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Head on over to Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com
Forward slash Support and do it there. Thank you. I
want to welcome everyone back to the Pekenana Show for
the first time. Ron Dodson's here.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Ron, I'm doing great. Thanks for having
me Pete.
Speaker 1: Of course, Uh, tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm an evil hedge fund manager in Dallas, Texas.
I do statistical volatility arbitrage and have a family office.
But I have been into the classics and biblical theology
for a long time and write, and life's giving me
the opportunity. Now I've got both kids out of the house.
I get to do the things I'm really passionate about,
which is a lot of this and discussing things that matter.
So been married for almost twenty six years and just
very happy, very happy with that, and very happy with
the direction we've seen things go here in the last
little bit.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's I guess that's something we'll talk about today.
A lot of people who claim the right are either
really excited right now, cautious, or absolutely black pilling. And
the last one I don't really I can't understand that.
I can't get with. I'm too old to be black
pilling at this point. But it's also one of the
things we wanted to talk about. So one of the
things I brought up to you was Trump's negotiating techniques,
and you brought up you know, people just really Most
people know Trump from the Apprentice and since he became political,
But someone like myself who grew up in New York,
I've known who Donald Trump was since I was a kid.
And you know you you talked about Trump's early early
dealings in his business. So just using as an example,
when Trump says something that seems completely outrageous, like we're
just going to buy Greenland, or we're going to end Canada,
We're taking the Panama Canal back, We'll get to the
one that he did. We'll get eventually gets to the
one that he did recently, and get your opinions on that.
But what you know of Trump's history, especially in his
business dealings, how do you see Trump? How do you
interpret the thing? How do you interpret Trump when he's
saying stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I think he I don't. While I don't think that
he's sitting around reading game theory literature. I think he
has a very natural, uh in his gut understanding of
how how that works. In other words, how do you
how do you maneuver on the on the battlefield of
negotiation in such a way that number one, you understand
the enemy better than he does. And it doesn't don't
even have to be an enemy, just the guy who's
across the table from you. How do you understand what
he wants, maybe even better than he does, so that
you're able to offer that carrot. And because carrots work
usually better than the stick. Is costly to everyone, but
you've got to be able to threaten to use it
in order to in order for the carrot to be
credible in the what I saw and family business background
was in multi family real estate and we did a
lot of business with a large New York City investment
bank that is no longer with us. And our lending
team was Trump's lending team on some of the projects
he did. Without going into too much detail, there were
you know, we had some visibility into how he would
negotiate and it would always be to the great frustration
of lending team because they just wanted everything to be very,
very raightforward. But you know, when you're trying to do
a development in the in the New York, New Jersey,
you know, Northeast Quarter, you're dealing a lot with unions,
which which the perception was that that there were some
corruption and you had to, you know, you had to
do certain things in order to get your deal done.
So it was very different from down here where it's
a right to work state and you just you bid
out everything. So Trump would often would would realize that,
you know, there would be these ovations made by the
other side, that well, you know, you just want to
screw the little guy. Uh and and we you know,
we don't get to participate in the in the bounty
of this development project. And so Trump would often get
them on the deal. And what that means is they
they ended up being participants in the risk of the deal,
and he was able to offload much of his development
risk onto the contractors onto the deal, which is incredible
stupid from there from from a rational perspective, because he's
a he's in the position to take that developmental risk.
They are not, because ended up they just you know,
if the deal, if the deal went somewhat sideways, he
would just reorg wipe them out and then have a
lower cost. And that happened more than once, I'll put
it that way. But eventually he stopped getting you know, uh,
the the he he got his his ultimate goal was
just from the get go to get fair bids from
from the these union contractors, and he got that but
so you saw an ability to what was the goal
of the other side, Well, we want to participate in
the deal. Oh well, I want to offload risk. And
he's just very naturally good at baiting the other side
into revealing by by saying there are no goalposts on
the other side, he bates the other side into revealing
exactly where the goalposts are. And it's brilliant. We go
through some of these, you know, with Greenland, which is
I mean the real game there is is access to
the to the Arctic h and to the polls, which
if if current trends go and I'm very skeptical about uh,
you know, uh, the human you know, human uh uh
being a major factor in global warming, but but the
Earth does warm and cool, and it seems to be
in a warming trend. Those that northern access is incredibly important.
So that's Trump's goal. Uh, he's pulled, He's pulled, you know, uh,
the Greenland side completely offside. In other words, you now
see where the local how much power do the locals have?
How much power is is is European and and it's
just brilliant. And I think that's been the case in
all of these The Panama Canal very very similar. Obviously,
the Panamanians, the elite there want us access and so
that's immediately what he what he took away, and the
Chinese were immediately kicked out of the of their contracts
and they're deciding as to who as to which ships
get priority through the locks. So it's so far been very,
very good, and I think just shows an incredible natural
ability to again have the other side reveal where their
true goals are without the you know, all the smoke screen.
Speaker 1: Is one of the problems that people just they're not
aware that this is the way business works. So behind
the scenes, we know, you know, I grew up, I
grew up in a union family, and I heard all
the stories. I even you know, I had relatives in
the teamsters when they were a little more they're a
little more than gangsters who would actually drop bodies, I
mean if they if they had to, right, But when
you see these negotiations that happened behind the scenes, I
think this is really what you're seeing is this is
the first time that most people are witnessing this happen
out in the open, and they just don't know what
to do with it, because sure, it's it's unseemly from
a simple morality point of view, but this is the
way power politics and power business works.
Speaker 2: Well, you're making the you you hit on it right there.
This is the return of true politics, and uh as
with metaphysics and biblical theology, politics has been out. The
myth of the twentieth century is the days of politics
were over, and they're not. They can you can only
subdue it for so long. But you're exactly right. This
is a politics ultimately is and I'm quite Schmidtian in
this is a battle over way of life and you
can't always solve that with endless debate, you know, Schmidten
crisis of parliamentary democracy makes I think a very good
argument as to the facetiousness of that entire endeavor. You
have to you want this, I want this, but I
have the upper hand. So we're going to meet my
demands first and then we'll see if we can meet
any of yours. And that's and whatever it is you want,
it can't impinge on my ability to live the way
I want to live. And that's what a leader ultimately does,
is protects the way of life for you know, his people.
And I think Trump really does see himself as a
champion for the American way of life, and that seems
that seems unseemly, and he's willing to do or say
whatever it takes to get there, especially in the second iteration.
I less so in the first, but in this in
this second iteration, I think he really sees himself as that,
and that's unseemly because again, in the twentieth century, we
were fed this lie that that is that's not how
you know, everything is consensus. We'll tell that to the
guys who are you know, who fought in all the
wars and ended up dead. It's consensus is is a
is kind of like self determination. It's it's there's a
lot of lie built into that.
Speaker 1: And I think when people start to realize that this
is the way the game is actually played. Just like
in any union where you have you have people who
are just in the union because they have to be
in the union. You have people who are in the
union who are there because you know, it's like, well,
they're protecting me, they're getting they're making sure I get
a good wage, they're making sure that our health insurance,
all of our insurance is proper. Then you have the
group that is like would be throwing bombs in the
haymarket in the nineteenth century, and those are the ones
who don't know how these things are played. And I
think one of the problems with that group is that
group is still ideological and they don't realize we're not
in an ideological war. We're in a power war where
you're just trying to get You're trying everybody's trying to
get what they want, and the only way you're going
to do that is you're going to have to play
the game.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. The whole moving from an ideological construct to
a way of life for power politics or Schmittian construct
is there's a lot of friction there at the edges,
and it's gonna I mean, I think the boomer set
is just almost completely It's one of the reasons they're
completely irrelevant now because they can't make that adjustment. Everything
was about ideology, but ideology ultimately is kind of a
scam in the sense that it's a distraction from you know,
it's pretty nice. I lived in a part of Dallas,
an internal suburb. You know, that's kind of a contradiction,
but a part of Dallas when I was growing up
and I'm in my late fifties where we never we
never had to lock, didn't even own a key to
my house, We never locked the door, and you didn't
worry about anything getting stolen. That's a luxury, but that
kind of should be the norm, right, And so what's
more important returning to that type of reality or some
platonic idea? I'm i say platonic. I shouldn't say that.
I'm a big fan of Plato, but but but this
this ethereal ideal that that you're constantly chasing, that you
never get through, and what does it do for you anyway?
It we're about people. But again that that change is
is very I still talk to you not and it's
not just the boomers, a lot of guys my age.
It's all about ideology, you know. Uh. And and making
that change to where no, it's about the people is
is hard. That's that's a difficult and you see it
with you to really think about it. Should people have
their right to gather together and exert a level of
power for a collective good, which is what the unions
are well? Certainly is that does that have follow on
after they've done that? Are there later on? Costs externalities
to that that are often detrimental to society as a whole. Well,
that's absolutely true too, So it just takes wisdom to
sort these things out. You can't have an ideology that
flattens everything out for everybody at all times. It just
reality doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: Then, I guess you can make the argument that one
of the reasons why unions today would even be a
necessity is because there are so many different interest groups
because of multiculturalism, they're vying for power and in a
in a society that is not multicultural, in a homogenous society,
the need for unions doesn't If people really were to
stop and think about that, the most the strong, the
person who's the most pro union, if they were still
in like nineteen thirty Sweden, what are you forming a
union to protect yourself against? Right, Yeah, you haven't been
invaded yet, so then but then that also, I mean,
that almost seems like a kind of ideology now. Of well,
until we basically get the United States back to being
just heritage Americans whose families have been here since the founding,
we're not gonna And when I hear that, I hear
an archo capitalist saying we're not going to have We're
not going to have free markets until we end the
until the government goes away.
Speaker 2: Kind of yeah, that's uh, you know, I was. I
was a huge fan of in my in the late
eighties early nineties, spent a lot of time uh with
Ledwig von Misis Institute, Lluellen Rockwell all those read a
time back when you know, it wasn't cool. I was
reading a lot of Papa and when it went hardcore
and cap because in the in the old days, people
don't realize the libertarian movement was kind of a palaeocon
kind of thing. It was it it assumed an that
that that the social institutions were taking care of a
lot of the things that they wanted to move off
of the state's plate, and not realizing that those institutions,
for the most part were all corrupt and gone right.
And so when it went hardcore and cap uh, I
kind of lost. I lost my taste for it. But
I have a lot of appreciation for a lot of
those guys. You know. The question now, I think comes
to the the and and often you don't know what
the real opponent is until in hindsight, it's like the
generals always want to fight the last you know, prepare
for the last war. Right now, it seems to me,
and I could be wrong on this, that corporate personhood
is and and the lack of the political will to
to limit corporate power when it's collective ends up being
a contra to the power of the state to do
what's good for the citizens. Now that's that sounds complicated.
What am I talking about? Well, for instance, you know,
we're getting to a point now where Amazon is what
kind of power and you know, Bezos seems to be
kind of rolling over and playing ice right now. But
just from a from an employer uh standpoint, the power
that that Amazon holds over an immense swath of employees
is alarming if you just look at the numbers and
the fact that you know, it's run a lot of
small businesses out Now, maybe we needed a new paradigm,
Maybe we needed a new model. But I question, you know,
so is the union the right tool to fight that?
Maybe not. Maybe it's it's we need we need to
think about what does corporate personhood really mean? Should if
we if we grant corporate personhood, then maybe that that
person should owe the same loyalties that a citizen would
And maybe that's a better way to think about it.
I don't I don't know the answers, but but I
do know that when you get to a point where
some of these some of these uh, some of these
corporations end up being de facto states within in and
of themselves, I don't know if that's beneficial. Again, it's
all about the state owes its first loyalty. I'm gonna
sound like Hobbs here is owes its loyalty to the citizens.
It's and and I think we've completely lost that and
we're hopefully getting a little bit of that back. But
but that's the paradigm which we need to be working in.
And so some of these old tools unionism, trust busting,
maybe we need, you know, we need to be really
thinking wisely about what's the what's what's the best way
to deal with these issues. Now. I don't know that
the the and caps, or the Libertarians, or the palaeocons,
any of them really have it because everything's changing. I
don't know. What do you You know, you and I
have kind of very similar reading lists in our past.
What do you think about you? How would you deal
with Amazon.
Speaker 1: They probably need to be well. I think the first
thing you have to do is you have to evoke
Citizens United. That has to go away. They Yeah, when
you look at the amount of convictions quote unquote, let's
use the term convictions that corporations have against them, many
of these CEOs would be in jail, right, I mean
would yeah, you have these ten twenty life laws or
not ten twenty life, but a third striking your outlaw.
And you know, so once you have your third conviction,
you go to jail for life. These corporations can pretty
much kill people at will, that's right, with what their products,
with whatever they do, denying service things like that. You know,
Luigi Mangione is a psychopath. I mean, it's obvious that
he's he's mentally ill. But if you put that aside
and you look at like the person that he killed,
this is this is somebody who is would probably be
in jail if it wasn't for Citizens United, or he
would have been after the first conviction, he would have
been he had have been fired. They would get rid
of these people. They don't have to because there's no
there's no liability upon upon persons, right, officers, officers of
a corporation cannot be cannot be held liable for things
that they do, right, Yeah, I think that basically the
corporate the corporate liability shields needs to be removed and
they need to be treated like any other business.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe there's and you see this in financial management
as well. So, uh, you know how big is black Rock? Golly,
what's their ass that's under management now? I mean it's
it's un you know. There there just needs to be
a rethink about you get to this too big to
fail thing with the banks. And that's a whole other topic.
We could talk about endlessly about the debtor, the debtor
nation of our of our culture and society and whether
that's you know, a Christian presupposition, but that really is
another topic.
Speaker 1: Well, you can't have you can't have debtor as prison
when your government is thirty four trillion dollars in.
Speaker 2: Debt exactly, and when you allow usury what amounts to usury?
And I see Trump is really has floated a pretty
interesting trial balloon about capping interest rates at ten percent.
That's a that's pretty ballsy.
Speaker 1: Well, getting rid of getting rid of libor was probably
the easiest, was probably the easiest stepping stone to do
that and going and so forth, because Libor was just
having our interest rates being controlled by foreign by a
foreign energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that's absolutely true. So wait a minute,
where were we? Uh? You know again, you're kind of
talking about the same thing. I am that if you're
going to have corporate personhood the the then you have
to then you have to treat these corporations as if
they were citizens with all the same issues. But I'm
with you as far as the corporate you know, shield
should somebody have the right to as in it that
that original that original limit of liability was for the
sake of Hey, if I want to invest in this
India Indian trading company that's going to be you know,
growing tea, and I have no control over the captains
of the ships, who you know, have to fight off
pirates and everything. I'm limited in in my liability to
the investment. And that's fine for the guy who's just
owns I'm okay with that, but but there's a there
comes a point in time in the management of that entity.
If you're taking you know, we call it in in
in tax law, you have active versus passive investment. If
you're active in that investment, then yeah, you absolutely should
have liability. If that means it's a board level, or
a C suite level, or a VP level, whatever it is,
it's it's clearly we're dealing with some uh uh, some
moral hazard here writ very large.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that the term that kept coming to mind,
and I don't think it's a term, it's a term
that needs to be reinterpreted for modern day is no
blessed leegh.
Speaker 2: The yeah, oh yeah, we're so far from there though,
I mean sadly.
Speaker 1: But if I don't don't know that any of these
new people who are in charge even understand the concept
of it, understand the concept of patronage networks. The left
understands the concept of patronage networks. They they probably don't understand.
They probably couldn't tell you what a patriotge network is,
but you know, the yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know,
I've taken to saying that the Left gets their radicals
elected and gets them, you know, six figure no show jobs,
and the right cancels their radicals.
Speaker 2: The right.
Speaker 1: Can you know, if if you you've mentioned Carl Schmidt
a few a few times now, no one meant talking
about Carl Schmidt openly, it is taken, is taken seriously?
Is they're actually you're you're suppressed. You know, you're you're
a radical if you're talking about Carl Schmidt, because you know,
there was a certain German painter who allegedly they were
like Buddy Buddy, which is a complete.
Speaker 2: Know, Schmidt was detained because he wasn't he wasn't down
with the final solution stuff. Anyway, we could go all
into that. Yeah, but that's way too complicated for people,
because the average normy can't hold two things intention and
that's what we're really talking about. Oh so a person
who is is incredibly wealthy and and uh and has
been blessed by their citizenship owes this obligation to bless
those around it, this idea of nob less obliege. But
that's a very aristocratic ideal. And we've spent the last
holver many years since Wilson saying that, you know, an
aristocracy is in and of itself evil as opposed to well,
there might be there's always abuses where you know, if
you believe in a sin nature and I'm a I'm
a trinitarian Christian, I do people need to be governed.
But but but that's a very that's that aristocratic ideal
that those who have been born with with gifts, abilities,
material blessing use that uh uh for the betterment of
society as a whole. And that's you don't do that
through uh you know, that's where inheritance taxes came from
and everything, which are an incredible blight on this country
because they end up they end up destroying. Oh well,
I'm gonna pay my taxes, I know not, I know,
I owe nothing to anyone because what you're you're just
gonna take it by force. Anyway, Now I am sounding
like my I'm sounded like Happa and my libertarian buddies.
But uh, but it's true. You know, Ron Paul was
has been by the way, Uh you know, uh do
you ever read any Gary North by any chance? Yeah,
of course, yeah, so you know Gary wrote was the
ghostwriter for Ron's newsletter all those years when Ron got
elected to Congress, and uh, anyway, brilliant, Go go read,
go read something. He's Gary died several years ago. But uh,
but well worth perusing if you're if you're a Christian
and interested in in kind of applying some of the stuff.
Pretty interesting guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were. I was doing my little, my little
get together with my got my buddies for the Thought
Crime Syndicate recently. And one of the things that one
of the things that D said was he said, you know,
we on the right, we should have no problem having
like a think tank, which is like the John C.
Calhoun What did he say, the John C. Calhoun Center
for Political Thought. He goes, and we have we have
people who we have single people who could find finance it,
and we don't. We don't. No one is doing it.
And you know, every once in a while when we
talk about patronage and it's like, okay, you know, so
a lot of our guys, including myself, can do this
full time out of the out of the generosity of
the listeners who you know, provide, provide for us and
allow and allow me to put out as much material
as I do and hopefully it's uh it's all quality.
Uh it's good. I try, I try real hard for that.
But yeah, I mean, there's no there's no reason why
there are people out there on our side who could
be who could just start an institute and all the
all the podcasters they like, can be under you know,
paid through that and take and taken care of and
wouldn't have to rely on people. But it's where the
left sees the benefit in that sees the benefit and
their people having a voice saying things that may go
a little too far, just to push the Overton window
a little bit. And we can talk about the Overton
window too, because we were talking about that. It doesn't
seem like the right once that and I think that
a lot of that has to do with the spirit
of the age. It has to do with the post
war consensus. Is everyone scared of the accusations of going
too far right, But yeah, I mean our guys are
a lot of our guys are honestly inspiring the change
inspired the change that's happening now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the patronage deal, I think is, you know
that's Roman Catholics still to a large degree practice this
and they're great at you know, my two daughters both
went to uh Conservative Catholic all girls school here in Dallas.
I'm uh Presbyterian Conservative Presbyterian Reformed, and but I saw
that with the Roman Catholics that that church wasn't just
where you went and got your spiritual fix once a
you know, once a week, but you actually that that
that there was a family, that we're in this together.
And and if somebody you know, oh, hey do you
hear about John, Yeah, they reorged him out. Well, hey,
we got to figure out a way to get John
a job. And that aspect of patronage in Protestant Land
has been lost. Uh. Part of that is the is
the is the uh you know, kind of the megachurch
deal where it's a very consumer model. But we treat
politics and we treat spirituality, which are two sides of
the same coin. You know, it's funny when Paul, uh,
Paul uses uh this interesting word his the Apostle. Paul
uses this word all throughout his letters when speaking of righteousness.
It's dicaiosune. And if you read Plato's, if you read
the Republic, Socrates is always talking about justice. You know
what word it is in the Greek, It's dicaiosune. This
politics and righteousness and justice are two sides of the
same coin. But anyway, we've lost that with this consumer
aspect to that we've embraced in the Protestant churches with
regards to how we do this. And because of that,
I think this idea of patriotage patronage networks has gone away,
but you absolutely should have and with it the old
social clubs that were around that. Again, the Catholics did it,
Great Knights of Columbus and so on and so forth,
and we don't have that. We've lost that in in
the Protestant world, and we need to gain it back.
But I think pastors UH have in in in embracing
the church growth movement of just marketing to as many
people as possible. I think they've lost that ideal, but
but we need to get it back. I think it
really grows out of out of UH that. And then
I'm a leader in a in a in a private
UH fraternal fraternal organization that has chapters all over the
country that has been written up in the Guardian and
so on and so forth, and that's one of our
goals is, Hey, we absolutely are a patronage network for
for our members that if we get persecuted for something
we say or do or you know, not for the
guy who does something wrong and deserves it, but but
if you if you've, if you've just are getting persecuted
because you actually uh are you know, are too far
to the right or a believing Christian or whatever that
we're going to band together and take care of you,
and that absolutely needs to return. But I think it's
for me at least. I think it's it's it's it's
broken down because it's broken down in the churches. I
don't know what your thoughts are on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it, you know, growing up in a
in a Catholic diocese, going to Catholic going to Catholic
high school, Altra boy, I mean yeah, everything baptized when
I was forty five days old on Christmas Eve in Germany.
Speaker 2: In Germany.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my dad was in the My dad was in
the military station over there, my mom, it was it
was at that time where pretty much wives traveled with
with with their.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what THEA do you mind saying?
Speaker 1: I think I said the other day. It's the one
in Heidelberg. I think it was one one twentieth hospital.
It's the one that Patton died in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, you're gonna draw me outside and get talking about.
Speaker 1: Let's not do that, which is interesting because Patton and
I also share a birthday. But really, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2: Are you Neil Stevenson fan.
Speaker 1: I've read I mean I've read snow Crash, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, uh, his latest that just came out, Pole a.
Stan Patton is a is a more than minor figure
in that novel. So worth checking out.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, no, no problem. And you know, something that
we talk about is the fact that if the church
was stronger, you know, I mean, I came after Vatican too,
and Vatican two did a great job of weakening. It
seemed like it weakened a lot of dioceses. And in
New York City, of all places, you would think, and
you know, it was like I was supposed to grow
up there. I was supposed to meet a girl at parish.
I was supposed to get married. I was supposed to
stay in that neighborhood. I was supposed to get a
job in New York. But that just that went that
went away. And you see the weakness in so many
in so many denominations in where it's just it's not
the same anymore. It's yeah, basically they've embraced modernity. And
I think you're seeing, you're actually seeing. And the reason
I'm talking about this is the obviously the most obvious
patronage networks and most paid is churches and they were
weakened and they were targeted. You know, I call Vatican
two Catholicism's Nuremberg that they had to go through. They
had to go through their own Nuremberg trials so that
they could be weakened and they could be destroyed, just
as any any right wing thought would be in the future,
real right wing thought. Not you know, free free markets,
and which is leftism? Sorry it is, and.
Speaker 2: Well it's funny men, free markets. Adam Smith assumed Christendom
for that model to work. You know, it didn't work
if you're going you're trading with people who don't share
your presuppositions. You're just asking to you know, get shot
in the back. But anyway, you're absolutely right with the
weakening of the church and and taking true right wing
thought with it, because that's the I mean, I think
that's the source. I don't think right versus left comes from.
Maybe the terminology comes from France, uh, the French Revolution,
But it's this is a this is a battle that's
as old as as humans are, you know, as humanity itself.
Of order versus disorder, of beauty versus ugliness of of
of of you know, high trust versus absolute and utter individualism.
This is the that is that is not a two
hundred and some odd year old struggle. This is an
eternal struggle, at least the way I see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've told this story before that I think it
certain societies get to the point where it's not left
or right anymore. It's people who want you dead and
people who don't. And I remember Jeff dies To, formerly
president of the Mesa's Institute. That's how we met he.
I think it was like February twenty twenty one. We're
still going through COVID stuff. I mean now they're rolling
out the vaccines, and he said, it's not about left
or right anymore. It's not about libertarianism anymore. It's about
people who want you dead and people who don't. And
that's hopefully well we'll see, is what what happened with
the the election of Trump? Is that a reaction to
that people, even if they can't articulate it, is it like, well,
we're at the point where there are people who want
to kill each other, and maybe we need to stop that.
Maybe we need someone to come in and try to
fix that, or maybe someone to destroy the people who
want to kill because just as in the Spanish Civil War,
it's very obvious who who the bloodthirsty murderers are. And
they're the same They're the same people from the Spanish
Civil War. They're the same people who won World They're
the same people who won World War two.
Speaker 2: Spiritually, Yeah, when nuns start getting lit on fire, you
know who the bad guys are, right, you know who
the bad guys are. And that was I remember, you know,
I was a young idiot and oh, you know, I
guess Franco is bad and all that. Somebody showed me
a picture of a nun getting lit up and I
was like, oh, that happened, you know, I didn't know.
This is when I was in a oh, freshman sophomore
in college, and I had a h it's not important,
but anyway, yeah, I remember being absolutely red pilled on
that very quickly.
Speaker 1: But you know, it gets to the point where you
start you start recognizing all of those tendencies with your
within your own society, and well, what do you do.
And because of the society we live in, because the
way we've been structured, and because we've imported so many
people who either hate us or are completely their culture
is antithetical to ours. It's you know, you wouldn't even
know how to begin to do what they had to
do then, so it becomes a political solution. And it
seems like the political solution was people were just like, Okay,
we're going to vote for Trump and cross our fingers.
And I guess the only thing that I guess what
a lot of people are hanging their hats on, or
at least not hanging not. I don't think anybody has
one hundred percent confidence that Trump's going to fix all this,
but I think they're getting a champion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're just they're getting a champions. It's very
hobbsy in that, oh you're going to protect me. Somebody
is finally going to bear you know, is going to
stand up and protect me and keep me from getting
killed or harmed or my way of life being destroyed.
It's it's not that complicated. And we can talk about
theory cell stuff when I love to, but but even
a six year old can understand, oh, that guy's going
to protect me, that guy's going to stand up and
and and not you know, my sweet dad, you know,
lifelong Republican and uh hey, you know, just can't stand
Trump and I was like, he kept saying, why do
you like Trump? And I go, you know why I
like Trump? Dad, because he doesn't hate me. He's willing
he he he looks at my at my way of
life and says, yeah, I'm willing to fight for that.
It's really you know, that's not that's not Uh. You
don't have to read Leviathan or political theology to understand
that basic truth.
Speaker 1: And Trump's never read any of that stuff. Of course,
Trump just knows. Trump just knows what he knows, right, Yeah,
and yeah, I'm sure you and Trump could you being
in hedge funds, you and Trump could have a lot
in common and be able to talk. But Trump could
also He it seems like he finds something in common
to talk with everyone.
Speaker 2: He encouraged everyone with everyone that Barrett and we don't
do that.
Speaker 1: We we well, we're while we're judging Trump, we don't
do that, right, No.
Speaker 2: You're that's a great point, Pete. You know that Rona
Barrett interview from back in what it was eighty four
or eighty five something like that that you can find
on YouTube. It he's the same guy. Actually he's better now,
but he but the basis of that knowledge in his
bones of all this. Again, do I think Trump is
eating a big mac and reading De Maestra, No, I don't.
But some guys just just get it, you know, And
God bless him that. I don't expect everybody to be
that way, but thank God for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's like my in laws. My in laws
are I hope they don't know a lot of the
things that I read and that I talk about and everything,
but they're just genuinely good people. Yeah, they're just genuinely
good people. If they do these are the kind of
people that if they do something, if they vote in
a certain way, or they have an opinion that in
some way affects your life. If they if they vote,
end up voting for somebody that that affects your life
in a negative way. They didn't do it on purpose.
They're just feeling their way through life. And here's the thing. This,
what we know is not for everybody. You see that,
you see that online. You know, somebody can get a
you know, somebody can pick up a book like Israel
Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion, or Sulcianes's Two Hundred Years
Together and they read that and they can't handle it.
They can't handle the information that's in there because they
they immediately go, they immediately all fly all the way
over to one side and have an opinion and there
and now they become ideological again, right, and their ideology
is never going to manifest into reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's hard. I've got some I've got some friends
who who are great folks, but you know, have come
across you know, the have started noticing and to try
to keep them from getting ideological about it as opposed
to uh, you know again, as a as a Christian,
I think we've got answers for these things. Yeah, humanity
is sinful, it's it's just flawed, and you need whise.
You need to first of all, look outside yourself. That
truth isn't something that bubbles up from within you, outside
of you. Even Plato spoke of uh uh, you know,
justice being alien to to yourself. That that that you
have to understand that that thing that laws truth is discovered,
not made right. We reject positivism, but but this ideology
is always that is always that that beckoning apple. You know,
if I just had the right if I had the
right rules, I could fix everything. Right, if I could.
I don't because people are flawed. That's that's the that's
the temptation, because how can I rely on a person
to be wise when it's people who are flawed? Yet
look at you know, managerialism or or you know, talmudism
or all of these things where you try to regulate
life to the end. It doesn't war idea. Again, you
can have first principles, you can have things that are true.
You know, multiplication tables are true. It seems to be eternally.
But when you make that leap to this governing rubric
of ideology that's going to that's going to determine every
response to every situation, it doesn't. It doesn't work. It
never has. You're gonna ultimately you've got to have wise, mature,
virtuous people. And that's just uncomfortable. And while we're still
living in the myth of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Well, what it comes down to is is that most people,
overwhelming majority of people, should they shouldn't even be concerned
with politics. Politics shouldn't be something they think about. You know,
But you know, Yaki wrote in Imperium, he said, you
know this is we're in the age of absolute politics.
For the whole form of our life is now a
function of power, and it almost seems like if you're
living in the age of absolute politics, it demands that
people become political. I said one of the one of
the artist. Yeah. One of the things that I noticed
from like the first Trump campaign, the twenty fifteen to
sixteen was you had a lot of people who became
who started following Trump who had never been political before.
I'd never been openly political, never been like, yeah, this
is my candidate. I'm just going to sit back and
vote for whoever I think, you know who I think
I should vote for. But people actually became political. And
there's a problem when you have the Internet and anyone
can go out there and be political, and anyone can
start spewing and they have no political background. They have
never read a book on political theory. They don't know
how politics works. They think politics works. Their politics is
the politics of the post war consensus, and it's a lie.
So you're adopting politics. It's a lie. And hopefully I
think what we're seeing, at least now so far, is
that there are people who are going in there who know,
who understand have figured out how politics works, and They're like, okay,
well we need to strip away. Politics only works if
we don't have this insane bureaucracy. And the bureaucracy is
funding funding our enemies, public and private. So how do
you you know, so what do we do? How do
we take them down? And the problem is is things
have been so bad and there are people who are
of an age where all they've known is internet politics
for so long. They don't think that anything can change.
They don't think change is possible. They see bu Kelly
and El Salvador and they still don't think change is possible.
Malay is They see what Malay is doing in Argentina
and they still don't. They don't think the change is possible. Right,
It takes will, and.
Speaker 2: It takes will. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, It turns out you
can just do things. As a friend of mine says,
you know you mentioned and you know Trump's really really
dealing with it now, with this this concept of impoundment,
that that as the as the UH as the chief executive.
And I'm a big Article two guy. I think you know,
the chief executive should run the executive branch. That's his job.
UH and and the whole thing serves at his pleasure.
But in doing in doing so, you know, he he
has he has chosen to practice impoundment of of any
mandated spending by the by the executive. And you know,
there in nineteen seventy because Nixon tried to do the
exact same thing, and and there was the nineteen seventy
four Impoundment Act where Congress basically said, no, we can
choose to tell the executive what to do by law,
and Trump's Trump's basically saying, uh huh, that's an unconstitutional law.
And so now you have you have two big concepts
that are that are going to really be the interesting
I mean I'm making I'm talking about you know, application
is trying to bring it down to current events right now.
But but is is does the does the chief executive
have the final say over how the how the uh
you know that the executive branch spins spends its dollars,
can it practice impoundment similarly? It's it's kind of similar
to can the states practice nullification? Kind of similar but
in the executive And then so you've had in two
judges now come out one is this uh ingle Meyer,
Paul Inglemeyer. And then I can't remember the name of
the other one. It was in the hill today in
Rhode Island. Uh, John McConnell. So you've had these two
district judge judges attempt to enjoin the entire the administration,
the entire executive branch, and say no, that the president
doesn't have the ability to to impound these these congressionally
ordered expenses that are expended by the by the executive
So so the two things are, is is impoundment as
a concept? Does the does the president have the ability
to do that? And that's that's going to be a
Scotus decision and I not. I don't have a ton
of man. That's a big thing to go against. For Roberts,
that may be a bridge too far. Even the in
it's and it's Roberts and uh oh gosh, uh uh,
I can't remember the other judge's name. Who those are
the two that are they're big on start decisis on
on on precedent. But the bigger issue I think is
does a district judge have the ability to enjoin the
entire country when they are their authority just exit. In
other words, you know, if a district judge says, hey,
I enjoin the administration to spend these dollars in my district.
There may be some constitutional authority there, but for the
entire country, and this question has never come up before
the court. And I think it's very interesting. So that
is one to really look for. And I think that
will that will rise quickly, uh to the Supreme Court level. You'll, you'll.
So those are two very interesting things. I was actually
emailing with John on you, who is kind of the
probably the pre eminent constitutional he teaches at Berkeley, but
he's a conservative, uh, probably the pre eminent constitutional theorist
on these things. And and uh, anyway, I'm really looking
forward to see how you know, it's and it's really
up to Kavanaugh and Roberts on that. I don't have
a ton of hope for Roberts but we'll see.
Speaker 1: Or you can just go to the Andrew Jackson wrap. Yeah,
you can just defy him. Yeah, and yeah, I mean
he could start, he could start looking to have them removed.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's and that's the thing too that.
Speaker 1: I think we're at that point. I I I'm just
going to say we're at that point. We're at the
point where if a president who wants to make drastic change.
Who wants to leave a legacy of fixing what was
what's been broken for one hundred years. Then they're going
to have to They're gonna have to cross, They're gonna
have to go to the across the rubicon and not
swim on the other side. We're gonna have to keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think that's true. I just think these
are the steps that are going to lead up to that.
I think he'll defy them until you know, uh, but
you're going to have these because the question becomes, you know,
you and I both know that the Constitution is written,
as you know, we are in a post constitutional state,
but there is still the as Yarvin talks about, there's
this informal versus formal power and the and the informal.
The question is how do you best how do you
best challenge those if you're going to get across the rubicon?
And I don't know, I don't know the answer to that.
I think this too pronged approach, which is defy but
also go the other fight the back on two fronts
because honestly, as long as he's president, he owns the
biggest army. And I don't mean the actual army. But
the he sits at the you know, he has the
pulpit of the nation, so to speak. Uh, and he's
riding a wave of popularity. You know. I was just
uh saw that today. The Democrats the way they're they're
fighting back on this. Uh. Senator Andy Kim, who's from
New Jersey said that the way they're going to fight
back is they're threatening a government shut down. And I
mean Trump should, Trump should go on TV and I
can say, bring it on, love it, let's shut it down.
Let's see how long you want to shut it down.
If you want to shut it down, great, Uh, you
know that's kind of what we're looking for.
Speaker 1: Shut but this time, shut everything down. Shut a payment
going shut every payment going out, and see how long
people who are on Social Security and people who are
on all the entitlements.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And all you do is take control. You take to
the airwaves and you say, this is the Democrats who
are doing this to you.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's with these judges. Okay, a judge made
a ruling. Let's see you enforce it. You and what army? Yeah,
you and what army.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. But it is harbon, it is a rubicon.
But I think, you know, Stephen Miller, everybody talks about
the power that that Elon has, uh, and that's true,
but but Stephen Miller is really swinging a big stick
up there. So if you want to kind of know
some of the thoughts behind this, I would suggest your
viewers go kind of look at the stuff Stephen has
said and has written, and then uh, Anton has uh
who's Anton has a pretty big I don't want to
overstate Michael's authority, but but I think the intellect, the
the the inte e actual heft is there as far
as in you know, Anton's a Claire monster, which might
frighten some of your guys. But I'm friends with all
those guys, and I really like Michael, and so that
I or we don't always agree on everything that excites
me because those guys absolutely have the intestinal fortitude to say, yeah, yeah,
we're getting in the river, we're going.
Speaker 1: Do you have how much more time do you have?
Speaker 2: How much you need? This is fun.
Speaker 1: I'm loving it. Let's let's get into this. Okay, let's uh,
let's circle back to the beginning. Okay, what what's how
are you reading Trump's strategy on everything he said about Gaza.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's an absolute uh what would the
game theory be? Uh? The mad men mad man? Uh?
You know mad Man theory there? And that sounds like
I'm saying Trump's acting crazy. No, you just you practice unpredictability.
Like you if you saw net and Yahu's face when
he was saying that Net and Yahoo had no clue
what he was being hit with. Okay, so so I
mad Man theory is just the idea strategy where a
leader cultivates an image of unpredictability to intimidate adversaries or
opponents into concessions. I think there is an app there
is part of that. Again, I think, Do I think
Trump's studying mad Man theory? No? I just think he
has it in his gut. But there is an absolute
rational explanation for this. Now in my heart of hearts,
do I wish we could wash our hands and be
this pure, you know, just be worried about our own
borders and we have two oceans and a failed state
and an incompetent state on our borders, and we just
want to maximize the advantages of what God has given
us geopolitically, a geography, you know, in a geographic way.
Sure that a reality because Egypt and this is I
haven't heard a lot of people talk about this. Stormy
might have mentioned it once or twice, but Egypt is
the problem over there. First of all, there's there's zero
political will to do anything that is directly against Israel.
I am not a Zionist. I think Zionism has caused
more problems than it attempted to fix. But that's neither
here nor there. We're in the world that's created. Okay,
we're in a post nineteen forty eight world, and we
do not have the political will to just say, hey, Israel,
figure it out and of your else because Israel figuring
it out in and of themselves. Here's what that looks like.
If we were to just not have any foreign giving
whatsoever because of the peace accords, you know, Sadat and
began Camp David Accords. We give Egypt so much foreign
aid because of that. Now do they technically do we
pay for their food? Not directly, but they use that
foreign aid to buy grain from Russia. Their GDP is.
Speaker 1: Did you see the news today that Russia has record
grain exports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's and this is all tied together.
But we basically have been buying Egypt off for the
last forty five years or so fifty years. But because
of that, they now have a population that's grown way.
We've subsidized this population growth. It's far beyond their ability
to support.
Speaker 1: Well, where's one hundred and thirteen million and pretty much
ninety percent of the country is uninhabitable.
Speaker 2: Uninhabitable and their biggest slums are right across the street
from where their seat of government is. You know, the
elite have all moved out into the desert and all
that kind of thing. But Cairo is a disaster. But anyway,
the point being is where's the release about where's all
the food grown right nearby? It's sitting up there in Israel. Now,
Israel's nuclear We could go through and I did this
for some folks. You can go through all the balance
of power things with Israel versus Egypt. But Egypt's got
a lot more people and a lot more tanks and
way more reserved forces. Israel's got nukes and Egypt's sitting
on the Suez Canal. So do we if we what
happens if we abandon that is China's gonna come in
big and hard, and Russia's gonna come in big and
hard to Egypt, and do they stay being I mean,
I don't know what the answer to that is. But
do we want do we want a nuclear war with
China and Russia being part and parcel to the to
the to the parties in the Middle East? Because we
get drug into that very fast, because again, we don't
have the political will to let Israel be off on
its own. We just don't do. I wish we would, sure,
but it's not happening. So I think there's a the
understanding that there has to be just like Ukraine has
to be a buffer state for Russia. Why because it's flatland,
Russia's surrounded by planes, there's no you know, full the
gap Ukraine. Ukraine just means frontier, the Ukrainian frontier. Russia
needs buffer states. Well, Israel and Egypt need a buffer
between them. So there is a there is this game
theory that says we weren't gonna Trump really doesn't want
to say, Oh, you're gonna genocide all the You're gonna
genocide all the Palestinians, and then we're just gonna help
you bulldoze Gaza and you get to take it BB.
That wasn't happening, not especially after BB played nice with Biden,
after you know, and Biebe gets the Intel reports, he
knew what happened with twenty twenty. So, uh, that wasn't happening.
So I think there is some there is actually some
practical Uh. They're going to try to negotiate something that
looks like a prosperous buffer state that neither Egypt nor
Israel wants to encroach upon. What that ends up looking like,
I don't know. Does it look like a US exclave Maybe?
I don't know. But they can't just allow Israel to
move all the way down the coast to Egypt's border.
That's not going to happen in my opinion. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically, the way it's been explained to me is that
the money that we give to Egypt and that three
point eight million dollars that we give to Israel that
we're never going to stop giving to Israel is a
bribe that they don't kill each other.
Speaker 2: That's right, one hundred percent, one hundred percent. That was
the secret to the Camp David of courts.
Speaker 1: And people will say, well, what do we have to
do with this? What do we what we have to
do with this is the fact that basically anything Israel
does gets blown back on us.
Speaker 2: Mm hm.
Speaker 1: So in many ways, you're going to have to negotiate
with Israel. You're going to have to at least play
the game of doing everything you can to troll them
so they don't do something that is so far outside
the realm. Cairo, Yeah, that it's going to blow back
on us. I mean people were like, oh, well, what
I mean there are people out there who will be
who are so anti Israel that they'll say, well, what
do we care if they knew Cairo?
Speaker 2: Okay, probably I mean Cairo by that point is a
Russian and it probably has dual alliances with Russia and China,
and so they just.
Speaker 1: They just they just imported. How many jets and anti
anti aircraft systems did they just get from China?
Speaker 2: Oh? Did they get did they get J twenties? I
mean something pretty sophisticated. Yeah, So.
Speaker 1: I mean if yeah, they have J ten cs and
PL fifteen's okay.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so the PL fifteen go look up you
know on if if your viewers aren't familiar with the
war zone, which sounds it's a cheesy name, but it's
some of the absolute best open, open source intelligence on
the web. It's it's and go read about the PL
fifteen and and that means they're in line for the
PL sixteen, which is also in production but not being
let out outside of China at this point. Very capable
weapon systems, very capable. And again, you just can't. Again,
you can play this ideological game that the US is
going to wash its hands and we're going to be
over here. But the problem is because of communication, because
of travel, because of commerce, and certain amounts of all
those things are just necessary for life. Not globalist, not homogenization,
not cosmopolitanism, but you know, a certain amount of those
things because of the reality of those things. It's an
interconnected world. You just got to live in reality. Again.
Can we move towards a more nationalist standpoint where we're
more concerned about our own citizens in our own backyard.
I mean, heck, let's deal with how we're going to
deal with Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba. That's I would like
that to be a priority. But you can't leave. You
can't just you can't just you can't just carte blanche. Uh,
leave the leave that mess that we created behind.
Speaker 1: You know, and I would love for our interest in
this to not be happening. At the same time that
APEC pretty much which owns every politician in the country.
But it just it is what it is.
Speaker 2: Well, you've got you've just got a huge you've got
a huge population of Jews here, and so you're gonna
have to now do the two and a half to
two point seven percent whatever it is somewhere in that area.
Do they exercise way too much political clout compared to
the Christian majority or the or the you know, the
rest of the people.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, a lot of the Christians, the majority of Christians
are one hundred percent behind them. Yeah. Well, my friend Jeremy,
my friend Jeremy ra Hammon, who wrote Obstacle to Peace,
which is a great book on Israel, Gaza said that
when it comes down to it, you don't even need
a pack, you just need all these Christians who've bought
into the last two this false theology of.
Speaker 2: The last dispensational framework. Yeah we can. Yeah, now you're
getting in my wheelhouse, but uh, it is you know,
and Whitney, you're familiar with Whitney Webb. I'm sure you are. Uh.
You know, Whitney wrote a great article a couple of
years ago that really focused on Pompeo and and that
crowd really stoking a lot of that too, really nasty
kind of stuff. Uh there's a you know, Bagbee does
a great reading. I think that's on YouTube of Whitney's.
Speaker 1: Burden has played that on his on his channel.
Speaker 2: Has Jay Okay, well, I love Jay. What a great Jason,
dear friend. Doesn't surprise me. But anyway, Uh, you know,
these are all of these questions that we're talking about
demand uh, leadership, wisdom and a certain amount of Van
Guardian noose, so to speak, that you're not going to
you need the decision maker. You need the person who's
going to rule the exception and do so in a
way where the people just see that they're being again
being protected, being provided, being blessed by. And that's how
I mean, that's what FDR did. And I don't you know, Fdr,
I have no time for but you but there was
your you know again speaking of Anton who talks about
red versus Blue Caesar, there was your blue Caesar. You know,
FDR mad remade the nation in his image and we're
still dealing with it. So it's not like this hasn't
been done before. It's just a matter of exerting the
political will to do so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it does all come back to will. You know.
I immediately when I started learning about bou Kelly, I
tried to find out everything I could about him. And
it's remarkable how they tried to keep him out of
office and tried to keep him from running for president
and he was able to form a party at the
last minute, and it was it's absolutely crazy. That's will.
And I think what you're seeing now is will. And
I don't know that Trump has the will to do
everything that he's doing. I think he is the executive,
but I think, like all good executives, he is deferring
to people around him, and it's the people around him
who have the will to do this. And I think,
you know, one of the great one of the great
things about this is if you remember, in the last
ten years, the term weaponized autism has has been out there,
and what Musk has done is he's weaponized autism. He's
brought in all of these kids who are they're probably
not ideological in the least, well maybe big Balls is
considering some of his tweets, but.
Speaker 2: The uh beautiful, so beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just having just getting leftists to have to say
that on TV, or even.
Speaker 2: The normy conservatives that I you know, I have to
swim through a lot of that. It's hilarious.
Speaker 1: But he's brought all these kids in who you know,
are just like, Okay, show us what we need to
do and we will get the job done. We will
root all of this out, you know, and you know
the leftists are just they're great. You know, like a
nineteen year old or a twenty two year old or
a twenty four year old should have nothing to do
with with national politics, yet like a five year old
can choose what gender they are and whether they can start,
you know, basically castrating themselves. I mean, these people are
just utter scum and they need to be defeated. And
I don't know that that is a goal. But I
think as this goes on more and more and the
reaction becomes more of what it is, I think maybe people,
maybe people who are in there, are going to start
to realize.
Speaker 2: That mm hmmm, mm hmmm. Yeah. Well just even the
even among the populace among the Holy POLOI you're seeing
a huge this the popular the popular popularity of Trump
is growing daily. People again, people love a champion, people
love a winner, but people love the guy who they
know is on their side. So it's again, I'm very encouraged.
Uh I know that there will be you know, things
could go sideways. He might do something out of his
gut that that is hackneyed or a little offer not
quite thought through, or even against some of the things
we think are good and right. Hopefully he's earned the
great the to be viewed, to be given the benefit
of the doubt and be given great grace because the
the the fortitude he's shown to do, I mean, the
the affirmative action executive order alone, I'm surprised that's not
being that's not leading every podcast almost because nobody, you know,
Reagan thought about it for about five minutes and everybody's like, no, no, no,
you're not touching that. Uh So the intestine, the fortitude
to do that is pretty impressive. But but the list
just goes on and on and on. You know, functionally
we've got our say back with the Panamaica. Now, functionally
we don't and we don't have to have soldiers down
there protecting it. You're going to do what we're going
to tell you to do. I mean, we've created a
sat trappy down there. May that, you know, may that
strategy again extend to the rest of at least Central America,
if not all of get to a lot of Latin
America on the same page, it would be good.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that really their only fight now
is that either democracy is being destroyed or the rule
of law is being destroyed. And James Kirkpatrick greg Hood
I thought his uh, he had the best tweet about it.
He said, the role of law ended about twenty million
illegal immigrants ago. We're not doing this anymore.
Speaker 2: Mm. Yeah. And it's it's it's always the rule of men,
you know, it just is law can help if you've discovered,
as opposed to created good law, you can have it
guide you. It functions the same way a lock on
your door front door does. It keeps hopefully you know,
keeps honest people honest. But it doesn't do a whole
lot more than that. You still got to have Again,
I'm sounding like Aristotle here, but you need you need virtue, maturity, morality,
all those things that or you're you're up a really
bad creak. I'm about I'm about running out. I'm gonna
I'm gonna have to I don't want to bail, but
probably another five minutes.
Speaker 1: Oh, no problem, no problem, I'll let you get out
of here. Yeah, it's just interesting that Aristotle was telling
saying that you have to have a Christian society before
before Christ.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's finish with this, because this is I've got
to I've got to hear. This is awesome. Pete Agay,
I've got a huge so I write for American Reformer,
not just for an American Reformer. They just happened to
pick up all my most of my stuff got about
a thirty page. It's kind of a scholarly bit on
the Inner Testamental period. But you know, Plato and Aristotle
were always on the run. And why well again, look
at the use of we mentioned earlier, this strange term,
this dikaia sune. That they used the same language that
the apostle Paul used in the New Testament. Uh, they
were rejecting the they were rejecting the pantheon and on
the run because of it, because it was the pantheon
that kind of help that, in the view of the
old timers, held that society together. And they were both
realizing that there was this unmoved mover, this this one source,
this alien source of truth that was that was behind
all things. You know, we don't have Aristotle's exoteric writings anymore,
those are all lost, but we have quotations from them.
And Cicero quotes Aristotle in this beautiful passage where he
talks about the farmer going up and looking at the
sky and comprehending its beauty at night with all the stars,
and being humbled knowing that something much greater than him
personally created all that, and being being convicted by the
beauty of it that there was in a sense of
holiness there. And so I think Plato and Aristotle were
in a sense some kind of you know, gentile prophets
that were pointing the way. Look, Aristotle inspired Alexander in
some way to conquer the entirety of the known world
at that point in time, give them a common language.
And it was by that common language that the you know,
this this gospel of this nas nasbarene king spread all
throughout the world. And what's really interesting, so Alexander obviously
from Macedonia, son of Philip of Macedon. The Paul has
this interesting vision in the Book of Acts where he
has a dream and the man, a man from Macedonia,
appears in his dream and beckons and says, come bring
this gospel and gospel this Greek word and gaelion, which
literally means a royal announcement, Come bring this to my people. Now,
in the ancient world, there would have been only one
man who the readers would have understood that being so,
was it Alexander himself appearing in a dream to the
apostle Paul as a result of the teaching of Plato
and Aristotle. It's something interesting to think about. So you
mentioned Aristotle preaching these Christian things before or they were
ever written or thought of. I think you're onto something.
Speaker 1: There, all right, Ron, You mentioned American Reformer. Is that
where people can read your stuff and.
Speaker 2: Read me an American Reformer. I also have a substack.
I'm on Twitter and do the occasional podcast as well.
But yeah, American Reformer and that latest piece that discusses
those things. It should be coming out in the next
oh month or so. It's going through editorial. It's long
so it needs it.
Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, Well, going to have you back real soon.
Thank you, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thanks Pete, appreciate its