Paradigm Altering Political Theory w/ Dr. Andrew Willard Jones

Jabron Jabron are we ready okay Dr Andrew Willard Jones nice to have you on the show thanks for having me do you go by Andrew Willard Jones I don't no just your book just your book St well it's great to have you on the show I've uh you know everyone I love and respect love and respects you so I'm looking forward to getting to know you a little bit okay is that too much no it's it's fine I guess it's a little awkward no buckle up cuz it's about to get way were um I was just asking you how you been and you said that you were grading yes I've been grading I finished that seems to me to be the worst it must be the worst part of teaching it is why by far because you hate your students and what they is garbage the second part is closer to the TR well no you you know you have let's say 50 papers to grade all on the same prompt all undergraduate Reflections on the same prompt over and over and over again you know do you I wonder as a professor like if somebody like took you off guard in the first paragraph So that you like whoo is that to their advantage absolutely really so the way this works if you want to know the secret is and this is every Professor I know who I've talked to about this does this basically the same way as you read the first paragraph you have a grade in your head then as you read it they can work it up or down depending on you know they has room for improvement if they if they pull together or they can really sync the ship but yeah first paragraph pretty much sets the that makes sense yeah and are there like I'm sure Scott's not grading his papers he must have some assistant who's I know that probably what would it take for you to get that or is that just impossible I'd have to become Scott you'd have to sell a lot more books or go to someplace other than Francisco okay yeah yeah we do our own work at Franciscan so I'm going to be co- teing in Austria with Rob McNamara awesome hopefully that means I don't have to grade but I'm not sure I think you could finagle that it's well it was funny though maybe the reason he was open to co- teing with me is cuz that'll be my only job you're the greater but if I was going to teach a university class I would do I would want to do two things and you tell me if these are just idealistic ideas that wouldn't actually work once I hit the ground one would be I would love to uh Implement a strict dress code okay like if people come in with ripped jeans or pajamas they can piss off yeah um I'd want a suit for the men wow not a suit but like a jacket like a sports jacket for the men and I like the ladies to dress in Sunday attire that kind of thing that would be one thing and then I'd like to somehow punish them severely if they didn't do that the other thing is I would like to public I yeah publicly shame them and then also I would like to uh try to fail everybody unless they could convince me otherwise like I would really enjoy failing people or at least giving them what's a fail is a d a fail well no no an F I mean a d is not good so I'd like to give them a like I'd like to just begin in my head thinking everyone's GNA get a d yeah and then I had a professor and I say that just because I wonder if people have gotten very soft and well that's certainly the case I had a professor in undergrad who started out everybody with 100 points and then every assignment you turned in it went down oh so it just your grade was minus four so minus and so you're 100% a just over the semester just so so your best bet was to submit nothing wow so he had a very negative sort of approach I also had a professor that enforced a dress code but it was so is that too idealistic does that not work on the ground that's what I was wondering uh you can say that's a good idea in principle but I don't know I think you'd be fighting a lot of fights yeah yeah yeah I had a professor that used to make fun of men if they wore shorts that's good and he would always make some joke about what are you going to a beach party or something and like nice shorts and would say things like that in front of them in front of the class I I had Dr Michael Barber for a theology class and he had a dress code and I remember once I forgot to wear a jacket and he just quietly came up beside me and whispered in my ear nothing like a professor whispering in your ear to have you never do that thing again next time maybe wear a jacket okay yep absolutely definitely so sorry please don't talk to me again yeah I mean it depends where you are you might be able to pull it off at some institutions he was a good profess I've gone to universities though where the students come barefoot in pajama pants oh my gosh you know they should be ex unated not just kicked out of the school yeah so what do you teach uh I teach history church history I teach uh political philosophy I teach in the honors program so that is a great books program as well so mostly it has to do with political um political theology political Theory the history of those things so and were you always interested in this or did something happen in your Catholic faith that oh no I mean I grew up I grew up up in a family that was very politically engaged I don't mean like um electoral politics I mean like we sat around the dinner table and talked politics um but not religious but very politically like you know basically my parents really didn't like the Communists or anyone who looked like Communists so we talked a lot about that that was in the ' 80s um so I was always really into that interested in that started reading political philos at a very young age thinking about it talking about it um religion was not important until I was in college so Catholicism became important to me in my senior year in college maybe the end of my junior year and in a lot a lot a lot of it had to do with the the study of philosophy and history where I came to the conclusion that I had this sort of choice before me that I was either going to go hard Nan nihilistic like that was the that was an option that was open to me yeah or Catholicism interesting but nothing else those were the two options either nothing mattered or everything mattered okay but anything in between was a copout I like that yeah that I was about to ask you what was about nian uh philosophy that and that makes sense nothing matters or everything matters that was where you were at how old were you about that oh 1920 so did you have a were you a Catholic growing up no um we were we were religious we we didn't when I was very little we didn't we didn't do anything religious um my my parents put me in Parochial School in Catholic school when I was a kid my brothers and I um because I hated public schools and so and and my mom and my mom and dad saw the Catholic Church as like allies against the bad guys so I remember my mom saying well Bill Buckley's Catholic so it can't be all bad that kind of thing you know so um so they put us in School uh for those reasons and then my brothers and I ended up converting as kids mostly just because our friends were catholic and they were going through first communion and doing all that kind of stuff and so we did it but my parents didn't and that didn't last very long it didn't stick you know as soon as I was in high school that was like a distant memory to me I don't you know college it was gone I was you weren't going to Sunday mass throughout High School anything um our family we would go sometimes but but not all the time it was not a very important thing I guess we I I think my parents wanted it to be like they thought it would be good but it just wasn't in our family culture just wasn't what we were you know pray very Scandinavian and so like praying and stuff would have been really awkward okay all right I'm out of the loop what is it about Scandinavians and praying that doesn't well maybe this maybe this isn't fair but it's like anything that's sort of an an outward show of vulnerability I see is get rid of that is not normally you would do yeah okay so then at what point were you looking at nothing matters or everything matters how old were you well in college okay so I mean I started having some uh intimations of this early uh and I thought I could solve the problems with my problems with um like economic theory so I go very into the Austrian economists very into libertarian type thinking um and then realizing that that was just a big tological game that didn't answer actually answer any of the questions that that was very shallow and my professors at H with the Hillsdale College in Michigan and my my economics professors couldn't answer the questions I had and they just wanted to kind of take a philosophical question and and refeed it through the kind of libertarian close system and get whatever answer came out but the answer wasn't the actual answer to the question so anyway wow it was so so that wasn't working so then I had um experiences with with friends of mine at school who were hedonists um Hillsdale was a very strange place in the 90s where it was there were some Evangelical Christians but but most of the intellectuals most of the the the really smart kids were um and professors honestly were uh libertarian economics kind of an randan ethics okay okay so egotism you know this this hedonistic kind of thought y seemed to dominate among the the the the Smart Set okay okay so so I I was in engaged in that and I remember what happened was I had a friend who was um very free morally uh I got I don't know he was he was taking advantage of freshman girls basically was the gist of it um and I found that to be ugly and and I I remember having a conversation with him where I suggested that that was not a good thing to do in which he challenged me to come up with one reason interesting and within my system I couldn't it interesting like within the it was consensual and I I had to come up with something about power differential something about duties responsibilities to the weak I mean I started coming up having to and none of those things apply right so none of those things are real so it's like well I either well why aren't they real well not for not for a Libertarian I see you know that the fact that you are smarter doesn't mean that you give to the one you're the one who's dumber than you that just is an opportunity for you to take more okay right when when you said your friends were hedonists did they claim Hedonism as their philos moral philosophy my friend just fair of my friends I mean no they they were there contingents within the school who identified as hedis or you're just saying that they were maybe maybe some yeah I'm sure some but but for the most part it was an Ethics there was an Ethics uh I mean intellectually anyway the way people actually live and the way they what they espouse philosophically are not always the same right so most even though uh philosophically we might be straight individualists and and henness ultimately um you know the way people actually live often is is better than that but um yeah there were there were people who would argue that self-interest and maximizing self-interest is the only ethic that is coherent maximizing self-interest presumably while not preventing the or or coming into conflict with the self-interest of another well I mean you surfing the self-interest of another like that would be the I mean there's there's this is these are the problems that I ran into right so so you have to they you'll end up people will end up trying to construe some sort of a system where it's in your self-interest to respect the the parameters of others self-interest or others autonomy or others but those things always fall flat right um and and and they and they fail for reasons that that the classics Plato and Aristotle already articulated that if you can get away with it then why wouldn't you do it right if you're self-interested right like if you can I mean the classic example with Plato in in the Republic is where the the um hypothetical is if you could have a ring that makes you invisible yeah and so you could get away with Injustice and no one would know so there'd be no consequences for you then why if if if Justice is merely a self-interested motivator right if if you are just merely because that's what works out the best in the long run right All Ships rise then if you could imagine a scenario where you could get away with it then you would be unjust right you would behave in an unjust way um which seems to hold water for me I mean that the the the libertarian ideal fails um and it actually fails in practice I mean what you see when you have a self-interested society is that the powerful um the powerful use their relative power in order to take as much as possible from those who are relatively weak let me lay something out let me lay something in fact happens let me lay something out and you tell me what you think cu age with you I think I I I've always found it difficult listening to atheists who tell me that they can abide by an objective morality that isn't self-interested right it seems to me like for a command to exist command only makes sense between two minds you know so if I ask the question how should I live uh well if there's no sort of God dictating to me how I ought to live then it's and there is no God and we're just sort of a meaningless sort of byproduct of evolution or something then it seems to me that I should act in a way that gives me the most pleasure or meaning or fill in whatever the blank is and that could be a sophisticated understanding of pleasure I mean you don't have to be shallow that's right and someone might say um well then what's to incentivize me to act one way or the other like if you disagree with how I act you're just you have no authority over me that's right and if Society disagrees with how I act well Society is just a collection of use that's right and they don't have authority over me so I I do find it really difficult to figure out how yeah you could get to what they can do what the the the the problem I remember and I'm reaching way back I haven't thought through a lot of this stuff in a long time so but the problem I remember is that they can account for the existence of morality but they can't give a convincing argument for why you should be moral right okay so they can say evolutionary speaking a society that has these sorts of rules where everyone obeys has better success against Society don't and so there's certain Hur instincts develop and all these they can account for historically why it is the case that you see morals yes none of that tells me that I should be moral that's right right so yeah why should I obey Evolution which is something Bel me here I am feeling that I don't want to obey those things yeah so isn't that just another evolutionary uh uh strategy that's being tried out now now to be to be fair to the hedonists they might say well we're not saying do what feels good in the moment we're saying even do the hard and difficult thing now so that good will eventually for you may maybe others but again others it would seem like the reason I want their good is for my good like I want to live in a good town so it's good for me if you do well so that I can do well and sure you can even say you can even say evolutionary speak in an evolutionary sense you've developed these sentiments towards other human beings because it's in our biology like a wolf with its pack that we have certain fondness towards people and there's no reason to fight against that you might as well it it brings you pleasure to see your kids Prosper right and so because it's ingrained in your very genetic makeup so you might as well work for them okay these so they can account they can account for that but none of that um none of that answers the question well what if I don't want to what if I don't want to care for my children what if I don't want to everyon has experienced something like that who's lived more than five minutes I don't want to then you end up saying something silly like well for the good of the species or something it's like well why would I care about the species why would I care about future man why would I care about and why should I why should I yeah yeah so so these things this is this is a chain of reasoning that lead me led me to the the world is about power um you want to you know one a viable option philosophically is that the world is about power that those who are weak um have power strategies that um resemble morality and res because they're attempting to tempting to subdue the more powerful because they feel threatened and weak and so they gang up together and make all these rules but there's really no reason to abide by any of that and if you're aloof and above that then you're free yeah this is very much nii correct yeah the resent him yeah but there's a coherence to that yeah I'd love you to kind of help help for those who are watching who haven't read a lot of nii can you help explicate that just a little bit more because I I think that n might sometimes get a bad Shake because people have just heard one or two things about him yeah help us kind of get inside the reasoning of why one might or what he's teaching and one why why it's attractive yes there I I think the basic and I'm not an expert on on on N here so but the basic is the basic idea is that that the overriding principle of human life so the overriding impulse is what he calls the will to power um which is a um uh uh it it's hard to to describe it's it's it's a feeling of um self-sufficiency or a feeling of um self-determination okay so it's not the the will what people want is not to be under the thumb of another all right that's what they desire um and that that is that is always the case so once you're in that world then different strategies can start to be deployed for how to do that and and you and you you described the his two main ones are the aristocratic and the slave morality right where the Aristocrat the aristocrats on the aristocratic morality are the ones who feel powerful in their own right like they know themselves to be powerful they know themselves to be beautiful they know themselves to be good he'll say and then so they have this positive sense of the goodness of themselves and then they contrast that with the Badness of the weak so the weak are bad um not the Badness is secondary to the goodness of themselves so they're they they they kind of dwell in their own magnificence right and then they see others who are not so great that's bad and so the aristocrats the aristocratic mindset has the emergence of good and bad um so what what Nish is trying to do is describe how morality comes into existence and the the existence of good and bad is with the emphasis on the good so the good is first us then bad is derivative so then he says a slave morality is the inversion of that so the slaves are the weak and the weak they they um know they're weak but they don't want to be weak they feel weak um and so they this is what you're talking about with resentment is that they resent and come to hate the powerful what they can't obtain what they can't obtain and so they they start to describe the powerful as evil that's right um and the powerful are bad the powerful are evil and that becomes their primary thing is is that the evil of the other is primary and then their goodness is derivative and this is laid out in Christian morality he would say right yes Jewish and Christian morality right so so it so he says you can get good and evil are you can derive them from this will to power and but there's two main ways in which you can you can find them they come into being either the aristocratic or the slave morality and um he thinks that Western Civilization transitioned from an aristocratic dominated one to a servile morality through the dominance of Christianity and into the modern world so his his call is of course to reject the slave morality and become an aristocrat think I'm thinking of an analogy to today with the kind of like um with with the what do they call it uh the victim Olympics where it's like the victims who claim to be victims in our society yesing it the us call us racist extreme example of's concep of the slave morality all right so that when you see other people having a good yeah that doesn't require you um your existence so what I mean is like then then you hate it and want to destroy it out of spite all right because so if you look at something like um and I was thinking about this the other day when I was walking to work and I was thinking about how um um like you brought up the some recent victims so if you think about like Pride The Pride movement Pride parades Pride it's hard to see all that without feeling that it's actually aimed against their enemies right like it's primarily not a celebration of themselves but more a uh a kind of face middle finger to the bad like if if the opponent wasn't there they wouldn't be doing it oh that's really good whereas if if you look at say like a Corpus Christie a Corpus Christie procession or um the celebration of Christmas or something we don't require the enemy for that to make sense right like if everybody was celebrating it we still would right the those that's some maybe inkling of those two moralities that n is talking about so there's something to this right he's wrong I think his historical analysis is wrong as who the bad guys are I think he he he doesn't understand Christianity he understands uh late 19th century German liberal protestantism okay but he doesn't understand historic Christianity so he sees in it what actually what he's actually seeing is modernity and and a victory of a a certain type of liberalism um okay so you know that I guess that's somewhat of the nutshell I mean I'm sure there's a niche of people who are going oh come on man it's more to than that something like that so what was it for you in college that um made the choice for Christianity over nihilism it's the beauty I mean it was it was um you had that conversation with your friend and you weren't able to persuade him as why he but what I knew is it was ugly yeah and so you know n and his followers have this idea that the powerful are the beautiful mhm and it's like but when I look around at history that's not what you see right like it's very often the case that the way that power manifests itself is horribly ugly right and and um and so there's a there's a there is an aesthetic argument where it's just if I can choose either I'll choose the one that's nicer and I don't mean nicer like in a sort of polanish way I mean more pleasing okay now that's that's not a philosophical argument but it's a foot in the door it kind of reminds me of a sort of pascalian wager where if the evidence is equal on both sides that I'm going to choose the one that seems to give me the most benefit exactly yeah which is which is not where you want to end up but it's maybe a place to begin yeah right so what what happened is there is that I was at that point I was dating my now wife um at Hillsdale at hillstown aome Sarah yeah and I and I remember having this conversation with her when I said I think we should be Catholic and she's like great I'm Catholic I was like oh that's awesome so she was a cultural Catholic and you know um she said great just like that she didn't questions we talked about it no she wasn't really practicing at that point but she never rejected it it was you know it was um yeah it was it was very common you know it's very common in the midwest that you get that right Catholics who don't reject Catholicism but aren't really practicing it um and uh she said fine I mean we talked about it and so well how do we do it and the first step was well we I remember actually getting like looking it up and getting like a list of the precepts of the church it's like well I guess we have to follow the rules so we'll start following the rules and we started following the rules and then you know over time reading doing a lot of reading and learning about the spiritual life and learning about the truth of it that it isn't just it isn't just a beautiful sort of work of art it you know Catholicism it's also true okay so there's a big gap here right between I find it more beautiful to what are the rules did did you make that jump did you see something in Catholicism when this must be true what are the rules and I'll just start living it and see if it's true or did you look for Arguments for it before looking I I was at that point reading I mean I I read um man I wasn't expecting to have this conversation so I'm trying to remember now that that the the um the first serious book I read Because when I said okay let's be Catholic U I think I should be Catholic because I I studied enough to know that Catholicism was the exact opposite of this nihilistic Hedonism and um why Catholicism and not something else I had no interest in protestantism or anything like that at all Orthodoxy you um it always felt like you were getting off the getting off the train One Stop too early okay for me you know it was like again it was like I'm not interested in the halfway measures and you know if if it all has meaning then then it seemed necessary that the church I I I I had a sense of the Catholic Church as being the center like I knew that there's maybe that doesn't make sense to say it that way but that there's periphery there's stuff all over around the periphery that are participating in what Catholicism is and but there's something in the like Catholicism as like what holds down the middle and that means it's not perfect so I wasn't I had no I had no sense that I was trying to find some sort of Utopia or some sort of religious um some place that like was perfect and had all the answers or anything it was like where is the where is the place that all the vectors go you know and it's like well there you know to the middle which is Catholicism nothing else all right and you said you said the first serious book you read what do you remember yeah I do I said I said okay what is all this about well here's a book called the introduction to Christianity by Joseph ratzinger and it was like an introduction to Christianity that's what I need wow but it's actually a very heavy book a very serious book and and I I remember reading it and going oh my goodness these guys are brilliant and that was my first understanding that what I thought Christianity was was stupid like I was stupid and that the people I were was reading who were telling me what Christianity was were either idiots themselves or lying to me you know were Mis you were didn't really know what they were talking about because what I found in that book and then the other books that it led me into was a tradition an intellectual tradition of incredible depth and sophistic ation right um and and that's just not the way it's construed by you you know by the by Christianity's opponents right so so anyway it it discredited a lot of the people I had been reading who were criticizing Christianity just more or less immediately and um and then I started reading a lot and learned after I had become Christian when I was 17 years old well after I read love and responsibility and I remember thinking this is so beautiful and right yeah and it says nothing about it's not offering Arguments for God's existence but if this is all I had I think I'd just become Catholic because I don't know anybody who's saying such a true thing yeah yeah that's that's that was like my experience so where you have the experiences that you have in life don't see how to put this very often the the the secular theorists take the experiences you have in life and then they they like deconstruct them okay so oh you love your wife well here's what's going on there's a mutually beneficial contract blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and it's like okay you're you're you're you're importing into the relationship with my wife all this stuff that I actually don't feel right like I actually don't yeah I don't I look at my child and feel think those things I don't and so you're you're reconstructing you're deconstructing and then importing a bunch of Concepts that aren't there and so what if you can have what what what Catholicism allowed is for me to just say no I just love my wife I just love my kids I don't need to deconstruct it when whenever you look at a kind of human let's say just relationship or anything in so it's either it's either less than you think it is or more than you think it is right right and you're saying that the secularists are saying it's less than you think it is and then they have to come up with a complicated system to explain why it's less than you think it is but that's just not your experience and it just seems more reasonable toly assume that it's more because that's primacia what it is yes it starts to feel convoluted it starts to feel um like they're attempting like like it's like there's a defensive battle being waged against the truth right you know where where everyone feels like friendship is real but let me tell you what's really going on and it's like hm okay or we could just say wow friendship is real let's talk about it that's really cool so it's it's like it's like an interesting clever argument that's false that's false and you and maybe people get and we get kind of uh tantalized by the cleverness of it m and well and it almost always frees you from some from some Duty or responsibility right like is that right yeah it gets you out of something it seems like those arguments like get it it you know justifies some some Temptation because if love is real we'll then think about the consequences the consequences of that all right um is there something that could convince you that it's less than you think it is your relationship with your wife let's say is there like an external argument aside from your immediate experience obvious what's obvious what becomes obvious in the Christian Life and what's awesome about Christianity is that Christianity comprehends its own negation so so what what the what what I mean is the idea of sin allows me to look at my relationship with my wife and see exactly where it is less less than I think it is okay you know what I mean like oh here are places where I am being selfish where I am using where I am in some sort of a negotiated relationship and those places are are places that are bad yeah not right whereas the the secularist at least the libertarian version of it can't comprehend the reality of love so the this is the genius of Christianity right it it like I want to say it comprehends its own negation it its own negation is included in what it is whereas the atheistic view of it can't comprehend anything other than the fact that's less than you think it is exactly holy mael that's why it's deeper it's more subtle it's more and so you know there this is the reason why this is one of the reasons why Christianity I mean as a political theorist why Christianity is non-utopian right where where where people will often accuse me and some of the people who who are like me I guess of being utopians um and sometimes we maybe fall into that a little bit but but because we're talking about how Christian Societies or Christian civilization is Superior or you know more more um fitting for what human beings are or the path to human happiness but included in that is that Christianity itself is the movement I mean in in in Christianity in the church militant is the movement from imperfect to perfect from Vice to Virtue right from from sin to to um Holiness and that movement is a dynamic movement that always includes both of those components to it okay so a Christian civilization is one that is not only full of sin but knows it right whereas the hedonistic civilization doesn't know it about itself you do you know like it doesn't it doesn't see its own its own fault whereas the Christian one does well would could you that the hedonistic society believes the enemy to be the fault that hasn't got on EX right yeah there's always the bad guy is someone other than you but don't Christians fall into that as well when they point to the I don't know the bad people in our society and yeah yeah I mean you not always it's not always wrong um no but it is but we can scapegoat people presumably like I'm thinking of the kind of those Baptists who had the signs you know God hates [ __ ] and you want to say no God hates your stupid sign to quot Jason like that might be an example where we kind of artificially divide the world between or yes and there's the the the Christian read on history is complicated um so if you look at St Augustine is the really the guy to go to here on in the city of God and um and the way he describes this is there's a real struggle going on in history between the city of God and the City of man or the Earthly city um the city of God being in League with the angels destined for salvation the city of man being in League with the demons and destined for predition but in the world in the in the time of History they're always intermixed and intermingled and and they're passing through each other right so there's a part of each one of us that there's aspects of us that are citizens of the citizen of the city of God others that are um citizens of the city I believe a quote of Augustine's is there are those in the church you know in the world the church what is it yeah I know exactly there's those who are in the church that are really citizens of the world and there are those in they're those who God has Church really all of us are to a certain extent um and and so but the point is that those those two cities both exist historically in the sense that there's certain epicenters of uh where the city of man or the city of God congregate right those who are who are moving towards salvation congregate in certain places and those that are moving towards predition congregate in certain places so there is a it's not wrong to say there are bad uh those guys over there are bad you know that could very well be true but that doesn't negate the and so am I part you know okay yeah right so and and so it's a more complicated um seems like a more complicated scheme for understanding history um yeah so so Christianity then becomes as a historical form as a a civilizational form is um a a a form of constant reform right so the the so Christian civilization is never finished it has never achieved its goal it's always seeking out where it's failing and then attempting to uh overcome those failures but in doing so it always is creating more places to fail right so so the church in history is both constantly reforming and constantly being corrupt right um because that's the plight of Christians all Christians right we're always both pursuing Holiness and sinning right wow yeah so we do that on the individual level and then on the societal level um and this is this can be very confusing for historians right so so it's very common among medieval historians to to go back and look at the medieval civilization Christendom and go look at how they're always talking about how bad they are and look at these priests are always preaching about people are greedy and the Knights are violent and all this they weren't really Christians W and it's like the response being well that's exactly what I was would expect Christians to do is to look at their society find the things that are not yet redeemed and talk about them right and it's probably the case that a society that talks about its own faults more is more Christian than a society that doesn't talk about them very often mhm right that's yeah that's really good I got to tell you guys about my new favorite app it's called Ascension and it's by Ascension press this is the number one Bible study app in my opinion and uh you can go to ascensionpress.com frad go there uh and so that way they know that we sent you it is absolutely fantastic it has the entire Bible there very well laid out the whole Bible is read to you by father Mike schmith so just sections of the Bible it has the catechism there it's cross referenced absolutely beautifully it's really actually quite difficult to explain to you how good this is just download it and check it out for yourself it even has over 1,600 frequently asked questions about scripture so if you go to Genesis 1 you might have a question about Evolution well there's a drop down right there you can read an article that'll help you understand it um I went through it with the guys at Ascension the other day and my mouth my jaw was just it it was dropped it was absolutely amazing um it's had tens of thousands of festar reviews again go to ascensionpress.com it also has all of their amazing Bible studies so I remember back in the day I had a big DVD case of Jeff Cav's Bible studies well it's all there on the app so go download it right now please go to ascensionpress.com very very broad question for you okay what is politics cuz this is where we're going right what is a Christian civilization I guess so yeah I want to know what politics is it's very there there's a lot of different ways to answer that question the way I tend to do it is to say is to try to answer what we mean by it okay because we use that word yeah um rather than trying to go back and find some historical definition fair enough okay so I think what we tend to mean by it is the and if we and if we think about it I think this is what we mean by it is the the use of power so so how is power used in so and that's very broad I mean it can be well how does power work what is power what is and then so you have questions about what power is and that goes to anthropology metaphysics then you have questions of well how ought it to be used those then you're so you're into ethics yeah um and then and and and and so and how how can it be used or how could it be used right so there's there's there's a lot of questions but I think it I think it always has to do with how some human beings impose their will and maybe that's too strong but but order the lives of other human beings okay right so power Social Power I think is is what we mean by politics is social power what does social mean like does it have to do with like I wouldn't say my power over this coffee cup is politics right but I might say that that if I could manipulate you even just through rhetoric that I'm verging into politics interesting right okay um so it has so so it's it's somehow social between human beings it's not just power in general but it's you know power between people um I think that's something like that I was fed this a lot I'm sure you were too this idea that um the Medieval ages were the were bad and were bad until the enlightenment yeah um and I'm sure this has to do with politics in some way uh yeah definitely is this is this narrative something that continues to be taught and do you agree with it and why not well yeah I think it continues to be taught although it's losing some uh appeal or at least it was losing appeal maybe it's back I don't know um the the the post maybe I shouldn't even go down this road but the postmoderns in the 20th century um were more interested in attacking the enlightenment than they were attacking the Middle Ages and so we got there was a little opening where the Middle Ages could kind of be redeemed a little bit because the postmoderns hated the enlightenment um but that's over now now no one cares about anything so so now we're back to hating everything so um but yes that narrative is the norm I think it's what's in most of the textbooks it's what kids learn and it's um wrong it's very wrong um and it's based on this idea well I don't I okay I'm going to try to answer Matt I'm sorry I'm stumbling all over the place but that the one of the ways that you answer things is with ideas like talking about the the history of ideas and that can be misleading in thinking that the ideas are what cause everything but that's not what I'm trying to argue okay but there are there are ideas that correspond to actions and one of the ideas that we get in the modern period um is the idea that Human Society history is in its nature chaotic and disordered all right so um this actually this actually precedes uh the enlightenment precedes um John Law lock and Hobs and these guys and and really maybe maybe one way to see it a foundational place would be even in protestantism where there's a sort of idea of total depravity um that history is a realm of a satanic realm of of of sin and and and so you have this idea that chaos and violence is what is the norm MH and then order is imposed so order comes in and is imposed on top of that um the the classic expression of that is Hobbs Thomas Hobbs and you know the Leviathan The the famous account of the state of nature you know where he says life is is nasty short and brutish brutish short I don't remember the quote but whatever the point is that it's a war of all against all and then what emerges from the war of all against all is the Leviathan or the the the corporate order the corporate power that's so overwhelming that it aw and frightens all the individuals into compliance and that's the emergence of society now Hobs is kind of a dark version you have lock that kind of tries to lighten that up with a few um ideas about property and stuff that don't really hold a lot of water but whatever he tries to make it sound less dark you have rouso who's doing a similar sort of thing only kind of inverted you have all of these accounts have the political as being artificial as being um useful as being a creation that human beings come up with in order to solve this problem yeah um of violence and of of of conflict so they all rely upon uh certain assumptions they rely that that anthrop anthropologically we're primarily individuals self-interested individuals that that's the the the base condition so they can't account well one of the ways where this is obvious is they can't account for the Existence of like families or children or anything like I mean there are accounts if you want to if you want to if you want to see just how kind of ridiculous John Lock's political theory is all you have to do is go read what he says about family and children I mean it's just like what can you sum it up for us cuz I haven't read it um well that the only reason why a man has a child is is because he's worried about his old age and like the kid will take care of him yeah and the only reason why a man and a woman get married and have children is so that they so that they have they can pass the State on which will then care for them and then once the children are raised and there's no reason for them to stay together they exactly what we were talking about earlier it's less not more less not more right less is complicated yeah exactly um Thomas hob says that when a baby is born the mother has a decision of whether to kill it or keep it if she decides to keep it then she's its master and it's it's her slave and that's the beginning of political Society of the Master Slave relationship all right these sorts of things it's like wow I've seen mothers and babies and that doesn't seem to be what I see not my experience but they all because children are are the fundamental problem for that anthropology right because children are completely dependent right they're not independent um the power differential is obvious and there's no way that we can construe um the the love and that is demanded by the child from the parent as being something that's self-interested for the parent I mean it it seems those are always a stretch to the point of being absurd so that creat so they always have to carve out like an exception for family family is like the weird private place where weird things happen but when as soon as you leave the house and get out in the world now we can explain it all through contracts and negotiations interesting you know it's like well if I if if love is devotion is true in the family why can't it be true with my neighbor why can't it be true to my friend why can't it be true with my business partner yeah if it's real then it's real yeah but if you begin with the if you begin with the assumption that you family interactions and relationships are contracts yeah exactly then there's nothing else to be had elsewhere exactly right so that's so that's the the point is that that I was getting at is that that exactly is the dis the shift from the medieval to the modern so the medieval assumption is that there's a primordial peace that man is in his nature at peace with each other in friendships and in familiar relationships and that sin ah is tears and and sin are wounds on that and sin is very real Sin is profound right it's not like they're negating the existence of evil quite the contrary they talk about it continuously but that evil is occurring on a a substrate of peace right the peace so so um social peace is what is in the garden right and sin is what distorts s and and and wounds it and hurts it but human nature is in its Essence peaceful and and loving towards each other right so we so that's the default in fact so for the so for the Christian we've been cast out of Eden and for the atheist to use just that term we've never been in Eden and we're seeking it like we're in the we we're created outside we're in the chaos and we're seeking Eden is that the two like one starts with chaos and seeks to establish order one believes that order was at the beginning of things and sin brought back that's a way of of putting it I think that the uh I mean and that may be more true with like the Socialist bent as far as the recreation of some sort of Eden or the the finding of it but that wouldn't be I think the Liberals yeah are more happy with um with just a sort of uh muddled stasis middle middle ground where we're not killing each other but it's not paradise and we just kind of prod new stuff and consume it so we're in chaos so so you're saying that for the liberal we're in chaos and we just have to make the chaos as bearable as possible but we're not striving for Eden is that what you mean well or that that Eden is not something that happens um in in time so so for Protestant the liberalism the liberal bent I think is much more Protestant and and and develops out of protestantism okay um and so there's the idea that that salvation is something something that occurs in a totally different realm right that that somehow um Heaven yeah independent from my daily life yeah independent from the world from history right like history is occurring and then and then the believer is sort of unilaterally plucked out of that into right but but but history itself isn't moving towards yeah towards its own Holiness right could could you clarify the difference between like what we mean by liberal I I want to know what that means so what is liberalism and then what how is that distinct from the modern leftism we we hear can we just do that before we move on oh sure so liberalism philosophically is there's lots of different versions of liberalism but the simplest way to describe it is it's the idea that that it's anth anthropological individualism okay so human beings are individuals yeah all right then Society is secondary all right so the individual exists first then the the society um flows out of that um it is the idea that uh that normally it rests on the idea that that human relations are um contractual or violent so they like the the famous um the famous articulation of this in the Austrian School of liberals is that human relations are either contractual or hegemonic and there's no there's no Third Way what is that word made I've heard it but I don't know what it means Master Slave hegemonic one person is dominating the other okay or it's contractual those are your options yeah right so there's so it presupposes um yeah so so those are your options um it normally views then social order as being uh one of these contractual Arrangements because of that the purpose of social order is the maximal the maximization of the individual's ability to realize his own ends whatever they may be to that is exactly what Dave Rubin talks about constantly Okay so whatever they happen to be individual the individual you like one thing I like a different thing someone else likes another thing and the social the purpose of society is to maximize our abilities to pursue those ends and then the only morality is don't step on anyone's toes as you seek those ends right but we can't explain why you shouldn't but just don't yeah you really can't all right so so there's there's it's just an agreement it's a contract we come up with I don't want my desires right you sered you don't want yours so let's agree not to do that to each other but why would you keep the agreement is arbitrary why would you keep the agreement and what this is a question Hobbs tackles it's like he's like well why would you keep the agreement right well the only reason why you would is because the consequences of breaking it outweigh yeah outweigh whatever gains you hope by by by keep you know by breaking it so that means that that the social the enforcement mechanism has to be ubiquitous the enforce has to be the enforcement system has to be ubiquitous right if every human interaction is contractual yeah and the only reason why people keep contracts is they're afraid of the consequences of breaking it y then every human interaction has three parties the two people engaged in it and the enforcement mechanism the state okay right so you're the so you have a ubiquitous State and and and and someone like John Lock thinking of Big Brother explicitly says this I mean and that the state that the only way it works is for everybody everybody who enters into the compact to surrender all that they have all their rights all their property all that they have to the state and then the state grants it back to them and now the state owns everything right that's the way and so it can manage and control everything is that what we mean by socialism and communism no that's a whole different this is liberalism this is liberalism help me understand that so liberalism the liberalism seeks to okay so if if we're going to take liberalism as an ideology and say it's sincere yeah okay which is a stretch but let's just assume it's sincere so what you're trying to do is maximize human autonomy yeah right you're trying to maximize the individual's autonomy so what you're trying to do is so so here's the problem if you're a liberal you're trying to maximize individual autonomy you you your anthropology dictates to you that human beings are by by Nature independent rational actors all right so we are making decisions about our own self-interest independently of everyone else other than to the extent they impinge upon that self-interest okay so that's the anthropology And yet when you look around what do you actually see it's like well actually what I see are moral codes gender Norms uh family structures religious dogmas I see customary law that's governing I see all kinds of things in society that seem to be um limiting the scope for autonomous rational action right I see all kinds of of forces not just States or anything that are impinging upon that individual or the realization of that anthropology right the the the the the coming to fruition of that idea of the individual rational actor who's charting his own course through life right okay so the original foundation of the state is that is to get together in order to reduce the impact of any other Authority or power structure on the autonomy of the individual okay okay so the state is a is a agreement that's designed to say well if you're bare minimum kind of lock in um at least will stop crime like other strong people from taking your stuff yeah external and internal threats PR we we'll stop that from happening from people taking your stuff from you all right just a beginning but why stop there right like if the purpose of the state is to maximize um individual autonomy y then anywhere where you see individual autonomy being compromised is a a place for potential expansion of the state you see so so um uh family structures say are oppressive right family structures are oppressive so um they they they they are um they are convin and this is you take someone like John Stewart Mill or someone like that from the 19th century where you you you're you're you're looking at Society no longer merely as physical coercion but you're looking at society and understanding how cultural coercion Works how Pressure Works how shame Works how um that uh pure pressure ading yeah all this sort of stuff is there and it's all affecting that realization of the autonomy of the individual and so the the project then has to be to locate um Locate structures that are minimizing individual autonomy and to expand into them do away with them right replace them with the state which is indifferent so advertising wouldn't be one of them then I imagine well it depends sense depends who you ask I mean I I the problem with advertising is that is it just has to do so much with making so much money and then you get different interests involved but just there is a manipulation of liberals were consistent if liberals were consistent they would they would they would go there and and I think some left liberals probably would okay the problem is is that liberalism is incoherent and so there's people people who have a very vested interest in the idea that self-interested contractual relations are always mutually beneficial can't account for advertising as manipulative right they can't admit that it's manipulative you see because it's free I mean it's a it's a free exch oh okay right like like so they can't they can't admit um I this is one of the reasons why I quit becoming a being a Libertarian in college is because I asked my professors about advertising because and what they told me was well advertising is the way that people communicate to each other what's for sale and it's like that's not what advertising is at all right advertising isn't just like a list of the specifications no advertising is is instilling a desire within you that you didn't have prev right but see that that that so why is that not fraud right what's the what's the difference between between advertising and fraud if fraud is lying you know in manipulation through lying right um these things I think I think that the they can't account for it um the liberal the the free marketer liberals can't account for it um so they have to just kind of pretend like it doesn't exist well give me an example you're talking about the ubiquity of government right yeah and we're talking about okay so liberalism is about the autonomy of the individual being maximized right and so the is that right I mean yes yes ideologically and I hesitate because I don't think that's what a lot of Liberals are actually doing but that's that's philosophically but that's what they want right they want every individual to reach their uh yeah right that's what they say okay and and so and it sounds like we're saying that then the only kind of immoral thing would be to squelch another person's autonomy though we have no good reason for making that claim that's right but it's not against the rules to to to suppress someone else's aggressive action against you right that was the founding of the state to begin with so if we expand our understanding of aggressive action to to move from um like actually physically invading the property to saying psychologically abusing you okay um which is what a liberal would think to say religion is all right is is psychologically that's what Richard Dawkin called child abuse um then the expansion into that realm is is a continuation of the same the same philosophy that led to this establishment of the police force to begin with okay so so this is the reason why liberals look at the world and where they see nonpolitical Power power structures they see oppression they see the patriarchy they see um moral codes they see wherever there's wherever there's Authority uhhuh right that has power yeah that's not the state they see oppression I guess they would say unless those being oppressed are willingly oppressed in which case they're not oppressed and we should leave them alone isn't that the liberal then then then it's I mean when you say willingly oppressed that you have immense well I mean they're not willing they're willingly oppressed that's a contradiction they're not oppressed but like if a child wishes to be fathered then presumably the liberal would say well just leave him alone like let everyone do their thing yes I mean that that I some people would say that um the problem is with with liberalism is that it develops a um it develops there develops a sort of elitism in it where the people who are in who are currently being oppressed are not in a position to see their own oppression yeah have to see it for them but we see it for them and so we're going to free them so so the march of progress that's interesting I think of BLM here cuz I have several close black friends who would say I don't see the oppression that you're telling me that I'm experiencing BLM and BLM is saying well we see it for you and they're going to make sure you see it sort of thing right yeah yeah yeah and that's right so so so the the experience of progress is this March of identifying and eliminating um non-political nonstate based power structures H right and this um I mean this this is the reason why the liberal holds in great suspicion things like patriotism um love of family love of town love of whatever I mean like any any sort of pre contractual prerational um affection or devot that is that is somehow in potential conflict with the hemony of the disinterested ubiquitous state is almost certainly oppressive right and so and so a target maybe we haven't gotten around yet to eliminating that but we will and that's the march of progress wow right so Wow real quick what's the difference what's the difference between liberalism and leftism then like this this new term that people are using today right leftism and it seems to be I don't those who are maybe liberal but against Free Speech I'm not sure do you have a I I don't I I mean there's there's sometimes there's convenient terms right we can talk about left liberals and right liberals yeah um and that and that's convenient because we we know who we're talking about we're talking about you know right right Liberals are are um uh free marketeer conservatives left Liberals are progressives and and not just you know free Mark but also Pro patriotism Pro Patriot like I would see that people I'm thinking of Dave Rubin I haven't followed his you know stuff for a while but right lots of times they're just in sort of positioned himself on the right side of liberalism who's attacking the left who are attacking you know lots of times there's there's a Poverty of terminology and and of Concepts and so people who know they don't like the progressives yeah can't find a way of expressing it and they are grasping around and it seems like the opponents to the progressives are the individualists right but that's not the case both both sides are individualists okay right both sides are and and so you you they they sometimes grasp after so so I had this experience I had this experience um the other day when I was I I driving back and forth from work I listen to talk radio and and uh you get like five minutes a day which is enough right because they just say the same things over and over again but Glenn Beck was on and he's at one point talking about God and family and uh the love of country and all this and then transition says talking about hyek and free market economics and it's like well have you read hyek Because what hyek says is that everywhere where there's not competition we ought to extend competition into it like what he says is that the the world of of um the pre capitalist world that was dominated by um by nonrational structures was oppressive and it was that he actually he actually says in the road to surum that that's just communism and fascism under a different name right that and and so the love of or the devotion towards family community country fits very uneasily with the right liberal system they're actually incompatible right and so there's a lot of people that try to hold those in two separate Realms that so they'll say we have the economic and the political in which I'm a liberal and then we'll have the familial religious in which I'm a conservative right in which I believe those things are real and good and it's like well that that's better I guess than being a progressive but the problem with it is is that your economic theory is going to systematically attempt to destroy that place of conservatism every place where there's a value that isn't monetized is a place to make money every place every place where there's a value where there's a loyalty or a a a friction point in human society that isn't a part of the market is a place of inefficiency and so it's a place where profit can be can be generated and yet we all know what it's like when somebody invites us or asks us to host I don't know what this is like but women do a Tupperware party you have you be told to sell to your friends yeah right right right so that there's a and I think what we're actually witnessing society today is more the elites this is getting into stuff that maybe do it the the elites that are dominating our society today are more accurately described as The Heirs of big business and capital rather than of the leftists of the middle of the 20th century they're not Communists like when people say that it's like the only reason why you would say it would be if you meant if you were using it rhetorically right if you didn't mean it not Communists the the elites yeah right they they they have no interest in redistributing wealth they have a lot of interest in maximizing the centralization of wealth yeah right I mean nobody nobody's proposing nationalizing apple right right no one's proposing that the tech companies you know like these are these are not this is not socialism right this is this is um radical liberalism right if if you're going to if you're going to apply it any sort of ideological label to it I think so which which is a stretch because once you once you get to radical liberalism it's they're really no longer liberal okay radal liberalism is what well let's put it this way let's try to put it this way um in the liberal ideal you have you have a a disinterested State yep okay disinterested State that's attempting to maintain an umbrella of control um under which individuals can move freely and maximize their gain okay whose interest is it to maintain the disinterested State okay hang on W whose interest is it to main yeah probably the powerful I would but why would why wouldn't they use the state to maximize their own interest well if they could they would presumably presumably so liberalism doesn't work could you say all of that again well if if the state is this disinterested umbrella under which individuals move if that's what the state ought to be you have the problem of well who populates it who mans it who who runs the state as a disinterested thing if if your anthropology you begin with is that everybody is self-interested where do we find these more than humans that run the state in a non- self-interested way that run the state in a way that maximizes the the ability of the great sea of individuals to fulfill themselves where do we find these people right well theoretically they wouldn't exist and so you have to maintain something like it's in their best interest to maintain a disin umbrella but that that seems to not be the case seems meaning historically yeah even now historically speaking the people who in fact Run theed theed State find that it's very much in their interest to make it not so disinterested yes that is that is my phenomenological experience of it and philosophically predictable where it's like well it it would seem like the liberal state to the extent that we ever had it relied upon pre- liberal values meaning there had to be people who Ed about the common good yeah and who were convinced that a liberal regime was the best path to the common good and so they would attain power and then maintain it for the good of all mhm but if that's possible why not have it everywhere I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography it is 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encouraging each other offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that strive 21 that's strive 21.com slat or as I say text text strive to 6 6866 to get started today you won't regret it well it it would seem like the liberal state to the extent that we ever had it relied upon pre- liberal values meaning there had to be people who cared about the common good yeah and who were convinced that a liberal regime was the best path to the common good and so they would attain power and then maintain it for the good of all mhm but if that's possible why not have it everywhere the analogy of the umbrella is that it's a protective thing that's what we mean by umbrella and it's and it's ubiquitous so it's this ubiquitous thing that protects me from having my rights being infringed yeah right and now it be it can become very early on it it extended well beyond what what Libertarians would like which is just the sort of negative the negative rights so if if you in the 19th century liberalism in the late 19th century then in the early 20th century liberalism turned around and took a more positive approach where it's not just violence against you but it's um any sort of cultural pressure against you is is is bad all right so we're not only going to stop the criminal we're also going to stop the the one who's propagating oppressive gender Norms so why why isn't the oppression against Christians in America today seen as as negative well because America because Christians are oppressors okay okay so you're not you're not you're not oppressing the oppressor you're liberating the ones whom the oppressor is oppressing yep okay so so there's a so like think about think about it like this so just how unnatural this is when you look at human beings like the course of a human life and you say historically speaking so in a historical situation nor throughout most of human history a human life might go something like this where you are a child and you're dependent upon your parents right um You Care and then you work for the family you're depending upon your parents then let's say you're in your you know late teens early 20s you get married you have children now there's people dependent upon you MH all right you raise them all right you raise them by the time they leave your parents are dependent on you mhm you care for your parents you care for your parents by the time they die you're dependent on your children okay you're old now but at no point is there this fantasy of the the unattached individual actor who's just roaming through the world satisfying his Desires in contractual relationships right like the normal and so that that normal course of a human life is governed not by contractual or economic or or explicitly political relationships but by by familial relationships or friendship relationships and those are governed historically by religion by morals by custom by the way we are right the way we do this which are not voluntary what I mean is no one gets together and like drafts it do you know what I mean like we inherit it just like we inherit our duties and our um and our benefits not just our duties but also the other people's duties towards us we inherit these things so that's the condition that the liberal wants to eliminate right the liberal the liberal wants because their ideal is the individual property owning actor MH right so they want to try they have to try to create that ideal in fact um this is what makes it ideological right so the ideas come prior to reality so you have oh that's good you have the system y right you have your state of nature your system is that what you mean by ideological yeah exactly so ideas come before reality and then you you have to bend reality to match the system right rather than the other way around right okay so and so the liberal the Liberals set about doing this and when they look out at the world then what you and I might say see as n natural they see as unnatural okay because what's natural is the state of nature which is the disinterested individual rational actors right which never existed but ought to yeah okay so that the in the 19th century they very quickly realized that that had to be um Pro proactive that force of Liberation had to become proactive and not merely um not merely defensive right like it it wasn't enough to just protect people's property but we had to now protect them from all of these uh cultural structures that were oppressing them okay all right so then you set you end up forming progressivism but this is not this is not in at odds with right liberalism okay so the more autonomous individual autonomous um unattached free to um free to move wherever uh wherever one is most efficiently used in the economy um free to um uh consume I mean not just free to but all those structures all those non liberal structures of society are all places that are typically uncommercial right so the expansion of the commercial into more and more Realms of human life is the same process of the expansion of the liberal anthropology into more and more Realms of human life right so progressivism and the expansion of commercial activity are are um are accomplices right this is the reason why historically speaking the expansion of the state and the expansion of the market always occur at the same time okay right so there's this like weird American Myth that the the the free market guys and the big government guys are um at odds with each other but that's just not true like historically speaking that's not the way it occurs the expansion of the state and the expansion of the market are the same historical Dynamic exactly because the market can only expand into Realms where the where contractual relations are expanding which is the process of replacing non-contractual relationships with contractual ones right which is what the progressives are trying to do so you have these these two movements of liberalism and they they argue with each other but they're really accompli in the March um into late modernity H so um yeah so so what we what we see I think what we see um in the in the late 20th century then into where we are today is that the liberalism progresses to the point where No One Believes In liberalism anymore okay well and what does that mean No One Believes In what like replace the word liberalism with what you mean by it No One Believes Freedom doesn't like the maximization of individual Freedom becomes that's not true that no one does let me put it let me put it differently it becomes cynical okay so um it's like an example is like if you read Cicero or something from the Roman Republic the Roman where he doesn't believe in the gods um but he thinks it's really important that people do all right and this becomes this becomes a sort of Trope in late Roman Elites right like oh of course the gods aren't really existing but it's important that people do um and I and I think in in our decadent Republic you get you get a similar sort of thing where you have Elites that only really care about their own interests and yet it's important that the people maintain these devotions to Liberal ideology and um because that's part of how the power works the power structure works and so you actually have a ramping up of liberal ideology um as the as the society becomes less liberal so like as the power structure the state and the economic structure cares less about maintaining a liberal system and more about its own the construction of its own hegemony yes the more it gets that way the more it talks up liberalism okay yes all right so um and so you get people believing you know believing somehow that the expansion of say commercial interests into every nook and cranny of our life is somehow um prerequisite to our freedom or something do you know I mean like where you have free market free marketeer type right right liberals who have a really hard time bringing themselves to criticize the tech companies for example yeah right and that's because they're ideologically hampered by and they can't just say what's right in front of you they see the problem their own world they can't yeah like what's right in front of you is that these this is tyranny okay um but your ideological system W all you to say it right um but but I mean that's the reason why the ideology has to be jettison um I guess that was a lot I don't know I can't wait to listen to my own podcast now this is I'm going to learn a lot from the second and third listening well what what does a Christian civilization look like and what should we be striving for and and and is it anything like it was in the in the Middle Ages and what was that like yeah I think I think that the the heart of it is that um I I mean I guess the word I would use to describe it is subsidiarity that's the word that the the the church has given us it's somewhat of an unfortunate word why because it sounds I don't know sounds like bureaucrat and maybe vaguely medical I don't know doesn't sound terrible subid but the point of it is the idea that human beings um I mean the very gist of it is that human beings flourish or human happiness is the objective that's the end human happiness and human flourishing and that human beings flourish as persons in relationships not as isolated monads not isolated yeah not atomized human beings but rather in relationships and not only do they flourish but they actually come to be in relationships like you come to be the person that you are in the relationships that form you and which you form right because every relationship you have is both changing you and changing them and when you have really in like very real personal relationships you're quite literally growing into each other right and and um becoming the person you are only in relation to the person the person who you're with as a man married 17 years to totally true I'm so glad I chose her to influence and yeah exactly so that and that but this is where human happiness is actually found so it's like sometimes I'll I I'll talk to my students and I'll and I'll ask them uh you know try to imagine a happy happiness like a happy person like imagine in your head a happy person what does that look like yeah like what does a happy person like and then and then I'll say now does it make any sense to imagine that without imagining other happy people like a happy person is not one who just consumes Netflix all day can you imagine a happy person that isn't in that imagining including friends and family which who are also happy right like a happy man isn't happy if his wife is miserable and his kids are miserable you know what I mean like the happiness is but just real quick and it's probably a much less substantive point that you're trying to make uh so forgive me for trying to keep up with you but it does seem like today we're being told that the happy man is the man who consumes Netflix porn gets gets Uber Eats isn't reliant on other people has no needs impressed upon him from others isn't that what we're seeing more and more well totally I mean it's it's it's if you watch advertising you know you watch a football game or something and you see the advertising every commercial is nothing but that person always smiling yeah right like the the the individual unattached so no one's dependent on him he's not dependent on anyone right yeah um and and he's got a big smile hanging out with his friends whatever they're selling some new fizer drug for some reason I just I just thought I just I just thought about this that stock photos of families seem to be very cheesy probably because they're from the '90s or something like you there's a lot of stock photos of individuals like sporting the latest show but when you see like a stock photo of a family I don't know they just but the point the point is that we know statistically right that that's that that person's actually not happy so in fact the more atomized we've become the more lonely the more miserable the more alcohol and drug abuse the the more suicide the more like the the society actually is becoming increasingly unhappy the more the liberal ideal is realized right okay so cuz we're becoming less human less human yeah human beings are social in our Natures like Happ and happiness is the Fulfillment of our nature then becoming less of your nature is the opposite of happiness it becomes yes happiness is only had when it's had together right so like the happy family is a perfect example of that where in order to say happy family you mean the people who make it up are happy right like the happiness of the people is is is what constitutes the happy family but you can't imagine the the happy individual other than the family being happy right I mean if the family's miserable he's miserable because he's a part of a happy family and they're they're happy or miserable together that's like the nature of it right and so so happiness if happiness is social is a common good meaning it's only had when it's had together and it's had at the most intense level at the most intimate of relationships mhm okay but those relationships aren't self-sufficient right so so for example um you know us with our wives we have a very intense um personal relationship in happiness and with our children say happiness is most intense there but those relationships are themselves um dependent upon larger relationships right even stuff as rudimentary as we have to speak a language with our family and we don't create our own language right oh like we're inheriting we have what do we like to do with our families we you know I mean we like to read books we like to tell stories we like to know Sports whatever those things but those those things are all things that that the family has to go outside of itself so so a family say Robinson or Swiss Family Robinson or something like a family deserted on an island is capable of a certain amount of happiness but there's that happiness draws it out to encounter other families right you what I mean is they don't you don't want to be stranded on a desert island with your family you want if that were the case you'd say man I wish there were four or five other families here with us yeah right yeah so that my sons and daughters could marry let's say so we could be happier like our happiness the happiness you experience at that smallest level calls you out into a deeper a deeper happiness that involves a larger social group mhm all right and um so say the village the town the whatever and and and then the same holds but the same the same construction of the person that we can see at the most intimate level is occurring at those higher levels so you as a family are becoming who you are in relations with the other families in which you're living and so on right um and then towns with other towns and you can the the concept of subsidiarity is this idea that the different levels of the social order are all ordered towards the Perfection of human happiness which is ultimately had at the most intimate level right so like the the the smallest or the deepest relationship is what's being perfected in its integration into larger social orders right so those um larger social orders then are are necessary not only in a positive sense of it of of grow of giving space for the happiness to expand but they're also uh necessary a negative sense of protecting the smaller order from um any sort of uh predator or including internal to them so so an example might be something like um child abuse right where you say okay the family is where happiness is the most intense but because of that it's also the place where misery is the most intense right the possibility for misery is the most intense at that level for the same reason that happiness is um and so if you have a situation say where a child is being abused um then the intervention of a higher order level of order into that smaller one say to remove the child yeah and to put him say in an orphanage okay we can say that has to occur but the genius of the insight and subsidiarity is what is occurring when the child say is put into an orphanage that's better than his abusive family perhaps probably um but it's not as good as a happy family yeah right mean meaning it doesn't replace the happy family right right it it that that higher level of order say that the level of the city is capable of a certain institutional action but it can't reproduce What a loving family can so when it acts it acts in a remedial sense right you you see what I'm saying it can act to stop a greater evil but it can't replace the good that is had at the lower levels yes that makes sense okay so so that means that the construction of apparatus government government apparatus at higher levels has to be very carefully done okay so like the replace it's the inversion of the liberal right so the liberal wants the highest levels to be the most powerful things ah right to reduce the existence of all smaller levels of order in order to free the individual huh right so the individual can move within this new giant sphere of Freedom yeah whereas subsidiarity like is the inversion of that and says no human beings actually move and live at that smallest level of intimacy and those things that are larger are there to protect and maximize that gotcha okay so it's it's there's a it's um it's it's an almost exact opposite in a lot of way so I think that what happens with with Christian Society is that is that the sub the form of subsidiarity is not something that is instituted the form of subsidiarity is the form that emerges yeah naturally natur out of loving relationships okay right so like for example you you know that the relationship you have with your kids is not the same as the relationship that your neighbor has with your kids what I mean is if he behaved towards them the way you do yeah that would be troubling that would be troubling to you but you don't need some constitutional articulation of that that's correct right it's merely the fact that you're a family and so is he that you know that to be the case right if if the mayor of the Town came into your living room and started disciplining your children yeah you wouldn't need some constitutional rule about the the the relative relationships between Mayors and fathers to know that that was not the right Order of Things yes do you know what I mean I couldn't know what you mean more so so the form emerges out of the loving relationships themselves here's what's interesting though right because you've got the Christian view which is the subsidiarity view and the liberal view that both seem to be saying the same thing namely leave them alone yeah sort of right yeah so um yeah I mean the Christian view isn't like we want the St out of Chris the Christian view is a little different yeah I mean I know what you mean by that what you're what what you mean is what you mean is um I think correct me if I'm wrong is that you want the the liberal state or that you want um the higher po stay out of your business right that is true when they're abusing their power but it's not the Christian view is different in that it understands those higher levels ofor authority to be necessary for the happiness of the family all right so like you're and so does the liberal the liberal only the highest level only the state and not what what's the intermediate level so for example you think no doubt I or at least I think that the authority of the parish priest is essential to the happiness of my family right like my my in order for my my family to be happy I must be integrated into the type of thing that has the authority of the priest golly I am ashamed to say that I've never thought that before and that uh I I would like to live in a parish where I could fully give myself I'm not being I don't mean to be smart here but I would like to kind of live in that world where I give myself over to the authority of my priest in certain respects but I don't feel that way but but you would at least admit that it ought to be that way uh I haven't thought this through why would I want that because the priest integrates so the priest brings into your family the um the or it's not even he brings into your family he elevates your family he's the conduit through which your family is elevated out of the domestic Church into the church and and you and the sacraments and the preaching and the community of the parish is the way in which your family is elevated out of its contained and and brought into something greater yep I get greater and and that and what's and that greater that being brought into that greater thing is the Perfection of what your family is it's not it's not adding layers it's not like stacking right your family is perfected as itself in its elevation okay right so the love the so so my point is that the the Christian understanding of subsidiarity is not merely negative it's not merely that the higher powers are there to intervene it's also positive and that the higher the higher authorities are there to elevate that which is below okay all right um and so they have real Authority like they they isn't that true of a town in a secular sense as well though that the be and maybe it is true inevitably because of human nature yeah right that the Liberals can't ever make true what they're attempting and so human nature is always this is something that that people have remarked on that human nature being what it is human beings are always attempting to reconstruct solidarity they're trying to build friendships they're trying to build NK networks that have some kind of authority because that's what makes them happy right but here's like I think like a farmers's market right is like illustrative of a group of people who wish to be in community with each other and I would bet you that it's the more liberal Progressive towns in America that have more of them and that might just be because there's a greater population but I don't think so the more kind of conservative towns well that's certainly cly that certainly was the case um but I think it still is I think it probably still I bet you there's a crap ton in Portland Oregon oh I think that's still the case on but not in Houston Texas I think that's still the case generally um uh so what I'm I guess what I'm asking is changing is doesn't that contradict your idea no no no no it there's there's the contradictions are everywhere okay okay so the whole system contradicts okay so so so you have why is it right that why is it the case that the farmers market is that way like it tends to be with the liberal yeah okay well what is it um it's more expensive there's uh a certain aesthetic that people like there's a desire for this to be part of a community I think that's right I think there's a desire to be part of a community there's a knowledge right now all of those things are good I think I mean the aesthetic side the desire to be part of your neighbors those are good things right so human beings aren't totally depraved and there's always pushing back and they push back in different places where and the human nature pushes back in places where there's an opening so so one of the things one of the things that characterizes contemporary politics is the the the um the way in which one formulates or imagines his opponent is largely is a integral aspect of how you imagine yourself mhm okay so I'm this way because the bad gu is that way right okay so when you had the bad guys on the right being in favor of globalization the big corporate stuff more profit more money more corporate stuff then there was a reaction in favor of small stuff local stuff less stuff okay okay what I'm saying is that in being that that's changing because yeah like so how is the enemy are things are shifting in a different way well how do you think the liberal perceives their enemy today well now increasingly people who emphasize local stuff are the enemy so increasingly interes so like when I was a kid um when I was a kid say in a grw up in western Washington Seattle area there were the the giant protests in the N what what year was that 90 whatever Against the World Trade Organization that was meeting in Seattle and they were left-wing protests against globalization right now now the left the so-called leftwing is who's radically in favor of globalization whereas the so-called right-wing are the ones who are against the globalists okay right the global Elite globalization the global I mean that has now become something that right-wingers say that's interesting um immigration happened the exact same way like when I was a kid the Republican party was the open immigration party and the Democrats were the closed border party oh yeah because the Democrats protected the unions and the Republicans were the free trade guys they wanted labor in right so the inversion of that that started to occur in the early a and then was was finished with Trump right has created an entirely different like an entirely different uh uh configuration that is as much about what might opponent says than about what I think you see like like Donald Trump's people often forget this right but like Donald Trump's hard line against illegal immigration was the motivation for the left to become radically pro- illegal immigration so maybe we should be Pro abortion well I mean it's it's it's there it's like a trap you know you can't really get out of it but but so when when you point out those inconsistencies yeah right I think those are always there um and there are but they are and and and they are I'm thinking of 1984 where it's I forget the exact countries but has always been at war with East Asia yeah so things just change and we can't explain why they change and we've forgotten that they change to begin with they've changed radically I mean the the leftists I mean think about like the co years and the the RO that we're talking about as in the past think about those years the dramatic role reversal where the left wing was the submit to Authority do what you're told the government the government is to be trusted what we probably didn't fund weapons research in China it's like man my memory of the left was that they were the ones who thought the government was always up to no good they were the ones who thought we shouldn't trust Authority they were the ones that thought well of course the military industrial complex is designing chemical weapons over Seas what else would the military industrial complex do right they were the ones who were against all that they became the ones who were in favor of it all I mean very very peculiar things like that that are really fascinating to watch right where the left um so-called left is adopted something like say the American support for the Ukraine war which doesn't I don't want to get into the details of that but but it's odd that the leftwing becomes the most rabid supporter of an American proxy war against Russia where we are funding nationalist Rebels against the Soviet I mean the Soviet Union against Russia it's like yeah that's something that's a that's a sort of model of conflict that we've been down before and it used to be the left that was against it right I mean that used to be the case so this is the in contradictions you're talking right these contradictions they they they they're moving right um and there's a there's a there's a an incoherence in it where human beings feel that and are always looking can I offer an analogy you know kind of like what um in the Republic where Plato tries to show that okay let's look at it at a a larger scale because that's easier to see what it's like in the individual but if we did the opposite here okay so maybe is it like to to make it into a person is it sort of like the person who's tossed to and fro by his passions without a coherent worldview or faith toally so he's just one day he wants this the next day he's tired of that and wants that and there's no real reason for it and he's giving you his argument for why he wants or doesn't want that thing depending on how he feels uh yeah completely right now what's it's I think that's completely right on the on the level of um the population right so the population we've gotten to a point I think where the population is that that soul that you're talking talking about that disordered Soul um I think there's more coherence at higher levels of order I mean I think I think there are um people a lot of people who want to make as much money as possible yeah so it's not very complicated and and and have as much power as possible you know and and that and they're not they they couldn't Care One Way one way or the other about immigration or Ukraine or yeah farmer markets or whatever I mean those things are all just means towards an end and they're willing to do whatever but but I again I think that that that is predictable um I mean I think that's highly predictable um given the the liberal premises uh that that that that's what would occur um so what's a Christian to do now like wait for it to burn down ignore the whole thing no the beauty of it the beauty of the Christian position and of subsidiarity in this idea is that it doesn't rely upon higher levels of order in order to to be built it it actually the point of it is that well no the most important part is the most immediate like the most important thing is you and your family the second most important is you and your family and the families that they're friends with the third most important is the town that you live in the four what I mean is it inverts because it inverts the power structure it you have you have the opportunity to act in an efficacious way underneath that umbrella that we were talking about earlier right yeah you don't have to wait for the government to give you commission to live a Christian Life you can have friends and like actually have friends like like really have friends and treat them as friends and the government not only can't initiate it the government can't even see it like it doesn't even know like those aren't there's no mechanism for even observing it friendship right right so that's right because the whole structure is built for the opposite the whole structure is built for for um nonpersonal interactions impersonal interactions right um and and so the whole bureaucratic and Commercial structure is built for that personal interactions are are beneath the radar so you can bu build friendships and and the the thing that's really fascinating about it from a political Theory point of view is that the construction of real communities is the undoing of the liberal order right the the liberal order its construction relies upon the destruction of communities but it can't it but there's like a paradox in it where it it it destroys the communities but not through other communities right it's through non-c commmunity apparatus and so you can build the interpersonal relationships underneath it um and they can't they can't stop it I mean they could stop it militarily I guess but they can't stop it within the structure itself what that does when I say it undermines their order I mean that quite literally I mean friend when you think of communities of friends um people who are really bound to get in in relationships of care those people are less anxious less scared less susceptible to propaganda less they have leadership within the communities that they trust who love them they have they're less suscep you know they're less susceptible to marketing they're less suscep all the the pressures that the the atomized individual falls under which gain which is actually the the basis of the power of the hegemonic entity right are undermined as that atomized individual becomes Less atomized in the in exactly inverted way that they were built as he became more atomized so if you look at there's a theorist very interesting political theorist Hannah arent her name uh mid 20th century she wrote a book called the origins of totalitarianism which was is a really wonderful book and um she she was um had seen German Nazi and bulvik firsthand she was there um and so she wrote this book about about the totalitarians and she she it's somewhat it was somewhat counterintuitive to Americans because what she argues is that totalitarianism is built on only on um a atomized population okay so the prerequisite to to to totalitarianism is the destruction of communities of solidarity because communities of solidarity aren't susceptible to the tools of tyranny right because they the people who are within them aren't scared to death the people that are within them have support the people that are within them have confidence that they're not crazy right like gaslighting doesn't work when you've got a community of people who all go yeah that's nuts right right it's only when you're by yourself that you go man I wonder if that that maybe I'm wrong Maybe I'm Wrong right and and if I if I have Community with you I need the government less way less you're not as vulnerable I mean this is what the argument was is that vulnerability and it's not just physical vulnerability but that is a of it like you need as as Society becomes atomized not just culturally but economically we become increasingly dependent upon large structures for our sustenance right and that has a psychological impact where we are afraid of disruption of the status quo because we know that the status quo is what puts food on the table we know that we serve these big entities do you know what I mean I want a specific concrete example so I can then know what you mean um well I mean don't you think that people say who work for a large Global Corporation have within them a mental check on entertaining theories that would that would suggest a large Global Corporation is evil yes if I work if I work for well well not even just that right but if I worked for Amazon I even have to be careful what I say on YouTube so in a sense I work for YouTube right right and so I at times feel myself mental chicked and now that's a very explicit but it can be much more subtle it can be like it can be um the human beings want to don't want to feel like they are um they are a part of a cog and a machine that's doing evil and so the rationalization that backfills okay this is what I'm doing I'm a part of this mechanism and then we are inclined to then backfill the rationality we need in order for that to be okay right again this is a part of the structure that builds that maintains and builds those power structures is that and when people are less dependent on on the larger structures they become more open to questioning them say that again when they are less less dependent on the larger structures they're they're more open to questioning their legitimacy yeah um so I mean the argument I mean if you look at something like so h Hannah RN in her in her book she talks about she talks about things like the purges in the Soviet Union where You' get just crazy stuff like the the secret police would be given quotas and it's like okay you need to come up with 2,000 people from this neighborhood or something and it's just like random quotas right like the secret police you have to make this number of arrests and and and she's like well that to Outsiders that seems crazy like why like just random arrests I mean it seems so bizarre and she's like well look because the point the randomness is the very Point cu the point was to destroy solidarity so if you have a neighborhood and at any given point anyone can be arrested and you never know why and you never know if it's because your neighbor said something or you said the wrong thing to somebody or you're whatever that you what happens is everybody Retreats as far as possible from from each other because they're terrified and that Retreat into their their into isolation into atomization was the purpose of the Terrors so is this why is this why people suspect that Co lockdowns exct had to do with I remember in Canada people were calling calling on each other calling police absolutely right I mean the the the and do you think that's an intentional thing that's coming from top down I think that no or is that like a happy coincidence for those in power I think that there is human beings are more are often more psychologically complicated than just intentional action like often often our actions and the and the rationalization for them are are Complicated by by by um sort of pre- rational intuitions so so people like I think that when when say during the co years when year or whatever when say some families got together and had Thanksgiving say and that like made some people mad resent him all probably exactly why does it make them mad yeah right it's like it it it makes them it's not the theory of I want to destroy families or whatever but there's some sort of resentment or anger towards them where you think your family is more important and it's like well yeah I do you know but oh well that that that is something that is now repulsive do you know what I mean like because it it's it's I think it literally becomes um repulsive to people right and so they they find that which they're ideologically opposed to aesthetically displeasing and so they go after it mm right I don't know it doesn't always have to be it doesn't always have to be thought out yeah that's good to hear because well I kind of like the idea of there being an evil group of men in a bunker plotting the demise of yeah I don't think that's the way it has to work I know it's unfortunate that would have been so cool I think those I actually do think those groups of men exist okay but I think they often don't succeed in their whatever their plan is do you know what I mean well yeah they they don't actually control enough to get what they want and part of part of why they may not succeed is because as you say like our beautiful Humanity FS forth in these little farmers markets and things that they accidentally accidental virtue problem problem right because if if if tyranny is predicated upon fear then it's always secondhand in the sense that you're always threatening something that the T The Tyranny doesn't provide you see what I'm saying so like yeah so like you you fear of what fear of dying at the most fundamental level the simplest level okay but life is something that the Tyranny did not provide me right fear of disrupting my family fear of whatever whatever the fears are that are motivating obedience are secondhand they're not positive they're negative so the the tyrannies then find themselves in a very tricky situation where they have to they have to be parasitical upon human Goods that they don't create but the human goods are always a threat to their tyranny right so it's like that's the reason why tyrannies are unstable it's the reason why they're they're is the reason why they're paranoid in their nature because they they they see everywhere the the the bubbling the bubbling resistance you know I'm thinking about during the second world war where Carol VOA and his friends would get together in secret and perform poetry and plays for each other to keep their culture alive so it's kind of like what you're saying so that thean doize them I'm also thinking of Christ's words to Peter Satan has desired to sift you as wheat yeah or or in the in the in the persecution the beginning of the persecution of the Christians under the Romans the original offense that they were persecuted under was illegal Gathering it had nothing to do with religion it was ex it was illegal to gather together in a house and they were doing that why was it illegal to gather because it was a threat to the state is that the explicit reason reason absolutely it they wer they weren particularly against Christians any sort of gathering was that wasn't sanctioned by the state was a threat and so outlawed this is and the Christians wouldn't not gather because of course they were celebrating the Liturgy and so they they were that's the the beginning of the persecutions how bizarre that Gatherings of humans weren't allowed in private houses yes because unsanctioned Gatherings so you could gather you know for the official cult and things wow wow but that but that it's the same reason I mean it's the same reason because human interpersonal relationships resist the tyrannical construction of power and build solid subsidiarity so like that's it's not implemented it's the way human beings order themselves if you leave them alone and if they were good and if they're good that's right right so to the degree that they're virtuous this is what emerges all right so could you tell me what you think we are doing well here in Stubenville to uh oh yeah Galvanize Humanity against I think that we're doing there's a lot and just for those at home I'm not saying this as if to say studville is the only place this is happening but this is our reference point you know you even St vill there's there's a lot of go there's a lot going on here with um like like we've been talking about with the construction of the building of of real relationships um there's it what's weird about Stubenville at least large sections of it here I think is that it's um it people know what they're doing I mean there's a lot of intentionality like we need to turn away from the big and look at the small give the example give the example of the grocery books that just went in downtown yeah so Mark Barnes and and Greg started this and it's it is exactly what we're talking about like like the attempt of a grocery store downtown that has local more local uh produce produce local food local stuff um and it's not it's not merely the point is not that it's a commercial Venture and that's like people the point is that it is the attempt to move what has become highly commercialized into a less commercialized space right like the space of friendships you know and there's a commercial component to it but it's not merely a business right so there's there's an attempt I think in Stubenville to to do that to try to actualize that um there's also a lot of I mean I'm more involved I'm in in the thinking side of things and there's a lot of thinking going on uh a lot of theoretical work a lot of stuff along these same lines so it's a real Center for that as well um you know Stubenville I mean I I can give an example I guess where we go to where we go uh to mass where we parishioners at St peters's here sometimes people will visit and they'll say um or it'll be here and they're like there's no there's no like Parish events or there's no like they look at the bulletin and there's like no there's no like stuff going on Bible study where's the youth group and I'm like and and and then it takes me a minute to realize and it's like well that's because the people at Mass are a community like wow like we see each other every day like we don't like everything every barbecue I have is just as St Peters get together every the the homeschooling Co-op is the the you know it's yeah it's not it's not that it's bad that other parishes attempt to become a place for Community they they ought to do that but the goal would be to have it so natural natural that it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be like organized it just is so um I mean that's great uh I don't know I don't know the the the long-term outcome of it I think that places like here are cropping up all over the place I mean I think there are communities um you know not just Catholic but but all different kinds that are that are popping up and and the acknowledgement I mean you hear it even sort of on in mainstream discourse sometimes about the acknowledgement that our the solution to our problems are small not large like yeah you've got the solution to the problem is in your town in your neighborhood it is not the next presidential election so I think this is probably true of me and most people watching why are we then surely the goal if we want to we're going to act where we put our love mhm but we love we seem to love the kind of inverse of what we should love so I'm more interested in global politics than National politics and more interested in National politics than local politics like who watches the local news you know and then I show by my behavior that even though I would not wish to admit it that I may be more interested in politics than my own family if I'm spending an hour a day listening to them but not my children right so how do we actively and violently change our I don't know the answer to that I I mean I fall prey to the same thing I think I I think um that's an act an act of [Music] will um that I I myself am still still struggle with but but I think we just have to force ourselves to care about the small thing you know and well you know I'm going to go back on what I just said there because it seems to me that like the more you invest in your small town the more interested you are then you become more interested The Cigar Lounge we started I'm now interested in that and the little Mite Community I'm invested in okay we're you know that sounds right to me um is there a good battle plan on how to be a human I don't think so okay I mean I'm sure there is I just don't know it there's an excellent book quot out of the ashes by Anthony esam that I've heard I mean I think that we are in a period right now of extreme confusion Y and disruption um because we're we're witnessing um we're witnessing the end of one regime one civilization and the birth of another and that's a very confusing time yeah a world is ending a world is ending and a new one is emerging and and and it's not the the the the categories that used to hold don't hold anymore the alliances that we used to be able to count on we can't count on anymore I mean like things are are crumbling yes um and it's really hard to see your way through that I don't know so what do we do so I guess what do we do while we're confused while the country Burns while the center has fallen out everything fall what I'll tell you what I people sometimes accuse me of being pessimistic and I guess I am but I think that the way I think about this is it's no longer about winning okay like that's I don't oh that's so helpful it's no longer about just took a breath when you said that what it what what it's about now is surviving um and I don't mean like you know eating I mean surviving as Christians and as a as a culture um and I don't I mean like like what do we pass on to our children how do we explain what has happened to them how do we live how do we you know and and how do we rebuild the church when we're so Ed to the church being this big thing just like everything else and it's like now we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that the church is actually a very small thing I mean like yeah the church is the parish the community the right like in rebuilding that which is something we used to know so the tradition is full has all the resources we need um and and then weathering the storm and then converting it I mean like weathering the storm isn't pessimistic it's it's it really is like what happens you look at something like the Roman Empire where the Christians um the Christian the Christians are presenting to the Romans to the Pagan Romans a different way of life and the the reaction to that because it's truly a different way of life there a lot of the pagans view it as a threat it's a threat because it's really different it's actually it was a threat it was in fact subversive subversive right yeah so there's a persecution the persecutions are launched against it but the persecutions only make its difference more obvious and more clear right it only it only call it only shows ever more ever more clearly that this was in fact different this isn't just another iteration of the same thing this is actually a different way of living this is actually a different a different form of life and so the ramping up of the persecution is simultaneous to the growing of the Christian Community right and and you have and and so you see what I'm saying like there's the the thing that attracts the pagans to the Christians their love their peace the idea that there is in fact a society of Peace that's real that is the the exact same reality that allowed the Christians to weather the persecutions right the fact that that was real and so so the conversion of the Empire occurs um so so I what I'm saying is like us becoming ever more authentically Christian in our smallness is actually is actually the thing that will eventually convert the Empire I mean like because we'll be different you know like visibly and when they come to persecute we'll be different then and then you know and and so I think that's actually hopeful right do we need to believe that we'll convert the empire in order to get to weather the storm or can we just can we assume that the Empire will always deter continue to deteriorate and will never convert and that's okay too I think we convert it yeah I think oh this is this is very speculative I don't know but I think that history church history in particular moves in um moves in these big cycles of of of corruption and reform and that the corruption um like what emerges out of the period of corruption is high at a higher level than what went into the period of corruption like there's a there's a sort of um you know sometimes people say things like the corruption of the best is the worst that there's a like as the church as the church sort of ascends through history there are openings for greater levels of corruption okay within it and it succumbs to that and then the the eventual reform out of it is now it's like it's like if you're a alcoholic or something and then you reform out of it you've now defeated alcohol do you know what I mean like you're you can become higher yeah yeah okay so yeah but do institutions conquer things because I get I get how it works on an individual level like you know the individual now knows the evil that he doesn't to go back to but a church in a thousand years from now didn't exist now they just have history or structures put in place I think modernity I think the modern world is corrupt is a is the corruption of the church I mean what does modernity mean well I mean we're we're witnessing the end of it so the modern world uh you you know the the the the end ofr Christendom is replaced with the modern world right the modern world has many different facets to it that we could describe it with and that's what it's meant by modernity I mean you could describe it um through you could just try to describe it with secularity you could try to describe it with scientific arguments you could try to describe it with the way States work I mean there's many different ways to describe it but one thing we know is it's not Christendom right it's the it's yeah and um but but it didn't come from anywhere else but Christendom what I mean it's like Christendom medieval Christendom wasn't invaded there wasn't it didn't there space aliens didn't land it wasn't an outside force like Christendom did this to itself Christendom did modernity no one else did it and so it's a it's a period of corruption in the church modernity is period of corruption yeah that was birthed by the church birthed by the church I mean the church understood the Brest sense right of of the civilization not not I'm not talking about the Episcopal hierarchy or something I'm talking about the civilizational sense okay um and and so the reform out of modernity is I I mean I'm I'm hopeful that eventually that that will be the the reform exactly of of the church I mean and and in and in a thousand years if the world's still here they'll be looking back at this period as a period of very profound corruption within Christendom right like so I I I think that that's a possible trajectory it's very speculative of course who knows but but but I think that's a possible way that this plays out in the long run you know one way I one way I see I see hope is that when I was a teenager we would never dance you know with anybody or if we did it didn't look like it looked like gesticulating or having a seizure it wasn't but you know my son went to a dance last night right had dance practice and they do swing dancing here yeah I know I know my kids are in part of the same thing is that awesome I just want to give another shout out for Stubenville if you if you can live anywhere and want to live in a little rundown town with friends that's a pretty good place to be we would like to have you I think well I can't say that for sure those kids are great continually shocked the teenagers the world that they have yeah what am I yeah yeah yeah yeah they're they're they're they're growing up in a better a better environment than I did right that's for sure and that doesn't seem to make sense in one sense because it seems like the world's gotten much worse America's got much worse in a sense but that was don't you think that was part of the problem previously was that there's a certain Clarity that's emerging yeah there's a line that's been drawn and and when you know in our generation there was our parents put us in front of MTV and Friends still the sort of sense that that American society isran Prett good and it's like we have this fault and that fault but overall we're pretty good and if we just stopped doing that bad thing and stopped doing that bad thing we'd be all right I was watching uh I was watching old reruns of WWF the other night I never do this but I watched that growing up yeah me too and that I was listening to the intro song for Hulk Hogan I am a real American fight for what's right fight for your life I know it great but that was maybe the understanding hey like I I think to be American is to be Christian yeah totally totally I mean that that was very very strong I mean I think I think that there's I think that we maybe we can um rewrite that history in a way that's not quite accurate I mean a lot of that is post World War World War II um in early Cold War I see like nationalism and um you know like America was less Christian in the 30s and then became a lot more Christian in the 50s okay so you know like when you ask the question if someone asked the question well how did it collapse so fast and it's like well it was built pretty fast too like yeah yeah that kind of interesting 1950s so even American kind of Christianity could be thought of as a response to our enemies yeah kind of reaction to our enem I mean I think I don't I don't think we want to be too cynical about it right because because the the the it can be Christianity can be quite sincere so if you look at if you look at like the um the post-war situation and you say what characterizes post-war sort of suburban life and it's like oh you know nuclear family hard work ethic uh Christian Christian you know practicing Christians what all these sorts of things and it's like well it's true that they had nuclear families and cared about them it's true that they worked hard and had a good work ethic it's true that they were Christian I mean we don't have to we don't have to be cynical about it and say it was insincere right but you can you can say but it was derivative of I mean what I mean is you can say things like in the war in fighting the war there became a what it meant to be an American right like a good American and being God-fearing was one of the things that that it meant to be a good American and so for people who intended to be good Americans that's something they did yeah right and that's not bad but you can see why in the Next Generation maybe it doesn't anymore yeah right why it can collapse so fast you know who's going to win the next election and should we even care I love that we came here to talk about Louis the 9th we have not spoken about him his name I gave you the opportunity at one point I asked about the medieval Church thinking that you would get there we're not going to get there now let's not even worry about it we'll don't I don't I don't I don't know I mean I don't do you not care oh that would it would be fair to say I don't care I I don't I no longer think that the system works in a way where the question can be no one so I know you know it's that's why outside is now elected now if you asked me if someone said who do you think will be in the White House in two years what would you say not Trump really okay why I think they're going to put him in jail okay I have no idea who it'll be yeah but that's just what I think maybe yeah yeah okay as we wrap up tell us about your book um I want to give you a little softball there and you can tell us about your book okay well I have two two books that I guess oh sorry I'm thinking about the before church and state is the big one okay um that's about Louis the 9th and the the 13th century France and how their their society was structured very different than our own so it's a it's a combination of history and political Theory wow heavy on the history um and then I have one called the two cities which is a history of soci human society human civilization I really start with Adam and Eve and I go to um Benedict the 16th um and it is it's a history a political history so it's about how the church was political from Eden all the way through to the through the modern so through the Romans the Middle Ages the Biblical history the Romans the Middle Ages the mo the mod the construction of the modern period and um yeah all the way through the construction of the ideologies and how how that all occurred so what book would you like someone to say they had read if they could if you could choose one of those well I'll tell you what the the before church and state is much more academic um probably probably much more boring the two cities I think is people say is more engaging and more of the two cities is that a throw back to City St Augustin yeah so would those be those are the those are the protagonists in the story is the city of God in the city of man fantastic and um so trying to trying to retell history out of away from the liberal Narrative of progress and into a Christian Narrative of um salvation history so what do we see if we look at history through our lenses rather than modernity's lens that's what I try to do very good where can people learn more about you other than those books are you part of the new po I'm involved with new polity um the podcast or the podcast the the magazine um just all the activities the conferences so that that that's my kind of group intellectually I work at Franciscan of course yeah and teach there and um and I'm involved with the new College of St Joseph the Worker that's coming on so what's politics of tyranny that's what politics of tyranny was a podcast okay so a podcast series that new poity that we did with new po sorry that Mark Barns and I did a long series we'll put links to all of this stuff on the politics of Ty the podcasts yeah hey uh as we wrap up I want to look at you right in the eyeballs the camera not you you and ask you to please subscribe to this channel we've got about 70% of people who watch this channel who aren't yet subscribed so if you like what we do and you want to support us I would really appreciate you clicking subscribe clicking the Bell button turns out it's free and uh it helps thanks thank you was really fun

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 37,654

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: O91kCJONbdk

Length: 135min 42sec (8142 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024