Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Aiden Grogan, a writer and history
PhD student at Liberty University and a Young Voices contributor.
His latest op ed examines why the left's hostility toward
Christianity contradicts their fight against rssion and injustice. Aiden, thank
you so much for joining us in this edition of
the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Thank you glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In fact, this was published recently in Real Clear Religion,
I believe, and it really does strike at the heart
of the argument for a long time that the left
talks about tolerance, the left talks about coexisting, but has
a hard time with both when it comes to conservatives
and conservative policy. And you start from the vantage point
of Bernie Sanders, maybe identified as the ultimate leftist in America.
There's so many, but Bernie Sanders and is fighting oligarchy
tour and where he ended up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, not
just what he said, but also the company he kept.
Start us from that vantage point, if you will.
Speaker 2: Yes, Bernie Sanders is on this fighting oligarchy tour around
the US. But in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at his rally he
hosted the transgender singer of the band Against Me, who
performed a very blasphemous song about Christianity. To put it simply,
it's about God's genitals. I won't get into the lyrics.
Speaker 1: Awful, just absolutely author as profane as you can possibly imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the hypocrisy is that Bernie Sanders message relies
upon Christian moral concepts and assumptions, particularly in his rebuke
of the greed of the rich. Oftentimes, when he talks
about the one percent hoarding whatever percentage of the wealth,
he describes the immorality of this. So he perhaps doesn't
even realize that he's really drawing on these Christian moral
concepts for so much of his political platform. Yet he
hosts a musician at one of his rallies to perform
this extremely vulgar and offensive song about the Christian faith.
So if the Left truly cares about fighting oppression and
intolerance and injustice, then they need to take a clear
look at what really is informing these beliefs. What are
the moral foundations of these beliefs. Ultimately, if they reject
the Christian moral norms of Western civilization, which provide us
the means to rebuke those who are in power and
engaged in oppression or in justice, then ultimately we have
no firm ground to stand on.
Speaker 1: Well, the left claims it is for the persecuted, which
is a oftentimes a big leap. And you note in
your piece Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world,
yet it is the only religion that can be openly
mocked and disparaged in the US without consequences. I think
that is a great point, if you wouldn't mind expand
upon that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the left still views Christianity as the establishment. It's
part of the patriarchal tyranny of Western civilization which they're
trying to tear down. But simultaneously, when they make these arguments,
they're relying on many of the same Christian assumptions. I
think they just have a problem with the Christian moral
prohibitions against certain behaviors that the left champions, particularly the
LGBT lifestyle or issues surrounding abortion. They don't really have
a problem with helping the poor or the downtrod. But
Christianity calls you to a much higher calling than simply
just helping the poor or the downtrod. And you also
have to conduct yourself in a certain way, which which
the left is not particularly on board with these days.
Speaker 1: You know, there's hypocrisy in all channels. Let's not fool ourselves.
There's hypocrisy within all of us. We're not perfect. If
we're Christians, we understand that. That's core, it's fundamental to
our faith, to our belief. There was there was one
man who was perfect for us Christians, and we aspire
to be like that. And that that man, the Son
of God, called upon us, calls upon us daily to
do what is right. But does the son of Man,
the center of Christianity, call upon the government to do
that or is it simply the individual.
Speaker 2: Well, you'll know this throughout the Gospels that Jesus was
not a political figure. He was not a political revolutionary.
Many of the Jews in that time expected him to
be this warrior who was going to overthrow Rome. But
he says, render under Caesar what is Caesar's and to
God what is God's. So Jesus calls the individual to
live a holy and righteous life in accordance with what
God truly calls us for. He does not call us
to be political revolutionaries. For Christians, we understand that there
is not going to be some earthly utopia. We're not
going to solve all of our problems or most of
our problems through government. We are ultimately hopeful for a
better world that is to come.
Speaker 1: You think the left has a Barabbas complex.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the entire revolutionary tradition, going back to Rousseau, has
this Barrabas complex. They really do believe that this world
is all that there is, and that the problems in
the world are due to flawed institutions rather than flaws
in the human heart, which is prone to malevolence and
greed and all sorts of depravity. So the left truly
believes that if you reorganize society along lines that are
conducive to equity and justice, then we can bring about
a much better world, perhaps even a utopia.
Speaker 1: Let's cite some of the examples of the disconnect, the
cognitive dissonance, if you will. Elon Musk the left and
Elon Musk the left of course loved Elon Musk and
his electric vehicles, his commitment to you know, in essence,
a good portion of the climate change agenda absolutely love
this man until he became a close advisor and confidant
to Donald Trump. Not all do they have a problem
with Elon Musk. Apparently some of them have a big
problem now with his teslas, as evidenced by the fire
bombings and destructions of dealerships and teslas and charging stations.
How did we get here? Aiden, How did we get
here in the American left when you have this absolute
disconnect that's going on.
Speaker 2: Well, the American left has adopted a kind of secular religion,
be it wokeness or progressivism, and when someone steps outside
of the narrow confines of that ideological worldview, they become
a heretic. So Elon Musk is a heretic. And also,
I think people forget that Donald Trump was loved by
many Democrats. Prior to running for the presidency. He donated
to people on both the left and the right. But
once he decided to run for president as a as
an outsider, all those in power came out against him,
and particularly the left came out against him with such
fervor that that we have never seen before in American politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no doubt about it. Ferver in fire and
again you can point to myriad examples, But I want
to take you back to twenty twenty. You know, when
we had massive riots. One could argue insurrections across the
country from the left burning down portions of cities. You
mentioned Kenosha in your story in your op ed. Excuse
me and Bernie Sanders being there talking about these oligarchies
and all of that sort of thing, which we'll get
back to in just a moment, But there was a
portion of Kenosha that burned down in the Black Lives
Matter riots. How do they square that circle when they're
talking about social injustice and then burning down neighborhoods of
course that are low end come minority neighborhoods filled with
low income minority businesses.
Speaker 2: Well, it's strange because they're so committed to this far
left worldview and they're so convinced that they are morally
righteous in their cause that essentially the ends justify their means.
They can do anything as long as it's in pursuit
of a greater good. But simultaneously, you really push these
leftists and get a little bit philosophical with them, they
will come out and say that, well, morality is actually subjective,
there's no objective truth in which case, as I made
the point in this article, they have no moral foundations
to their worldview. So this is where the strange hypocrisy
comes in. The Left are oftentimes the most moralizing and
self righteous people in our society, Yet when they're pressed
on their beliefs and the moral foundations of them, there's
nothing there but just sort of secular nihilism and materialism.
Speaker 1: How difficult and challenging it must be for someone to
be so moralizing without a moral foundation. But that's your
argument that that's the collective left. That's what's going on
in American leftist politics today.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's this immense confusion because the left, while having
this commitment to secular liberal values, simultaneously has to draw
upon Christian moral assumptions to inform some of their worldview.
The historian Tom Holland, whom I quoted in the piece
said that to live in a Western society today is
to still live in a society that is utterly saturated
by Christian concepts and assumptions. So people take for granted
just how significant the Christian Revolution was on the world.
The ancient pagan world was absolutely savage, tyrannical, and unjust.
As the Federalist editor John Daniel Davidson pointed out, I
think very effectively in his book Pagan America, the the
dominant idea in Paganism is essentially that nothing is true,
everything is permitted, and under those conditions, those in power
can simply impose their will and their desire on the population.
Because if nothing is true and everything is permitted, then
ultimately just your opinion against my opinion. And if I've
got power, then who are you to say that I
am morally wrong and imposing my worldview even with force
and violence against you.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting contradiction of the so called mostly peaceful demonstrations,
mostly peaceful left and You're right. John expertly drives home
this point that if you don't have this moral foundation,
if you don't have this moral center, well everything kind
of collapses around you. And all of the peace that
you say that you're pursuing really comes back to power,
And exactly that's I guess that's really what we're talking
about with the Bernie Sanders oligarchy argument. He's looking at
the ones he's labeling as ola garks, refusing of course,
to look at the arguably the real olig arcs, the billionaires,
the leftish sugar daddies of the Democratic Party, the George Sorosids,
the Reid Hoffman's. They're playing such a fundamental role in
policy and politics today.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think ever since Donald Trump ran for president,
it became increasingly clear that the left was no longer
opposed to the industrial hycoons and the Wall Street speculators
in the way that they used to. Increasingly the left
came to understand the establishment or the oligarchy as the
white male Christian so to speak. And that could include
your rural truck driver who's only making forty something thousand
dollars a year, or that could include someone like like
Donald Trump or Elon Musk. But nonetheless, there's this very
strange phenomenon where you have these highly educated, perhaps Ivy
League educated, progressive elites acting as if someone from some
rust belt, blue collar town is the essence of the
oppressor in our society simply because they may be a
white male and a Christian. So I think the left
is far more opposed to Christianity today than they are
to the rich or the wealthy. And I think that
was very much indicated by Bernie Sanders' decision to have
Laura Jane Grace perform this song at his rally in Kenosha.
Speaker 3: Elon's not cutting Medicare, just the billions in waste of it.
The watch Dout on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.
Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
the economy and how it affects your wallet. As the
Left freaks out claiming Elon Musk is gonna cut Medicare.
Remember during Obamacare when health insurance got double paid by
Medicaid for hundreds of thousands of patients and our government
didn't check whether it's happening in DC or down on
Wall Street. It's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Aiden Grog and a writer history
PhD student at Liberty University and the Young Voices contributor.
You can read his latest op ed examining why the
left's hostility toward Christianity contradicts their fight against oppression and
injustice is at least they're so called fight against oppression
and injustice. Again, you can find that at Real Clear
Religion one source. Indeed, how much did the election cycle
of twenty twenty four change the dynamic in this country
as it relates to this topic. It's changed it so
much in so many different ways. But the argument that hey,
we are Christians, we are a fundamentally Christian nation. We're
not going to apologize for that. I'll ask you the
question of how much it's changed it in terms of
politics as you see it and policy? And the other question,
the more difficult one, is how sustainable is that strength
and courage?
Speaker 2: Absolutely so. What we saw in twenty twenty four was
an across the board rejectection of institutionalized wokeness. Over the
past decade, the leading institutions in American life all became
thoroughly saturated with woke progressive ideology. Fortune, five hundred companies, media, nonprofits, universities, etc.
And people were simply sick of it. The message did
not appeal to ordinary working class people of any erase.
And in this last election we saw that Trump won
a majority of the vote among Hispanic men. We also
saw significantly more black men voting for Trump this time
around than in twenty twenty or twenty sixteen. So I
think men in particular are rejecting this woke ideology. It
does not have much appeal to men. It mostly has
appeal to college educated women. And you can't unite a
society around a message that is that is so thoroughly
divisive and toxic, and that effectively alienates half of the population. Now,
as for whether this current I guess the worldview which
won the election the Republican Party of twenty twenty four,
I think it ran against wokeness and it was able
to win on that front. But I think conservatism has
a lot of work to do in crafting a more
long term sort of post populist vision. Now, perhaps populism
is necessary here and there. It's a reckoning on an
establishment that has lost touch with ordinary working people. But
populism can't be sustained forever and ever. Eventually, you have
to return to normal. You don't want the masses to
be perpetually in revolt against the ruling class. You want
to have a ruling class that actually represents the people,
that understands them, and that will work for them the
best interest with the common good of the nation. So
the Trump moment is eventually going to come to an end.
I think what the Trump Maga Revolution did was it
exposed that there's a lot of phoniness and corruption in
our political system. But it's time to look beyond this
and really start to articulate a long term conservative vision
that can appeal to broad swaths of the population. I
think it's going to be particularly challenging because the United
States is becoming more and more of a secular nation.
Public opinion is liberalizing on a lot of social issues.
The Republican Party of twenty twenty four understood that and
actually changed its stance on certain social issues such as
same sex marriage or abortion, recognizing that those were not
winning strategies. So I've made the case that the twenty
twenty four election was won by barstool conservatism. It was
sort of the conservatism of Dave Portnoy. It's very anti
establishment it waves the middle finger at elite progressive injunctions.
But it's not the conservatism of Russell Kirk or Edmund Burke.
This is a very anti establishment populist movement, which which
again may serve its purpose and may be necessary, but
I don't personally think that it's a coherent, long term vision.
Speaker 1: That's fundamentally understandable why it was that kind of revolution
because the institutions have been so thoroughly corrupted, and that
is what I think the American people were rising up against.
You All of that, I think is a big part
of it. But I also think that it was a
revolution against incompetence. What we saw in the Biden years
was absolutely incompetence in governance, and the American people already
had a you know, a body of work from President
Trump in his first term and his administration. They compared
that next to Joe Biden, and the orders are Kamala Harris.
They saw no borders, they saw inflation at you know,
historic levels, They saw all kinds of problems with crime
in their neighborhoods. They saw all kinds of problems, and
they wanted it to end. And so that was a
big part of it. As well back to the left,
though they were thoroughly rejected, pretty thoroughly rejected in November,
wouldn't you.
Speaker 2: Agree, absolutely rejected.
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, why are they doubling down
on the same things that cost them so dearly in November.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a very important question, because Bernie Sanders in
particular mentioned I think intelligently after the election that the
Democratic Party has lost touch with the working class. And
I thought that the Democratic Party would get together and
do some serious thinking and restructuring after that blowout to
try to reorient the party toward serving the working class.
But they really do seem to be doubling down. And
perhaps there just is a high level of incompetence within
the ranks of the Democratic Party. Perhaps they are so
out of touch with the way that ordinary people think,
or indoctrinated by the elite institutions they have attended, which
which have inculcated them with this woke, progressive or neo
Marxist ideology, that they simply cannot think in terms outside
of the confines of that narrow worldview. And so they
are resolutely committed to this progressive, woke, neo Marxist ideology
with unrelenting fervor, which is quite religious in nature. As
Edmund Burke said, man is, by his very constitution, a
religious animal. Atheism is against not only our reason but
our instincts, and it cannot prevail long. So the elite
progressives are actually engaged in a religious crusade, whether or
not that they acknowledge it. But it's very difficult to
change people's deeply held religious beliefs. So that's why I
think those steering the Democratic Party have not adapted very
much since the twenty twenty four election. They have doubled
down because this is all that they know. They have
to advance this worldview because that's what is in their soul.
Speaker 1: On the other side of that, aiden, what say you
of the Republican Party, Because one thing we do know
about the left is they have been in it and
will be in the crusade for a very long time.
They make deep investments, and by that they have used
the power of the government bureaucracy. They have used massive
leftist well healed donors, donations from well healed donors to
do everything from indoctrinate the school system. I mean that's
deep in the water for generations.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The kind of indoctrination we've seen on the DEI front.
What's going on in terms of state, local, and the
federal government. They have driven long term policies, They've played
the long game on the courts. Are conservatives the Republican
Party in particular, responding with the long term game or
are they still stuck in short term advances.
Speaker 2: I think right now the political right is really focused
on government because the left has taken over the culture.
Back in the nineteen sixties, the neo Marxist left launched
a long march through the institutions. They understood that they
did not only have to take over government, but they
had to take over the education system, the media, the
entertainment industry, the publishing houses, etc. To advance their worldview
and thoroughly saturate their ideology throughout American society. And they
won the Culture War. And the right is responding to
the left's dominance in the culture through government, and there's
been some significant victories, such as the rollback of DEI
initiatives and an attempt to weaken the power of the
federal government and have a more federalist approach, particularly with education,
wanting education to be run locally, and not have bureaucrats
in DC setting education policy for the entire country. But
as I said that, the right needs to think more
long term and past the current populist wave. We really
need to figure out a way to take back the culture.
The right does need its own long march through the institutions.
We need to take back the publishing houses, we need
to take back the entertainment industry, we need to take
back the media. Now, many will say that that is
probably an impossible task. People don't even know where to begin.
If you say let's change the culture, they say, well,
how are you going to do that. Let's just try
to advance our worldview through government. But if we're serious
about this and we really do want to win America's future,
we have to start somewhere. And I think that a
post populist or a post Trump right really needs to
take that into consideration. And now is the perfect time
to do it, because there is this broad rejection of
the left's ideology which has been steadily growing and seeping
across all institutions for decades. It really reached its full
flowering in the past decade. But the American people are
rejecting it and Thankfully, they're rejecting it across multiple demographics,
not just one segment of the country. So the opportunity
is very ripe for the right to cast its vision
not only in politics, but in the culture.
Speaker 1: You right in your piece. The rights and freedoms enumerated
in the Declaration of Independence and safeguarded by the US Constitution,
which progressives like Grace and Sanders enjoy and exercise by
attacking Christianity are indebted to the West Christian inheritance. Are
they willfully obtuse or just absolutely obtuse to that idea?
Speaker 2: They are absolutely obtuse. They do not seem to understand
the way in which our society is still, in so
many ways informed by Christian morality. And again they like
to pick and choose. If there was nothing in the
Bible that said anything negative about the LGBT lifestyle, I
think they'd be much more inclined to accept the Christian
faith than they presently are. I think a lot of
the revolt against Christianity is driven by it's it's the
way it calls on us to conduct ourselves personally, particularly
in regard to human sexuality. Even all this, Huxley, the
great writer of brave New world and and sort of
a modern rationalist and empiricist type of thinker said that
many of his contemporaries revolted against Christianity, not because uh,
it was it was unreasonable, but because it interfered with
the way that they wanted to conduct themselves sexually. And
so much of the the left's agenda today is this
obsession with human sexuality, whether it's LGBT or abortion. That's
that's really their focus. That the Left is so focused
on just maintaining sexual freedom, and they really abandoned many
of the older economic arguments that they used to make.
And and someone like Bernie Sanders is still trying to
keep the old left alive in a certain respect. But
but he seems in many ways more committed to the
current progressive woke ideology than he is to the old
left's prime primary economic arguments.
Speaker 1: Now, Bernie is, if any anything, you know, an old
world social So he understands about using useful idiots and
you know, his ultimate ends. Again, it comes back to
that whole notion, the you know, the ends justify the means.
That seems to me to sum up the American Left today.
Speaker 2: Agree, disagree absolutely, Yeah again they are very religious, but
they don't realize it. And Bernie Sanders in twenty sixteen
was asked about his religion and he said, quote that
he's not particularly religious, that he doesn't attend a synagogue
or any type of congregation. But nonetheless, when he rebukes
the greed of the rich and says, what is the
morality in one percent of the population hoarding whatever percentage
of the wealth, he's relying on Christian moral precepts.
Speaker 1: Final question for you, and that is this, as we
look ahead, not to the left but to the right,
it would seem in many ways there is a spiritual
awakening that has been going on for some time in
this country. Will that ultimately blossom, Will that ultimately succeed
in maybe helping turn back the left in their war
on Christianity in America.
Speaker 2: Throughout American history there have been several spontaneous great awakenings
of religious sentiment and religious conviction, and these seemingly spring
up out of nowhere when least expected. And I am
hopeful that there will be some type of new great
awakening in this century that will radically transform American culture
and politics. And in fact, I don't think that anything
can change unless there is is another great awakening. I
think that our political divide at its core is actually
a theological divide. C. S. Lewis said, in the end,
there are only two types of people, those who say
to God, thy will be done, or those to whom
God says thy will be done. So ultimately everything is
religious and spiritual in nature. In the end, everyone is
a religious creature. We all have metaphysical assumptions about the
world and something much much deeper that motivates us. And
I think it's time that we really understand that and
really take seriously these deeper metaphysical and theological questions about
human life and existence.
Speaker 1: I just I think there is yearning, really, a longing
for something bigger than in our selves. I just do
as you mentioned before Burke's notion of man as a religious,
spiritual animal. You know, there is such an emptiness in
so much of the culture that has been driven by
the cultural takeover of the left. Quite frankly, I think
that you know, like him or dislike him, But the
vik Ramaswami who ran for president, covering him and what
he tried to message in his political run for president
was this deep void in America among Americans, and I think,
particularly after what we all survived in COVID, the isolation,
I think that longing has just been screaming out. How
do you feel about that?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, a man inherently has these spiritual longings, and if
it's not Christianity, it's going to be some type of
other religion. And there was an article in Newsweek a
few years ago which is very illustrative of our current
religious moment. The headline was number of Witches rises dramatically
across the US as millennials reject Christianity. And to get
back to the argument of John Daniel Davidson in his
book Pagan America, as Christianity withers away, We're going to
see the resurgence of these very bizarre, superstitious, ancient pagan practices.
And I think we're already seeing that among young people
who have thoroughly rejected the Christian faith. It's not that
they're becoming more secular, atheistic, agnostic, or rationalist. Increasingly they
are getting involved in these very bizarre, occultic types of practices.
They're interested in divination, witchcraft, and so forth. Now that
may be a minority, but I think that that is
going to become more widespread as Christianity withers in the
culture unless there is some great awakening, which I am hopeful.
Speaker 1: For well as always, there are some frightening things in
the horizon, but there's also great opportunity and that is
at the core of what we believe, I think in
our faith on our Faith Journey. Thanks to my guest today,
Aiden Grogan, a writer in history, PhD student Liberty University,
and a Young Voices contributor, you can find his new
piece a fascinating look into where we are at in
America on many fronts. His latest op ed examines why
the left's hostility toward Christianity contradicts their fight against oppression
and injustice. You've been listening to another edition of The
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at
the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom, anxious for the.
Speaker 3: Frank m.
Speaker 2: I heard the fame voice the Reason, and then it
faded away.
Speaker 1: M HM.