Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond
the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to
explain something right now. If you support me through substack
or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that
you can plug into any podcast your including Apple, and
you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there.
If you support me through a subscribe, Star, gum Road
or on my website directly, I will send you a
link where you can download the file and you can
listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate
the support everyone gives me. It keeps the show going.
It allows me to basically put out an episode every
day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just
going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm
putting out two even three a day, and yeah, can't
do it without you, So thank you for the support.
Head on over to Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com,
forward slash Support and do it there.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I want to.
Speaker 1: Welcome everyone back to the Pekingona Show. All right, got
a little panel going here. Ron Dodson's back. Seems like
we haven't talked to each other in two weeks.
Speaker 2: How you do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm doing great, Pete, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: And for the first time on the show, Fesmo Dad,
How are you doing, sir?
Speaker 4: Very well? Thank you so much for inviting me pleasure
to be with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no problem, no problem. Ron, You've given your You've
given your rundown on who you are. Why don't you
tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 4: Sure? I'm a Middle East and geopolitical risk analyst. I
try to help clients understand the commercial impact of geopolitical
change and what it means for them doing business, and
this has led me down a bunch of interesting pathways
as I've had to learn about religion, culture, human nature
and came to certain conclusions which maybe we can touch
on during this conversation.
Speaker 1: Sure, all right, well, wow, there's a lot of places
we can go, and I have a feeling we're going
to be here for a little while. But Ron, what's
on your mind? Why don't you start us off?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, okay, Well, I just have to say I
I get to be guests on some really cool podcasts,
but I am super excited about this one. The interview
that Ferris did a month six weeks ago that made
the rounds on YouTube was utterly fantastic long form deal.
So I found his thought cogent and willing to step
outside of what you normally hear in. You know, I
am a what amounts to a risk are portfolio manager.
I have a hedge fund and a family office, and
so we traffic in a lot of the same kind
of ideas is assessing geopolitical risk. But I was very
impressed at his ability to not just stay in that
very narrowly defined lane like when you read the guys
from you know, Goldman or whatever, and those are all
smart people. But I was very impressed. So I'm excited
about this. I I've got a peace coming out in
Claremont's American mind about the Realist. I don't know when
this will drop, when this when this UH stream will draw? Okay,
so on, it should release on Monday or Tuesday in
the American mind, and I'm going to be making the
UH the realist case against attacking Iran and uh, I'm
so my what's on my mind is is realism making
a comeback. I was very encouraged to see Michael Anton,
another Claremont guy uh Get placed on the technical side
of the negotiations with Iran. He comes from a Straussian
but a realist bent on the Straussian school, So i'm
i'm I'm very interested to hear what Ferros has to
say about along those lines and just shoot, we've got
a lot to This can go a million different directions.
I love what he had to say about his Christian
faith and that's a very important thing to me. So
there's a lot of stuff to talk about today.
Speaker 4: That's a very very kind introduction, Ron I really appreciate it.
Thank you. On Iran, I think what's happening now is
that the Islamic Revolution has failed and there is no
need to end it militarily because the consequences of that
are going to be quite severe. So let's sort of
unpack that a little bit. The whole project of Romaine
and Ramene, the leaders of the Islamic Revolution, was to
export that revolution to the rest of them at least
and Ramene, over the last thirty years forty years of
his reign, has had a great amount of success in that.
As President and then as Supreme Leader, he helped establish
and set up Hazmala and strengthen it quite significantly. The
American invasion of Iraq paved the way for Iran to
expand into Iraq itself, and the civil war in Syria
gave the Iranians a very important say in that country.
And then after seven October and the subsequent wars with Israel,
this all came crashing down. Hezballah was decapitated and severely weakened.
It underperformed militarily very badly, in part because it didn't
listen to its own military command. The military command of
Hesbadah had said, don't go into a war of attrition
with Israel. If you're going to go into a war,
throw it all in, go quite extreme from the outset,
and then try to get a ceasefire. Instead. Hesbadah played
this cat and mouse game with Israel along the border,
and a year later it was more or less defeated
and it signed a ceasefire that is indistinguishable from surrender.
Speaker 3: Pharaoso want to ask you a quick question. Let me
ask you a quick question on this. Do you see
the Iranian what amounts to in Western terms Iranian Trotsky Trotsky?
You know a Trotsky type of of of of missionizing. Uh,
what their their project? Is do you see it as
chiefly a Persian project or a Shia project.
Speaker 4: Both, and I think that the two are inseparable. The
distinguishing feature of IDUN was that it tried to make
itself into a pan Islamic power. So the emphasis on
opposition to the United States and Israel, which went against
the Shah's policy of alliance with the US and Israel,
was partly intended to position Iran as a pan Islamist
power rather than a Shia only power. And so if
you look at Romani, he was highly influenced by saying
it Putub say it. Kutub is one of the main
ideologues of the Muslim brotherhood, and he's the guy who
really introduced the violent element into brotherhood, thinking with his
declaration that the entirety of Muslim society was now the
facto apostate. Hence the importance to re Islamize societies and
bring and through that re Islamization process, raise the importance
of Muslims globally and make them into a global geopolitical
player as opposed to a theater for the competition of
other great powers, which had been the case starting with
the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the late seventeen hundreds.
So this was a reaction to their own decline. They
looked at themselves said, Okay, clearly we're not practicing Islam correctly.
Otherwise God would be with us and would not be
allowing us to get humiliated. The answer is to reform ourselves.
And Romiani was influenced by this idea, hence the importance
of imposing Islam and society. So you had this revolutionary
project and this missionary export of Islam to the rest
of the world, and particularly the export of militant Islam
to already Muslim societies, rather the export of militant Islam
to already Muslim societies with the aim of strengthening them
in a geopolitical framework. With the fall of with the
defeat of Hezbealah, things were still acceptable. But with a
fall of Syria that meant that the Islamic Revolution had
really been defeated in its project of confronting Israel. Now
the challenge is that if they make a deal with
the Americans, it's a double humiliation, because the whole idea
of the Islamic Revolution was to confront America and Israel.
You've lost the war against Israel and you're making deals
with the Americans. Why is there a revolution and why
is there a revolutionary regime that is quite burdensome on
the Iranians themselves, and that's had some important economic successes,
but people are suffering because of the inflation. And this
is what they're focusing on the effect of sanctions and
geopolitical weakness on the currency and how that affects day
to day life, because the average man on the street
is at the end of the day prioritizing his family
first and his own standard of living. So this is
the challenge facing Iran. If they make a deal, it
discredits them. If they don't make a deal, it could
break them because of inflation and unrest and because of
a potential military strike.
Speaker 1: So, in a way, can I interrupt you for a second.
It seems like if the more and I'm using this
term very loose secular would be pushing back against the
the the religious and they get in bed with the U,
it seems like they would have to get in bed
with a foreign possibly with a foreign power, in order
to defeat these to defeat the radicals, does that mean
they become just another you know, proxy of the of
the West or the United States.
Speaker 4: Look, the big threat for the Uranians now is the
Turks and the Pakistanis.
Speaker 3: So this is where I wanted to This is where
exactly where I wanted to go on. This was the
the I don't know if you saw a foreign was it.
The Foreign Minister of Pakistan just yesterday, very revealing in
an interview, said hey, look, we've been doing all this
stuff for the US obviously through US A I D.
That gets cut off and now they're like, well, I
guess those aren't our bosses anymore. We're going to go
I'll see if I can find the clip, put it
in the show notes. But uh uh, it was quite revealing.
It wasn't typical. Uh it wasn't your typical you know,
slide of hand kind of talk.
Speaker 4: You had the same with the Saudis several years ago
when the Foreign Minister at the time said, look, we
supported that she had these in a Finistan together and
we were fully partners in the export of she had
because this is what the Americas wanted us to do.
And now you're criticizing us for wanting to change.
Speaker 3: So what do you what do you see as the
what's the chief dynamic between uh Artawan and and and Iran.
Right now, how is it? Does Erdawan still have a
view of of having this basically you know uh visions
of former at a Turk grandeur or what what do you?
What do you what do you see going on there?
Speaker 4: He's the antithesis of Attitude because Attitude tried to make
Turkey into a nationalist country and to end their relationship
between Turkey and Islam, and this led to a series
of coups by the Turkish military against the encroachment of Islamists.
The last one was in nineteen ninety seven. And then
Abdogan takes power in I think two thousand and one,
and he slowly dismantles the military deep state and these
secularizes Turkey the facto, even if not the jude He
hasn't been able to reinvent a political system in the
same way that Romaine was and to create a fully
new Islamic constitution.
Speaker 3: But I was just going to say so, it's a
very are they on similar track with Egypt, although Egypt
seems very dependent upon the US foreign aid But no.
Speaker 4: Egypt has a big fight against the Muslim brotherhood, Whereasin
is the region's main sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood in
partnership with kata.
Speaker 3: I, didn't realize the Muslim Brotherhood is weakening in Egypt.
So it's not that it's weakening, it's.
Speaker 4: That they've locked everybody up who dares think and express
views supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood. It's just that they've
re established the tatalitarian police state that tolerates absolutely no
dissent and no disagreement. But for the Turks, their project
is to become the leading state of the Muslim world
and to lead the Muslims of Central Asia, the Caucuses,
the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa in order to
become a global power. The big problem that Turkey faces
is an economic one. Their current account deficit is constantly
too big. With Iran being weakened and the US looking
to the possibility of leaving the region, there is a solution,
which is for the Turks to annex Kirkuk and Northern Syria.
Kirkuk in Iraq and Northern Syria because already Iraqi KRG
the Iraqi couldn't The stand region is a Turkish dependency
more or less mm HM, and so by controlling the
energy resources of Kirkuk, and the Turks have the technical
know how to develop that oil and expand its production
very dramatically. The Turks would no longer be reliant on
Iran and Russia for energy, which is where they currently are,
and they would plug their current account deficit and they'd
be able to stabilize their economy. The agriculture is Russia.
Speaker 3: Is Russia getting pushed out.
Speaker 4: Russia made a deal to get rid of Asset. That's
my read of the situation. My read of the situation
is that there was a Russian, Turkish Israeli deal to
get rid of ASAD and figure out some kind of
new delineation post Ascent. The precise diminies of that clear.
Speaker 3: Yet, Yeah, are they going to keep that deep water
port on the mad is my question.
Speaker 4: There. It's a very vulnerable location right now, given how
he has changed. And yet despite the intensity of Russian
air force strikes against the Syrian opposition that she had,
these who are now ruling Syria, they haven't touched the Russians.
And the only explanation is that the Turk said, don't
you dare mm hmm, which is why I'm of the
view that there was a deal Remember, Turkey and Russia
are partnering in Africa. We're working together to kick out
the French and to kick out the Americans and to
sort of generally expound that into their sphere of influence, right,
and which puts them with Turkey.
Speaker 3: Well, and this puts them in, this puts them butt
up against uh, the Chinese expansionary UH movement moves in
Africa as well, which is one of the areas I
wanted to talk about today.
Speaker 2: So since we're.
Speaker 3: Because I find that I find where American interests are
exactly in that is hard for me.
Speaker 4: To know.
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, we used to be a little more involved,
not me personally, uh my, let's call it expertises moreover
in the in the Pacific Rim, but but in in
Africa where exactly the levers are currently because I do
see Russia wanting to be involved there. I know Turkey
has moved on the basis on the the east, on
the eastern side to try to exert influence. But where
they're coming up against, you know, what China is trying
to do and get done.
Speaker 4: Look, I don't know enough about Africa to say, but
what I do know is that the area where the
Turks and the Russians are cooperating. Is the sort of
Sahel region and is the Sahara region. So they're not
yet in a situation where they're directly butting heads with
the Chinese because a lot of the Chinese interests are
in the Congo are in South Africa, are basically further
south in the Africa.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, they're looking for.
Speaker 4: The minerals, minerals exactly exactly, so so far there isn't
a conflict there so far. But I think it's worth
recalling that China and Russia are natural rivals, and its
own extremist liberalism, with its obsession with both countries, that
drove them together into an alliance, going against any sort
of common sense, which would have always said, don't let
the biggest industrial powerhouse enter into a full alliance with
the biggest natural resource powerhouse because the consequences of that
kind of alliance dominating the Eurasian land mass are going
to be extreme. For a maritime power like the United States,
this is elementry, except that everybody from Clinton through Biden
completely didn't see it that way. First, they opened the
door to China and they kept on harassing Russia in
areas where I mean, if you remember the Balkan conflict
and the conflict over Bosnia Hesbabah. Every few months when
one of their big leaders gets killed by Israel, they
then revealed that this guy was actually a commander in
Bosnia as well, and that he was fighting in Bosnia
against the Russians with the US Air Force overhead. So
the way that the United States has sort of used
radical Islam extremely cynically has been very destructive, while at
the same time backing Israel to the hilt and opening
the doors to migration. This is just suicidal policy making.
This is just stupid, and it's not even stupid, it's
malicious because there comes a point where you stop thinking
that these are mistakes and you start assuming that these
guys are genuinely doing something destructive because they believe it
benefits them and it enhances their power against everybody else,
particularly their own citizens.
Speaker 3: M So this is where we.
Speaker 4: Are right now. And you know, striking Ian means that
Turkey becomes stronger, means that Pakistan becomes stronger, means that
China becomes stronger. And I don't see how that's in
the West's interests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't I don't either. I uh, I'm I
make the point. I am a peace coming out next
week trying to make the the realist point against striking Iran,
and I would go so far as you know, I
think mad tends to work, so I would. I would
almost you know, John Marsheimer makes the argument, I think
pretty cogently that that you need a three legged stool
for long terms to in that area, in that part
of the world. But I have you know, do I
think this just happened? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is this just left over? Is this just leftover Cold
War thinking? Because when you look at Russia becoming allied
with China, it almost seems like, okay, well, the one
thing they didn't want is Russia to become allied with
Europe and especially Germany. That's the one thing they don't want.
They don't want Russia in Germany to be allies. So
if they're still stuck in Cold War thinking and they're
still fighting the Cold War essentially, and the reason they
want to go after Iran is well, because you know
the ties to Russia, it just seems like this is
just antiquated thinking. There's you have a bunch of people
there who are still fighting a war that ended forty
years ago, and they don't see what the bigger picture
is when you have all this threat where everything should
be concentrated in the Pacific right now.
Speaker 4: Look, I think there's an element of that. The obsession
of Iran is driven by Iran's own obsession with Israel.
And there is something that has to be said about Iran,
which is that it's the only country in the world
where in the constitution it says we must continue that
she had until the word of Allah governs all of
the world, and that sets up an institution to pursue
that she had, and that's the Islamic Revolution Guard Core.
So Iran is unusual in that respect. I mean, we
know that she had this mandatory for Muslims against unbelievers.
We know that that is sort of part and parcel
of Islam, but it's the only Muslim state that actually
codifies it and sets up an institution to do so,
and that institution gets to decide its own funding and
to be prioritized above all others. So there is something
exceptional about Iran. But at the same time, I suspect
that if Iran was obsessed with Mianma rather than with Israel,
there will be a lot less attention given to Iran.
Speaker 3: I tend to agree with you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. US policymakers are quite blinkered in one sense.
They're blinkered in their obsession with Russia. Even though Putin
is within the Russian spectrum, a liberal leaning leader, he's
not one of the hardliners by any means. And yet
they're absolutely obsessed with weakening Russia and pursuing Russian influence everywhere.
And so they go crazy supportive Azerbaijan against Armenia, even
when there's a genuine ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in
areas that have always been Armenian.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker 4: Uh, and so they completely decide to American policymakers could
decide to completely ignore that. You know, they commemorate the
Armenian genocide of one hundred years ago, but the ongoing
ethnic cleansing of Armenians they completely ignore. Okay, that seems
stupid with Idan. Yes, it's a dangerous regime that's been
exporting instability, but it's also a reaction to the fact
that Israel is an expansionist state that is incapable of
living in peace with the Palestinians. And the Palestinians are
incapable of living in peace with the Jews. So there
is this reality to how messed up and interlocked this
conflict is. And this was one of the reasons that
brought me to Christianity. You can't look at this conflict
long enough and not see the role of religion in it.
And you can't look at the pointy headed nerds that
insist that there is going to be a two state
solution and that solves everything and ignore that actually, because
of the way that religious Zionism works and the way
that Islam works, it's impossible for there to be a
two state solution. The contested areas are the holiest areas Hebron,
where Abraham and the patriarchs are buried, Jerusalem, the city
that started it all, the West Bank, which is full
of a million and one holy places to the Jews
and to the Muslims and to the Christians. And so
saying that no, you're just going to draw a line
and hand it over to your religious enemies is impossible.
So we look at these conflicts with a very incorrect, unrealistic,
tragedy free lens that's very materialistic and says you're just
gonna divide the land, you know, give them the holy
parts of Jerusalem, and then we'll call a new area Jerusalem.
And that'd be a way to get a two state solution,
which is what Badak sort of proposed data fat in
in the Wye River negotiations. Are you crazy? I mean, really,
the only solution to this is religious conversion. So I
thought i'd at least start with myself. You know, this
is the reality of the conflict in the Middle least,
and appreciating that reality should inform our thing thinking about
everything else. And well, it makes us thank God that
there's a Russian leader who wants to at least in public,
be Christian and endorse Christianity and have good relations with
Catholicism and have good relations with the West in general,
rather than driving him into the arms of godless Chinese, who,
as party policy, wish nothing but harm upon the West.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, well, let me bring up the controversial thing.
There are a lot of people who have infiltrated the
United States government who have centuries old ethnic animosities towards Russia.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you look at their backgrounds, I think
one time I had counted like twelve of them from
what we're within a their families are within a ten
mile radius of Levov Okay. So these people are still
upset about kemil Netsky from sixteen fifty two, and they
want to destroy Russia. I mean, how do we get
past this?
Speaker 4: I think we get past us by being honest with
ourselves in the following sense. And I really want to
choose my words carefully. Different religious groups have different priorities,
different interests, different identities. Liberalism pretends that there's no problem
with every important envoy to them at least being Jewish,
when practical experience suggests that this is going to bias
opinions in a particular way, in the same way that
if you sent a Musli Brotherhood member to be or
envoy to them at least. So liberalism tries to paper
over the fact that there are divisions in worldview and
that your ancestry and current beliefs are both important to
how you think. You're not raised in a blank slate,
you're not raised in a desert. You're raised in a
context in a particular way of thinking, and this is important.
And the Jewish people have a very important historic memory,
and so the fact that you have this old hatred
that is still alive in some and it's not a
general thing. It's not that every single Jew is this way.
That's not that's not the point, and that would be
a silly argument. But it is the case that if
you are particularly interested in this issue, and you are
drone to it to the extent that you want to
join the Foreign Service and participate in decision making, you
are probably motivated.
Speaker 3: It's a self selecting issue.
Speaker 4: It is a self selecting issue. It's a self selecting issue.
And so if that happens and you are motivated in
this way, then there should be a degree of caution.
But liberalism is essentially a system without immune system, is
a system without an immune system because of the assumptions
that it makes that everybody comes in with a complete
blank slate. And you see this across the board. In
the United Kingdom, in the Home Office, there's a Muslim
network that has hundreds and hundreds of members and the
importance of immigration. It is absurd that this kind of
thing is allowed. It's an absurdity because you know what
the motivations are going to be. The problem has been
that in a way, we're beginning to be aware, or
Westerners are beginning to be aware that Islam is a problem.
But given the historic legacy of Christian Jewish relations, particularly
in the West, it's impossible to say that. Look, if
somebody is Jewish and very supportive of Israel, you want
to take their contributions to Middle East policy with a
grain of salt. Not because they don't know, not because
they're evil, not because they're stupid, but because they have
a stake in this issue, and a deeply personal one.
And maybe they're right, and maybe what they're saying is
absolutely correct, but there must be at least some discussion
of the topic. And yet any kind of discussion that
you know, in the same way that Muslims globally will
support Muslims in Palestine, and therefore you see that Jews
globally support Jews in Israel. Any kind of equality that
comes not from hatred or from moral equivalents, but from
a healthy respect for human nature is seen as hatred
or hostility, or antagonism or something or the other. I
say this about myself is if the I'm a naturalized
British subject, I know I'm Lebanese. I'm not under any
illusions about who I am, but I took an oath
and I try to respect it, and I want to
be loyal to the monarchy in this country because that's
the oath that I took. At the same time, if
there was a conflict between the crown and the Catholic Church,
I accept that I will be torn over this. I
project the same onto others, not out of malice, but
out of an understanding of human nature. And I think
we should be able to say this, and I think
we should be able to discuss this maturely. And if
there is a self selection process that is happening that
is informing policy on Russia and on the Middle East
in a way that is driving together an Islamic Russian
Chinese alliance, we should a say this and b be
humble enough to understand that a united Eurasia is too
large of a military and political and economic challenge and
is therefore a threat to the West, and so any
policies that delivers that should be analyzed correctly, including what's
driving it, and should be countered with a policy that
says no, no, Let's see which of these countries we
can bring on side through some realism, through some humility
to avoid a situation where the West is isolated in
a fight against a United Eurasia.
Speaker 3: Well and for US, this begs the question the next
domino to fall, obviously would be India. It would be
if that alliance were to were allowed to really solidify
between a United Eurasia, then India would it would be
in their interests to participate in that. And so I
think that is one of the reasons you'll see. I
think I think the US, uh, the decision makers in
the US are seeing this flash you know, this oncoming
train uh flashing in their dreams and are doing everything
they can at a late stage to try to get
curry Indian favor pun intended. Sorry I didn't.
Speaker 4: Thank you, but that was amazing.
Speaker 3: I had to. I had to.
Speaker 4: I don't we played very well placed?
Speaker 3: Ye, thank you? So anyway, uh, So I think that
explains part of you know, the pa okay.
Speaker 4: I think that what China is trying to do is
to prepare for a day where it can defeat India
rather resounding. And Pakistan's hatred of India is quite legendary
and it goes it's sort of reciprocated, you know, not
to pick a side here, I personally would always pick
monotheists over pagans. That's a point of principle as far
as I'm concerned. But that's a different conversation. But I
think that India is a bit of its own island
and will want to play its own game, in part
because their reawakening of Indian national pride as part of
the v and as.
Speaker 3: Part of the idealism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly isn't going to allow them to be
a a passenger in a geopolitical context. They want to
be their own player. There's a discussion to be had
as to how seriously India can actually expect to be
a player. I find that I tend to be much
more negative on India than others. I don't think that
it has the kind of culture of excellence that has
begun to develop in China, that sort of deepened really
in China, that allows them to be the same kind
of contender as China is. And I partly attribute that
to the chaos of Indian religion, which there is no
Indian religion. There are Indian religions that sort of all
get labeled as Hinduism, but Hinduism isn't one thing. It's
sort of dozens and dozens of different things and different
branches that sort of all go in all kinds of
different directions, and the internal animosities within Indians between Indians overcast.
And this is a country that has one of the
largest Muslim populations in the world, something like two hundred
one hundred fifty million Muslims. Its ability to put itself
together in a unified way and act in a concerted
manner in the same way that China can. Okay, Accepting
that different CCP provincial branches do their own thing while
pretending to obey the central government, et cetera, et cetera,
fair enough. But in India the level of chaos is
much much greater, and I think that that comes with
a geopolitical costs in their ability to execute on the
projects that they commit themselves to.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you think that part of the lack of
perspective in the West to these issues in India is
partially due to the fact that most Westerners their sole
interaction with Indians is with Bramine, because that's mostly who
I think that's.
Speaker 4: A big part of it. I think I don't aware
that most of the Indians that they're dealing with are
from the highest echalons of Indian society and that underneath
that there is a an awful mess.
Speaker 2: I interviewed.
Speaker 1: I interviewed an Indian gentleman who was after he graduated
in India.
Speaker 2: He was educated in Britain.
Speaker 1: His name is Giant Bandari and he basically yeah, he
basically said, you, the West has not met the average
Indian yet quite quite.
Speaker 4: Yes, if you go to the Gulf, you encounter a
very different kind of lowercas Indian and you sort of
see a much bigger golf pun intended between the the
the Indians in the West and the rest of India
when you meet Indians from impoverished backgrounds. I mean, poverty
has an effect on everyone everywhere, fair enough, But I
don't think people appreciate exactly what rural India is and
where it is in terms of its development and how
far it has to go. And I think that they
it's impolite to talk about religion, and it's impolite to
talk about religion affecting culture, and even more so about
religion affecting behavior. Yet in my experience as an analyst,
I found that this is the single most important factor
in understanding how cultures behave and how cultures are different.
So I think that betting on India to counter China
is a bit of an unwise bet, and that you're
better off working with the likes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines,
South Korea, Japan. South Korea with all of its problems,
including a big chunk of you know.
Speaker 3: Of the demographic cliff, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: And the demographic collapse obviously. So I'm not a you know,
India superpower twenty twenty kind of guy.
Speaker 3: I just, yeah, you just hear a lot of it.
I think due to the to to Indian influence in
the UH. You know, the those who have immigrated here
tend to the ones who have done well, have tried
to make their voices heard, and there's some there's some
democratic power. I you know, maybe I'm sensitive to it
because in DFW is probably I think is the large
just South Asian concentration in North America. So where I
am in Dallas, and it's they make their voices very well.
And you know, I get along with every I get
along with anybody. It's not that it's just you know,
a whole different set of presuppositions. You mentioned the whole
monotheist versus pagan thing that becomes very evident if you're
trying to do business, very evident. You know, there's the
it's a joke in the US, but it's a it's
a joke that's true about the Patel Hotel cartel. You know,
forty north of forty percent of all extended stay hotels
in the United States are owned by ethnic Indians. And
it's pretty interesting phenomena that is has gone kind of unnoticed.
Speaker 4: Look, this is something that the West is beginning to
wake up to. As someone from the Middle East, you
automatically know that you're going to do people who are
from your community a favor wherever you can, because the
other communities are a doing the same way and b
out to get you. And this is deeply ingrained in
the Middle Eastern mindset. And this is one of the
reasons for the backwardness of the Middle East, the fact
that this kind of diversity prevents the emergence of a
high trust society. High trust comes from deeply shared interests
and deeply shared values, and the values precede the interests,
because unless you look at the world in a similar way,
you're not going to identify interests in a similar way.
So as the West diversifies its demographics, it's realizing that
actually the rest of the world doesn't really operate this way,
and you're seeing it right now. I mean now in
London there are protests by Indians outside of the Pakistani
High Commission and vice versa because of an incident in
India and Pakistan, and there's a real fear as to
how much this is going to spill over into the
streets in places like Leicester that are highly mixed between
Hindu and Muslim and Pakistani Muslim. So this idea that
you're going to jerk everyone equally, regardless of their blood
relation to you is simply stupid. But Westerners have been
sort of programmed, as one of the consequences of the
Second World War and the atrocities of the Second World War,
that you're not meant to think of ethnic skin first.
But that is a very strange and destructive exception. You're
supposed you're biologically wired to think of your own people first.
The Christian Revolution is in part based on the idea
that you're not going to be tribal, because the Catholic
Church banned cousin marriages in order to end tribes and tribalism.
Several hundred years later, this sort of created the society
that we know today. But the rest of the world
doesn't operate this way. The rest of the world mostly
operates on marrying your cousin from marrying someone that your
family knows very well and trusts very well.
Speaker 3: Faras I think, this is something that's rarely appreciated in
American philosophical, Christian intellectual circles, and that is because everybody
has a hard time holding two things in tension, much
less three. You know, we all are looking for that
simplistic heuristic that's going to explain everything right, and real
life is just not like that. We're called this is.
Speaker 4: Why we believe in the whole. This is why we
believe in the Holy Trinity.
Speaker 5: That's right, and it is meant to confuse your mind
and to make dear to you that there is something
that is transcendent in a way that you will never comprehend,
and that the truth is not accessible to you in
its fullness.
Speaker 4: And therefore you must constantly strive for it and try
to meditate on it in order to be able to
get any kind of understanding of the world.
Speaker 3: That's right, whereas well.
Speaker 4: The yeah, anyway, I could go on about this for
a while.
Speaker 3: Well, no, what I was just saying is is that
it is true that the Christian West has shown that
ordered liberty, not radical licentiousness, but ordered liberty is a
blessing and will unlock incredible wealth and productivity and blessing
on people. But on the other end, and yet outgroup,
but that can't metastasize into radical outgroup preferencing, which is
what you're saying. And let's ever, But on the other hand,
you go the other direction, and radical radical in group
preferencing strikes against ordered liberty. And so these this this
this intellectual philosophical battle which Christianity is supposed to make
you struggle with. It's supposed to make the wise ruler
hold these things intention uh. Is instead we see this
pendulum that just goes back and forth. And it's a
real you know, I I I hope that it doesn't
take radical suffering in order to get this ideal ideal back.
I I question whether that's the actual case. But but
we need to embrace this, the the biblical idea of
wisdom and holding these things intension again, family, state, and church,
or you know, are are three legs of a stool,
and due to you know, the Nick Land talks about
the institutional jealousy between these three that that you know,
you either see fascism, a radical fascism which prioritizes the
state above all. I'm not talking about guys who have
a strong nationalistic view. I'm talking about, you know, the
state above all kind of a hyper Mussolini idea. Or
you see ecclesiocentrism to where the churches is so superseding
over everything else that that there's no place it even
pushes out the family. Or you see these weird tri
radical in group tribalist things. And the truth is you've
got to have all three. And that is just very
very very difficult for in a democratic society for people
to get their arms around, because it doesn't sell. It's
just very very hard.
Speaker 4: Let me go a step further.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 4: Radical tribalism is the default setting. If you accept that
you are genetically ninety eight percent Chimpanzee, what you see
there is radical tribalism. If you look at all other
cultures in the world, from the case system to the
way that nepotism works in Korea and China, to the
way that family conglomerates are the norm in Japan, to
the way et cetera, et cetera. You see that the
default setting of humanity is tribalism, and you see that
this is the starting point for all of us. And
you you see in Christianity when Christ emphasizes that if
you have a disagreement with your brother, go and fix
it before you go and pray well. The reason that
example is used is because that's the default setting. Tribalism
and caring for your brother and cousin first is the
default setting. In Lebanon, we say me and my brother
against my cousin, and me and me and my cousin
against any strangers. So that's the initial wiring that you have.
The state in most parts of the world is monarchy.
Then default government system is monarchy, which is the elevation
of one family as the leading family of all of
the others. And that always comes with its own religion
and religious tradition that says that the ties worship of
ancestors to well being and sacrificing for the an sisters
to keep us safe, and so on and so forth.
These are the default settings of humanity. When you understand
the default settings, the extent to which Christianity is revolutionary
becomes slightly easier to perceive. Because God is no longer
the God of a single people. He is the God
of the Jews and the genteels, all of them. And
because conversion is no longer dependent on blood but is
available to all of the world, hence the miracle of Pentecost.
Speaker 3: And a distributed spirit. Yes yeah.
Speaker 4: And the King is no longer just the head of
his own family. He, according to the Old Testament, has
to write the law himself, to copy the law of
God himself, and meditate on it all the day long,
and think that it is God's law that he is
there to implement. And the antithesis of tyranny is the
implementation of God's law, which is justice for all on
an equal footing. So when you understand the false setting
of the world, you understand that every single aspect of
Christianity is revolutionary. But Westerners have been so Christian for
so long that they view it. They view that extreme
revolutionary idea as that a false setting. And because they
no longer practice Christianity and read the Old Testament and
ask themselves why did we transition from the angry God
of Genesis and Exodus to the merciful God of Christ,
And don't try to see that evolution on how God
shaped us. They assume that the the Sermon of the
Mount is the fault setting of humanity. M Practicing religion
makes you dumber, is what I'm saying to you. Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. That's really good, that's great stuff.
Speaker 1: Well what I think, let me what I think happens
is is that people who are brought up in the
Christian West, now look and see what the Christian West
has become and what you just said about it being revolutionary,
they consider that to be subversive. They consider that to
be the reason why all of this, why the West
has fallen, is because Christians are pussies. Christians won't fight.
Christians allowed this to happen. And it's all because you know, hey,
it's open borders. And you if you, if you have
a natural law, that law applies to everyone. So if
everyone has the right to travel without being you know,
without being having violence put upon them, well then that law,
that law applies to everyone, and why the borders exist.
If Pentecost. If Pentecost brought the whole world together, then
why then then I guess the Tower of Babbel was reversed,
and now there's no everyone speaking. It should be speaking
the same language, and everyone should be together. And then
Christianity is the enemy, because Christianity was the revolutionary spirit
that allowed this to happen.
Speaker 4: Yes, for some of the pagan right this is the case,
but you're also seeing a huge increase in conversions to
Christianity and especially to Catholicism, with people realizing that really,
if you don't want to degenerate into barbaric statism and
a barbaric form of racism as opposed to the natural
human racism that says, I prefer people who are like
me to strangers because that's my default human setting. For
some there is an appeal in that. But for those
of us who want order and to balance order and
liberty rather than worship order for its own sake, then
the answer is christian thought. The answer is serious Christianity
that contends with the difficulties of the Old Testament and
understands God's wisdom in the severity of the Old Testament,
and that embraces the charity and love and forgiveness, I
dare say of the new estimate, but within their proper bounds.
You forgive a killer after he's executed, or when he's
on his way to execution, because you balance forgiveness and justice.
You forgive to not turn yourself into a into a hateful,
rage driven demon. That's why you forgive. You don't forgive
to say well, I'm happy that my son's killer is
walking free. That's just demented. That's another kind of demonic
lethargy and demonic complacency that says, well, I'm indifferent to justice,
I'm indifferent to to to love. I'm indifferent to the
fate of my children. And therefore I choose to just
forgive and forget. You can forgive without forgetting while demanding justice,
and I think that is the correct balance. You don't
let your tragedy turn you beast. You you demand justice
because doing justice is serving God. And you balance the
two together so that you can recover from tragedy and
continue to serve God. And I think fundamentally, if I
wanted to characterize the biggest problems of the West, the
one that I see most is lack of balance. Lack
of temperance. If you're free, you're too free. And if
you want order, you worship the state. Neither of those
is a correct answer. This is why what Ron was
saying about balance, about balancing family, church, nation, and loving
all three of them are are, and learning how to
serve all three of them and to give each of
them as it's due is really the only way to
go about it. Ron is absolutely right.
Speaker 3: You're seeing the rise of pagan Niets Nietzscheism. I think
as a reaction.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: In some of this it's in you know, the less.
Speaker 1: It's a react, Ron, it's a reaction to Jewish power.
That's exactly what it is. If you ask them, they
will tell you. They will say, I am not going
to worship this Jew who was so weak that he
allowed himself to be killed when Jewish power is destroying
what my ancestors built.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although coven Italy, I think the intelligence I mean
this is you know, uh, I know this is going out.
But we can Modern Judaism and covenantal Old Testament temple
worship are two different things. And I can still have
respect for you know the uh uh, you know, the
the the Jewish fellow who I interact with and and
so on and so forth, and still have the opinion
that Old Old Testament temple worship, the Old Testament Tabernacle
and temple cultists and modern rabbinical judaism are just two
different things. They don't see it that way. But I
think the Christian I know, we we Pete and I
were just on a stream together about dispensationalism and dispensationalism
has kind of put a wrench in this understanding. But
but Christian understanding historically is that look, we we we
understand that these are this, this is this modern thing
is a is a reaction to Jesus basically making the
world believe in the in in the Hebrew God, that
he was the messiah. He he he, He proved himself
as Messiah because he fulfilled all this stuff, not just
in the resurrection, but the world believes in yahweh. You know.
It's and so anyway, but that's a very difficult conversation
to have because you get you get all this social
pressure and suddenly you're antisome, you know.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And and that's unfortunate because my argument always back is is, hey, look,
I'm I can be a gentleman. Here and we can disagree.
I know you're not a you're not a Christian, you
don't believe Jesus is a messiah. We can we can
have a we can have a an adult conversation about this.
But but you tend to get shut down pretty quick.
And I think the way forward, the way forward on
all these issues is if we could be just a
little more honest of these things in the same way. Yeah,
go ahead.
Speaker 4: I think what you need is an adult relationship, not
an adult conversation. And I'll explain what I mean by this.
When you're in the Middle East, a lot of people
pride themselves on having friendships across religions and across different sects,
and having grown up with these kinds of friendships. It
is an objectively good thing and these are real friends, right.
But every time there's a war in Lebanon, each community
goes to its own villages. Now, some of these villages
are mixed, but when there's a conflict, each side stays
on its own side of the village. None of them
are so mixed that they would be sort of the
neighborhoods would be fully intermixed. You know, there is this
neighborhood for that sect, and this neighborhood is for that sect,
and it stays this way. Why is this a more
adult relationship? Not that I want the West to become
Middle Eastern, although it seems that Western leaders want the
West to become Middle Eastern. That's a terrible sense. But
this is an adult relationship because what people understand is
that in times of crisis, you're going to be first
and foremost loyalty your own. That doesn't preclude the possibility
of heroic friendship. That is, you go out of your
way to save someone who is out of your own community,
and to do things that are good for someone out
of your own community. That doesn't preclude that possibility, nor
does it make it less good. It is objectively good. However,
you are aware constantly of the fact that the relationships
may turn sour at a communal level, and in which
case you will follow your own group and your friends
will follow their own, and that might lead to all
kinds of different tragedies. So it's not just about adult conversations.
It's also about adult relationships. And part of these adult
relationships is the recognition of the different as different. Because again,
it's important to emphasize the rest of the world recognizes.
Speaker 3: This similar to recognizing men and women are different exactly exactly,
and so we don't understand that distinctions.
Speaker 4: And perhaps the good news is that now that we're
sort of backing away from the men and women are
the same nonsense, we are going to explore differences in
a more adult way, and in a more mature way,
and in a more realistic way. My concern always is
that we as humans are extremists by nature, especially in
a group, and that therefore, rather than realizing that we're
different and figuring out a way to navigate differences constructively,
we then decide that okay, here we go, and it
turns into more extreme elements. And I think that people
constantly warning against the rise of extremism and calling any
kind of recognition of difference extremism are really contributing to
the possibility of this kind of backlash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the denial of the monster in the room
gives room, gives the very lessening of defenses in order
to protect yourself from it. Yeah. So absolutely, you mentioned
going back a little ways, you mentioned Serbia. What do
you think of the uh, you know, people have noticed
the Romanian shenanigans in their election. What do you think
of the same thing going on in Bosnia.
Speaker 4: I haven't been following that, to tell you the truth,
I haven't nothing that. But I've seen clearly that the
EU has decided to drop the fig leaf of respect
for popular will and popular sovereignty right, And I think
that is a It is kind of them to be
more honest, and I hope that everybody else can be
more honest as well, because if we're discarding the idea
that there is respect for the popular will and there
is respect for what the public wants, then there is
going to be a reckoning. And they can, yeah, they
can no longer pretend to sort of have popular support.
They are ruling in a manner that is contrary to
the interests of the public, and they are increasingly abrasive
and unashamed in doing so. And the danger is that
the more they continue down this path, and they've shown
their willingness to crack down on dissent, and they've shown
that they can try to ban Marie Lapin from running
from elections, and they've been trying to overthrow Victor Oddband
for a decade now, the more likely it is that
there's going to be conflict around this in a way
that they don't predict at the street level. And that
is especially the case with the import of enormous numbers
of people from hostile cultures who don't understand what the
West is and have no interest in it. Right, So
they're pushing towards They keep saying that any kind of
opposition to them is extremist far right, and in doing
so they are in a way, uh, animating the possibility
of the rise of genuine far right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these all these, all these characters between a f
D and Lapin and and uh, the Bosnian fellow and
the Romanian fellow, these do not seem like far right figures.
They seem like pop they seem like right leaning populists.
Speaker 1: They're not anti they're not anti liberal right right.
Speaker 2: You'd say that, no.
Speaker 4: No, no, I I I wouldn't call somebody like Nigel
far anti liberal. Most of Marine Lapan's assumptions are are liberal.
So I don't see the I don't see that a
true alternative has emerged. The idea that the AfD, led
by a lesbian is somehow far right, is genuinely insulting
to the far.
Speaker 3: Right exactly exactly, and it's also intelligence. Yeah, I thought
Zamor was pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, but he didn't. I think that part of
the problem is the extent of public apathy, and I
think we sort of need to be honest about that
as well. The one of the things that I noticed
when I came to the West was that you constantly
find people in their thirties and in their forties trying
to relive being twenty one. And that surprised me, and
then I joined in it myself, to my shame, But
that was one of the things that I that I
initially noticed when I when I when I got here,
and it just didn't really make sense. The other thing
is that for the most part, there's a culture of
complacency and keep your head down. I mean, the reason
I'm self employed is because I told my former employer
is that no, men can't become women and know, the
West isn't racist. And this was enough to get me
reported to HR. And I was told in no uncertain
terms that HR said that you can't be a manager
in this company, and so there's going to be a
merger soon. Why don't you take a package and buzz off?
Is that fair enough?
Speaker 3: Were you with one of the big banks for us.
Speaker 4: No, no, m So this kind of what surprised me
the most really was that among thousands of employees, it
seems that I'm the only one who said anything. And
I'm not Western, I'm Middle Eastern. And I don't say
this to brag, but I say this to say that
nobody can save you. You've got to stand up for yourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Agency well, well, let me ask you fit us.
Speaker 1: Because I was listening to Carl Benjamin the other day
and he did a very very long, long rant and
at one point somebody asked him this. And the reason
it stuck out to me so much is because a
friend of mine has a friend in Britain too, an
academic in Britain, and this person made the same exact
within three days of each other. I heard two Brits
say this, and two very educated, very smart Brits say.
Somebody asked him and said, does anybody love England? Doesn't
anybody love England anymore? And he said, and he said,
and this other person said, it's not that they don't
love England anymore, they don't love themselves anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And if you don't accept divine love, self love
becomes becomes narcissism in the same way that you must
balance love of country, love of family, love of God.
You can't love yourself in a healthy way without divine filiation,
without accepting that you're a son of God and are
loved by God. Otherwise your self love becomes like Indians
and pakistanis bragging about how great their own country is,
and then you look at the country and you realize,
hold on what So there is this reality here that
the loss of religion which has been embraced fully by
the elites. I mean, in Britain it was the Conservative
party that turned civil unions into homosexual marriage, as if
such a thing could exist, that they would make that
it would be the Conservatives to do. This shows you
how far the love of God is from the elites
and within all of the Western leaders that are trying
to revive the West. I think the only person who
speaks about faith in a in a semi in a
semi serious way is a Salvador's president. The others. I mean,
I believe that Trump felt something divine after he was
saved from the assassination attempt, but I still don't think
that's well developed. And you look across the West, and
who are the opposition parties. Nigel fire Arch doesn't mention
God as far as I'm concerned, Marie Lepenn mentions cultural Christianity,
as does the mood the a f D is literally
led by a lesbian. I mean, we can stop there. Uh,
it's only urban who's also serious about religion and about
his faith. These are the two say again, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Know he's reformed.
Speaker 4: I know I know he'll get there. He'll get there,
you'll you'll all get.
Speaker 6: His family is all Catholic, right, So this kind of
not loving themselves does have spiritual roots.
Speaker 4: And in a way if this you you mentioned the
sort of issue with Annietzschean right and and all of that,
Well that's exactly what the right is going to look
like without God.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: It is going it is going to be racist in
a not in a natural love for your friends and
family way, but in a somewhat more hateful way. And
it's going to have consequences. So you need God back
in the political discourse. This is absolutely necessary. I think
in Britain there was a Liberal Democrat leader who apparently
turned out to be Christian, and they just kept on
attacking him for that until he resigned and they kicked
him out. But aside from King Charles, who whenever he
mentions Christianity has to insert a slam into the conversation,
no public figure in Britain that I'm aware of, mentions Christianity.
And this, to me is it's very dangerous. It's very, very,
very dangerous. You need to love your yourself and your friends,
and your neighbors and your community in an ordered way,
and that order comes from above.
Speaker 3: Yeah, otherwise you get positivism and uh, and that's just fancy,
that's just fancy tyranny. You know, the idea that whatever
we whatever we say, goes because just because rather than
you discover, you discover that which is true and lawful?
Is uh is a radical difference. Uh, that is I
don't think fully appreciated, especially by the hoy poloy uh
in in at least in the US. I don't. I
don't know about UH. You know, we're seeing and so
so as a result of that, you're seeing you know,
the UH controversy over the judicial in the UH in
the US right now, and it's it really boils down
to that, do we do we create law or do
we discover law. So and and that's a I want
somebody to talk to mention that at least at some level. So, yeah,
I don't know that. That just came to me while
we were talking.
Speaker 1: No, you're right, you're right, I guess, I guess I
got to keep the conversation going then, No, no, no problem.
I wanted to go back to something because you had
mentioned very early on in this conversation fit us that
talking about how the liberalism, the the concepts of how
the concepts of liberalism basically you they need you to accept,
they need you to almost take that on as like
the new religion. Like and you mentioned family. We've mentioned
family as being first and foremost in everything. You're going
to prefer your family above everything else. Well, that's what
liberalism has to do, right, And that's what liberalism has
been doing for the last hundred years, is tearing all
that foundation out, and it's torn the foundation of family,
of church of you know, they wrote about it in
the book The Authoritarian Personality, the Frankfurt School, Theodore Aderno,
those guys saying that basically, if we don't want fascists anymore,
we have to tear down the family. We have to
tear down the church. We have to basically tear down men.
So if that, if that is the default of what
most even people who are maga, most of maga is
liberal and they're you know, if you if you try
to tell someone who's maga, you know, you know, we
really need to you know, reverse o Bergerfeld. They may
be like, Okay, we need to reverse the law, but
the whole attitude behind homosexuality, we can't attack that. So
I mean, how do you go forward? How do we
deal with this?
Speaker 4: I don't have a clear answer for you, but I
think it's important to Liberalism is animated by an erasure
of difference and distinctions first and foremost, and I think
emphasizing difference and distinctions as being ordained by God and
as being a good thing is important. The second point
I'd make is that the erasure of men isn't going
to result in what is hoped for by the liberals.
It's going to result in the emergence of much more animalistic, unbounded,
merciless men with a mob cheering them on to help
them avenge themselves against the excesses of liberalism. So there's
got to be an answer here that sort of says,
we see what you're doing. We think it's absolutely wrong.
Here is the truth, and the truth starts with Christ
and it starts with the idea that natural law recognizes family,
nation differences, distinctions and their importance. Men naturally strive for hierarchy.
This is part of how we are and it helps
us and enables us to function. If I know my job,
I do it better than if I don't know. And
so if someone tells me what my job is, that
actually helps me in a way. And ultimately that comes
from God, who gives us our ultimate functions. But there
are intermediate steps here.
Speaker 3: I don't know what works now, Yeah, fear us you mentioned,
you know, liberalism of races distinction. But but Christianity has
the answer for this because at Pentecost, when the as
Pete mentioned a minute ago, when the when the curse
was undone, it wasn't undone in a way to erase difference. Yes,
it it made difference part of the answer. In other words,
everybody could could hear the mighty, the mighty deeds of
God in their own language via either a miracle of
hearing or a miracle of glossalleia. You know of tongues.
Uh uh, probably the latter of the former, but there's
some theological difference on that. But the point is is
that the different ethne the different groups remained even and
so that seems lost. In other words, there is this,
there is a celebration of of there is a there's
a manifold glory in all these distinct distinctions remaining and
and and being distinct, I mean with some admixture at
the edges. Uh. And I think that Christian thought being
so in the West, being so subsumed into John Locke,
the tabula rossa, which is where all this flattening comes from.
I think. Uh. And Locke wasn't a terrible guy. I
radically disagree with that pose it. But but but I
think I think a recovery of just oh, the story
is all these distinctions remained, and and yet there was
a there was still this reversal of of Babel. Well,
you know, that does seem lost.
Speaker 4: I think, firstly, you are absolutely right in everything that
you've said. Second point that I would add is that
even though the Liberals keep on preaching equality, they do
not live by it. If you look at the Labor Party,
this is the single most nepotistic cabinet and seat of
political appointments that has ever happened in Britain. In modern Britain,
they are by far the most nepotistic across the board.
You had the head of the civil service do a
hatchet drop to get rid of Boris Johnson and then
her son, and then she becomes Keir Starmer's chief of
staff and her son becomes a Labor MP dropped in
out of the blue. You have husband and wive teams.
One of them is working in communications, the other one
is in control of a ministry. And that you have
rinsed and repeated at nauseum. They Labor Party just decided
to appoint again Ayan to be their trade representative to
Ghana and a Nigerian to be their trade representative to Nigeria,
and on and on and on. And you see this
and you kind of go, well, guys, this is obviously nepotism.
You see it in the United States with a Pelosi
family and her relationship with Newsome and all of that.
You see it with a Kumo family, You see it
with a Bush family, You see it with the Clintons.
So these guys preach one thing and do the other
constantly across the EU. It's just one big gravy train,
one massive gravy train. And then the assumptions underneath a
lot of what they're actually doing today only work in
a Christian society. So we've ended up in a situation
where instead of having original sin, we have slavery, racism,
and sexism and homophobia and whatever it is, these various isms.
And you go and try that in a Muslim society,
like try and tell the Muslims that slavery was wrong.
You can't because Muhammad himself owned a bunch of slaves,
and it's permitted fully in the Pud'an, and it's not
been superseded by a new Testament. It's not been turned
around by a new Testament. It's something that's still fully embraced.
There is this guilt that, Okay, the West didn't treat
the people that it's subjected to its empire well enough,
but it treated them better than anyone else did, and
better than they treated each other. I mean, African slavery
was primarily an African affair before the Arabs and before
the Christian step in, and the.
Speaker 3: West Africans were pretty good at it, and the.
Speaker 4: West Africans were very good at it, and the people
who ended it were the Westerners, and they went as
far as to end it for the Muslim world. So
where did that impulse come from? You see the same
with how these holy groups have been made into the
Holy victim. In the Catholic Mass, Christ is the Holy Victim,
and I think it's the same for you, for your
reformed guys, he is the Holy victim. He's the Lamb
of God. And this has been replaced by being black,
or being gay, or being Muslim, or being a minority
or being this, that or the other, even though technically
now they're using the term global majority, so they're not
a minority anymore. But anyway, you see it with transness,
I mean, transgenderism is a spiritual claim at heart. The
idea is that there is something within you that is
different from your appearance, and that this is the real you.
As Christians, we call it a soul, but they, the perverts,
call it gender identity and try to sexualize it in
a way reminiscent of how Islam sexualizes Paradise, you know,
and you look at it and you're like, God, guys,
this is nuts. You can't go this far. This is
a little bit extreme cancelation. It's just excommunication, that's all
it is. And it operates in the same way because
you don't get canceled for de industrializing America, you don't
get canceled for the financial crisis, you don't get canceled
for any of that. You don't get canceled for I
don't know, selling weapons to evil people. You get canceled
for not professing the correct dogma. So it's a sin
of blasphemy that gets you canceled, it's not an actual
crime that you commit. And that's exactly Christianity, that's exactly Catholicism.
If you do something bad, you confess it and you
seek justice a case yourself if you're sincere in your confession.
Whereas here whereas what gets you excommunicated in Catholicism is blasphemy,
is going against the dogma of the Church, and it's
the same exact thing. So it's important to point out
to people that even the framework of the extreme liberals
is fundamentally Christian. And it's important if you want to
counter this sort of passivity, to explain to people that
everything that they think about the world is Christian. It's
just that it's a fine diverged standing of Christianity.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's an inversion.
Speaker 4: It's an inversion of Christianity, and to the extent that
they're trying to be charitable towards strangers and so on,
and so it's a five years understanding of Christianity. It's
not a mature, realistic, grounded understanding of well ordered thinking
that animates Christianity, the faith that sort of built the civilization.
Speaker 2: So and it is a real Yeah, it's a real religion.
Speaker 1: Ron and I have a mutual Yeah, Ron and I
have a mutual friend, Charles Heywood, who sometimes Charles will
make the argument that it's not a real religion because
they're not willing to die for it. Oh but they are.
They're willing to spiritually die for it. And they're also
willing to basically cut off their body.
Speaker 2: Parts for it.
Speaker 1: They're willing to be cut off there, cut their lineage
off for it. To you know, sever they sever their
they sever any connection they have with the past or
their history. So that is that's a work that's worse
than the formal physical death.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, that's a form of death.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, do you do you mind if we pivot
a little bit to Asia, because I would love.
Speaker 2: To pivot to Asia. Where'd you get that from?
Speaker 3: So I would love your thoughts on this podcast is
really Hey, it's Saturday. It's Saturday, so absolutely it's when
we're taping at least, so, uh, listen to me sound
old when we're taping. When was the last time any
of us use tape? So, so do you think it's
it's it's my posit that, uh, a more regionalistic reality
is coming regardless just as much as anything. As much
as uh, you have populism on the rise and so
on and so forth, but you also just have the
the changing calculus of power projection in that it's much.
It's just I can overwhelm these multi million, multi billion
dollar defense systems with very cheap weapons and so so
an extended global supply chain. That and the offshoring of
critical manufacturing. Forget the jobs question. Let's just talk about
strategic strength and that all these things are going to
are that that it is impossible for the US Navy,
even though we have ten carrier groups, it's that only
maybe four or five of which are ever in the
water at the same time. Can police all the different
choke points of the world that's coming to an end.
These are these are no longer functioning power projections, but
more of of power totems. If you touch my carrier,
We're going to nuke you kind of idea, which is silly,
but I see this in Asia really driving part of
the new the new reality of of of of a
of a new regional hegemony rather than a global hegemony.
What do you think about that.
Speaker 4: I think let's start with the Yeah. I think that's
a great introduction, and I think you're absolutely right and
that the West can, the United States can no longer
be the policeman of the world, especially given the level
of industrialization and the sheer extent of dependence on China,
and the fact that China is ahead of the United
States in a range of technologies. The Aussies identified sixty
four critical technologies and claimed that the Chinese are ahead
and fifty seven. If that is true, then it is
really a very hard time for.
Speaker 7: The West right now, and so it makes sense to
try to decentralize responsibility a little bit, because if you
look at China, they've got a border dispute with everybody.
Speaker 4: Around them because of the nine dash line. They've got
a dispute with India, They've got a dispute with the
with the Japanese, and this puts them in a position
where their sheer strength encourages others to band together against them.
The United States has been trying to get to that outcome,
but in an incredibly clumsy way, and really the main
obstacle to that outcome is American intervention. And it's much
harder for anybody to challenge China if it's allied with Russia,
the world's greatest natural resource, superpower and nuclear power. So
this is where the Trump doctrine comes in. Has built
this alliance with Russia and Iran largely as a result
of Western policy. And this alliance naturally dominates most of
the Eurasian land mass because if you're in Central Asia,
good luck, buddy, You're stuck Iran, China and Russia all
around you. You're gonna do whatever they tell you. And
these resources get to feed the Chinese manufacturing behemoth and
became captive and become captive markets for Chinese exports. This
has been the result result of Western policy. This is
the legacy of Clinton, Bush, Biden, Obama. You know, the
answer is to dismantle this legacy, and that requires a
reconciliation with Russia and a reconciliation with Iran to finish
these problems. And when you see the world this way,
the location of the border between Russia and Ukraine is
an unimportant detail. The point has been conceded that countries
get to invade each other in annex territory and the
law of conquest. The fact that we expect conquerors to
be civilized is another one of these Christian revolutions because
normally they're just mongols. But you can't have a world
in which invasion is illegal because it's just not how
it works. This is different from policing a society. You're
policing international relations, which are naturally violent and chaotic.
Speaker 3: Well, and this is why the neoliberal impulse is to erase,
is to not a race, but regard difference as immaterial
because in order to remove any what Schmidt would call
way of life that you know what I talk about
in common pre suppositions, to try to keep it because
I think it's ultimately theological. Whether you're whether you're an
atheist or a devout, your politics is still driven by
political theology. You can't get away from it.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, So what Trump is trying to do with
Asia is to at least begin to dismantle this behemoth
by saying to the Ukrainians to pounce sand and now
that Iran's regional project is defeated, make a deal with it,
solve these problems. It becomes then a lot easier to
deal with China. You have countries like Vietnam, like the Philippines,
like Indonesia. They don't really like China because China doesn't
have allies. People forget this. China only treats the way
it treats the world. Commercially. They see eat on down
because of sanctions, and they try to milk it for
every dollar, ignoring completely that this breeds resentment. They see
that Russia needs them and they try to bleed it
for every dollar. That's how they are their their relationships
South American fish.
Speaker 3: So they got the South American The South American fishing
is yeah one I think it should be getting tons
of attention because they are they are raping the the
the the ability for the South Americans to feed themselves
from you know, from a.
Speaker 4: It's cautious free a motion, free exploitativeness and empathy and
empathy free, they don't give it dan about anybody. So
reducing American pressure on everybody else, including reducing American defense
of Japan, might be helpful. Because if Russia is free
from sanctions, the Japanese manufacturing machine is sitting right there
ready to compete with China, and they're willing. And Japan
and Russia are also a formidable combination against China and Japan,
Russia and Vietnam is a very impressive combination. And so
you constrain the Chinese by giving the Russians and the
Iranians options so that they're not dependent on China. And
again I have to emphasize this the stupidity of the
previous presidents who pushed this alliance together, who created it
unnatural as it is, through their arrogant, idealistic posturing.
Speaker 3: Well and the and the the structure of sanctions which
not only not only forced this alliance but also remove
the sponge for us to export our inflation. So it
absolutely came back upon and that uh uh, you know,
the the the you're a dollar issue. That's a little
technical we we you know, we could talk about that,
but but just think of one of the benefits of
a world reserve currency is you create out there this
this ability for you to push your inflation out. Now,
I think we would all agree you shouldn't be printing
all that money to begin with, but we were. We
live in the world we've been given. And to create
a sanction regime which basically takes that sponge and cuts it,
cuts half of it off. Uh, was insanity. You know,
actual inflation you know they reported, oh it got up
to seven eight percent. It was double that at least.
Speaker 4: The way that they cheat about inflation data and about
every other kind of data has become truly third world.
Speaker 3: Oh and the the the employment data in the final
days of the Biden before the election was so they
just look at the series of revisions. Uh, it was
so bad. But you know, again, I don't want to
get to tech this. The point of this talk isn't
to get super technical and in the weeds. But but
it's you know.
Speaker 4: I think you have a smart audience. They'll understand it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: I think the point that you're making is that they've
been deceiving us about inflation and about employment for political ends.
M H. And then at the same time, you heard people,
you hear people from the liberal right talking about the
sanctity of deep politicized institutions. If, if even economic data
is being lied about for politic ends, then let's sort
of end this discussion and let's remember something that is
very important again to sort of answer the liberals and
the soft valied, the yellow valied liberals on the right.
States can't operate without a dogma, No institution can in
the private sector. That dogma has become make a book
fair enough. In a state bureaucracy, to organize something of
this magnitude of only speaking from sort of a practical
utilitarian perspective, to organize something of this magnitude, there must
be shared principles. There must be a shared set of beliefs. Otherwise,
a behemoth of the size what the federal government has
two three million employees, or considered a behemoth of the size,
cannot operate without a dog without a set of beliefs,
without a set of assumptions. These assumptions throughout the West
have been deeply left wing liberal, hostile to the idea
of national identity and hostile to God. There can't be
a serious political movement that aims to correct the situation
without recognizing this reality, and therefore they must come in
with an alternative dogma, otherwise they end up in the
same kind of chaos of the first Trump term, where
selections were made not on loyalty or ideology, but based
on trying to appease different branches of the Republican Party
and keep things in line. The actual result was factionalism
and a new Secretary of Defense and a new Secretary
of State every ten minutes. So you must have a
commitment to dogma. And what dogma are you going to promote? Exactly?
Restore the West? What is the West? Is it the Vikings?
Is it the dramatic tribes? What is the West? The
West is the union of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. And
it cannot be understood in any other way. And that
is Christianity. Now I'm not going to say that's Catholicism
out of respect for you, but that we know that
it is without that animating dogma that says we recognize
the realities that have always been there, and we recognize
them in the light of Christ. Any prospect of reform
is seriously dimmed because it's just going to be tinkering
around the edges, leading to factionalism, leading to chaos, leading
to incompetence. Because there isn't a cohesive ideological position. There
isn't a hymn sheet that everyone can sing off of.
You're never going to be able to plan for every contingency.
You're never going to be able to sort of have
a way of dealing with every single government department. You're
going to need a set of operating principles. You need
to articulate those fair enough for your own geographic context.
But there has to be an intellectual bedrock underneath them,
and that's not going to be provided by you know,
make Britain great again, make Germany great again. That's not
got to do it. It's not going to be done by slogans.
It's not going to be done by slogans.
Speaker 3: It's, as Plato said, the righteousness that produces or the justice,
same word in the Greek Dikaiosune, the same word Paul
uses for righteousness in the New Testament, can only be
provided with. It has to be alien. In other words,
there has to be a standard that is outside the individu,
which is exactly what you're speaking of. There has to
be that target, There has to be that bat signal
for us, it's the cross, it's it's and and. But
but a nation cannot be it's, it cannot be its
own tell us. It has to have that that alien,
that outside of itself, beacon that it is working towards.
And Uh, I mean this is what got Plato and
Aristotle run out of Athens, uh, you know, and constantly
on the run because the was this was this idea.
I think they were ultimately seeing, uh, pointing towards a
realizing the pantheon was a disaster. There's a monotheistic ideal,
even if they didn't have the language to completely put
their arms around it yet. But that's that's what we're
that's what we're talking about. Is that's the recovery.
Speaker 4: Yes, And under that light you set your own national policies,
and you fix your own local issues, and you sort
of define your priorities based on your situation. But there
is a guiding light above all of that.
Speaker 3: There's going to be a guiding light you just whether
you like it or not, it'll just be this niche.
You know. Again, all politics is the is theological yes,
And if you know you can you don't have to
love Carl Schmidt. He was just But but that third
essay in that political theology book. Everybody talks about the
other essays, but the third essay in that book is
is critical because it describes reality in that all politics
are secularized principles derived from your understanding of who God
is and how He works in the world. And you're
and so you tell me you're an atheist. Okay, I'll
tell you what your politics is going to be. It's
going to be a material dialectic that is that treats
me as a bag of meat.
Speaker 4: And so, as a former atheist, I think atheists are
just deeply disappointed Christians looking for guidance. Mm. Atheists are
just Christians who are angry at the world not being
Christian enough and of God having given us free will.
Speaker 3: M okay, you know that's good.
Speaker 1: The one of the arguments I was having yesterday was
as people were complaining about Trump, you know, arresting judges,
and well, what about the constitution. Yeah, I'm having an
argument with people, and you really that's when you realize
the whole skyt Adams thing of you're watching two different movies. Yeah,
I'm telling them, I'm telling them the constitution doesn't mean
anything if you don't have a foundation. The foundation has
been washed away. It was it wasn't built. It was
built on sand, it was not built on stone. So
it's been washed away. And you know, people want to say, well,
we need to follow this, and we need to follow
that if we just follow this, and I'm like, no,
the whole thing is you know, I mean, Thomas and
I have been having this series where we're discussing continental philosophy,
and you know, basically in the first two episodes what
we said is Socrates deserve to die. He subverted the
culture of Athens. He basically he tore away the foundation.
And then when you look at what, oh, Plato and
a Plato and Aristotle get run out. Why because Socrates
had changed Athens to the point where they accepted all this.
And then when somebody comes along it says, no, it's
actually the way, it's actually points towards Monotheism, it actually
points towards Christ. He gets run out because Socrates had
perverted what was it what had existed, and what existed
was basically civilization, you know, And and our argument is
is that civilization hasn't existed since the Peloponnesian War.
Speaker 4: I don't know anywhere near enough to begin to answer you.
Speaker 1: What what What it comes down to is if everybody's arguing,
why is the house falling down, and they're like, well
there's well look at that beam right there, look at that. No,
it's the foundation. The foundation has been And if you
don't get the foundation, no, no.
Speaker 4: The foundation. I think again, it's not to sound like
a broken record, but perhaps it's it's it's it's the
enthusiasm of the confort. The foundation is Christianity, and as
Chesterton says, our God knows his way out of the grave.
So it's not dead and it's not over, and there's
no point in being sort of black pilled, as the
kids apparently say. But it is also important to recognize
where we are and how bad things are, and what
are some of the steps that we need to do
to sort of to answer this. So the foundation is
severely weakened, but this is an undying foundation, and this
is a foundation on which you can always rebuild. So
I just want to because I don't like black pilling
as a general approach to life. You know, I don't
find any use in it. Yeah, that's what I want.
Speaker 2: To tell the black pill.
Speaker 1: The black pill comes in when you're there rigid ideologue
about like like politicans, well in results. Yeah, I'm not
the biggest Thomas soul fan. I think people have over
people use him too much. And I think a lot
of the a lot of the reason in the States
that people use him is because conservatives like having a
black guy they can they can refer to.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I think that that's just that's just the truth.
But he said that.
Speaker 1: He said that there's there's no perfect, it's all trade offs.
Your life is going to be about trade offs, and yah,
yeah yeah. So I think that's where the black pilling
comes in. Is somebody who used to be a libertarian,
who used to be an narco capitalist. I look at
that and I'm like, oh, well, they I was right
all the time because I was always pointing towards the perfect,
and I was saying, oh, well, if it doesn't meet
this then and I stand by the perfect. I know
what the perfect is. If it doesn't meet this, then
oh it's all wrong. And that's where black pilling comes in.
It's like I knew, I knew voting for Trump was
going to be better than voting for Kamala because I
honestly think Kamala would have some of us killed. I
mean that under her regime, some of us would be
killed and some of us would be taken out.
Speaker 4: And that underestimated and we see it here in Britain.
What's happening to us? Yes, sorry I interrupted you.
Speaker 1: No, that's fine, And I think you know, if we
want to have it, if we want to have a
conversation the next time it is, I think a good
place to start would be the fact that, and I've
been talking about this a lot lately, is Trump can
do all he wants, but if the left ever gets
in power again, the people who supported Trump, they're going
to come after us. Yes, So, I mean that's that's
how the system is broke. The system is broken because
if people are just voting in every if people get
to vote every two to four years, and you have
the threat of someone coming back in who wants you dead,
who wants half the population dead, well I don't that
is that a democracy?
Speaker 3: Is that proscription? You're describing proscription in return of the
of the late Republic, uh, proscriptive reality, which is what
gave rise to one of the things that gave rise
to Caesar. Caesar was able to say I'm gonna end this.
I'm everyone's leader, and uh. And so that's the question.
You know, Michael Anton has written about this, uh, and
I find him pretty compelling on that. For For me,
the thing that I think would help, regardless whether you're
Catholic or or Protestant or or Orthodox, is a recovery
of the preamble to the Great Commission. You know, everybody
remembers make disciples of all the name everybody. But but
we forget this the sentence Jesus says right before that
which is all on heaven and earth has been granted
unto me. And so there is there's not a Yes,
power can corrupt, but there's not a there is not
a some kind of weird spiritual prohibition on the wise
exercise of power in a Christian framework. There's just not.
And we need to understand that that what is best
for the world, what is best for the sinners and
the pagans even, is for us to want for the
wise to exert power. And we can't be bashful about that,
you know. I see this general Jesus meek and mild
as a totalizing impulse over everything. And then there's no
you know, I shouldn't you can't even then you can't
even comment on who who needs to be dog catcher,
much less what are what's wise policy to take care
of people and promote peace.
Speaker 1: So I it's the we, it's the we lose down here, Yeah,
which is anyway I'm about to Jeff.
Speaker 2: All Right, gentlemen, I go.
Speaker 1: I know that Ron has a heart out, so fitess
please promote what your promote your substack, promote what you want.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you. You could find me on modadgeopolitics dot
com and on uh convert or die dot net and
on my my Twitter, my dad g E O p
and thank you so much for for speaking with me.
It's been a pleasure to speak to you both, Ron
and Peter.
Speaker 2: Of course, Ron, what do you got?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: I you can find my writings at American Reformer and
at the American Mind part of the Claremont Institute. I'm
on Twitter, uh, Ron Dodson, Uh at Ron Dodson and uh.
And then I have a substack which is the Eyes
of Apilles and UH. But Ron Dodson at substack uh.
And Hey, for us, this has been a real pleasure
what a uh, what a brilliant mind God has blessed
you with. This was fun for me.
Speaker 4: You're too glad to thank you. Amazing to speak to
both of you.
Speaker 1: Yes, very much so, and let's do it again real soon.
Hang out and uh hang out until while we're closing this.
Thank you everybody for tuning in. Appreciate it.
Speaker 4: H