changes the way that we live.

2101
02:22:36,040 --> 02:22:38,760
Like right now, we're an advent, which means we're eating

2102
02:22:38,879 --> 02:22:42,040
differently and we aren't doing it all by ourselves. We're

2103
02:22:42,079 --> 02:22:43,879
doing it with the people we go to church with.

2104
02:22:46,280 --> 02:22:48,920
Right now, we're all talking, we're all very excited because

2105
02:22:49,319 --> 02:22:57,000
the Patriarch of Moscow, Saint Ticon of Blessed Memory, he

2106
02:22:57,479 --> 02:23:04,280
designated American Thanksgiving as something Americans ought to keep in

2107
02:23:04,399 --> 02:23:09,399
feasting before he got martyred by the Bolsheviks. So we're

2108
02:23:09,440 --> 02:23:12,440
all very happy. This week we will take a break

2109
02:23:12,479 --> 02:23:15,840
from the advent fast and will feast like good, thankful Americans.

2110
02:23:16,799 --> 02:23:21,040
But it is it's something that really does change the

2111
02:23:21,120 --> 02:23:24,120
way that we live. It requires something of us. We

2112
02:23:24,280 --> 02:23:30,120
are required to be distinct from our age, were required

2113
02:23:30,159 --> 02:23:34,680
to be distinct from the secular because we're set aside

2114
02:23:34,760 --> 02:23:36,000
for sacred use.

2115
02:23:38,360 --> 02:23:40,760
Speaker 6: That's well said, and what I think that people are

2116
02:23:41,680 --> 02:23:46,680
looking for, even if not you know, explicitly stated, it

2117
02:23:46,760 --> 02:23:50,680
is this idea to return or to integrate themselves with

2118
02:23:50,799 --> 02:23:54,360
something larger. You know, this idea that you know, I

2119
02:23:54,440 --> 02:23:58,280
want to connect myself to a chain, to a historical

2120
02:23:58,399 --> 02:24:01,719
narrative that makes sense, like I know what is my place?

2121
02:24:01,879 --> 02:24:03,680
You know what is expected of me? Like what I

2122
02:24:04,000 --> 02:24:07,520
what ought I to do? And I think that one

2123
02:24:07,559 --> 02:24:12,639
of the most damaging lies about liberalism, you know, one

2124
02:24:12,639 --> 02:24:16,040
of the most damaging I guess truit of the Enlightenment

2125
02:24:17,200 --> 02:24:21,239
is this idea that well, the basic unit is you.

2126
02:24:22,079 --> 02:24:26,520
You know, if we can maximize your I guess, personal

2127
02:24:27,040 --> 02:24:30,200
scope when it comes to decisions, you know, that will

2128
02:24:30,239 --> 02:24:33,520
produce the best for you. And the problem with that

2129
02:24:33,719 --> 02:24:36,959
is that's not a it's not something you can turn

2130
02:24:37,120 --> 02:24:39,760
off and then turn back on again. You know, that

2131
02:24:39,920 --> 02:24:45,639
kind of chain of being required continual renewal. And the

2132
02:24:45,719 --> 02:24:48,360
problem is that now we're you know, depending on how

2133
02:24:48,399 --> 02:24:51,000
you count it, well maybe we're sixty, maybe we're one hundred,

2134
02:24:51,079 --> 02:24:54,319
maybe we're four hundred years down. It's from that decision

2135
02:24:54,399 --> 02:24:56,559
being made. You know, we can we can argue about

2136
02:24:56,600 --> 02:25:00,280
that somewhere else. But there's a certain part of that

2137
02:25:00,360 --> 02:25:03,239
it's like, well, we don't really have the option of

2138
02:25:05,000 --> 02:25:07,959
believing in God in the same way that someone in

2139
02:25:08,040 --> 02:25:10,680
the eleven hundreds believed in God. Not to say that

2140
02:25:10,719 --> 02:25:15,000
you don't believe, but it's a different thing now, and

2141
02:25:15,120 --> 02:25:19,120
it is to a certain degree, it does require you

2142
02:25:19,280 --> 02:25:23,879
to do things that don't on the surface level feel

2143
02:25:23,959 --> 02:25:27,559
natural anymore, you know, like they're at least for me right,

2144
02:25:27,639 --> 02:25:31,600
Like there's always a part of my brain that is

2145
02:25:31,719 --> 02:25:34,040
kind of like trying to claw me back into the

2146
02:25:34,719 --> 02:25:38,200
you know, the the materialist world. You know, that's I

2147
02:25:38,280 --> 02:25:40,120
realized that's a personal flaw of mind, but I think

2148
02:25:40,159 --> 02:25:43,760
it's something that a lot of people have. And look like,

2149
02:25:44,799 --> 02:25:47,559
if you're going to connect yourself to a chain of being,

2150
02:25:47,920 --> 02:25:52,159
you know, to this narrative going back into time, Well,

2151
02:25:52,200 --> 02:25:55,000
you not only have to to a certain degree make

2152
02:25:55,079 --> 02:25:59,959
peace with it, but you also have to to make sacrifice.

2153
02:26:00,200 --> 02:26:02,479
Is for that, you know, you have to do things

2154
02:26:02,520 --> 02:26:10,000
which are difficult and unnatural and countercultural in a way

2155
02:26:10,079 --> 02:26:15,079
that's not necessarily fun. Do you see them poking about there? Yeah?

2156
02:26:16,559 --> 02:26:21,079
Speaker 5: You you have to stop caring about respectability at some level.

2157
02:26:23,000 --> 02:26:28,559
There's a there's a wonderful essay by Nikolai Berdiev, who

2158
02:26:28,840 --> 02:26:34,440
I especially love. I actually try to republish this book

2159
02:26:34,600 --> 02:26:37,920
because it was very difficult to get and I was

2160
02:26:38,000 --> 02:26:40,959
not successful. Amazon would not let me republish it. But

2161
02:26:41,760 --> 02:26:48,120
it's called The Bourgeois Mind. And Berta Birdayev says that

2162
02:26:49,520 --> 02:26:53,559
the problem with moderns is they really want to be

2163
02:26:54,600 --> 02:26:59,719
socially acceptable, They want to fit in, and for that

2164
02:27:00,079 --> 02:27:06,280
they're willing to make most any spiritual sacrifice. And I

2165
02:27:06,399 --> 02:27:10,680
think that that melds well with our conversation here tonight.

2166
02:27:12,879 --> 02:27:18,600
It's a very sobering thought and it corresponds to what

2167
02:27:18,639 --> 02:27:19,120
I was saying.

2168
02:27:19,200 --> 02:27:20,120
Speaker 6: It was it was.

2169
02:27:21,680 --> 02:27:27,239
Speaker 5: Something that was a reasonable given not so long ago,

2170
02:27:27,440 --> 02:27:30,239
that you could send your kid to the public school.

2171
02:27:30,319 --> 02:27:32,040
You could take them to church, you could send them

2172
02:27:32,079 --> 02:27:34,719
to college, and they would grow up and believe in Jesus.

2173
02:27:36,360 --> 02:27:41,200
Because it was not so long ago respectable. Now it's

2174
02:27:41,280 --> 02:27:47,920
actually genuine rebellion against the ways of the world. And

2175
02:27:49,079 --> 02:27:53,280
it leads us to very disturbing questions. Like back in

2176
02:27:53,319 --> 02:27:56,479
the nineteen fifties, when it was all so very respectable

2177
02:27:56,680 --> 02:28:01,520
to you know, be an upstanding Methodist or something, you know,

2178
02:28:01,639 --> 02:28:06,079
and to be in politics or whatever, and we don't

2179
02:28:06,200 --> 02:28:09,360
have the culture wars that we have now. Well, were

2180
02:28:09,399 --> 02:28:12,639
those people actually believing Christians or were they just going

2181
02:28:13,000 --> 02:28:18,079
through what was socially acceptable. What is the more powerful

2182
02:28:18,959 --> 02:28:25,000
pull in our lives? I'm not sure. I would like

2183
02:28:25,079 --> 02:28:28,479
to think the best of every one of those you know,

2184
02:28:28,600 --> 02:28:31,760
from another time, but there's no question about it. You know,

2185
02:28:31,840 --> 02:28:35,799
it's a lot easier to just go through the motions

2186
02:28:35,920 --> 02:28:38,360
when that's just what everyone expects you to do, and

2187
02:28:38,479 --> 02:28:41,520
it's an awful lot harder to be purposeful about it

2188
02:28:43,280 --> 02:28:48,479
and to do it at social cost and to sacrifice

2189
02:28:48,600 --> 02:28:49,840
your place in some way.

2190
02:28:51,600 --> 02:28:54,879
Speaker 6: Well, it's incidentally, it's a point that it's a point

2191
02:28:54,920 --> 02:28:58,319
that Ted Kaczynski makes, you know, where he he says

2192
02:28:58,479 --> 02:29:01,920
he describes that as being over soized, you know, where

2193
02:29:01,959 --> 02:29:05,639
the primary concern in life is these kind of like

2194
02:29:06,680 --> 02:29:12,440
social slights. And I think that obviously there's no you know,

2195
02:29:12,559 --> 02:29:18,159
correlation between popularity and and you know, correctness. But I

2196
02:29:18,239 --> 02:29:21,399
think that if Burdev and Ted Kazinski are pointing out

2197
02:29:21,440 --> 02:29:23,520
the same thing, you know, as different as those two

2198
02:29:23,600 --> 02:29:28,639
men were, you know, maybe there's something there. Absolutely, so

2199
02:29:28,719 --> 02:29:32,680
I'm enjoying this conversation, but because of my uh my

2200
02:29:32,879 --> 02:29:35,520
new strenuous work schedule, we are going to have to

2201
02:29:35,559 --> 02:29:38,479
wrap things up. Is there anything you want to you know,

2202
02:29:38,559 --> 02:29:40,639
kind of lay to bed before we we you know,

2203
02:29:40,719 --> 02:29:41,520
bring this to a close.

2204
02:29:42,959 --> 02:29:47,799
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I've got I've got one last thought in

2205
02:29:49,639 --> 02:29:54,000
in American history, just as an example of of something

2206
02:29:54,079 --> 02:29:59,360
that I've got a passion for. We we really want

2207
02:30:00,399 --> 02:30:03,680
our students here in America to know and love their

2208
02:30:03,719 --> 02:30:08,319
own history before they go out and explore the history

2209
02:30:08,360 --> 02:30:12,360
of China. Really, the next logical step for us is

2210
02:30:12,440 --> 02:30:15,840
to go and explore the history of England and maybe

2211
02:30:16,000 --> 02:30:20,680
France and maybe Mexico. Right, the ones that are that

2212
02:30:20,760 --> 02:30:24,120
are closest to us, they make the most sense for

2213
02:30:24,239 --> 02:30:27,000
the second step. But we have to start at home.

2214
02:30:28,719 --> 02:30:32,520
We must start with the familiar. We need to know

2215
02:30:32,719 --> 02:30:37,879
who we are first, and we need to have that down.

2216
02:30:39,639 --> 02:30:39,760
Speaker 6: Now.

2217
02:30:39,840 --> 02:30:42,399
Speaker 5: I think other I think the other periods of time

2218
02:30:42,479 --> 02:30:45,440
really did have this so much easier. We live in

2219
02:30:45,479 --> 02:30:48,360
a time when everyone is pressured to send their kids

2220
02:30:48,399 --> 02:30:53,120
to college. And that's that's part of this problem, Like

2221
02:30:53,719 --> 02:30:55,639
how is it that so many young people are falling

2222
02:30:55,680 --> 02:31:00,239
away from their Christian faith that their parents really want

2223
02:31:00,280 --> 02:31:02,399
them to keep and have made investments, you know, to

2224
02:31:02,520 --> 02:31:06,319
that end. One of the reasons is far and more

2225
02:31:06,360 --> 02:31:08,360
of them are going to college than ever before, and

2226
02:31:08,719 --> 02:31:11,959
college is more or less designed to break that connection

2227
02:31:13,120 --> 02:31:18,879
these days, not to encourage those things, but so many

2228
02:31:19,000 --> 02:31:22,840
of these young people don't know where they're coming from.

2229
02:31:26,120 --> 02:31:30,680
This is part of an anti intellectual tradition in America

2230
02:31:31,040 --> 02:31:36,760
that does not value good reading. Where do we find

2231
02:31:36,799 --> 02:31:39,840
the bookstores? After all, we find them in the most

2232
02:31:39,959 --> 02:31:44,319
leftist areas that we know about, right or or it's

2233
02:31:44,399 --> 02:31:48,200
the local Barnes and Noble, that's the alternative, the local

2234
02:31:48,239 --> 02:31:52,399
Barnes and Noble, and they don't have the most discerning

2235
02:31:52,440 --> 02:32:00,799
book selection. Our students need to know who their people are,

2236
02:32:01,760 --> 02:32:09,120
and they need good selections to read We need, we

2237
02:32:09,239 --> 02:32:14,840
need readers who know their own, their own sides literature.

2238
02:32:16,600 --> 02:32:18,239
And that's one of the best things that we can

2239
02:32:18,319 --> 02:32:21,719
do for them is to to give them a writer

2240
02:32:21,920 --> 02:32:25,280
like Chesterton, for instance, and tell them this guy is

2241
02:32:25,479 --> 02:32:30,639
our guy. He's one of us. This guy has our

2242
02:32:30,719 --> 02:32:35,600
opinions about things. You know, he pushed back against his

2243
02:32:35,840 --> 02:32:40,319
world effectively and with with what's even more winsome, with

2244
02:32:40,479 --> 02:32:44,479
a good sense of humor, which is so wonderful about him.

2245
02:32:46,479 --> 02:32:51,520
Franz Kafka once once remarked something about Chesterton. He was

2246
02:32:51,600 --> 02:32:56,159
reading Chesterton in German translation, I understand, and he wrote

2247
02:32:56,200 --> 02:32:59,280
to his friend and he said, this man must have

2248
02:32:59,479 --> 02:33:04,879
found guy odd. He is so happy, which is the

2249
02:33:04,959 --> 02:33:07,360
best one of the best remarks I think ever made

2250
02:33:07,360 --> 02:33:12,440
about Chestertown. But we need people like that who have

2251
02:33:13,319 --> 02:33:21,399
a loyalty in our imagination. We need the Saints, We

2252
02:33:21,520 --> 02:33:24,719
need them to command a loyalty. We need to know

2253
02:33:24,879 --> 02:33:30,719
we aren't alone standing against the slings and arrows of

2254
02:33:30,799 --> 02:33:36,719
the world. And if we know we've got somebody at

2255
02:33:36,760 --> 02:33:44,159
our side, like Hector at Troy, he stood to fight

2256
02:33:44,760 --> 02:33:51,280
Achilles when he saw he had his brother at his side. Right,

2257
02:33:51,879 --> 02:33:54,000
if we if we know that we've got somebody who

2258
02:33:54,079 --> 02:33:57,280
can stand with us, then we're much more willing to

2259
02:33:57,399 --> 02:33:58,440
face our doom.

2260
02:34:01,399 --> 02:34:02,159
Speaker 6: Or to prevail.

2261
02:34:03,040 --> 02:34:11,440
Speaker 5: Sometimes we do win after all. Right, thanks a lot

2262
02:34:11,520 --> 02:34:14,399
for having me on. It's a real pleasure to be

2263
02:34:14,479 --> 02:34:15,040
with you tonight.

2264
02:34:15,760 --> 02:34:18,639
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you so much. I believe I made the

2265
02:34:18,680 --> 02:34:21,479
same mistake where I forgot to unmute myself. I'll eventually

2266
02:34:21,559 --> 02:34:24,159
get better at that. But again, thank you for coming

2267
02:34:24,200 --> 02:34:26,159
out and thank you for discussing this. This is something

2268
02:34:26,200 --> 02:34:29,440
that's been bouncing around my head for a while. And

2269
02:34:29,559 --> 02:34:33,239
I think that you know the tweet exchange with Dave question, say,

2270
02:34:33,319 --> 02:34:36,040
Dave is live right now. You guys should go head

2271
02:34:36,040 --> 02:34:37,079
over to his stream after this.

2272
02:34:37,559 --> 02:34:38,719
Speaker 5: Oh Dave, I love you.

2273
02:34:39,799 --> 02:34:44,799
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you so much on my work. And so

2274
02:34:44,920 --> 02:34:46,719
it was a good I guess prison through rich to

2275
02:34:46,959 --> 02:34:50,200
you know, kind of examine this, and you know, Bagbise

2276
02:34:50,239 --> 02:34:53,000
links to his telegram that'll be down in the description.

2277
02:34:53,239 --> 02:34:56,280
And obviously you guys know my stuff. It's on YouTube,

2278
02:34:56,920 --> 02:34:58,760
you know Jay Burden Show. I've got a whole bunch

2279
02:34:58,760 --> 02:35:01,479
of other episodes with with Bagbee and also from people

2280
02:35:01,520 --> 02:35:04,239
in our circles. And then in addition, I finally figured

2281
02:35:04,239 --> 02:35:06,959
out a system to get it. You know, my audio

2282
02:35:07,040 --> 02:35:10,760
only episode seamlessly put up on Apple, Spotify, you know,

2283
02:35:10,840 --> 02:35:12,879
anywhere you want to listen to the audio only episodes,

2284
02:35:12,920 --> 02:35:15,159
you don't have to be glowed to your computer. And

2285
02:35:15,239 --> 02:35:16,879
then I have a little bit of a gimmick with

2286
02:35:17,040 --> 02:35:21,559
that where essentially the most recent ten episodes are free.

2287
02:35:22,200 --> 02:35:23,879
And then after that, if you want access to the

2288
02:35:23,959 --> 02:35:26,120
audio files, you do have to pay you know, five

2289
02:35:26,159 --> 02:35:28,040
bucks a month on my substack. I realized it's not

2290
02:35:28,079 --> 02:35:30,479
a huge thing, but it helps me offset costs here,

2291
02:35:30,520 --> 02:35:33,520
which I appreciate. And obviously they'll always be, you know,

2292
02:35:33,600 --> 02:35:35,559
for free up on my YouTube so long as I

2293
02:35:35,719 --> 02:35:37,959
keep it, and you know, the links for those will

2294
02:35:38,000 --> 02:35:40,760
be down. Then description and thank you guys for coming out,

2295
02:35:40,879 --> 02:35:44,079
and remember, keep your head up. The life can't last forever.

2296
02:35:44,440 --> 02:35:45,159
Good night everyone.

2297
02:36:15,680 --> 02:36:19,000
Speaker 11: Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret.

2298
02:36:19,159 --> 02:36:19,840
Speaker 6: It doesn't have to be.

2299
02:36:19,959 --> 02:36:20,879
Speaker 5: Let me point something out.

2300
02:36:21,200 --> 02:36:23,399
Speaker 3: You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great.

2301
02:36:23,559 --> 02:36:25,479
Speaker 5: You love the host, You seek it out and download it.

2302
02:36:25,520 --> 02:36:28,239
Speaker 3: You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even

2303
02:36:28,280 --> 02:36:29,079
going to the bathroom.

2304
02:36:29,559 --> 02:36:31,799
Speaker 11: Podcasts are a pretty close companion.

2305
02:36:32,319 --> 02:36:34,840
Speaker 3: And this is a podcast ad, Did I get your attention?

2306
02:36:35,440 --> 02:36:38,719
Speaker 11: You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising

2307
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2311
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Speaker 5: That's l I B s y n ads dot com

2312
02:36:54,600 --> 02:36:54,920
today