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Dec. 22, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK Dinesh D’Souza Podcast EP482
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This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walzer, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
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Coming up, I'm going to talk in this Christmas season about what makes Christianity different from all other religions.
Debbie joins me. We're going to talk about our plans for Christmas in New York, recall our exploration of the City of David in Jerusalem, and I'm going to talk about Biden's border policies.
I'll also continue my exploration of Christian apologetics, focusing on the relationship of Christianity to human equality.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Well, guys, Christmas is almost upon us.
Today's the 22nd, and I want to wish you all the best.
Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year.
I say this because this is actually my last podcast of 2022.
It's not to say that the podcast is shutting down for the year.
This will be my last podcast, and tomorrow, Friday, It's a Salem holiday.
The podcast will pick up on Tuesday, which is December 27th.
Danielle, my daughter, will be sitting in for me for the duration, and I will be back on January 3rd.
Isn't that right, honey? January 3rd, I will be back in the saddle, and it's going to be great.
In fact, Debbie and I are heading to New York.
We'll talk a little bit about that when Debbie comes on.
I thought I'd speak about the uniqueness of Christianity, a topic I've had to think about from a young age because, of course, I grew up in a society that wasn't predominantly Christian.
If you grow up in a society that's Christian, you're taught Christian doctrine and you go, well, this is how it is.
But when you grow up in a society in which the Hindus are the majority, the number two group is the Muslims, and there are a number of other religious groups, the Jains, the Sikhs, the Buddhists, and so on, it makes you think about what are the ideas that these different religions have in common But also, what are the ideas that make Christianity different?
Now, I spoke about this recently.
In fact, when Debbie and I were in Israel, I gave a talk on the Sea of Galilee.
I'm jokingly calling it my Sea of Galilee talk.
And by the way, I got an audio of it yesterday.
And I put it up inside my Locals channel for subscribers.
This is part of the exclusive content I sometimes do just for my Locals subscribers.
So if you're a Locals subscriber, please listen to it.
Dinesh.locals.com, by the way, is the site to check it out.
And if you're not, do consider joining me on Locals.
I'm also able on that platform to talk about stuff I sometimes can't address because of the censorship on places like YouTube and Facebook.
Now, Christianity has in common with other religions of belief in God.
It has in common with other religions of belief in the afterlife and the idea that this life is not the only life.
The profound idea that there is a sort of world behind the world or a world beyond the world, what is sometimes called transcendence, that is not a unique preserve.
Of Christianity. In fact, it's not even a unique preserve of religion.
We find even in the philosophers of ancient Greece, like Socrates, the belief in transcendence, obviously a transcendence that differs from traditional theistic belief.
But what makes Christianity unique?
I put it this way, and I tried to put it this way as part of my Sea of Galilee talk.
That we can begin with something that everyone would agree with.
Things are not the way they ought to be in the world.
And so right away we're saying that things in the world operate on two levels.
There's a kind of baseline level of the way things are.
That's the ground level.
And then there's the top level of the way things ought to be.
That's the higher line.
that is absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute perfection, absolute goodness, and so on. So you have a chasm, you have a large gap between the way things are and the way things ought to be. And how do you close, how do you shrink, how do you traverse this great chasm? Well, if you think about the religions of the world, most of them, virtually all of them, are based upon some set of codes and
Commandments, rules.
I think most prominently of Judaism, with not only its 10 commandments, but its 600 plus rules.
A elaborate regimen of do's and don'ts that include diet and what to do when you're menstruating and what you should put on your head.
And so rules that go beyond obey your father and mother or thou shall not kill.
An elaborate regimen of rules.
And in Islam, the same thing.
Lots of rules. So you can think of religions as putting up a ladder.
It's a ladder that attempts to cross the distance from the way things are down here to the way things ought to be up there.
And human beings are urged to kind of make this trek and some may get further than others and no one may get all the way but then you rely on the mercy of God to kind of overlook The fact that you haven't been able to fully cross the boundary, but at least you tried.
You made a valiant attempt.
And interestingly, Christianity rejects this.
Why? Not because it's not good to follow rules.
Christianity, in fact, incorporates a number, although not all, of the Jewish rules.
But the Christian idea is that the chasm between the human level down here and the divine level is impassable.
It cannot be crossed.
Yeah, some people may get to rung number five as opposed to rung number three, but that difference doesn't matter all that much.
Why? Because you're still a long, long way away from the divine level.
If that boundary is going to be crossed, it has to be crossed from the other side.
God has to descend, or you may say condescend, down to the human level.
And this is really the message.
This is the role of Jesus.
Jesus is God's ambassador, if you will, a part of God.
God sends down to earth to become a man, to take on, if you will, to cross this otherwise terrifying boundary.
And this is really what makes Christianity unique.
The initiative comes from God, and our job is basically to say, yes, our job is not necessarily to atone for all our sins, because how can we?
But rather to acknowledge that we are sinners and accept the substitutionary atonement, the saving grace, if you will, of Christ.
This is not an attempt to prove that Christianity is right or true or even good.
It's merely an attempt to italicize, to identify the way that Christianity is unique, the way in which it's different.
And I thought it would be important to do that this Christmas season.
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Debbie and I are here for our, well, weekly roundup, but we're also here for our last roundup of the year.
And you know, honey, it occurred to me that this is, well, this is our eighth Christmas.
Coming up. Yeah. First, we were engaged in 2015.
So that was our first Christmas.
And then, well, everyone since.
Oh, where's the mistletoe?
Where's the mistletoe?
Uh-oh. This is getting a little too gooey for public comfort.
Yeah. They're like, please, TMI. I think somebody in one of the comments, when I was talking about fiber and all of that, they were like, Debbie, TMI. Sorry.
Sorry. Well, this one, though, interestingly, so we've had...
We've had Christmas in California.
We've had Christmas in Texas.
This one, for the first time, we're doing Christmas in New York, which we've talked about doing for about three years.
Yeah, for a long time, since before COVID. But interestingly...
Things are going to be a little weird, a little wonky.
Why? Because it's supposed to be colder here where we live in Texas than in New York.
And so I thought that we were going to have a white Christmas in New York and all that.
Don't get me wrong. It's going to be frigid.
It's going to be very, very cold.
But it's supposed to go down to 15 degrees Fahrenheit here where we live.
So, you know, our plants...
Our pipes. Our pipes, our plants.
We've replaced our palm trees, I can't tell you how many times.
Well, I mean, the point is that Texas is not equipped.
New York is equipped. They're ready for it.
They can handle snow. They got the shovels.
They got everything going. But here, it's a calamity.
And we're not going to have snow...
At all, but we are going to have very frigid temperatures.
It's going to be really fun.
We actually have our three kids with us.
We have my son-in-law, Brandon.
We also have my business partner and friend, Bruce Schooley.
We're going to be kind of a gang of eight or a gang of nine traipsing around New York City.
Of course, I lived in New York for a couple of years.
Debbie's now been multiple times.
But it's a little bit new for a couple of our family members are going to be kind of, for the first time, touring New York.
And we're going to do a high tea.
We're going to do some good New York meals.
I thought it was funny. My stepson sends me a text.
He goes, why is New York so expensive?
Why does it cost so much?
Is the food really all that great?
And I replied and said, you know, big cities are expensive.
They're expensive. They're expensive in hotels.
They're expensive to get around.
And of course, they're expensive to eat.
Now, New York, in my opinion, does have really great food.
If you know where to find it, it doesn't mean all food in New York is great.
But even street food in New York is really good.
I mean, if you've eaten... Well, you saw me in America...
Eating your hot dog, and I want to eat a hot dog.
But you know, I never have.
Primarily because it's extremely fattening, and I can't eat anything.
I gain five pounds just looking at it.
So... You know, it's one of those things where I just kind of have to go, oh, I'm sure it's really delicious, but maybe some other time.
Well, your favorite pizza is in New York.
Oh, my favorite pizza, Angelo's, is in New York.
I love Angelo's pizza.
Well, it's that Ross pizza, which is thin crust.
I'm not supposed to have gluten.
I'm not supposed to have carbs.
But you know what? I think I'm going to kind of do it anyway.
We were looking. I was looking at Broadway shows.
Hey, honey, real quick, before we go on...
Can you please sing me that song that you serenaded me with last night?
Well, that's really not right because the song goes, you're a mean one, Mr.
Grinch. So I wasn't applying that to you.
Well, I am kind of the Grinch at Christmas time.
I'm not really a fan.
It's never been your...
It's never really...
It's not that I don't like Christmas the...
Christian Christmas, right?
The celebration of Jesus.
I love that. I'm just not a fan of the commercial Christmas.
I don't like the gifts.
I like getting gifts, though.
You just don't like giving them.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't like looking for gifts.
I don't like going to the mall.
And, you know, it's just one of those things.
Well, you know, the thing is that one of the highlights for me of places like London, places like New York, is I always go, I look up, you know, Broadway shows.
And literally it's...
There's nothing I want to see anymore.
Either it's just old, recycled Phantom of the Opera.
Well, one of my favorites, and you didn't even know it was my favorite, was when we were in London at Christmas of 15.
Imagine that. We were in London, and you got tickets to see the Michael Jackson tour, right?
Michael Jackson obviously wasn't him, but it was Michael Jackson musical, right?
And so we went.
I was super excited because I've always been a fan of Michael Jackson ever since high school.
And I go, and I get up and I start dancing, and then I look around, and I'm the only one up and dancing.
Well, the British are used to the stiff upper lip where they basically nod.
Occasionally, they will move their head and beat to the music, but not more than that.
And of course, I obviously was raised in the same British tradition.
Him either. I kind of fit in with the British crowd.
Danielle, not having it. So you were the outlier.
I was the outlier. So I'm like really having fun and then I quickly look around and I look like, okay, this is not good.
So I sit down and I just kind of, you know, enjoy the rest of the show kind of doing this.
All that being said, we're really excited about New York.
It's going to be, well, it's going to be very unique and it's going to be a wonderful family Christmas.
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feel the difference. Even though it's now been what three weeks or so since we got back from Israel, I think we're still in the afterglow of that trip and we talk about it, you know, quite a bit. I think before we jump into it, one thing I want to stress is the very existence of Israel as a Jewish homeland is itself a miracle and that was a point that our guides stressed while we were there. I think Israelis are very conscious of it. Let's
remember.
The return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland is prophesied in the Bible.
It's one of the most spectacular of biblical prophecies signaling the beginning of the end times.
Now, the end times could be...
A decade, they could be a century, they could be a millennium.
We don't really know what that bracket of time is.
But the return of the Jews to Israel, think about it, they were dispersed after the collapse of the temple, the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. If someone had asked you, let's just say in 300 A.D. or 700 A.D., Or 1500 AD? Or as late as the 19th century?
What is the probability that this group that was scattered a thousand years ago or more is going to come back to the same place that it was scattered from, have its own land and its own country?
People would think it was outrageous.
The chances of that would be zero.
It's amazing. And it's also equally amazing that their enemies have wanted to take them out all these years.
And they keep winning wars that are really like...
David and Goliath, you know?
The miraculous even in a secular sense.
Yeah. We were up on the Golan Heights, remember, we're looking over, and it was pointed out to us that during the 73 so-called Yom Kippur War, there were 100 Syrian tanks rolling across toward Israel.
I mean, they were basically 100, 200 yards away facing seven Israeli tanks.
What a miracle! I mean, it's just miraculous.
And so, you know, I have no doubt why that happened, because I know God was looking out for the Israelis.
But secularly, you're like, well, I guess we outsmarted them, right?
You know, well, okay.
However you want to put it, it is a miracle.
But, you know, one of my favorite parts of the whole trip was Pilgrimage Road.
And I have some photos of when we went down into...
It's actually underground.
It was dug up by accident, or if you want to call it accident, I think it was obviously not an accident.
So a water pipe busted, and they had to fix it.
And as they were fixing it, they were excavating.
They always have to have the archaeologists go along with them every time something like that happens.
And they discovered that there was an actual road underneath All of that, all of the road that they were on.
And as they dug further, they found the pilgrimage road.
And, you know, so we were...
It's not open to the public.
And I've got these photos of when we went down there...
with our tour guide and it was just a group of us that were able to go down there because the rest of the people down there are actually archaeologists and they're still continuing to dig and in fact in one of the photos it's my hand and I have the ash of when the Romans burned down the city of Jerusalem.
So here's how this happened.
You know, you think, well, how is this even preserved?
How is it that you even have a road?
Wasn't the road destroyed?
But turns out, historically, as new groups came in, and remember, Jerusalem has changed hands multiple times.
It was held by the Jews, and then when the Jews left, the Romans took over.
And when the Roman Empire collapsed, Jerusalem became Christian.
But in the time of the Crusades, the Muslims took Jerusalem, then the Christians got it back, then the Muslims got it back.
Later it was ruled by the Ottomans, the Ottoman Empire out of Turkey.
Then after World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
So the British come in.
So you've got these. And what happened is each civilization would kind of come in and they would build on top of the earlier ones.
So the reason that the old road is preserved Is that Roman roads were built on top of it.
And then there were Muslim reconstructions and Ottoman constructions.
And you see this throughout Israel.
This kind of layering of civilizations.
Almost like a tree. And you look at the rings of the tree and it takes you back in time.
And the same is true here.
And the Pilgrim Road, I think, was very moving to both of us because...
It is incontestable that Jesus walked on that road, on those exact stones.
The historical Jesus who bathed in those pools, ritual baths that were customary for traditional Jews, and then they walked the pilgrim road up.
It's kind of a hill ascending to the temple.
Yeah, it was quite amazing.
And I wish we had had more time.
In fact, we didn't go all the way to the pools because we ran out of time.
And it gets dark in the wintertime very early.
It's by 4.30.
Pitch dark. And so we didn't have a whole lot of time.
I wish that the next time we go back, we can go all the way down and see those pools.
They're not swimming pools, they're bathing pools, right?
And see that and maybe see some other things that we didn't get to partake.
We're going to do a very unique trip.
We'll tell you more as we get into the new year.
At the end of 2024, we realize these things take time to plan, but we'd love for you to consider going with us.
I'm thinking we're going to do Rome and Jerusalem.
The trip is not, we don't know yet, we don't have it yet, but it is part of the plan.
We're putting it together. Yeah. So more more details on that to to come in 2023.
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Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. Debbie and I want to say a few words about what's going on at the border.
And I just want to begin by expressing, well, my disgust at the, well, this is the Biden spokeswoman, Jean-Pierre or whatever her name is.
And she, KJP or KTJ, as Archie Bunker, you say whatever.
But in any event, she's like, well, we're getting ready for a surge on the border, but there's a court order to suspend Title 42.
And the journalists are like, a court order to suspend Title 42, but didn't you push to get it suspended?
Well, we have to follow the court order.
Yeah, but didn't you ask the court to give you that order?
Isn't that your position that you want to get rid of Title 42?
You want more illegals?
You want to increase the already epidemic traffic at the border?
So just the sheer dishonesty of these people is really outrageous.
Now, Chief Justice Roberts has stepped in and given a sort of temporary restoration or preservation, you could say, of Title 42.
And Title 42 was the rule that basically said that because of COVID, because of the risk of illegals coming across the border and bringing COVID, or other things, or other communicable diseases, that they could be turned away, that they could be blocked at the border, prevented from entering the United States.
And so this was hardly an effort to arrest illegal immigration.
It was merely a kind of I mean, a very slender Band-Aid, but the Biden administration was trying to get rid of and almost did get rid of the Band-Aid.
In fact, I think it's today that Title 42 was going to lapse until Robert stepped in and said, for now, for now, Title 42 can stay.
Yeah, yeah. But you do know Dr.
Jha says that the most important thing...
Oh, tell people who he is. Oh, yeah.
He's the health, I guess, the health coordinator for the administration.
For COVID. Right, for COVID. I don't know his official title, but anyway...
Well, he's a former professor at Brown University and an intelligent guy.
A really smart guy, but in this, he's kind of missing the boat, unfortunately.
For Americans.
Because here's the thing.
He says the most important thing that every American can do is get a booster.
Okay? But while he's saying that, the administration is saying, you know what?
Let Title 42 lapse and let's allow...
All of these people coming in, we don't care if they have COVID. We're not testing them.
We're not vaccinating them.
We don't care if they have tuberculosis.
We don't care if they have Zika.
We don't care if they have anything, really.
Let them in. So what kind of a hypocrisy?
What statement is that?
It's like, guy, we're not going to take you seriously until you take COVID seriously.
If COVID is as bad as you say it is, then it has to be bad across the board, not just for some Americans.
So look at the twisted priorities, not just of Dr.
Jha, but let me pivot to one Mitch McConnell.
Mitch McConnell, I just saw him in social media clip of his recent remarks.
Marx, he goes, the most important thing that America can do right now is send money to Ukraine.
And he's talking about the new appropriation.
I believe it's something like 44 or 47 billion dollars.
I mean, let's pause for a minute.
What's a billion dollars?
A thousand million dollars.
So they're taking our money, 47 billion dollars to give to Ukraine.
And why? Well, we have to preserve the integrity of Ukraine's border.
We can't have the Russians crossing over the Ukrainian border.
Yeah, so they're worried about their border.
And their sovereignty. And what about our border and our sovereignty and our citizens who, some of them, are not going to have a Christmas this year.
They don't have any money.
And they don't even have money to put gas in their car, let alone buy gifts for their children.
So this is just ridiculous.
I mean, it's just beyond ridiculous.
I mean, this is what really gets me.
And, you know, talk about, you know, bleeding heart.
I mean, there's a bleeding heart conservatism that basically says, isn't it outrageous for people who are having trouble filling up their gas tank or making all kinds of sacrifices?
Can I even get my kids presents at Christmas?
Mm-hmm. And these are people saving a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars.
Meanwhile, these irresponsible scoundrels in Congress, which, by the way, includes a substantial cohort of Republicans, especially the so-called rhino types.
Shelley Capito Moore is part of that, and Romney is part of that, Portman is part of that.
I mean, these people are a national disgrace.
And they demoralize their own side because you have conservatives and Republicans like me.
And I'm like, wow, this is the party that's supposed to save us from the bad guys when it seems that at least some of the time you're in it with the bad guys.
Exactly. I just think it's time to vote these people out, guys.
Because we can't, as a party, say that the other party is the bad guy while we have some of our own, okay?
So we've got to clean up our house.
And we've got to realize that we've got a crisis on our hands.
And... Voting Democrat mainly is going to keep this up, and we're going to have another really bad and very, very tight, you know, what do you call it when you have to tighten your wallet?
Christmas for a lot of people this year.
It's very, very sad.
I thought COVID, the 2020 Christmas was bad, but it's only getting, it seems, worse.
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Debbie and I were talking today and actually railing on the January 6th committee, I think very deservedly, for their, well, I mean, these guys are out of control.
In some ways, we knew what they were up to from the beginning.
You predicted, hey, listen, they're going to There's one purpose of this operation.
And I tweeted about it.
I said the whole purpose of the January 6th committee was to go after Donald J. Trump, not to find out what really happened on January 6th.
I mean, let's look at the composition of the committee.
Does, you know, does Liz Cheney really want to know what happened?
No. I don't think so.
No. Adam Schiff?
No. Kinzinger?
No. I mean, none of them want to know.
Actually, I think they do know.
To be honest, I think deep down they do know that it was not Trump that incited the violence.
I think they deep down know that.
Well, the violence was going on a mile away, and it began and continued while Trump was still speaking.
And so he had no idea what was going on.
He couldn't possibly have instigated it.
He didn't even know about it.
Not to mention, peacefully and patriotically, What does that mean?
He told people, go home.
He told people, we respect the men and women in blue.
And look, it's interesting that when you look at some of the things that the January 6th report is laying out, it's really not about instigation and things like Trump was sitting around and watching TV while these things were going on.
Okay, well maybe he shouldn't be watching TV. Maybe he should be on the phone.
Maybe he should be out there making a statement.
But that's not the same thing as you started.
Instigation is not the same thing as you were lackadaisical or negligent in the way you handled the situation.
Or told people to do it.
Told people to do it, which he did not do.
He did not do. So anyway, and the other thing that's interesting is that Ashley Babbitt's name never came up during the investigations at all.
So her death never was investigated.
Well, I think they knew that there was a supposed internal investigation.
If you look at it, it's a complete disgrace.
Our friend Troy Nels, who is a former...
Sheriff and constable knows exactly what kind of...
And he's now congressman. And now congressman says that the rules of engagement were not followed.
Right. What is it? The six steps.
It's five steps. Yeah, those were never taken.
Yeah. And so in a sense, the lieutenant who shot Ashley Babbitt should be investigated and prosecuted.
Mm-hmm. Because he appears to have broken the law.
What I'm saying is the January 6th committee never looked at that.
They never looked at her death.
They never looked at Roseanne Boylan's death.
They didn't really investigate the actual deaths that happened.
Well, what was the prime factor?
Was there any organized factor at all that caused violence on that day?
And if so, what was that?
Right. So now you have to look at different possibilities.
Well, one possibility is it was Trump.
Okay. The second possibility was just these militant groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.
A third possibility is that those groups were infiltrated by FBI informants and agents who prodded that violence along, maybe even orchestrated.
What was their role? What's the January 6th Committee's position on that answer?
Nothing. Nothing. They never investigated any of that.
Any of it. Instead they painted this as a one-sided only event and and they portrayed people that are patriots as terrorists What about the security situation?
So there's some debate about what Trump authorized or didn't authorize in terms of security.
But Trump certainly didn't turn down the idea of having adequate security.
No, they turned it down.
Exactly. We know that Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.C., said, I don't want additional security.
I don't want additional troops.
I don't want National Guard.
What is the January 6th committee's position on why she said that?
And the answer is nothing.
No, they never called her.
They never investigated. They never inquired into it.
There's no answer. So this is not no it was mainly it was a witch hunt. It was another impeachment trial Basically, it was the third impeachment trial trial of Donald J. Trump That's what it was. Except this time they want to take it further because they actually want to put Trump in jail.
And this was their primary goal from the very beginning.
I mean, they were like, oh my goodness, I think we can actually stop him this time.
I mean, their real goal, I think, is to prevent him from running.
Because see, if Trump said to them, listen...
I will make a deal with you.
Don't indict me.
Don't send me to jail.
I will agree not to run in 2024.
They would be completely happy.
They would be like, okay, yeah, that's what we want.
That's the deal that they would take because that really illuminates what their real goal is.
What I find is, regardless of whether you think Trump's the right guy for the country now, he's the best guy for 2024, I mean, the abuse that this guy has taken that is flagrantly unjust...
Unbelievable. It's unbelievable.
No one in American history has ever...
Well, okay, I should take it back.
Maybe Lincoln? But I don't know of anybody else, to be honest.
I mean, for this reason alone, a large part of me is like, I'd like to see this guy be the nominee.
I'd like to see him be the candidate.
Because I think that this vindication is an expression of justice.
It's a way of giving this man his due and restoring to him some of the things that were taken, not just from him, but quite honestly also from us.
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I'm talking about the influence of Christianity in shaping the core ideals of human equality, human dignity, representative democracy, and universal human rights.
Now, we're often told that modern notions of democracy and equal rights go back to ancient Greece and Rome, but the American founders did not agree with this.
Here's Alexander Hamilton.
He writes, quote, it would be as ridiculous to seek for models in the simple ages of Greece and Rome as it would be to go in quest of them among the Hottentots and Laplanders.
He's using Hottentots and Laplanders as representing absolute primitivism, virtual barbarism.
And Hamilton goes, the ancient Greeks and Romans, in some respects, were not all that different.
In the Federalist Papers, we read this, that the classical ideal of liberty decreed, quote, to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
In other words, one day Socrates is the greatest, next day execute him.
So this kind of mob rule, the founders were like, this is not really what we have in mind.
So, the ancients had direct democracy, by the way, supported certainly economically by large-scale slavery, but we've got something a little different.
Representative democracy with the franchise and principle extended to all, but also modified by an important countervailing force, which is the idea of human rights, rights that are unassailable even by the majority.
Now, in ancient Greece and Rome, we have to remember that human life had very little value.
Think of the Spartans. They would take their unwanted children and leave them on the hillside and find them, well, dead in the morning.
Infanticide was common in ancient Greece, just as it is even today in some parts of the world.
Fathers who wanted sons would think nothing about drowning their daughters.
Human beings were sometimes bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena.
And interestingly, the great thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, from Aristotle to Plato and then on to Cicero...
They knew about all this, but they didn't think it was a big deal.
It didn't outrage their sensibilities.
Why? Because the notion that human life is sacred is precious.
That didn't exist in those times.
It came into the world and into the West because of Christianity.
Let's talk about women.
Women had a very low status.
In ancient Greece and Rome, as they do today in many cultures around the world, Aristotle basically expressed a traditional view.
He basically says that only men are really capable of the full use of reason.
He goes, listen, in children, reason is present, but it's not developed.
In women, he says reason is present, but it's not used.
So this is like the classic expression of what today we call misogyny.
But this was the patriarchal view.
But notice how Jesus broke with it.
Jesus... And even sometimes when his male disciples were a little bit confused or outraged, Jesus would scandalously permit women, and even women of low social status, to travel with him to be part of his circle of friends and confidants.
I'm not saying that Christianity disputed patriarchy per se, but what I'm saying is that it elevated the status of women within patriarchy.
So, for example, women were allowed to inherit on the same basis as men.
By the way, this is not allowed both in traditional Judaism nor in traditional Islam.
Women inherit less than men.
Christianity introduced the idea that adultery kind of works both ways.
In other words, Christianity never condoned At least not in principle.
The double standard that says, well, it's okay for men, let's look the other way.
But no, women are not allowed to go outside the bounds of marriage.
And women dominated the early church, as in some respects they dominate the church even today.
We also find in Christianity this elevation of the idea of romantic love, which began as courtly love, the knight pursuing the maiden, and the maiden was, quote, on a pedestal, which is to say that she had a high status, a status that even in the physical terms was above that of the knight.
And out of this came a lot of things that I think have helped to civilize our society and our world.
The idea of courtesy, the idea of treating people with respect, family life came to be seen as the central locus of human happiness, the role of the mother as preserving the household.
but not just having the responsibility of taking care of the household, but also being in charge of the household, which was an elevation of female power, the education of the children.
So really fundamentally important things to life, to the perpetuity of the next generation, women came to be seen as central here.
So point I'm trying to make is that all of this stuff, which in some ways is today disputed in new ways by the left, we don't like the family, we don't like the idea of women as homemakers, but it's very important to understand that all of that was a strengthening of the position of women.
and Christianity had a great deal to do with this transformation.
I now want to talk about Christianity and slavery because this has actually been an attack point for a lot of people who detest Christianity.
Here's Sam Harris in his letter to Christian Nation.
He goes,"'Consult the Bible and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves.'" And so we find here an indictment of Christianity for, if you will, making its peace with slavery.
Now, it's important to know that slavery predated Christianity, not just by centuries, but by millennia.
Slavery was widespread in the ancient world, from China to India to Greece and Rome.
Most cultures, well, slavery wasn't even controversial.
It really didn't have any defenders because it didn't have any critics.
There was no need to defend it.
And the Bible admittedly does not condemn slavery outright.
In fact, at one point, Paul in Ephesians 6.5 says, It basically says to slaves, obey your masters.
And it says to masters, basically, be kind to your slaves.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that from the very beginning of Christianity, Christians were discouraged from enslaving fellow Christians.
That's kind of how it started.
In one of Paul's letters, Paul himself intercedes with the master, this is a guy named Philemon, on behalf of his runaway slave.
And here's what Paul writes. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while so that you might have him back forever, no longer a slave but as a brother.
In other words...
A transformed relationship from one of enslavement to one of Christian camaraderie.
Now, we know that Christianity is anti-slavery for a simple reason.
Slavery disappeared in Europe in the early Middle Ages as a consequence of the influence of Christianity.
What else? It couldn't have been ancient Greece and Rome because the ancient Greeks and Romans loved slavery.
Slavery was an intrinsic part of their society, so the Christians got rid of it.
Now, some people say, well, yeah, but the Christians introduced serfdom.
Well, yeah, but serfdom is not slavery.
Serfdom is a completely different thing.
Yes, it is a hierarchy.
Yes, you've got lords and you've got serfs.
But while the slave is a human tool, you literally own the slave.
The slave belongs to you kind of in the same way that your horse does.
Serfs were incontestably human beings.
They had rights of marriage, rights of contract, rights even of property ownership.
They made deals with the lords in which they got to keep a certain share of the produce.
So medieval feudalism is based on this hierarchical system of reciprocal rights and duties between lords and serfs.
Christians were the first people in the world to start an anti-slavery movement.
Now, I'd like to tell you it began in America, but it didn't.
It began in England in the 18th century, and William Wilberforce led the first really successful anti-slavery movement, which not only shut down slavery in Britain, there weren't a whole lot of slaves in Britain, but essentially mobilized the English to defeat the slave trade abroad.
And this is really a very noble thing.
In America, there was an intense clash over slavery because it was such an important part of the economy of the South.
Admittedly, both sides in this debate claimed the authority of the Bible.
Blacks, by and large, embraced the book of Exodus, in which Moses leads the captive Israelites to freedom.
Think, for example, about the old spiritual, go down Moses way down to Egypt land and tell old Pharaoh Let my people go.
This took on a powerful anti-slavery or even abolitionist connotation in the modern era.
Now, the remarkable thing about slavery is, you know, while today we say, oh, well, there were all these Frederick Douglass, and it's true that you had black abolitionists who were anti-slavery, but hey, that's not all that surprising.
Nobody who's a slave is going to like slavery, and so it's not surprising that slaves don't want to be slaves.
What I find interesting about American history is the people who oppose slavery not for themselves, but for other people.
People who oppose slavery in principle.
Think, for example, of the Quakers who had one of the earliest, maybe the earliest anti-slavery movement in America.
This was then picked up by the evangelical Christians.
And essentially what you have is a political movement, anti-slavery, which is drawing its strength from a theological idea.
And what's the theological idea?
That human beings are equal in God's sight.
And so because human beings are equal in God's sight, no man has a right to rule another man without his consent.
And notice how This doctrine, no man, no person has the right to rule another without consent, becomes not only the foundation of abolitionism or anti-slavery, but interestingly, it also becomes the foundation of democracy.
Why? Because democracy is based on the idea that no person has the right to rule another without consent.
Consent is the foundation of democracy.
And And so Christianity here has a powerful role in taking on an institution that existed, you could almost say forever, and bringing it to a well-deserved end.
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