NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - What Is A Nation?
Aired: 2024-11-21
Duration: 02:14:49


=== Triggering The Algorithm (15:17) ===

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[00:00:45]  Since the Reagan era, even so called conservatives have euphorically championed the idea that anyone, absolutely anyone, can become American.
[00:00:56]  In practice, this means that America amounts to little more than a set of civic convictions and ethical principles that almost anyone can agree to.
[00:01:07]  This view of a nation is almost completely absent from Scripture, world history, and the founding fathers.
[00:01:15]  Nations are composed of a distinct people occupying a distinct place, and assimilation is not merely a matter of intellectual assent and enjoying apple pie.
[00:01:28]  Tune in now as we discuss what is a nation.
[00:01:40]  Last speech that I will give as president, I think it's fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love.
[00:01:50]  It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago.
[00:01:53]  A man wrote me and said, You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman.
[00:01:59]  You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or Japanese.
[00:02:06]  But anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and become an American.
[00:02:19]  One is the one that I share, which is that there's a shared set of civic ideals that brought together a divided polyglot group of people 250 years ago, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and operationalized in the U.S. Constitution.
[00:02:31]  And that's what unites America, and your commitment to those ideals is what defines whether or not you're an American.
[00:02:36]  I think there are two other competing visions.
[00:02:38]  There's more of a blood and soil conception of American identity, which is that you vest into how American you are based on how many generations your family and your lineage has been attached to the soil of this nation.
[00:02:48]  How many people are in your Kentucky cemetery plot, for example?
[00:02:51]  You know, and the blood and so you are inextricably linked to this land.
[00:02:55]  On this view, you will have the view, you know, that people won't be willing to fight for abstractions or abstract ideals, but they will fight for their homeland.
[00:03:04]  I disagree with that.
[00:03:05]  This is JD Vance's convention speech.
[00:03:06]  Well, I think it's representative of a broader worldview in some segments of the NatCon world.
[00:03:11]  And in my NatCon speech, I rejected that view because I actually think the American Revolution was fought for a set of abstract ideals, actually.
[00:03:21]  All right, welcome.
[00:03:22]  Here we are.
[00:03:23]  So you got to see, well, I was going to say a rare Reagan L, but sadly, the more I learn about Reagan, I feel like it's fair to say a common Reagan L.
[00:03:34]  He was aspirational, but I think idealistic.
[00:03:36]  Yeah, and we were just saying during the clip, we were, you know, whispering back and forth to each other, and none of the three of us think that Reagan was nefarious in that.
[00:03:46]  I don't think that he was malicious, that he actually intentionally behind the scenes was like, I'm going to ruin the country.
[00:03:54]  I don't think they realized, Michael.
[00:03:56]  You said, I don't think they realized that what America was and what they had that was precious was actively in the process of being lost.
[00:04:04]  And I don't think he realized how statements like that were actually sealing the future destruction and doom of the country.
[00:04:11]  So for him to say that, you know, that America, I mean, he essentially says, Reagan says that America is the only nation.
[00:04:20]  So every other nation on the planet, and he's not just talking about Somalia or Uganda or.
[00:04:26]  Or Japan, he's talking about Western European nations, you know, that you can go to France and you can become a legal citizen, but it doesn't make you a Frenchman, you know, or same thing with Germany, or, you know, you can't be a Brit by simply moving there as an immigrant and becoming, you know, a legal citizen.
[00:04:44]  But there's one country in the whole world where anybody can come from, he says, any corner of the earth, anywhere.
[00:04:51]  Anyone can come at any time from anywhere, and simply by standing on the magical soil.
[00:04:59]  And repeating the magical incantation and watching the Super Bowl and eating apple pie, you don't live in America and you're not just a legal American citizen.
[00:05:10]  You are an American.
[00:05:13]  You can't do that in Great Britain.
[00:05:15]  You can't do that in Germany.
[00:05:16]  You can't do that in France.
[00:05:18]  Reagan is wrong.
[00:05:19]  And we're going to talk about that.
[00:05:20]  Go ahead.
[00:05:21]  He said they can become an American.
[00:05:23]  And I still think this is the blindness of that generation.
[00:05:28]  When they read their history, they saw people come and they saw people assimilate into America.
[00:05:32]  Like, actually, become, you know, over time marrying in adopting the culture.
[00:05:38]  To give it a charitable read, I think he would say, yeah, like America is such a society.
[00:05:42]  Now, I would still disagree with him, but that word become an America, not just show up and automatically be an American, I think is important.
[00:05:49]  That's helpful.
[00:05:50]  And I would just want to go even further than that and say that you can come and that your grandchildren can be an American.
[00:05:57]  And we would have a biblical precedent to make a statement like that.
[00:06:01]  It's not just an unhinged, you know, firing from the hip.
[00:06:04]  It wasn't until the third generation that someone who had immigrated.
[00:06:08]  Into Israel, it wasn't until the third generation that they were fully considered to be a part of Israel and to be fully assimilated and have full rights as a citizen of Israel, especially as it pertained to worship and the temple and those kinds of things.
[00:06:23]  And so we've talked about that before and advocated with a general equity of that passage within a general equity theonomic.
[00:06:31]  And also, we think it makes sense with natural law.
[00:06:33]  So you can get there, I think, through natural revelation or special revelation, which are not at odds against each other.
[00:06:40]  Two books that God has written, both are God's word, Him speaking to us.
[00:06:46]  And so, by good and necessary reason and prudence, and also by the word of God, I think that the general equity applied to today's standard would advocate for that if somebody immigrates, number one, we got to get rid of all illegal immigration.
[00:07:00]  Number two, we need to radically, radically shrink even legal immigration because it's been insane.
[00:07:08]  We have, you know, in the last 50, 60 years, almost 100 million people.
[00:07:13]  Who have come into the nation is way too much.
[00:07:15]  So, you need to put a cap, even with legal immigration, for the next 50 years, is what I would advocate for.
[00:07:22]  And then have maybe some immigration, those who really want to be Americans.
[00:07:27]  And then, with that, the general equity applied is I would advocate for that they can attain some form of citizenship, but it will not be until the third generation, their grandchildren, that they actually are able to vote in federal elections and have full rights as Americans.
[00:07:44]  All that being said, Reagan is right in one sense that I do believe, but that's not unique to America.
[00:07:50]  I think that that's the case for every nation.
[00:07:52]  And it has happened over the years.
[00:07:53]  And that's how nations have been formed to begin with.
[00:07:56]  Every nation involves some kind of migration of people, and then in not every case, but in many cases, a further migration of other people that eventually intermingled, intermarried, mixed, and became one people.
[00:08:12]  But none of that happens in 15 minutes.
[00:08:14]  No.
[00:08:15]  All those things happen over centuries.
[00:08:17]  And to pretend that you could just export the third world and that the moment that 500,000 Haitians touch American magical soil, that they'll become Americans and stop eating people's pets, that is naive.
[00:08:33]  That's not the way the world works.
[00:08:35]  We have this problem too because so many people want to come to America.
[00:08:38]  Yeah.
[00:08:39]  The people that founded it were supremely blessed by God and we created something so harmonious, so safe, so profitable, a place where truly, I mean, we talk about.
[00:08:49]  The American dream that you could work hard and be blessed and be safe and all these things.
[00:08:53]  But now we have the problem that prosperity brings all the people that want a piece of the pie.
[00:08:58]  So it's really unique because we have this nation and with all the problems that it has and the things we're dealing with, and everybody else wants to be in it too.
[00:09:06]  But I would bet 80% of India and we would understand why.
[00:09:10]  Frankly, right?
[00:09:11]  I can't blame them.
[00:09:12]  None of us want a better life.
[00:09:13]  We just have to say no.
[00:09:14]  Exactly.
[00:09:15]  Daryl Cooper said it was a good idea.
[00:09:16]  So you want to be here?
[00:09:17]  It makes total sense.
[00:09:18]  Love you guys.
[00:09:19]  We don't wish any harm on you.
[00:09:20]  Also, no.
[00:09:21]  Yeah.
[00:09:21]  He said really well, like, there's tons of sob stories of people escaping wars.
[00:09:25]  And if you have those people coming to you and you don't have a heart for them and say, Oh, I really feel for your circumstance, like you wouldn't be human.
[00:09:31]  But that line is infinitely long.
[00:09:34]  All of them have a story, all of them have a reason.
[00:09:36]  Many of them would be good workers.
[00:09:37]  At what point are there 1.3 billion people in India?
[00:09:40]  Do we owe all of them a Saab story, a place in America?
[00:09:43]  We can't.
[00:09:44]  There would be no America left.
[00:09:46]  Right.
[00:09:47]  Real quick.
[00:09:48]  So let's talk about Vivek now.
[00:09:49]  So that's Reagan with Vivek.
[00:09:51]  Real quick.
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[00:09:53]  Thanks, Michael.
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[00:09:55]  Appreciate it.
[00:09:56]  It helps a lot.
[00:09:57]  Right now, yeah, guys, those of you who are watching live, Nathan, can you give us a running count so we can see how many on YouTube?
[00:10:04]  And if possible, if you could just give us an update from time to time on Twitter.
[00:10:08]  So right now, we're streaming live if you're joining us both.
[00:10:11]  On X and on YouTube.
[00:10:14]  I don't know why.
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[00:10:17]  So it didn't go live on X.
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[00:10:50]  You'll get all of it.
[00:10:50]  So, real quick with Vivek, what I was going to say is so he, I appreciate it in the sense that I don't feel like he straw manned JD Vance because that's who he's referencing.
[00:11:03]  JD Vance had said right before that interview in one of his speeches during the campaign that people are willing to die to defend a home.
[00:11:13]  They're not willing to die to defend an economic zone or a set of propositions, but they are willing to die.
[00:11:20]  For a home.
[00:11:20]  And a home, I would argue, Michael, Wes, we would all argue it's more than this, but it can't.
[00:11:25]  Here's the point it cannot be anything less than this.
[00:11:29]  A home is lineage and land.
[00:11:34]  In other words, particular people and particular place.
[00:11:37]  And so Michael is in the process of publishing a book right now.
[00:11:40]  We'll let you guys know when it's available to the public.
[00:11:43]  But he's, over the course of this past year, has been writing a book, and Stephen Wolf is reading it and just messaged me today.
[00:11:50]  He's going to do a blurb for it.
[00:11:51]  I think John Harris is going to do.
[00:11:53]  An endorsement.
[00:11:54]  So, different guys were getting it out there, and Michael's going to be doing the final editing and things like that.
[00:12:00]  But the whole thing is on the biblical case for nations, for Christian nations, and basically trying to answer the question that we're delving into today what is a nation?
[00:12:11]  What is a nation?
[00:12:12]  And so, you came up with five things, and we can maybe add someone from the chat, if you're listening, messaged in and gave me the sixth L.
[00:12:19]  And it was amazing.
[00:12:20]  Yeah.
[00:12:20]  Yeah.
[00:12:20]  Liturgy.
[00:12:21]  Yep.
[00:12:22]  So, Michael says, you know, defining a nation in a biblical sense would be land, lineage, But in addition to that, so it can't be less than that land and lineage, that's soil and blood, is what Vivek is saying.
[00:12:36]  We prefer to use the language particular place and particular people or land and lineage.
[00:12:41]  And I'll talk about blood and soil and why I think that's unhelpful language here in just a moment.
[00:12:45]  But land and lineage, and in addition to that, it's law and it's loves, language, and then we could add liturgy, worship is really important.
[00:12:55]  So there needs to be a monoculture that a nation shares.
[00:12:59]  Monoculture.
[00:13:00]  That doesn't mean that everybody has the same skin pigment, but it does mean that there is one culture.
[00:13:06]  We believe America, that culture is an Anglo Protestant culture that it's unified around the Protestant Christian faith.
[00:13:14]  So there's your liturgy, your religion, English, speaking the king's tongue, that's your language.
[00:13:21]  There are certain laws, biblical case law system that really tracks all the way back to King Alfred.
[00:13:28]  So there's a history there, a legacy there.
[00:13:32]  The people, the lineage was predominantly Anglo Saxons.
[00:13:35]  And then there were waves throughout American history.
[00:13:38]  This has always been the case for America because it's discovering this new world, a massive landmass.
[00:13:46]  And so you had constant waves of immigration.
[00:13:48]  None of that is new.
[00:13:50]  But the Italians come, the Irish come, the Germans come, the Dutch, and all these different things.
[00:13:57]  But it was always to assimilate and still to maintain the dominant hegemony of this Anglo Protestant.
[00:14:06]  Culture.
[00:14:07]  So the Germans come and they're not, we don't, the nation doesn't say, and now we speak German.
[00:14:12]  No, the Germans have to learn English.
[00:14:15]  They have to speak English.
[00:14:16]  And so, anyway, so all that being said, land, lineage, that's a place and people, and then laws and loves and language, and we could add liturgy.
[00:14:30]  And so, what Vivek is saying that we would disagree with is first, I want to say, I appreciate that he says blood and soil.
[00:14:38]  I wouldn't use that language.
[00:14:39]  I'll tell you why.
[00:14:41]  But notice he says blood and soil, and he doesn't immediately launch into, you know, his eyes don't roll back in his head, and he doesn't launch into a rant where he starts calling JD Vance a Nazi.
[00:14:53]  Praise God.
[00:14:54]  I wish that some reformed ministers had the same level of maturity and tact as Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:15:00]  Sadly, they do not.
[00:15:02]  So he was able to steal man rather than straw man, and he didn't do bolvarism.
[00:15:08]  You know, he didn't get this logical fallacy of saying, instead of telling you, What you believe is wrong and arguing on the merits and the substance.

=== Ethnicity And Nationhood (15:06) ===

[00:15:17]  I'm going to assume your motives for why you believe what you believe, and I'm going to prove that your motives, the why, is wrong without ever having to deal with what.
[00:15:26]  That's what Bolvarism is.
[00:15:28]  It's a logical fallacy that oftentimes, you know, the reason why people engage in it is because the opponent, what they believe, the substance, is something that they actually are not able to prove false.
[00:15:43]  And so instead, what they do is they assume the motives for why.
[00:15:47]  Somebody would believe that.
[00:15:48]  So, if somebody believes that nations are composed of lineage and land, and you don't like that, and you can't disprove what the person believes, then what you do is you immediately demonize your assumptions for why they believe that.
[00:16:02]  And so, I can't tell you, I can't explain, I don't have the explanatory power to say why a nation is not composed of land and lineage, but what I can do is I can call you a racist.
[00:16:17]  And so I'm going to do that.
[00:16:18]  So I appreciate Vivek not doing that.
[00:16:20]  I hope that other Reformed ministers would be able to have the same maturity of a Hindu who's Christless.
[00:16:28]  It's sad when those who worship false pagan gods are making Reformed ministers look inferior in terms of their character.
[00:16:35]  So hopefully the Reformed church can learn from that and grow up a bit.
[00:16:40]  In addition to that, I said I don't like the blood and soil language.
[00:16:46]  The reason why is because everybody does track that back to Hitler.
[00:16:49]  The reason why we would say, like JD Vance, a home, particular place, particular people, or land and lineage instead of blood and soil is because Hitler's conception of blood and soil was not what people on the right are saying today, on the new right are saying today.
[00:17:06]  He wasn't just saying that Germany is its own sovereign nation and it's distinct because it's a particular geographic region, land, and it's particular people with a heritage and a lineage.
[00:17:21]  What he was saying with blood and soil is it was wrapped up.
[00:17:25]  He was saying that, but in addition to that, he went further and was saying that this is wrapped up in a kind of a Norse pagan kind of mythological conception that this particular land, in his case, Germany, was a magical, a superior soil.
[00:17:44]  It was actually in an ontological, magical, mythological way.
[00:17:49]  It was a superior land, a magical soil, and that out of the soil, it produced a superior blood, a superior race of people.
[00:18:00]  And so, and that we would disagree with.
[00:18:02]  That's not our position, isn't saying that America is magical and that it produces those who are born here are therefore ontologically superior to people anywhere else.
[00:18:14]  That's not our argument.
[00:18:15]  But we do think that blood and soil are two of the five or six components of what make a nation.
[00:18:23]  And because blood and soil, that rhetoric will always be tracked back to Hitler, people will instinctively think Thor, pagan mythology, we choose not to use it.
[00:18:33]  There's certain things that are worth redeeming because they've been hijacked, and there are other things where it's just not worth the fight.
[00:18:39]  And so, blood and soil, yes, but much better to say land and lineage or particular people, particular place.
[00:18:50]  And a nation, again, is more than that.
[00:18:51]  It's not just land and lineage, it's also law, liturgy, language, loves, but it can't ever be less than that.
[00:19:00]  It's not just an economic zone, it's not just a set of propositions.
[00:19:03]  And the final thing I'll say about Levec is one.
[00:19:06]  He didn't call JD a Nazi.
[00:19:07]  I think that's good too.
[00:19:09]  He actually, I think, steel manned the argument.
[00:19:12]  It was brief, but he didn't use a straw man conception of the people and place conception of a nation.
[00:19:20]  But then the third thing I'll say about the VEC is that in the final analysis, he does say, and I reject this.
[00:19:26]  And I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say he rejects it, likely because he's Indian.
[00:19:34]  And I just think that that's worth saying.
[00:19:35]  It's.
[00:19:38]  I just think we're being silly.
[00:19:40]  I'm not trying to get clicks here or be obnoxious, but I really think we're being silly if we don't acknowledge that the Hindu Indian guy doesn't like the idea of defining nations as a particular people in a particular place.
[00:20:01]  Well, of course he doesn't.
[00:20:02]  Of course he doesn't like that because that doesn't particularly work in his favor.
[00:20:09]  Now, to see point A, back to the previous arguments that we made, I think that Vivek does embody a lot of America's virtues, and I'm grateful for him in many ways.
[00:20:21]  And with each generation, Vivek, his children and grandchildren, and they'll be able to lay claim to lineage and land.
[00:20:34]  So that's not something that you can never have, and your descendants can never have.
[00:20:39]  But to argue that it's not even a part of conceiving of a nation is not helpful because if Vivek wins that argument, you don't get a billion Viveks.
[00:20:52]  That's right.
[00:20:53]  You get a billion people who poop in the street.
[00:20:58]  That's what you get.
[00:20:59]  You won't get, if Vivek wins this argument, you won't get more Viveks.
[00:21:04]  You'll get more Haitians eating cats and dogs.
[00:21:07]  Right.
[00:21:07]  And that's why it matters.
[00:21:09]  Okay.
[00:21:09]  Yeah.
[00:21:10]  If we could title this first segment, it would be really trying to narrow down and insist on a much more narrow definition of American than we even have been offered.
[00:21:17]  Reagan would be the conservatives of the past.
[00:21:19]  Vague would be the conservative of today, the conservative of the future, really insisting on a much more narrow definition.
[00:21:26]  Let's get into some straight just definitions because nation, race, ethnicity, lineage, they're all closely intertwined.
[00:21:32]  And sometimes you'll be talking with someone and you realize you're both using the same word.
[00:21:36]  You're talking about ethnicity.
[00:21:37]  The way they're using it is totally different.
[00:21:39]  You're talking past each other.
[00:21:40]  So we're going to lay out some definitions here.
[00:21:42]  These are from people, smarter than we are.
[00:21:44]  They're from scripture.
[00:21:45]  And hopefully it's helpful.
[00:21:46]  Even if you disagree with us, you can say, okay, that's where my disagreement is on this definition.
[00:21:51]  This is where I think this plays a bigger role, et cetera.
[00:21:53]  So, starting off, let's start with the foundation, which is race.
[00:21:56]  Michael, you bring up a good point in your book.
[00:21:58]  This is a newer word.
[00:21:59]  We don't really see it used as much in the Bible, I would even say.
[00:22:03]  We see actually race is pretty close to just nation, that the two would be almost synonymous.
[00:22:08]  I think of the children of Israel.
[00:22:10]  Literally, there was a man named Israel who had children that became the nation of Israel.
[00:22:15]  They were his offspring, they were his lineage, they were the nation of Israel.
[00:22:18]  But race is something, it's not everything, but it's not nothing.
[00:22:22]  I offer this definition physical traits passed down from ancestry that delineate people into distinct groups.
[00:22:28]  So they're physical traits, it's not culture, we'll get to that in a second, passed down from your ancestors, the people you're related to, and they delineate, they separate people into distinct, recognizable groups.
[00:22:39]  It's a little bit tricky here.
[00:22:40]  You'll see some people emphasize one side of it, some people emphasize the other.
[00:22:43]  There's a very real sense in which scripture speaks of men belonging to the one human race and to distinct races.
[00:22:50]  So Acts 17 26, it's on your screen.
[00:22:53]  God hath made, this is Paul, of one blood, All nations, all races, you could transliterate it as, of men for to dwell on the face of the earth.
[00:23:02]  God made of one blood, of one seed from Adam, all the nations, all the peoples to dwell on the face of the earth.
[00:23:08]  So that's the one human race.
[00:23:09]  And people will say, well, there's no race, there's just the one human race.
[00:23:13]  That's a half truth.
[00:23:14]  It's not the full story.
[00:23:15]  You're going to say something, Michael?
[00:23:16]  Nope.
[00:23:17]  There are also distinct racial groups.
[00:23:19]  This is Deuteronomy 32 8.
[00:23:21]  When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people.
[00:23:30]  You see, three times repeated, he separated.
[00:23:33]  He divided them.
[00:23:35]  He made them distinct.
[00:23:36]  How did he make them distinct?
[00:23:37]  In what way?
[00:23:38]  Well, I don't know.
[00:23:38]  There's a big ocean between America and between Europe.
[00:23:42]  There's mountain ranges, there's deserts.
[00:23:44]  Rivers, deserts, oceans.
[00:23:46]  Intended for people to be separated.
[00:23:49]  Remember Babel?
[00:23:50]  Everyone's trying to get together.
[00:23:51]  Wait, you're saying the land separated them.
[00:23:54]  The land that God made, that he set up, that he made impassable.
[00:23:59]  So again, race, it's not everything, but it's not nothing.
[00:24:03]  So, my background, I actually am on my dad's side, Anglo Saxon.
[00:24:07]  We can trace our name back to about 1300 in literally the Anglo Saxon English area, which is why I'm so based.
[00:24:15]  Wes has been a racist for 800 years.
[00:24:17]  That's a long standing tradition.
[00:24:19]  He thought the World War was going to fix that.
[00:24:21]  And then on my mom's side, German.
[00:24:23]  So, I have those two things I have English, I have German.
[00:24:25]  But here's the deal, and this is why we have to have another category than race that doesn't tell you the actual experience, it doesn't tell you the language I speak.
[00:24:33]  That's where ethnicity is a helpful term.
[00:24:35]  So, Stephen Wolfe in his book, This is the Case for Christian Nationalism, he then goes on to say, Ethnicity.
[00:24:41]  This is really important, guys.
[00:24:42]  So, big picture, real quick.
[00:24:44]  Race and ethnicity are both helpful terms and they don't mean the same thing.
[00:24:48]  Exactly.
[00:24:48]  Go ahead.
[00:24:48]  At least in this way of describing them.
[00:24:50]  Two different terms.
[00:24:51]  They used to.
[00:24:52]  They used to.
[00:24:53]  In the classic theological sense before Darwin, they actually did mean the same thing.
[00:24:57]  Well, even today, to be Japanese racially is to be Japanese ethnically, but that's not always the case for every nation.
[00:25:03]  It's not helpful to trade.
[00:25:04]  Exactly.
[00:25:05]  So, historically, You could conflate these two words.
[00:25:08]  But for today's purposes, they should be separate.
[00:25:11]  And that's not a nefarious hijacking of the English language.
[00:25:16]  It's actually language evolving and developing in a helpful way because we need more than one term to describe two different things because we have a certain phenomenon that exists today that previously, I mean, you could say it existed in some conception within the Roman era and things like that, but not like it does today.
[00:25:37]  Today, we have, because of airplanes and boats and ships and technology and all these kinds of things, we are.
[00:25:45]  And propaganda.
[00:25:46]  And propaganda.
[00:25:47]  Propaganda.
[00:25:47]  Exactly.
[00:25:48]  Multiculturalism and globalism.
[00:25:49]  And Marxism.
[00:25:50]  So, because of nefarious ideologies and technological innovations for these purposes and these reasons, we have nations like Japan, which its race and ethnicity are virtually synonymous.
[00:26:06]  It's an ethno national state.
[00:26:09]  But then we have places like America that are not.
[00:26:12]  And in America, we have different races and we have different ethnicities.
[00:26:17]  And what we're going to argue is that different races within measure is perfectly permissible.
[00:26:24]  But we should actually have one culture.
[00:26:26]  And from that culture, and the way that we're going to define here with Stephen Wolfe, ethnicity, in that sense, it should be one ethnicity.
[00:26:36]  That culture is paramount to the way that Stephen Wolfe and others, it's not just him, in our modern era, because of globalism and a new world, we have just a whole new world.
[00:26:49]  And so it has to be defined carefully.
[00:26:51]  The way that ethnicity is being used by, I think, really good thinkers on the right today.
[00:26:57]  In our modern time, ethnicity translates more to culture, whereas race would translate more to your actual lineage and your ancestry.
[00:27:08]  And that, of course, would include color and pigment, things like that.
[00:27:11]  Okay.
[00:27:11]  All right.
[00:27:12]  So, this is Stephen Wolfe's definition.
[00:27:13]  And again, listen here we're not talking about physical traits and genetics, although I will say they are typically closely related.
[00:27:18]  And we'll get to that.
[00:27:19]  Ethnicity is shared language, manners, customs, histories.
[00:27:24]  That's a big one history, time, rituals, calendars, July 4th, social expectations.
[00:27:31]  Duties, loves, and religion.
[00:27:34]  Stephen Wolfe says this in his book.
[00:27:35]  I've modified it a little.
[00:27:36]  Blood relations matter.
[00:27:38]  They do matter, but they do not directly establish the boundaries of one's ethnicity.
[00:27:43]  I mentioned English and German.
[00:27:44]  None of those tell you what language I speak, they don't tell you what denomination I belong to.
[00:27:49]  It doesn't tell you all I'm Lutheran or Anglican.
[00:27:51]  So you have that genetic component.
[00:27:54]  It matters.
[00:27:55]  It gave me my skin color, my height, my bone structure, my disposition.
[00:27:58]  But then ethnicity, culture, all of those things actually then filled in what it looks like for me now to be here.
[00:28:04]  200 years later is about my ancestors came over distinctly American in my ethnicity.
[00:28:09]  So try to think in those categories.
[00:28:10]  I think it's helpful genetics and race.
[00:28:13]  And then, like you said, that ethnic component of that actual experience.
[00:28:16]  And with that, Nathan, go ahead and put the definition back on the screen.
[00:28:19]  But with that, we were talking just as a thought experiment, as a case study about African Americans here in the United States.
[00:28:28]  So when you think of the black population, the black community, notice that the way that ethnicity is being defined here.
[00:28:37]  By Stephen Wolfe, and we're adopting this definition.
[00:28:39]  We think it's helpful.
[00:28:41]  It is entirely conceivable and possible, even plausible, that if you think of the South and Confederates and things like that, that you can have, well, let's even go a little bit past that.
[00:28:55]  So, not all the way back to the Civil War, but some of what came out eventually, descendants of the South and things like that.
[00:29:02]  Booker T. Washington.
[00:29:04]  Booker T. Washington would be the same ethnicity as George Washington.
[00:29:09]  Right.
[00:29:10]  According to this definition, again, let me read it here.
[00:29:12]  Ethnicity, shared language, they're both speaking English, manners, customs, and notices, even histories.
[00:29:19]  So that doesn't happen in 15 minutes, but over time.
[00:29:23]  So by the time you get to Booker T. Washington and you're looking at, you know, originally the settling, not immigration, but settling of America by Anglo Protestants, George Washington being one of them, and then also the transfer of slaves because of the slave trade, it is entirely conceivable that you could have someone like Booker T. Washington.
[00:29:44]  Who could say, well, my ancestors, my blood ancestors have been here for 200 years.
[00:29:49]  And George Washington, you know, and some white guy that partners with Booker T. Washington to accomplish lots of good things, both Christians.
[00:29:57]  Booker T. Washington was a man who loved the Lord, he was a good Christian man.
[00:30:01]  So he could have his white friend, and, you know, Booker T. Washington as a black man, and then his white man who's his friend could be a descendant of George Washington.
[00:30:12]  And Booker T. Washington, I'm not saying this is a fact, but let's just say hypothetically that he's a descendant of one of, George Washington's slaves.
[00:30:20]  But by the time you get there, history is actually included.

=== Shared History And Repentance (04:19) ===

[00:30:24]  We're not just fabricating that.
[00:30:25]  That's a real history.
[00:30:26]  That's a 200 year history.
[00:30:28]  So you would actually have between Booker T. Washington and some white guy who's partnering with him, you'd have shared language, you'd have manners, you'd have customs, you'd have history.
[00:30:36]  And it's entirely possible that you could have a black guy 100 years after the Civil War who has the same shared history with a white guy who was a Confederate because he actually fought for the South, because he actually was a good Christian man, believed in those values.
[00:30:51]  Didn't want his entire, all of his customs and all to be completely uprooted and all those.
[00:30:57]  Like, yeah, he wasn't a fan of slavery, but he believed that that was coming to an end regardless eventually.
[00:31:03]  And he loved the South and he loved those people.
[00:31:06]  So you could have two guys like that, a white guy and a black guy who share language, they share manners, customs, and a history, a 200 year old history, plus rituals, calendars, social expectations, duties, loves, and the Christian Protestant religion.
[00:31:22]  And so the point is.
[00:31:25]  Our desire, what we would like to see for America, is the same thing that we believe God desires and that God actually planned and has prescribed through his authoritative command in Scripture what God's plan for every single nation on the planet.
[00:31:42]  It is not actually a blessing of liberty, it's not actually a brag or a boast for America to say, God says this about nations and we reject it.
[00:31:55]  It's actually that doesn't mean that we have transcended or that we're somehow above it all.
[00:31:59]  We're not above it all, we're beneath it all.
[00:32:01]  We're actually in rebellion against the Lord God Almighty.
[00:32:05]  We desire for America to be a monoculture and that be an Anglo Protestant culture, or you could use, if defined this way, the term also ethnicity.
[00:32:14]  We would like to be an ethno state with this definition of ethnicity.
[00:32:20]  That does not mean that we will be a monoracial state.
[00:32:24]  So, America, because it is unique in its founding and in its history, with Various waves of immigration after immigration, whether it be the Germans or the Italians or the Irish.
[00:32:37]  Yeah, let's do it once you finish this thought and then we'll do it.
[00:32:40]  But because there are various waves of immigration, and from the onset, because of slavery, you have a black population.
[00:32:50]  There's still a dominant race, at least in our founding.
[00:32:53]  There was a dominant race, and it was English people, it was people from England.
[00:32:59]  That was the dominant race.
[00:33:00]  But you did still have at a certain point, and not just 15 minutes ago, but a few hundred years ago, there was a point in America in early on where you could say there were 20% of America was black.
[00:33:15]  And so for those people, now that's different than Haitians immigrating last week.
[00:33:22]  But for those people who track back there, they're American.
[00:33:26]  And we would like for them to be American, and we'd like for us too to be American in a In a true sense.
[00:33:35]  And Michael made a great point.
[00:33:36]  We were talking about this as a case study before we started recording, but Black America was heading in many ways, by virtually all metrics, they were heading in that direction and were hijacked by the Frankfurt School, by Marxists, by globalists, by the Civil Rights Act, by the Hart Cellar Act, by all these different things.
[00:34:00]  But you look before that and you look at the Harlem of the South and you look at the advancements, the guys like Booker T. Washington and And the advancements that they were making.
[00:34:11]  And what they were trying to do was head overall.
[00:34:14]  There's always individual bad actors, but overall, they were heading in the direction of we just want to be American.
[00:34:22]  We want to love Jesus, love the Christian Protestant religion.
[00:34:27]  We're not asking for special handouts or this or that.
[00:34:32]  We just want to be American, just like everybody else, with shared history, shared customs, shared manners.
[00:34:38]  All in a shared religion, most importantly, and of course, a shared language.
[00:34:42]  But that got hijacked.

=== America's Biggest Divide (02:48) ===

[00:34:43]  And there's a reason why today, when you look at voting patterns, like even this is something I'll take just a moment to do this.
[00:34:51]  When we get things wrong, it's good to correct it publicly and publicly repent, right?
[00:34:56]  That's what repenting is changing.
[00:34:58]  So I remember saying about the election just a couple weeks ago that the big divide.
[00:35:03]  You mean before the election?
[00:35:04]  Yeah, when we did our live stream, I think.
[00:35:07]  It was either the week before or the live stream when we were live streaming the election.
[00:35:10]  But I remember saying that, you know, the big divide nowadays.
[00:35:13]  Is between men and women.
[00:35:15]  And I was right in the sense that the divide between the sexes has enlarged.
[00:35:19]  That is true.
[00:35:21]  But then looking at the metrics post election, once they were all posted, the reality is that the biggest divide, the gap is getting bigger, especially with younger generation like Gen Z between men and women.
[00:35:34]  However, it still stands that the biggest divides in terms of voting pattern is not sexes, and it's also not religion.
[00:35:43]  It is race.
[00:35:44]  It is.
[00:35:45]  And by God's grace, Trump was able to get the highest turnout of any Republican since Reagan.
[00:35:51]  So 20% of black men voted for Trump.
[00:35:53]  Praise God.
[00:35:55]  When it comes to Latino men, it was, I think, 47 or highest number in a long time.
[00:35:59]  Almost half of Latino men.
[00:36:01]  So amazing.
[00:36:02]  Praise God for that.
[00:36:04]  But just again, to use black and white as a case study here, black women, I think, was less than 10%.
[00:36:10]  92 to 8%.
[00:36:11]  Yeah.
[00:36:11]  For Kamala.
[00:36:12]  Yeah.
[00:36:13]  So 8% of black women.
[00:36:14]  Voted for Trump.
[00:36:16]  20% of black men.
[00:36:17]  So if you split the difference there, then if my math is right, that's 14%.
[00:36:21]  And then if you look at the white vote, so what I'm recanting here is white women in the younger generation, Gen Z, are splitting more and more from white men.
[00:36:35]  But women are more liberal than men.
[00:36:37]  That's right.
[00:36:38]  But on the whole, white women, married and single combined, every generation from boomer all the way down to Gen Z, white women on the whole was, I think, 59% for Trump.
[00:36:51]  And 59% white women for Trump is a lot more than 20% black men for Trump.
[00:36:58]  So, the biggest divide is still not men and women.
[00:37:00]  The biggest divide, I have to be honest, is still black and white.
[00:37:04]  And my point in bringing that up is just as an example to prove my point.
[00:37:09]  There is a big, because one of the things you're voting on in a national election like that is you're voting on the vision of the country.
[00:37:18]  What is the country going to be?
[00:37:20]  What is its culture?
[00:37:21]  What culture do I want?
[00:37:23]  And right now, the average black person, not all, of course, not all, but the average black person wants America to be something very different.

=== Virtue In Black Culture (07:01) ===

[00:37:31]  And so, my point in bringing that up is to say that's actually a new development.
[00:37:37]  So, we don't believe that that's proof.
[00:37:39]  So, therefore, black people aren't Americans or can never be Americans in a monoculture sense.
[00:37:46]  No, we're actually very hopeful about that because of the power of the gospel and because we believe all the nations will flock to Mount Zion and will be Christianized.
[00:37:53]  And that'll include all the people that make up those nations.
[00:37:56]  So, we're very hopeful for black America in a future sense from biblical grounds.
[00:38:01]  But we're also hopeful because We can look at it from historical grounds and we can point back and say they were on their way and it got hijacked.
[00:38:10]  And it was hijacked by a bunch of Marxists.
[00:38:14]  It wasn't hijacked by, you know, that all the black people decided together, we're going to, you know, what we've decided we want to stop working and we're just going to get on welfare and we don't really, you know, want to be, you know, we don't like Protestant Anglo culture anymore and we're going to do things our own way and we're going to vote for Democrats who want to destroy the nation.
[00:38:32]  That's not what happened actually.
[00:38:34]  It was a bunch of Marxists.
[00:38:37]  Who used as a puppet guys like Michael King, Martin Luther King, and used him to absolutely, through the Civil Rights Act and all these things, destroy the black population in America.
[00:38:51]  But it wasn't always that way.
[00:38:52]  And because it wasn't always that way, I'm hopeful that it doesn't always have to be that way.
[00:38:56]  And I think Trump in this most recent election is a sign that maybe it's moving the right direction.
[00:39:01]  So, anyways, all that is to say that you can have Booker T. Washington and George Washington and them be.
[00:39:11]  In the way we're conceiving of it, in this definition of ethnicity, the same ethnos.
[00:39:17]  And historically and biblically, certainly, nations are ethnos.
[00:39:23]  That's what they are.
[00:39:24]  And if it's not, then you don't actually have a nation, you have an empire.
[00:39:28]  And empires, eventually, whether it be being overly altruistic or whatever, every story of the rise and fall of empires is eventually they spread out too thin.
[00:39:41]  They cover too much ground and too many tribes, too many different ethnos.
[00:39:46]  And they eventually implode.
[00:39:49]  Empires rarely are taken over from the outside forces, whether it's the Babylonian Empire.
[00:39:54]  Well, that one actually was, the Persians and the Medes.
[00:39:57]  I mean, literally God's divine judgment.
[00:40:00]  Exactly.
[00:40:00]  But if you think of Rome, you know, and you think of, you know, Byzantine or you think of Ottoman or you think of all these different empires, rarely, they eventually accrue so much power that they're rarely actually toppled by an outside power that's stronger than their own.
[00:40:17]  They usually actually implode and they implode because they begin to eventually think that, you know, everybody can be a Roman, you know, and we can just, you know, all we have to do is just go over to this country and make a deal.
[00:40:35]  And then, you know, and that's what America has been doing.
[00:40:38]  And so we would like for America not to be an empire, we would like for it to be a nation.
[00:40:43]  And if it's going to be a nation, then we need to have one ethnos, not one race, not one color.
[00:40:50]  But one ethnos.
[00:40:52]  And right now we don't.
[00:40:53]  And so right now we fit the metrics of an empire in many ways more than a nation.
[00:40:57]  And we think that that's a bad thing.
[00:40:58]  I would offer, too, why was there so much flourishing, even in the black community, the 40s, 50s, and 60s?
[00:41:03]  Well, we had, by and large, a Christian nation.
[00:41:07]  So, our laws, there was rule of law, there was enforcement of it.
[00:41:11]  Not even then enshrined in law, but there was a social expectation, for example, against wedlock.
[00:41:16]  So, all of those things surrounded.
[00:41:17]  For wedlock.
[00:41:20]  Yes.
[00:41:21]  Right.
[00:41:21]  Like the expectation was that you didn't have children out of wedlock.
[00:41:25]  So, all that being said, that surrounded the people and then the different peoples inside of it.
[00:41:29]  Flourished.
[00:41:30]  They had families, they were productive members of society.
[00:41:33]  But as those have receded, as we've lost the Christian identity and the Christian social power, now these groups that were beginning to come together and to live harmoniously separated out more so, much more distinct.
[00:41:43]  And especially black culture, we have to be honest.
[00:41:45]  Like rap is not European in its origin.
[00:41:48]  No, rap music did not come from Italy and it's entirely foreign.
[00:41:51]  And I've said it before and I'll say it again.
[00:41:53]  Like people say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
[00:41:56]  No, that's true in the sense if we're saying that the one true beholder that's the final arbiter of beauty is God, then sure.
[00:42:03]  Then beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if the beholder is God and he gets to objectively decide.
[00:42:07]  But art is not subjective.
[00:42:09]  Jackson Pollock, eventually, I believe, as our nation becomes more Christian and repents of its sin, our great grandchildren will go to museums to look at Jackson Pollock to laugh and say, Isn't that funny when the nation was in rebellion against Christ, embraced secularism, embraced Marxism, and they actually thought that this was art, this piece of crap right here?
[00:42:27]  That's a joke.
[00:42:29]  This relativism, abstract, reductionist, whatever.
[00:42:33]  And I would say the same thing about rap.
[00:42:35]  And I'm not saying that black people are this way across the board, or certainly not that they have to be this way or that they were always this way.
[00:42:42]  But the idea of rap being a legitimate source of art and music, I reject.
[00:42:48]  So I'm not just saying, oh, I don't like it because I'm white and art is perceived by the beholder and it's subjective and different people have different tastes.
[00:42:55]  No, I'm going to go on record saying objectively if you think that Mozart and I don't know, 50 Cent or whatever, Jay Z, that it's just tomato, tomato, then you have a low IQ.
[00:43:09]  You are a stupid person.
[00:43:10]  Do you know how I know this is true?
[00:43:11]  Do you know where one is superior in the objective sense?
[00:43:14]  I think I mentioned this before.
[00:43:16]  Do you know where the greatest renaissance of classical music is right now in the world?
[00:43:20]  Where Japan they love classical music, they train to play the violin.
[00:43:28]  That's seriously right, and it is exploding there right now.
[00:43:32]  I believe so.
[00:43:33]  All but that being said, you know, like you are what you eat, and in some sense, you are what you consume in terms of what you listen to.
[00:43:39]  And hip hop has been terrible for the black community, absolutely like the morals.
[00:43:45]  But it's also as an art form.
[00:43:47]  It's like, well, then we just need Christian hip hop.
[00:43:50]  No, it's not just the lyrics.
[00:43:51]  It's not just the values.
[00:43:53]  There's actually something virtuous in certain instruments and being conducted and composed in certain ways.
[00:44:01]  There is a way that certain music, even without lyrics, that a symphony stirs the soul in a way that, drop that beat, man, does not.
[00:44:10]  Syncopated beats.
[00:44:11]  Yeah, that does not stir the soul.
[00:44:12]  And these are not just a matter of opinion and subjective.
[00:44:17]  These are objective, I think, objective truths.
[00:44:19]  And so, anyways, it's funny in the 70s and the 80s, the fundamentalists, they were really sounding the alarm about rap music, rock, and everything.
[00:44:26]  They were right.
[00:44:26]  And you grow up and you're like, oh, those fundies.
[00:44:28]  And then you get older, you're like, turn that trash off.
[00:44:31]  Turn that trash off.
[00:44:32]  They were right.

=== Christian Hip Hop Values (03:18) ===

[00:44:33]  Let's go to our first commercial break and we'll come back.
[00:44:35]  We'll talk more about Nation.
[00:44:36]  When we come back, we're going to listen to the clip that we referenced.
[00:44:39]  So we have one more clip.
[00:44:40]  It's a martyr made with Daryl Cooper.
[00:44:44]  Right.
[00:44:44]  We'll do that.
[00:44:45]  Yep.
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[00:46:47]  Are you a Christian who struggles to find companies who align with your convictions?
[00:46:51]  Do you wish that you could work with Christian brothers rather than pagans who hate everything you love?
[00:46:56]  You shouldn't have to dedicate your hard work to men or women who support evil.
[00:47:01]  At Top Knot Alpaca Care, we're looking for mature men who desire hard work.
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[00:47:41]  So contact us today before our interview window closes in January.
[00:47:45]  Call Elijah at Top Knot with the phone number that's listed in the description for this show.

=== Assimilation And Identity (06:58) ===

[00:47:51]  Go to the description.
[00:47:52]  The phone number for Elijah with Top Knot will be right there.
[00:47:55]  Give him a call today.
[00:47:58]  All right, welcome back.
[00:48:00]  We mentioned a clip we're going to play.
[00:48:01]  This is from Daryl Cooper.
[00:48:03]  He's, for one, he's based.
[00:48:05]  He's our guy.
[00:48:06]  This is not some Harvard intellectual trying to sell you the idea of a propositional nation.
[00:48:11]  Great dude.
[00:48:12]  And an incredible historian.
[00:48:13]  I think when the story is written of the 2000s, his podcast and his history and his writing and his study will be very, very highly regarded.
[00:48:20]  But I took this clip from the Jay Burden show to just kind of show that what we're saying that America really fundamentally in its conception, in its founding, has been different than Iceland and Japan and Uganda that are almost exclusively monoracial.
[00:48:33]  Is that America just hasn't from its founding been that?
[00:48:36]  We've talked about we don't want to be idealistic.
[00:48:39]  Like in an ideal world, this is exactly what we do.
[00:48:41]  We live in the world that God has made, God is sovereign over how he arranged and apportioned these peoples.
[00:48:47]  And this is just the facts of it.
[00:48:48]  Now, America is young.
[00:48:50]  Our identity could change.
[00:48:51]  Remigration is a real thing.
[00:48:52]  But as it is right now, this is our history and this is what has happened leading up to this 250th year.
[00:48:58]  So we'll go ahead and play the clip.
[00:49:01]  You know, people have the idea that there was this kind of strong, stable, longstanding American identity that existed before 1968 or whatever.
[00:49:16]  And then everything came apart because of the Cultural Revolution and the Hard Cellar Act and everything.
[00:49:20]  And that's just not true.
[00:49:21]  You know, I mean, the, the, the, The Anglo population that fought the Revolutionary War was getting displaced in the cities by Germans and Irish within a generation.
[00:49:35]  The big East Coast cities were like a lot of them were majority Irish and German, and the Germans were assimilating to the Anglo class, so it wasn't quite as visible maybe in that sense.
[00:49:45]  But nevertheless, these were people who were still reading German language newspapers at home.
[00:49:50]  And no sooner did those people get worked into the system, we built Public school system to put these crazy Irish kids through so that they could grow up and become flag waving citizens, then just got an even bigger influx of Southern and Eastern Europeans just a generation later.
[00:50:06]  And we had to go through this whole process again.
[00:50:09]  And that went on from like the early 1880s up until the 1920s.
[00:50:13]  We cut off immigration again.
[00:50:15]  But then as soon as we did that, you started to get the great migration of six, seven million blacks coming out of the South into the Northern and Western cities, which so again, like just, you know, they're not coming from a quote unquote different country.
[00:50:27]  But on, you know, on one level, like if you're coming from, if you're an African American coming from the rural South, You were a sharecropper and you're moving to Detroit in 1945.
[00:50:36]  I mean, a lot of ways you're more foreign than somebody who's coming from Berlin to Detroit, you know, much more familiar at least with the urban environment and so forth.
[00:50:43]  So, like, you know, America's a big ass country.
[00:50:46]  So people come from one side to the other, especially back then when there were major regional differences.
[00:50:51]  You know, it was like a new migration from another country, basically.
[00:50:55]  And that went on up until the 1960s and petered out, you know, at that point and then was replaced with the Hart Seller Act, which is the world we're in now.
[00:51:03]  And so we've been in this state.
[00:51:07]  where we've had to redefine ourselves and we've had to reshape our story to include new people in it over and over again throughout our history.
[00:51:19]  And there really was no long period of time where that was not the case.
[00:51:23]  It was pretty much from the beginning.
[00:51:25]  And one of our all right.
[00:51:31]  All right.
[00:51:33]  Yeah, so the reality is God profoundly blessed America.
[00:51:38]  Like, even with those things, even though it was at first majority English and then German and then Irish and later the black, like, God profoundly blessed our nation, even despite the way we've been different from a lot of other nations on earth.
[00:51:50]  And so, see, that's the key though is like, did God bless our nation because we're different or did He bless our nation despite?
[00:51:58]  Yeah.
[00:51:58]  Like, and I think a lot of people think like, God blessed our nation because, like, this is what all the Democrat, liberal, progressive Marxists think is like, diversity is our strength.
[00:52:07]  He, like, We've been blessed.
[00:52:09]  We've been so strong and so successful because.
[00:52:12]  No.
[00:52:12]  And it's like, no, We were blessed because of our founding.
[00:52:17]  And initially in that founding, it was not diversity is our strength.
[00:52:23]  It was an Anglo Protestant founding, an Anglo Protestant nation.
[00:52:28]  And there have been waves of immigration since.
[00:52:30]  But even with those waves of immigration, at least initially for the first couple hundred years, really were settlers, not just immigrants.
[00:52:38]  And they actually assimilated.
[00:52:40]  What was it?
[00:52:40]  What's the RMAC?
[00:52:41]  They assimilated.
[00:52:42]  To that Anglo Protestant thing.
[00:52:43]  And that's why we've been so blessed.
[00:52:44]  And as we've lost that, the blessing is evaporating.
[00:52:47]  Go ahead.
[00:52:47]  Yeah.
[00:52:48]  I was just kidding.
[00:52:48]  Who was it in that podcast that you sent us?
[00:52:50]  Was it Aaron or CJ who was saying, even, you know, people, immigrants would come and they would rename their children or they would name the next generation with traditional American names?
[00:53:00]  That's right.
[00:53:00]  They're not German names.
[00:53:01]  But Adi Robles said the same thing recently.
[00:53:03]  He said, I'm glad that my dad, you know, because he's half Puerto Rican.
[00:53:08]  And he said, when my dad, you know, came here, he really wanted to be an American.
[00:53:13]  And that's why he named me Adam.
[00:53:15]  Yeah.
[00:53:16]  Which, by the way, Adi Robles is, his name is Adam.
[00:53:20]  And his wife calls him Adam.
[00:53:21]  All of his friends call him Adam.
[00:53:23]  Um, AD was a joke because he just noticed that every like Christian author would use like their uh first name initial, last name, RC Sproul, exactly.
[00:53:33]  So he did it, you know, AW Tozer, whatever.
[00:53:35]  He did it as a joke, but now everybody like calls him AD, like, but it's not even his preference.
[00:53:40]  He's like, I remember asking him, you know, a couple years ago, I was like, is it okay if I call you Adam?
[00:53:43]  He's like, yeah, it's my name, but anyways, so he was making a point and I can't remember, but he gave he gave like a Puerto Rican equivalent of Adam, which I don't know what that is because I'm not Puerto Rican and I don't care.
[00:53:56]  And 80 would support that 100%.
[00:53:58]  But he was like, I'm glad my dad didn't give me the Puerto Rican equivalent of Adam as a name.
[00:54:03]  But instead, he moved to America because he didn't want to be a Puerto Rican in America.
[00:54:07]  He wanted to be an American.
[00:54:09]  And he is Puerto Rican, but he wanted to be an American.
[00:54:11]  And he sure as heck wanted his kids to be American.
[00:54:15]  And so he gave us American names.
[00:54:17]  That's what's so powerful about assimilation if you properly assimilate and you take on the characteristics of a nation, you're leaving.
[00:54:25]  The one of your fathers.
[00:54:27]  You're like Ruth does, your people will be my people.
[00:54:29]  Like something does die.
[00:54:31]  You leave behind a language, you leave behind habits, you leave behind maybe even family members to cling to a new nation.
[00:54:38]  Like that's the seriousness of assimilation.
[00:54:40]  Nationalism, even patriotism, the word comes from patre, which means fatherland.
[00:54:46]  It's so eventually as time goes on, your fathers live there.

=== Conducted By A Christian Nation (11:31) ===

[00:54:49]  That's serious.
[00:54:50]  We've got to stop.
[00:54:51]  We do this with marriage.
[00:54:52]  Well, no fault, divorce if you want out of it.
[00:54:54]  Well, patriotism, it's like you like the flag and you go to the cookout on July 4th, but you're going to anyway because they were grilling.
[00:55:00]  No, no, no.
[00:55:01]  It's deep seated commitment and a willingness to say, I'm going to leave behind this other thing that conflicts with it.
[00:55:07]  I'm going north, which means I don't get to see what's south.
[00:55:10]  Right.
[00:55:10]  That's well said.
[00:55:12]  Real quick, this is just an interjection, but some of you guys will probably notice by the time, you know, some of you may have noticed in the live chat, but you'll definitely notice as people watch this video in the coming days.
[00:55:24]  But the Antioch statement has just been released and posted on Twitter by Doug Wilson and Joseph.
[00:55:31]  Boot and it's basically Ezra Mosco and Apologia.
[00:55:35]  So it's your James White, Jeff Durbin, Joe Boot, Andrew Sandlin, Doug Wilson, and there's some other signers.
[00:55:42]  And Tobias is one of them.
[00:55:44]  He's the pastor in Frankfurt, Germany.
[00:55:47]  And so, anyways, people are already asking, like somebody said, it's curious that Joel hasn't signed it.
[00:55:53]  And like I'd literally been aware of it for 15 minutes.
[00:55:57]  So, you know, people are probably going to wonder, you know, like, are you going to sign it?
[00:56:03]  And what I'm going to do, I can tell you this right now.
[00:56:06]  What I'm going to do is, I'm going to first read it carefully.
[00:56:10]  Before we started recording, I read some of it, and some of it was good, and some of it I don't like.
[00:56:16]  But I'm going to read it carefully, and I'm going to do it the same way I do everything, which means I'm going to do it in community.
[00:56:25]  I'm going to co discern this statement on its merits.
[00:56:30]  Is it biblical?
[00:56:31]  Does it honor the Lord?
[00:56:33]  Is it truthful?
[00:56:34]  And what does it actually say?
[00:56:37]  And I'm going to do it together.
[00:56:39]  So I'm going to do it with Michael.
[00:56:40]  I'm going to do it with Wes.
[00:56:41]  I'm going to do it with my co elder, Connor.
[00:56:44]  I'm going to see what he thinks about it.
[00:56:46]  But then I'm also going to be doing this with Ogden, right?
[00:56:48]  Response is not going to come out and sign this if Stephen Wolf and Andrew Isker and CJ Engel and Brian Sauvay and Eric Kahn.
[00:56:57]  And we're all ready in communication.
[00:57:00]  We're aware of it.
[00:57:02]  It was leaked to us a little bit early.
[00:57:04]  And so we saw it.
[00:57:05]  And so we're already, communication is already underway.
[00:57:08]  Me and Brian and Eric and Andrew and all the boys, the boys are talking.
[00:57:15]  And we'll read it.
[00:57:16]  But here's what we will do that I think will be a blessing to the body of Christ at large.
[00:57:20]  It may cause a division.
[00:57:21]  We'll see.
[00:57:22]  It depends what we ultimately conclude, and we don't have any final conclusions as of yet.
[00:57:28]  We'll need some time.
[00:57:29]  But this is one thing that I can promise you.
[00:57:32]  What we won't do is we won't be gay like Al Moeller and Mark Dever.
[00:57:38]  And yes, I think gay is the appropriate word.
[00:57:42]  When they didn't sign the statement on social justice and the gospel, they refused to tell people why.
[00:57:47]  Right.
[00:57:48]  They never told people why.
[00:57:50]  I was there in person, right?
[00:57:51]  Because I was pastoring in California at the time.
[00:57:53]  This is March 2020.
[00:57:55]  And I was there at Shepherd's Conference with the infamous panel.
[00:57:59]  It was Phil Johnson and John MacArthur were on stage, and Phil Johnson was kind of moderating this conversation.
[00:58:06]  And then, you know, with him and MacArthur, you also had Al Moeller and League Duncan and Mark Deffer.
[00:58:13]  And Phil Johnson was kind of saying, like, guys, why?
[00:58:16]  You know, like, we don't understand.
[00:58:18]  You know, the MacArthur crew, we came out and signed it.
[00:58:21]  The G3 crew, we came out and signed it.
[00:58:23]  This is an obvious problem.
[00:58:27]  Rising through the ranks, even in Reformed churches, this wokeness, this neo Marxist CRT wokeness.
[00:58:34]  And we wrote this, and Al Moeller and Mark Dever and Lig Duncan would not give an answer.
[00:58:40]  The closest any of them got to giving an answer was Lig Duncan, which was a terrible answer.
[00:58:44]  Which was a terrible answer, where he basically said, Well, I need to fold on race so that my kids don't become gay.
[00:58:53]  And so, when I, so like earlier, I said, like I called them gay.
[00:58:56]  Gay is the appropriate word.
[00:58:58]  They gave very gay answers.
[00:58:59]  Yeah.
[00:59:01]  And so, what they never did is they never told you why.
[00:59:04]  The closest they got to saying why they didn't sign it is they said, Well, I would have worded it differently.
[00:59:09]  Let me say this I've never heard anyone ever say anything in my life that I would not have worded differently.
[00:59:17]  Everybody, you know, how many times I've been told that people have some kind of complaint with something I said in the sermon or something.
[00:59:24]  And I'll just keep asking questions and trying to uncover what's the problem here?
[00:59:28]  What's the real problem here?
[00:59:30]  And they don't oftentimes have.
[00:59:31]  Any real substance or whatever substance they did have, I then give an explanation.
[00:59:36]  I show them in scripture why that's wrong.
[00:59:37]  So then they get rid of that.
[00:59:39]  And then what it usually boils down to is always this, but was it necessary?
[00:59:43]  Or but your tone.
[00:59:44]  And then we press harder and we press harder.
[00:59:46]  And then the conversation almost always, 99% of the time, ends like this.
[00:59:50]  They say, Well, I wouldn't have said it like that.
[00:59:53]  Yeah, because you're not me.
[00:59:55]  I want to say things the way you say them.
[00:59:57]  You want to say them the way I say them.
[00:59:58]  Like nobody says anything the way that other people say them.
[01:00:01]  That's part of what makes us unique.
[01:00:02]  Of course you want to say it like me.
[01:00:03]  That's so stupid.
[01:00:05]  So, I will not be Al Moeller gay, Ligan Duncan gay, Mark Dever gay.
[01:00:10]  Me and the Ogden boys and Stephen Wolfe and Andrew Isker and CJ Engel and AD Robles, all the boys, we will read the statement.
[01:00:18]  We will read it carefully.
[01:00:20]  We will pray.
[01:00:21]  We'll wait.
[01:00:22]  We'll pray.
[01:00:23]  We'll think.
[01:00:24]  We'll deliberate.
[01:00:25]  We'll study, looking at scripture, looking at history.
[01:00:29]  We'll talk together.
[01:00:31]  And then we will come out and we will either sign the statement, which is probably unlikely, or we will not sign the statement.
[01:00:39]  And in not signing the statement, we will produce hours of content explaining precisely why we're not signing the statement.
[01:00:47]  And our answer, I guarantee you, will not be, well, we wouldn't say it that way.
[01:00:52]  Because that's a gay, effeminate, fake answer.
[01:00:55]  That's when a coward knows that something's true, can't blatantly say that it's not true because he knows it's true, but he can't put his name behind something.
[01:01:07]  If we don't sign this statement, we will tell you exactly why.
[01:01:11]  Exactly why.
[01:01:13]  Substance, not just wording.
[01:01:15]  Why I want to say it that way.
[01:01:17]  We will tell you why the statement is either objectively wrong in its substance, it's actually wrong, or we'll sign it.
[01:01:26]  Right.
[01:01:26]  Simple as that.
[01:01:27]  All right.
[01:01:27]  Good word.
[01:01:29]  I just want to define.
[01:01:30]  So we talked about nation.
[01:01:31]  It's a people, it's a place.
[01:01:32]  There is one criticism.
[01:01:33]  This is typically guys farther to our right.
[01:01:35]  And they would make the argument, and there's good justification for it from history.
[01:01:39]  Nation can never be reduced to less than race.
[01:01:42]  And so, technically speaking, there would be multiple nations within the U.S. Here's the deal.
[01:01:47]  That's a good conversation to have.
[01:01:48]  I think we would all at this point.
[01:01:49]  It's possible, too.
[01:01:50]  Yep, it's possible.
[01:01:51]  At this point, we disagree.
[01:01:52]  But here's the deal.
[01:01:53]  And here's why Christian nationalism we don't just want to be correct in theory and have academic discussions.
[01:01:58]  We want to win.
[01:01:59]  Whether we are five, 10, 11 nations contained here in this continental United States, or one single one, with some people that have to go back because they just got here five minutes ago, whether it's multiple or one, here's the deal.
[01:02:11]  We are all under one law.
[01:02:13]  Then those residing in the states, they're under state law.
[01:02:16]  Those laws, right now, the short term goal, Is for them to be Christian.
[01:02:20]  Let me just define nationalism.
[01:02:22]  This is, you wouldn't hear nationalism in the Bible.
[01:02:24]  You wouldn't hear that word.
[01:02:25]  It really, it's the French Revolution where the people decided their identity wasn't going to be bound to a monarch, but they were going to be bound to the national ideals.
[01:02:32]  So this is nationalism.
[01:02:34]  This is again from Stephen Wolfe.
[01:02:35]  He says this Nationalism is a totality of national action to procure for itself, that is the nation, both earthly and heavenly good.
[01:02:43]  Simply put, nation is for itself.
[01:02:45]  Now, how does Christian nationalism modify that?
[01:02:47]  It's not brand new.
[01:02:48]  It doesn't come in in a totally different category.
[01:02:50]  It is nationalism.
[01:02:51]  It's a nation, it's for itself.
[01:02:53]  But it's Christian.
[01:02:54]  Christian nationalism, as defined by Stephen Wolfe, is a totality of national action conducted by a Christian nation to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.
[01:03:05]  So it's the same thing as the nation looking out for itself.
[01:03:07]  Conducted by a Christian nation.
[01:03:09]  Right, of course.
[01:03:09]  And then at the end, in Christ.
[01:03:11]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:03:12]  Yeah.
[01:03:12]  So, because nations will always, people will always seek their good.
[01:03:16]  They want to see their crops flourish.
[01:03:18]  There's one nation currently that's not.
[01:03:20]  Yeah.
[01:03:21]  Right.
[01:03:22]  America isn't.
[01:03:23]  But, yeah, but nations with a head on their shoulders.
[01:03:26]  You would hope.
[01:03:27]  Yeah.
[01:03:28]  So, the Christian nation seeks that good, but it does so in Christ.
[01:03:31]  It says we want these blessings and we want not just earthly but heavenly blessings.
[01:03:35]  And so we do so self consciously.
[01:03:37]  Someone put in the comments, and it's a great rebuttal.
[01:03:39]  There's Christian universities, there's Christian families, there's Christian schools, there's Christian businesses.
[01:03:44]  All of these things can be Christian.
[01:03:46]  Why not, I ask you, the nation?
[01:03:48]  Oh, it can be.
[01:03:49]  It says we are Christian.
[01:03:50]  Its laws are Christian.
[01:03:52]  Its identity is Christian.
[01:03:54]  And even on the Protestant thing, I don't know what you guys think about this.
[01:03:57]  We're not just Anglo Christian, we would be Anglo Protestant.
[01:04:00]  Now, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, I would personally say they can stay.
[01:04:04]  But here's the deal.
[01:04:04]  Maybe you don't get a parade down Washington, D.C., with a statue of Mary.
[01:04:09]  We're a Protestant nation.
[01:04:11]  And even a Catholic nation like Italy, they could say, we're not on Reformation Day going to have a march for Martin Luther.
[01:04:17]  The nation can actually do that.
[01:04:18]  Now, Protestantism, we of course believe, is true.
[01:04:21]  And Catholicism has a lot of errors to it.
[01:04:24]  So it's not about an ultimate, like, true, false thing, but the nation in itself that says, we're Protestant.
[01:04:30]  We're Catholic, we're Eastern Orthodox, can then say it will only be public practice exclusively of the Christian religion.
[01:04:36]  Well, and that's one of the things with Catholicism here in America is that, like, many different historians and even theologians have said that, you know, like the Catholic priests in America frequently got in trouble with, you know,
[01:04:50]  the larger diocese and, you know, with the Pope and, you know, the cardinals and the Vatican, all those kinds of things on a regular basis with Catholicism globally because the Catholic priests in America were so Protestantized by the larger American.
[01:05:08]  Hegemony, which was an Anglo Protestant, not Catholic, but Protestant culture.
[01:05:13]  And so, simply by virtue of being a Catholic priest in America, they couldn't help but assimilate to some degree, some fact.
[01:05:21]  And so, even Catholicism in America, while distinct from Protestantism, still kind of like an amoeba absorbed, it couldn't help itself but to absorb some of these Protestant virtues and ways of thinking and stuff like that.
[01:05:35]  Joel, I've lived in a Catholic South American country.
[01:05:38]  There you go.
[01:05:38]  And that is true.
[01:05:40]  It's not the same.
[01:05:41]  It's, I mean, obviously, the fundamental tenets are going to be, but the practice of it and its assumptions and its cultural, the way it weaves through the culture is not the same.
[01:05:51]  Catholicism in America is a little stitches, but Catholicism elsewhere is superstitious.
[01:05:55]  In Latin America, especially.
[01:05:57]  As Michael Scott would say.
[01:05:58]  But yeah, no, you go to Mexico, and you look at Catholicism in European places, and you look at it, especially in America, versus in Mexico, it's very much like if you ever watched the movie Coco.
[01:06:11]  Right.
[01:06:11]  The Disney movie, like it's, you know, Day of the Dead, like it's magical, mystical, superstitious syncretism.
[01:06:17]  It's syncretism with false Mexican gods, you know, and pagan, you know.

=== Moral Distinctions Today (15:04) ===

[01:06:21]  So let me say this too before we'll head to the break for encouragement for some of you that are like, we've got Muslims, we've got Jews and Hindus and all these things.
[01:06:28]  Here's the deal short term goal Christian nation.
[01:06:31]  When you establish a Christian nation and you say, no more mosques, no more synagogues, not conversion, no more giant statues in Texas, not conversion at the point of the sword.
[01:06:39]  Stephen Wolfe has a whole chapter on that.
[01:06:40]  You can't command the conscience.
[01:06:41]  So, you're not going into people's homes, holding a gun to them, recite the Apostles' Creed.
[01:06:46]  But you are saying public worship.
[01:06:48]  None of these things are allowed.
[01:06:49]  How many Somalis that came into Minnesota, when that's done, say, you know what?
[01:06:54]  I think I'm going to go back.
[01:06:56]  How many Jews, if pornographers were executed in the town square, would pack their bags and head to Israel?
[01:07:02]  Penalties for usury and this and that.
[01:07:04]  Not every Jew.
[01:07:05]  Not everyone.
[01:07:05]  Not every Jew.
[01:07:06]  But yes, Wes saying, pinpointing Jews there.
[01:07:12]  And saying, you know, like, notice he said one thing for Somalians, but he chose pornography as an example when he said Jews.
[01:07:20]  Yeah, that's fair, guys.
[01:07:21]  That's fair.
[01:07:23]  Of course, it's not all Jews.
[01:07:25]  But, yes, there is.
[01:07:27]  I mean, you can just look at the books, it's on paper, the statistics are there.
[01:07:32]  There is an outsized, disproportional amount of Jews involved when it comes to pornography.
[01:07:39]  And so, I said this on a podcast.
[01:07:42]  Months ago, I think it was the Green Tavern, Tavern, Dragon Tavern, or something like that.
[01:07:48]  Green Dragon Tavern.
[01:07:49]  Yeah.
[01:07:50]  It's the guys with the Sentinel, great guys.
[01:07:53]  And so they graciously had me on the show, and we were talking.
[01:07:56]  And they were like, Well, you know, do like a Christian, you know, Christian nationalism is, you know, the divide is, if you haven't noticed by now, the divide is getting wider.
[01:08:05]  So even with the Antioch statement, it's like, Well, who's on one side and who's on the other?
[01:08:09]  Like, okay, well, you know, one side is we're very, very, very concerned about Jews.
[01:08:14]  And then the other side is.
[01:08:17]  Well, we're not so concerned.
[01:08:20]  We love Jews as we love all people, and we wish them a very pleasant conversion to Christianity.
[01:08:26]  But for those who refuse to convert and those who are actively involved in things that are nefarious, like usury or like pornography, then yeah, we would like them to leave our nation because we like our country.
[01:08:38]  So there's that side.
[01:08:39]  And then there's the other side that's we really, really love Jews.
[01:08:45]  And so you can look at the distinction there.
[01:08:47]  But there are always other distinctions.
[01:08:49]  That's what I like to do when I'm kind of looking at some kind of argument that's happening online.
[01:08:54]  Let's get down to common denominators.
[01:08:55]  What are other things that separate these two groups?
[01:08:57]  Well, here's another thing that separates.
[01:08:59]  Everybody with the Antioch statement is a theonomist.
[01:09:03]  Yeah.
[01:09:04]  They're all theonomists, whether it's Ezra, Apologia, or Moscow.
[01:09:07]  They're all OG theonomists.
[01:09:11]  But you look at Ogden Some more general equity, some stricter, but still under that broad umbrella.
[01:09:15]  Right.
[01:09:16]  But you look at Ogden, Stephen Wolf, Andrew Isker, CJ, and me.
[01:09:21]  Pretty much all of us, except for CJ and Wolf, have used the theonomy moniker.
[01:09:27]  Ogden has used that language.
[01:09:29]  Right.
[01:09:30]  If it was 2020 and 2021.
[01:09:32]  Right.
[01:09:33]  You would be hearing the Ogden boys talking about theonomy.
[01:09:38]  Andrew Isker was a part of Greyfriars with Doug Wilson.
[01:09:41]  Absolutely.
[01:09:42]  He has described himself as a theonomist.
[01:09:46]  I have absolutely described myself as a theonomist.
[01:09:48]  You may have noticed over the past year, year and a half, every time I describe myself as a theonomist, I always take the time to say general equity theonomist.
[01:09:59]  I am, in some sense, I'll admit it publicly, I am distancing myself a little bit.
[01:10:06]  To be fair, Joel, I've been listening to you for a couple of years and I've heard general equity come from you almost from the beginning.
[01:10:12]  Okay.
[01:10:12]  So you may be more intentional.
[01:10:14]  That's good.
[01:10:14]  But I think, I actually think you're being consistent.
[01:10:16]  Okay.
[01:10:17]  Good.
[01:10:17]  That's good.
[01:10:17]  Because you're the Rush Dooney flavor of Theonomy, too, which he is.
[01:10:20]  I wouldn't call myself one anymore, but he is one of the best thinkers.
[01:10:24]  Really, we don't have a great record.
[01:10:26]  50s to today, not a lot of bright, brilliant C.S. Lewis's, Augustans, Calvin's.
[01:10:33]  We don't got many.
[01:10:34]  Rush Dooney was brilliant.
[01:10:35]  And even my disagreements that I would have with him, His application, his interpretation, his exegesis, his application to current events was incredible.
[01:10:44]  And so I think you were drawing a lot from that.
[01:10:46]  And Rush Juni is awesome.
[01:10:48]  Yeah.
[01:10:48]  And I think that's part of what changed my mind was reading Stephen Wolf and having conversations with him.
[01:10:56]  And then number two was getting to know Theonomist.
[01:11:02]  Because when I came into Theonomy, I read a couple of Rush Juni books, I read Greg Monson, and By What Standard.
[01:11:08]  And I was like, this is great.
[01:11:10]  Right.
[01:11:12]  And I still stand by that.
[01:11:14]  I really like Theonomist, the dead ones.
[01:11:17]  Rush Dooney, too.
[01:11:17]  I like the dead Theonomist.
[01:11:19]  So much of this comes from he reads Van Til when he's ministering as an OPC minister in a Native American settlement.
[01:11:25]  And in the settlement, he's seeing rampant alcoholism, he's seeing degeneracy and perversion.
[01:11:30]  And so he's seeing all of this, and he manages to pick up a copy of Cornelius's Van Til on Christian Ethics, a book on ethics.
[01:11:35]  And he sees the connection of wait, we're lawless, we're godless, we're wicked.
[01:11:40]  We need to return to God's standard.
[01:11:42]  And so 2020, the reason a lot of us loved Theonomy was because, again, The state got tyrannical and we realized, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, the state is under Christ and under his moral commands, just like any other institution, like the family and everything like that.
[01:11:54]  So there's good reason why we saw the need for, whoa, we can't just do this a la carte or shoot from the hip as far as the state.
[01:12:01]  There is a standard that God requires the state to do.
[01:12:04]  That's a good point to carry out.
[01:12:05]  So my point is, you know, with this Antioch statement that just came out, one of the dividing lines, it's like, you know, you're seeing it coming to head with the issue of the Jews.
[01:12:15]  But Under the surface, you're seeing in terms of theological distinctions, it's kind of theonomy versus Christian nationalism.
[01:12:22]  That's becoming a bigger divide.
[01:12:23]  At first, it was like, well, we can all do this together.
[01:12:25]  I mean, after all, canon, Moscow published Stephen Wolfe, the case for Christian nationalism.
[01:12:31]  And so I thought, you know, Christian nationalism is kind of just like the big banner, and theonomy would be a subset within that.
[01:12:38]  But now it's becoming more and more increasingly two distinct groups.
[01:12:41]  And so, all the way back to, you know, Wes' comment about the Jews, what I was going to say is, you know, when I went on that podcast, the Green Dragon Tavern or whatever it is, but the Sentinel guys, great guys.
[01:12:55]  When I went on their podcast, I said, No, like my position would not be, you know, in a Christian nationalist conception, my position would not be that Catholics have to leave, Jews have to leave, atheists have to leave.
[01:13:12]  No.
[01:13:13]  But what you would do is you would enact just Christian laws, just Christian laws.
[01:13:20]  So, in the public sense, in a legislative sense, and in terms of public rituals, Things that are celebrated, virtues, holidays, all those kinds of things.
[01:13:31]  The public square, legislatively and culturally, it would absolutely, unapologetically play favorites.
[01:13:40]  And there would be one favorite, but it would be Anglo Protestants.
[01:13:44]  That would be the favorite.
[01:13:45]  So there would be no public Catholic parade.
[01:13:50]  But you could have a public Protestant parade.
[01:13:53]  And there would be no law that says Jews can't live here.
[01:13:57]  But what there would be is anybody to hold public office would have to make a Christian profession of faith.
[01:14:04]  Right.
[01:14:04]  A Christian profession of faith.
[01:14:06]  So, not just a 15 minute profession of faith.
[01:14:09]  Right.
[01:14:09]  And they profession over time.
[01:14:11]  And they would have to have a track record of it.
[01:14:12]  That's right.
[01:14:14]  So, no practicing Jew who hasn't converted to Christianity would be able to serve in public office.
[01:14:21]  Also, you ban porn, you ban usury.
[01:14:27]  And what would happen is, Jews, you can't have political power.
[01:14:31]  Without recanting, repenting, and converting, you can't make money through porn.
[01:14:35]  You can't make money through usury.
[01:14:38]  What would happen is that good Jews who do exist, hear me, there are good Jews, good Jews would stay.
[01:14:45]  Many would convert.
[01:14:47]  Some wouldn't convert, but they'd just say, you know what?
[01:14:50]  Even as a Jew, I'd rather be a Jew in America than a Jew in Israel.
[01:14:55]  Which, to be honest, would probably eventually lead towards their conversion because they'd be like, well, why is America better than Israel?
[01:15:03]  Oh, maybe the Christian God is the true God, blah, blah, blah.
[01:15:06]  So good Jews would stay, bad Jews would leave.
[01:15:09]  And that's my concern.
[01:15:10]  My concern is not that no Jews live here and no Catholics live here and no Buddhists live here.
[01:15:17]  No, my concern is that there be no quarter for wickedness.
[01:15:24]  No quarter for wickedness.
[01:15:26]  No, you don't get to be a dual citizen of Israel in the United States and serve in our federal government or in Congress.
[01:15:34]  No way.
[01:15:35]  Right.
[01:15:35]  No way.
[01:15:35]  And no, you don't get to do pornography, whether you're a Jew or whether you're Anglo.
[01:15:40]  I don't care.
[01:15:42]  It would be disproportionate, the effect.
[01:15:44]  It would be.
[01:15:45]  And we should acknowledge that.
[01:15:46]  But it's across the board.
[01:15:48]  It affects.
[01:15:48]  So what you do is you don't outlaw people, you outlaw wickedness.
[01:15:53]  But here's the deal.
[01:15:54]  This is where I get in trouble.
[01:15:57]  Christian nationalism doesn't outlaw people, it outlaws immorality.
[01:16:02]  But in outlawing immorality, it will affect certain peoples more than others.
[01:16:10]  And that's what I think some of my brothers on the theonomous side of the aisle refuse to acknowledge.
[01:16:18]  But that's part of the divide here.
[01:16:20]  That's the point.
[01:16:21]  Like Israel was commanded to never forget some of the things that the Amalekites and one of the other tribes had done.
[01:16:28]  Like there was an eternal grudge that God put in place because they had done and been more wicked towards Israel than any other people group.
[01:16:37]  Like that's straight out of theonomy.
[01:16:40]  And same thing, Baltimore and Detroit, you need rule of law.
[01:16:43]  Gangbangers and murderers and rapists.
[01:16:46]  You need to have, as the Bible requires, public justice after a fair trial that would have a huge impact just in a year.
[01:16:53]  Of getting people to see, because that's what the law does it teaches, uh oh, this lifestyle will actually lead to quick, severe justice.
[01:17:00]  Like many people, I believe they would go back.
[01:17:05]  Yeah, that's all we're talking about.
[01:17:06]  It's a meritocracy.
[01:17:07]  Voluntarily.
[01:17:08]  Voluntarily, yes.
[01:17:09]  Nobody's rounding them up.
[01:17:10]  Right, self deporting.
[01:17:12]  All we're talking about is a meritocracy.
[01:17:14]  And then what Wolf is conceptualizing is a Christian meritocracy.
[01:17:18]  And the beauty of, like, because people will say, like, well, you know, like, you know, some of the race essentialists and guys who, you know, they'll get and say, like, Well, I just don't think that any black person could ever XYZ.
[01:17:32]  I'm like, well, first, that's just wrong.
[01:17:35]  Like, I've talked to Vodi Bakum.
[01:17:37]  I've read Thomas Sowell.
[01:17:40]  I've read Clarence Thomas is single handedly saving the nation right now.
[01:17:44]  So it's just, it's wrong.
[01:17:46]  I understand what you're saying from a group dynamic.
[01:17:48]  I'm with you.
[01:17:48]  I'm not one of those, I'm not Joel Berry.
[01:17:51]  I'm the good Joel.
[01:17:52]  Praise God.
[01:17:53]  You know, so I'm not Joel Berry.
[01:17:54]  And so I'm not going to pretend like, well, Clarence Thomas, and that proves that there's no difference between white and black.
[01:17:59]  No, there are differences.
[01:18:01]  I wish there weren't.
[01:18:01]  I wish there weren't, but there are.
[01:18:04]  Right now, there aren't in behavior.
[01:18:05]  God did make it in terms of behavior.
[01:18:06]  Yes, yes.
[01:18:07]  But hold on, though.
[01:18:08]  Even Israel had 12 tribes and they had cultural and even linguistic differences.
[01:18:15]  Like there are going to be differences.
[01:18:18]  Right.
[01:18:19]  But like Wes said, that's what I meant I wish there weren't moral in terms of morality.
[01:18:24]  I wish there weren't just.
[01:18:25]  But even in Israel, that happened.
[01:18:26]  Right.
[01:18:27]  And so I believe that number one, the deck can be shuffled.
[01:18:31]  So I'm not a fatalistic.
[01:18:33]  Guy, when I think of when I conceive of race, so I believe there are disparities between races as it currently stands moral disparities.
[01:18:42]  I believe there will always be distinctions, natural distinctions, always because that's God's design.
[01:18:47]  That's a good thing.
[01:18:51]  Because heaven will be diverse.
[01:18:53]  Not every nation on the planet here on earth in this temporal life are supposed to be diverse, but heaven will be because it will be composed of different nations that throughout this gospel age somehow.
[01:19:05]  Maintain their distinctions.
[01:19:06]  That's the only way you get to the final end game of heaven, nation, tribe, and tongue.
[01:19:10]  You can't have a diverse heaven if everybody just folds in and becomes one blob.
[01:19:17]  So that assumes revelation and the final end game of a diverse heaven, nation, tribe, and tongue assumes that distinctions will be kept and upheld as good things decided by God.
[01:19:29]  Now, all that said, that's natural distinctions.
[01:19:32]  Right now, there are moral distinctions.
[01:19:35]  That I don't believe is.
[01:19:38]  Is etched in the stars and always has to be.
[01:19:40]  That I believe can change.
[01:19:43]  Europe can morally become radically inferior to Zambia morally over time if Zambia continues to bow the knee to Christ and Europe and America continues to reject Christ.
[01:19:58]  So the debt can shuffle in that sense.
[01:20:01]  And out of morality, when a nation changes morally, I do believe that that also affects.
[01:20:08]  Other attributes of humanity as well.
[01:20:11]  We've talked about this before.
[01:20:12]  The gospel affects everything, religion affects everything, including diet.
[01:20:17]  And so that gets into things like epigenetics and all these different ideas that, okay, well, if they bow the knee and you stop being cannibals and you stop eating raw meat, you know, or using cow dung instead of actually eating the cow, looking at you, India, you know, when you make these kinds of changes, does that affect somebody's physical being?
[01:20:34]  Does that affect their health?
[01:20:37]  And over the course of 10, 20, 30 generations, looking at even a millennia, would that affect not just their physical health, but as it's passed down from generation to generation, could that affect even their whole physical body, including their brain?
[01:20:51]  And IQ.
[01:20:53]  I believe that all these kinds of disparities.
[01:20:55]  But here's the deal the Christian ministers who are looking you in the eye right now and saying these disparities don't exist, every young man in the world can pick up their phone and in 15 seconds can see that the average IQ in Haiti is 67.
[01:21:14]  And any Christian minister who denies that will not have any credibility.
[01:21:19]  They won't.
[01:21:20]  Credibility, but it is a sin to God as a manifested reality.
[01:21:24]  You're a liar.

=== Credibility Of Ministers (12:59) ===

[01:21:25]  It's not true.
[01:21:25]  You cannot be a minister of the gospel and be a public liar.
[01:21:29]  Right.
[01:21:31]  You're disqualified from ministry, from lying.
[01:21:34]  You can't be a liar and be a minister of the gospel.
[01:21:38]  So we're simply willing over here with Right Response Ministries and other guys like Ogden and guys like, we're not saying, oh, this is how it is and we like it.
[01:21:50]  And we're also not saying this is how it is and it always will be.
[01:21:53]  We're acknowledging all the different disclaimers that I've given, all the caveats, all these things.
[01:21:59]  But we're also, we want to be one of the very few, and it's sad that it's so few, but we want to be one of the very few ministries that doesn't talk to you like you're stupid.
[01:22:11]  We want to talk to you acknowledging that you probably have a smartphone in 15 seconds of spare time.
[01:22:21]  And if we sit here and lie to your face, it's not going to go well.
[01:22:27]  And all that establishes in your mind is.
[01:22:30]  Joel Webbin can't be trusted.
[01:22:33]  So, all that being said, my point is there are moral disparities.
[01:22:38]  There don't have to be.
[01:22:40]  And I believe, because I'm post millennial, eventually there won't be.
[01:22:44]  Eventually, I believe all the nations will flock to Mount Zion, bow the knee to Jesus Christ, and love God's law and legislate and enact and enforce the law.
[01:22:55]  Which Isaiah 2 talks about nations being drawn, nations, races, peoples, groups.
[01:23:01]  And if they're all drawn to the law because they're They're being saved, and then they start enacting the law, and the law shapes them, it functions as a tutor, it sharpens them, and all the nations will be moral.
[01:23:12]  They will all be moral, and you won't have a disparity between, well, this society based on race is high trust, which high trust is a moral component.
[01:23:23]  This society is high trust, this other society of another race is low trust.
[01:23:29]  Everything, even the tables in a park, have to be chained down to concrete because somebody will pull up a truck and steal them.
[01:23:37]  That's not just, hey, different races are different.
[01:23:40]  No, that's objective.
[01:23:41]  That's one is better, morally better.
[01:23:44]  The other is worse.
[01:23:46]  That doesn't mean each and every individual, but speaking in group dynamics on the whole and using general language, what I'm saying is that not only can that change, but because I'm post millennial, I believe not only can it change, it will.
[01:24:00]  I believe it will change.
[01:24:02]  In the meantime, though, in the meantime, one of the things that drew me to more of the Christian nationalist side of the aisle, getting back to this theonomist, is I have always, I remember even as a kid, I couldn't play with action figures.
[01:24:23]  Other kids in the neighborhood would want to, I couldn't do it because it's not real.
[01:24:27]  Like I understood, I could see the incentive to collecting action figures, but I wanted to build a treehouse, I wanted to jump on the trampoline.
[01:24:37]  I wanted to ride bikes.
[01:24:38]  I wanted to go down to, we lived in a neighborhood that had a river.
[01:24:41]  I wanted to ride bikes down to the river, jump in the river.
[01:24:44]  I remember I wanted to go to the junkyard, local junkyard, and collect big, those big drums that hold air and build a raft and do like a Tom Sawyer thing.
[01:24:57]  I wanted to do things that were, I was not good at pretend.
[01:25:00]  I've never been good at pretending.
[01:25:04]  And I think that's where I struggle sometimes with my Theonomist brothers and sisters.
[01:25:10]  He's like, I've never been good at pretending.
[01:25:13]  And that's part of the appeal with Stephen Wolf.
[01:25:18]  How is it pretending?
[01:25:21]  Stephen Wolf, Ogden, these kinds of guys on the more Christian nationalist side of the aisle, what I was trying to get to is they deal with the world as it is.
[01:25:32]  I see.
[01:25:32]  As it actually is.
[01:25:34]  Not in hypotheticals, not what we wish the world was, but as the world really is.
[01:25:39]  And Stephen Wolf will be the first one to tell you.
[01:25:42]  Like, if you talk to him, like, are you a race essentialist or do you think, do you just think that we should get rid of every person of color?
[01:25:48]  And that, like, he'd be the first to tell you privately or publicly, he'd be like, no.
[01:25:53]  And then you say, well, then what is your prescription?
[01:25:55]  What's your advice?
[01:25:56]  What should we do?
[01:25:57]  And he's like, meritocracy.
[01:25:59]  And then with his definition of Christian nationalism, all the way back to the definitions that Wes shared, he would say, meritocracy and ideally a Christian meritocracy.
[01:26:09]  Right.
[01:26:10]  Because here's the deal.
[01:26:12]  So, if people are saying, well, there's IQ disparities and blah, blah, blah, I acknowledge that.
[01:26:16]  I acknowledge.
[01:26:17]  And again, it's on the whole, not each and every individual.
[01:26:19]  See Thomas Sowell, see Vodipakam, see Clarence.
[01:26:24]  But on the whole, there are disparities.
[01:26:27]  There are moral disparities right now.
[01:26:28]  I don't think that'll always be.
[01:26:29]  There are intellectual disparities.
[01:26:31]  I think that part of that stems from moral.
[01:26:33]  Because, like I was saying earlier, I think that the gospel affects everything.
[01:26:36]  But here's the deal you got to deal with the world as it is today.
[01:26:39]  You got to have a plan.
[01:26:40]  I think sometimes the theonomists, they read Isaiah 2, Isaiah 65, and they say, here's Z.
[01:26:45]  It's like, okay, but we're at A. Give me B. Z's great.
[01:26:51]  Give me B. Stephen Wolf is giving us B.
[01:26:54]  And so what Stephen Wolf would say is no, you don't need to be an all white nation.
[01:26:59]  You don't send every person of color away.
[01:27:02]  What you do is you get back to what we did previously.
[01:27:05]  You get back to a meritocracy.
[01:27:07]  And then what happens?
[01:27:09]  What happens is that, yeah, to quote something I said that blew up in the past, and I'm fine with it blowing up again because it's true.
[01:27:16]  I don't.
[01:27:17]  Care how many people attack me.
[01:27:19]  I'm going to say things that are true.
[01:27:21]  So, meritocracy.
[01:27:23]  A meritocracy will mean you have less black doctors than white doctors.
[01:27:27]  One, because the percentage of black America is less than the percentage of white America.
[01:27:32]  But I think that it might temporarily, for a while, even be less than the percentages.
[01:27:38]  So, if black America is, let's say, 13% and white America is, let's say, 57, 59%, then that's roughly, I don't know, What?
[01:27:50]  There's basically one for every five black people in America?
[01:27:53]  Is that about how it shakes out?
[01:27:55]  I think you might end up seeing one for every seven, one black doctor for every seven white doctors.
[01:28:01]  Well, wait a second.
[01:28:02]  What are you getting at, Joel?
[01:28:04]  You know what I'm getting at.
[01:28:06]  I don't think it'll always be that way.
[01:28:08]  I don't.
[01:28:09]  But it might be that way for now.
[01:28:11]  But here's what you don't do.
[01:28:13]  This is why I get in trouble because I'm not ambiguous.
[01:28:17]  Because ambiguity saves you from controversy, but it doesn't help the people of God.
[01:28:22]  You guys are listening.
[01:28:23]  You want to learn.
[01:28:25]  You're like, what is, I don't know what he's saying.
[01:28:28]  The blim blam.
[01:28:29]  I don't know what that is.
[01:28:30]  I don't know what he's actually saying.
[01:28:32]  What is this person saying?
[01:28:33]  The thing about Joel.
[01:28:35]  You may not like what I say, but you know what I'm saying.
[01:28:38]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:28:40]  I'm clear.
[01:28:41]  This is what I'm saying.
[01:28:43]  If there is a disparity in terms of IQ, the solution is not to say, well, then people of color don't get to be doctors.
[01:28:52]  No, what you say is doctors have to be this good.
[01:28:56]  You must be this tall to ride the ride.
[01:28:59]  You must be this color.
[01:29:01]  No, you must be this smart, this disciplined, this knowledgeable, this skilled.
[01:29:08]  To ride the ride.
[01:29:09]  It's virtuous.
[01:29:10]  Yeah, it's virtuous.
[01:29:11]  Amen.
[01:29:12]  And I think that as it stands today, with a meritocracy in high level positions, politically and vocationally, you will see disparities of people holding those positions today.
[01:29:28]  Over time, though, by holding to truth and not just kowtowing for people's feelings or white guilt or this or that.
[01:29:37]  Most importantly, preaching the gospel and nations flocking to Mount Zion and being changed over generations, I think you'll see less disparities.
[01:29:46]  I think you will.
[01:29:47]  I think you'll still see just natural distinctions, but I think you'll see zero eventually in the end game, zero moral disparities and fewer intellectual disparities.
[01:29:59]  That's my belief, but still cultural distinctions.
[01:30:04]  That's if you want to know Joel Wevin's views on race, there you have it.
[01:30:08]  And here's the deal I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but the last thing I'll say here.
[01:30:12]  And all that means is that Christian nationalism.
[01:30:14]  I think the Christian nationalist guys can have that conversation in a way that theonomists just are unwilling to.
[01:30:21]  And if the Theonomist, Rush Dooney was willing to.
[01:30:23]  Yeah.
[01:30:24]  Yeah.
[01:30:24]  But the modern Theonomist today.
[01:30:25]  He didn't play great with others, to be fair.
[01:30:27]  If anything, that was his one downfall.
[01:30:28]  But he was willing to apply and deal with things as they existed.
[01:30:31]  As they existed.
[01:30:32]  And the Theonomist today are unwilling to have, to talk about what is.
[01:30:38]  They're unwilling to say, okay, but like, okay, there's some great Jews.
[01:30:44]  Praise God.
[01:30:46]  But disproportionately, yeah, this does exist with porn.
[01:30:50]  And so, you know, and so, anyways, so I think that's, if you're wondering, that's part of my gravitation towards Ogden, Isker, Wolf, some of these guys, is they're not just saying we're at A and here's Z. Isaiah 65, leopard and the lamb lying down together, beating, you know, the spears into plowshares, and the nations no longer know war, and lifespans are elongated.
[01:31:15]  And I praise God, I believe all those things.
[01:31:18]  But what I like about the Christian nationalists is they're not just saying today and tomorrow, Isaiah 65.
[01:31:25]  Or sadly, like a lot of theonomists, today is today and 50,000 years from now, we'll get Isaiah 65.
[01:31:32]  But the Christian nationalists actually want to take real, tangible wins today.
[01:31:39]  Today.
[01:31:40]  And I never played with action figures, back to what I was saying.
[01:31:44]  I'm not good at pretending.
[01:31:47]  I've always been more of a realist.
[01:31:49]  And so it appeals to me.
[01:31:51]  And all that back to, you know, there's my position on race.
[01:31:53]  There's my, you know, I give you guys the reason I get in trouble is because I tell you the truth.
[01:31:59]  I tell you what I think in clear, non ambiguous language.
[01:32:04]  But here's the thing that you should know about our ministry, right?
[01:32:07]  Response ministries, and you should know about me.
[01:32:12]  There's nothing else under the surface.
[01:32:15]  So, what you hear from me, I will tell you what I actually think.
[01:32:19]  And that's why I get in trouble.
[01:32:20]  I will say the things that other guys won't say.
[01:32:22]  But here's the deal I'm not winking and nodding, I'll say what I actually think.
[01:32:28]  And anything beyond what I've said, if I thought it, I'd say that too.
[01:32:34]  So, what you hear is what you get.
[01:32:38]  So, I don't go any further than what you've heard me publicly say.
[01:32:42]  So, you can say, well, I think that Joel really, under the surface, deep down, he's super anti Semitic and he wishes that all the Jews would die.
[01:32:51]  But no, if I thought that, I would say it.
[01:32:56]  I can vouch for this.
[01:32:57]  We talk all the time, and it's never like, We'll say it there and then we'll get here.
[01:33:00]  I'm like, oh, we got to button up and not like, right?
[01:33:02]  We talk about it, we disagree, and then we like movies that they go to movies.
[01:33:06]  And before, during the previews, we're always talking.
[01:33:08]  And it's like, people in the theater get mad at us and they get mad at us then.
[01:33:11]  But me and Wes will be talking before a movie, and I'll be telling him, like, yeah, I think I'm going to say this on the podcast.
[01:33:16]  And this is usually how the conversation goes.
[01:33:18]  I'll say, I think I'm going to say this this week.
[01:33:20]  And Wes will say, probably shouldn't.
[01:33:22]  And then I'll say, I think I will.
[01:33:23]  And then I end up saying it, you know, and it's exactly what we discussed offline.
[01:33:28]  Like, this is why we ended up, you know, This is why the recorded Zoom call with me and the member in our church and Tobias and his elders, this is why it exonerated me.
[01:33:44]  I don't mind being recorded.
[01:33:46]  I actually didn't record it.
[01:33:48]  My member did, and I wasn't even sure about that.
[01:33:53]  But these things, the reason I don't get in trouble is because this is who I am.
[01:34:00]  You can bug me or my house, you know, whatever, and you'll hear.
[01:34:05]  You'll just end up hearing an extra episode of Right Response Ministries.
[01:34:08]  You know, like it'll be the same kind of content.
[01:34:10]  This is how I talk with my wife.
[01:34:11]  This is how I talk with my friends.
[01:34:15]  This is what I believe.
[01:34:15]  And so, anyways, all that being said, that yeah, Christian nationalism has appealed to me more and more because I want to win.
[01:34:22]  I want to make a difference.

=== Meritocracy And Heritage (03:25) ===

[01:34:25]  I don't know how to get from A to Z.
[01:34:27]  So, I need someone who's going to give me B.
[01:34:30]  I think a meritocracy is the way to do it.
[01:34:32]  I think, particularly, a Christian meritocracy, a society, a nation.
[01:34:38]  That morally and also culturally, with customs and celebrations and holidays and all these things, favors an Anglo Protestant tradition.
[01:34:49]  And for whatever reason, in America, we have always been the out group.
[01:34:53]  Every other nation.
[01:34:54]  Right.
[01:34:55]  Anglos of their own nation.
[01:34:56]  Yes, of our own nation.
[01:34:58]  Every other nation.
[01:34:59]  Japan, if you go visit Japan, you're the out group.
[01:35:03]  Japanese are the in group.
[01:35:04]  Yeah.
[01:35:05]  Right.
[01:35:06]  If you go visit Uganda, every other nation.
[01:35:09]  The majority of people there is the in group.
[01:35:12]  We are the only people who take the majority population of our nation and say, You're the out group.
[01:35:19]  And everybody else will, we will give favors to them.
[01:35:23]  It actually, it actually been in America.
[01:35:26]  That's what was so wrong with wokeness.
[01:35:27]  It was not only was it a lie, it was the opposite of the truth.
[01:35:31]  It tried to say that you somehow benefited by being white in America, that you had privilege, when it is actually the opposite, the direct opposite of the truth.
[01:35:41]  In America, You get more benefits by being anything in everything other than Anglo Protestant.
[01:35:49]  Right.
[01:35:50]  Yeah.
[01:35:51]  You have the least benefits, the least rewards, the least recognition by being a white Christian.
[01:35:59]  On average, that is our besetting sin a lack of love for our own.
[01:36:03]  And that's why you see on Twitter, and it's like, I don't understand why they're always arguing about it.
[01:36:07]  That's why you're going to see us continue to talk about the order of morals, the order of loves, love for your own.
[01:36:19]  That's why you saw me back with the abolitionist arguments, you know, with voting for Trump.
[01:36:24]  I said, I love my already born children more than my enemies' unborn children.
[01:36:30]  I love my people.
[01:36:32]  I love my people because I'm a Christian.
[01:36:36]  Because I'm a Christian.
[01:36:37]  And loving your people does not require you to hate those who are not your people.
[01:36:41]  I do not hate Jews.
[01:36:43]  I do not hate Muslims.
[01:36:46]  I do not hate atheists.
[01:36:48]  I hate the wicked, but that is groups.
[01:36:50]  It's not, I hate every single one of these.
[01:36:52]  Of course.
[01:36:52]  We're supposed to have biblical hate for the wicked, the evil.
[01:36:55]  Right.
[01:36:55]  And I want all these people to convert to Christianity.
[01:36:59]  And those who convert and have already been here for a while and not just 15 minutes, then you can stay.
[01:37:06]  And those who do not convert, but they have a heritage, a lineage, and have been here for a while, but they don't convert, but they're willing to recognize that this is an Anglo Protestant nation, a Christian nation, and play by those rules and don't expect any favors, then you also can stay.
[01:37:24]  But any who want to stay and get special privileges, And be favored while, meanwhile, actively trying to destroy our nation and use us as a tax farm to get billions to Ukraine or billions to Israel or flood everybody's phone with pornography, or that like, then, yeah, you can get the hell out of our country.

=== Special Privileges Expelled (15:19) ===

[01:37:50]  Amen.
[01:37:51]  Get out.
[01:37:52]  You know, you don't belong here.
[01:37:54]  So, yeah, that's, I don't know if that's theonomy or Christian nationalism or both.
[01:37:59]  I don't, but whatever that is, that's my position.
[01:38:02]  That's the next step.
[01:38:03]  All right, let's hit our last commercial break.
[01:38:04]  I saw a great question on meritocracy, so we'll hit that.
[01:38:06]  Maybe hit any burning questions in the chat.
[01:38:08]  That'll be it.
[01:38:09]  All right.
[01:38:11]  All right, that's it, guys.
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[01:40:34]  All right, welcome back.
[01:40:40]  We had some good questions.
[01:40:41]  I'm going to start with this one.
[01:40:43]  This is from Terry, if you could pull it up, Nate.
[01:40:46]  Scott Terry.
[01:40:46]  Scott Terry.
[01:40:47]  Can a meritocracy be Christian?
[01:40:49]  And he followed up.
[01:40:51]  My parents, for example, may not be the best parents.
[01:40:53]  I don't have the most merit, but I love them anyway.
[01:40:56]  So, what is the extent of the range of meritocracy?
[01:40:59]  We're talking in every single thing.
[01:41:01]  I thought about this, and that's where natural affection, I think, is helpful.
[01:41:04]  Like your kids, objectively speaking, I love you, love your kids, but whoever you are, your kids objectively are not perhaps the best students, the best athletes.
[01:41:13]  Like we talk about viewing reality as it is.
[01:41:16]  It's objectively true.
[01:41:17]  My son is not the tallest.
[01:41:19]  But because he's tied to me and he's my son and I love him, it's not a question of merit in that private relationship.
[01:41:26]  Same with my town.
[01:41:27]  I love Georgetown.
[01:41:28]  Is it literally the best town in the United States?
[01:41:32]  It is debatable.
[01:41:34]  It is pretty awesome.
[01:41:35]  Probably not.
[01:41:37]  We have a Confederate statue at the courthouse.
[01:41:40]  That is true.
[01:41:40]  Yes.
[01:41:41]  It looks like a Hallmark movie downtown.
[01:41:43]  If you're thinking of moving to Georgetown, it's quaint.
[01:41:46]  It's quaint.
[01:41:49]  Tens of thousands of people from moving here.
[01:41:51]  Not even immigration, just generally, people are flocking to Georgetown.
[01:41:54]  A couple years ago, because that's an awesome town.
[01:41:56]  Town in America, right?
[01:41:58]  But all that being said, natural affections, those are not meritorious.
[01:42:02]  Yeah, when the kid buys the mug for his dad that says world's greatest dad, he's not lying.
[01:42:07]  There's a natural affection there.
[01:42:09]  But in public, I think the best distinction would be public distinctions.
[01:42:12]  You don't get to be mayor because you're from a discriminated class, because you're Native American, you used to live in this land.
[01:42:18]  The most qualified and virtuous person should be mayor.
[01:42:22]  Pastor, same thing.
[01:42:23]  It's not we hand out participation trophies.
[01:42:25]  Like he tried really hard at preaching.
[01:42:26]  He's got a lot of heart.
[01:42:27]  No, the most qualified godly man should be a pastor, should be the lead pastor, senior pastor, whatever terminology you want to use in that public position, the church.
[01:42:36]  So, privately with your family and natural relationships, that's not where you apply the meritocracy.
[01:42:40]  I love my most talented kid the most.
[01:42:42]  But publicly in jobs, in positions of office, in the state, in judges, that's where you say.
[01:42:49]  That's what I was talking about.
[01:42:50]  And that's why I use doctors as an example.
[01:42:52]  Yep.
[01:42:52]  Exactly.
[01:42:53]  We moved away from a meritocracy.
[01:42:55]  I think if we move.
[01:42:56]  And the only reason I was saying is because I've heard some guys say that, like, well, the solution is genetics, it's race for vocation, for positions.
[01:43:05]  Right.
[01:43:06]  And I would just say, no, the solution is a meritocracy.
[01:43:09]  Well, that's the exact opposite.
[01:43:10]  May the best.
[01:43:11]  It's just going the opposite.
[01:43:12]  Right now, it is race.
[01:43:13]  Red and yellow, black and white.
[01:43:15]  Right now, it is race.
[01:43:15]  They're precious in the sight.
[01:43:17]  Like, if you're an Indian doctor and you're good, great.
[01:43:21]  Yeah.
[01:43:22]  Great.
[01:43:22]  But that said, also, in terms of, Ethnicity or race, you can be Indian.
[01:43:31]  But you need to, if you live here in America and you're smart and gifted, be a doctor.
[01:43:37]  Great.
[01:43:39]  But also, you should convert to Christianity and you should love America.
[01:43:45]  Yep.
[01:43:46]  And name your kids American names.
[01:43:47]  And name your kids American names.
[01:43:50]  Like that whole clip with the, you know, given the choice between a white and a black doctor, my whole point in that was that I would choose a white doctor if both were complete strangers, if I didn't know that.
[01:44:00]  If you had no other.
[01:44:01]  If I hadn't, yeah.
[01:44:02]  If I knew the black guy, like he was a member of my church and I knew that, like, I knew his scores on his SATs and how he did in med school and all that kind of stuff.
[01:44:09]  There's a guy here in Georgia.
[01:44:10]  Down, he goes to an Anglican church that we've met before.
[01:44:12]  A black man, yeah, incredible.
[01:44:13]  I would go and see him, sharp dude, absolutely.
[01:44:15]  Yep, absolutely.
[01:44:16]  So, I wasn't talking about him, but I'm saying if there's two strangers, one is a white guy I don't know from Adam, and one is a black guy I don't know from Adam, I'm going to choose the white guy.
[01:44:24]  And here's my point because we as a country have moved away from a meritocracy, right?
[01:44:29]  With a meritocracy, you don't actually have to have that debate, you wouldn't have to have that debate if we still had a meritocracy.
[01:44:37]  That's my point.
[01:44:38]  So, a meritocracy that's you know, when you're thinking A to Z. That's a good A to B. That's a good B.
[01:44:44]  It's all right.
[01:44:44]  First, let's reestablish a meritocracy.
[01:44:47]  Next, what Stephen Wolfe is saying, let's make it a Christian meritocracy.
[01:44:51]  And all I mean by that, a Christian meritocracy, is just adding the Christian component to the meritocracy.
[01:44:57]  So you wouldn't necessarily add that for every single vocation under the sun.
[01:45:01]  It wouldn't be like, hey, we need him to be a gifted plumber and has he memorized the book of Matthew?
[01:45:06]  Right.
[01:45:07]  But what I am saying is, especially for public positions of office, governmental office, Then, yes, they need to be made the best man win in terms of merit and skill and knowledge and intellect.
[01:45:22]  And also, that dude needs to be a Christian.
[01:45:26]  And in terms of a Christian meritocracy, made the best Christian win.
[01:45:30]  A guy who's been a Christian for two weeks should lose to the guy who's been a Christian and his dad and his grandpa.
[01:45:37]  That's what I'm saying by a Christian meritocracy.
[01:45:39]  I was in pre med for a little bit in college, really.
[01:45:41]  Like, should I go to medical school?
[01:45:43]  And my goodness, the people of other races, the The benefit and the leg up they got compared to white men.
[01:45:51]  Compared to white men, I mean, as a white man, you practically had to have landed on the moon to have a shot, unlike an average school.
[01:45:57]  But I mean, there's people with bad MCAT scores, bad grades, which all those are proxies for intellectual capacity.
[01:46:05]  With terrible grades, they were being welcomed to the top medical schools.
[01:46:09]  And they did study, obviously, and everything like that.
[01:46:11]  But just the disparity was huge.
[01:46:13]  We completely inverted it.
[01:46:16]  There's another question.
[01:46:17]  This one was on Theonomist.
[01:46:19]  I don't know if it was their favorite.
[01:46:20]  Who said it?
[01:46:21]  Yeah.
[01:46:24]  It's all right, Nate.
[01:46:25]  The question basically was we talk about some of the theonomists.
[01:46:27]  You just passed a striker.
[01:46:29]  And he's been posting a lot.
[01:46:30]  That are, they're not willing to go there.
[01:46:33]  Who are the names?
[01:46:34]  Who are there?
[01:46:34]  Oh, it is.
[01:46:35]  Like bad theonomists.
[01:46:36]  I think you just passed it.
[01:46:37]  So when you say, like, some of my theonomists, I can't get behind.
[01:46:42]  They don't have good answers to these questions.
[01:46:43]  They're living in the world.
[01:46:44]  Who are we talking about?
[01:46:45]  Yeah.
[01:46:45]  Yeah.
[01:46:46]  Okay.
[01:46:46]  So Stryker, he says, I'm just wondering who these guys are that Joel is describing, because it sounds like a bunch of boomers that aren't actually theonomists, but.
[01:46:55]  I don't know.
[01:46:57]  John Andrew Reasoner, I'll give one.
[01:46:59]  John Andrew Reasoner would be an example of a bad theonomist.
[01:47:03]  Yep.
[01:47:03]  Theonomist and committed to it, but his application of it here and now and the current situation we've talked about with the different peoples in America.
[01:47:11]  Terrible.
[01:47:13]  I could say it like this if you're a theonomist and you find yourself retweeting Kevin Young.
[01:47:23]  Oh, yeah.
[01:47:23]  Kevin D. Young.
[01:47:24]  Kevin Young.
[01:47:25]  Kevin Young, who's a heretic, gay affirming.
[01:47:27]  Yep.
[01:47:29]  So, if you find yourself as a theonomist retweeting Kevin Young positively, just because he said something negative about Stephen Wolf, and you can't help yourself but hate Stephen Wolf, and so you'd rather side with a guy who affirms sodomites than Stephen Wolf, then you might be a bad theonomist.
[01:47:49]  If you're that same theonomist and you also find yourself retweeting Mike Cosper, or you find yourself siding with Mike Pence and saying that JD Vance is a shame.
[01:48:02]  Then you're a bad theonomist.
[01:48:03]  And could the same guy be so dumb as to do all three of those examples that I just gave?
[01:48:09]  Yes, his name is David Bonson.
[01:48:12]  So then why does he, like, why is he a big name?
[01:48:17]  Well, one, because his dad was great and the apple sadly fell far from the tree.
[01:48:22]  And two, he's rich.
[01:48:25]  Yeah.
[01:48:27]  But we don't get money from David Bonson, so I can say that.
[01:48:31]  Yeah.
[01:48:32]  Next week, you see a Bonson Group ad.
[01:48:33]  The content might be a little different.
[01:48:35]  There's P. Andrew Sandlin counter signals being physically fit, caring for your body a lot.
[01:48:41]  Yeah.
[01:48:41]  A lot.
[01:48:41]  Which is been a hard one for me because I, there was some stuff earlier as I was moving out of Dispy, whatever, that was super helpful from him just personally.
[01:48:51]  And he advocates for, if not saying like he'd be happy for his daughter to serve as a police officer, most certainly saying that women could perfectly fit in that role.
[01:48:58]  And that is a great example of not.
[01:49:00]  She does serve as a police officer.
[01:49:02]  It's a great example of not being able to see what's right in front of your eyes.
[01:49:06]  God designed men for force and enforcement and protection.
[01:49:10]  He did not design women for that.
[01:49:12]  Scripture's clear about that.
[01:49:13]  Nature's clear about that.
[01:49:14]  And it's only possible if you take both eyes and you cover them, you could ever come to the conclusion that it's a perfectly valid profession for a woman full time.
[01:49:22]  Just be carrying a gun, enforcing the law.
[01:49:25]  Yeah.
[01:49:25]  So that would be another example.
[01:49:28]  People asked about David Reese, if you're going after David Reese or that.
[01:49:30]  No.
[01:49:31]  I love David Reese.
[01:49:32]  And one of the reasons I love David Reese. Is um, and since I mentioned this about David Bonson, just in the spirit of being forthright and honest, David Reese, you know, I said, uh, David Bonson doesn't support our ministry.
[01:49:45]  Um, David Reese does, he does, he's one of our sponsors on our uh, you guys have seen his ads, Reese Fun and uh, Armored Republic, and so uh, he's he has been generous and he does support our ministry.
[01:49:57]  Um, but it's not just that.
[01:49:59]  If it was just that, um, but he was you know, had the same takes as David Bonson, then it just wouldn't work.
[01:50:08]  And we just have to say no and trust the Lord that He provides financially through another source.
[01:50:14]  But the reason why I love David Reese and we're becoming good friends is because he, in my experience, has been the most humble and honest of any of the theonomists that I've met or conversed with.
[01:50:32]  That whether it's race, like I had a phone call with him last week and I said, Hey, you should know.
[01:50:39]  You've seen, since you've partnered with me, I've been in like 17 controversies in the last month.
[01:50:47]  And with each one, so like with the whole thing about the Jews, when Tobias dropped his video on Eschatology Matters, and praise God that Eschatology Matters, when they saw the Zoom call and listened to that, they took it down and realized that it was filled with slanders and lies.
[01:51:05]  And they did the right thing.
[01:51:07]  But that was a big ordeal, and a lot of people were trying to cancel me.
[01:51:10]  And David Reese could have easily.
[01:51:13]  I mean, most guys would just click into self preservation mode.
[01:51:18]  That's what you do.
[01:51:19]  Like, why commit suicide, public suicide?
[01:51:23]  You know, like just, you know, Joel is a landmine and I'm just going to back away, you know.
[01:51:30]  But he didn't.
[01:51:31]  He just, he did what nobody else has done.
[01:51:34]  Like he called me.
[01:51:37]  He called me.
[01:51:39]  That's not fair.
[01:51:40]  I shouldn't say nobody else has done.
[01:51:42]  James White did eventually call me and we had a good conversation.
[01:51:48]  And I appreciate that.
[01:51:49]  We still disagree.
[01:51:50]  There's still probably going to be some beef here and there, back and forth.
[01:51:54]  I wish there wasn't.
[01:51:55]  I love James White, but he did actually reach out to me.
[01:51:58]  He did call me.
[01:51:59]  It was a couple weeks after the fact.
[01:52:01]  I wish it had been sooner, but he did.
[01:52:03]  And he was kind.
[01:52:05]  He was reasonable.
[01:52:06]  I'd like to see some more things publicly, but he was kind.
[01:52:10]  And I appreciate that.
[01:52:12]  Doug Wilson, I called him, and he was kind.
[01:52:16]  So there were two guys that there were phone calls with Doug Wilson and James White.
[01:52:21]  Still some differences and disagreements, but they were both kind.
[01:52:31]  But David, James White and Doug make a little bit more sense because they shared the Tobias video.
[01:52:37]  I would argue there was some obligation, you know, and preferably a call maybe before sharing the video.
[01:52:46]  But in the case of David Reese, he didn't share the video.
[01:52:52]  He didn't owe me, he didn't mess up, he didn't sin against me.
[01:52:56]  And he's giving our ministry money to promote the Reese Fund and Armored Republic.
[01:53:03]  And so he could have just backed out.
[01:53:05]  Like, we benefit more with this relationship.

=== Avoiding Moral Compromise (05:36) ===

[01:53:09]  I would argue we benefit more from David Reese than he benefits from us.
[01:53:13]  I want it to be a symbiotic, you know, mutual.
[01:53:16]  So I'm looking for ways to give as much benefit as I can to that good Christian man as he deserves.
[01:53:25]  And so I'm working on that because I want it to be a mutual relationship.
[01:53:28]  And I don't want, because sometimes guys like David Reese, I'll be honest, He probably would never say this because he's a good man.
[01:53:38]  But I bet you, if I had to guess, I bet you most of his relationships, it's people who take more than they give to him.
[01:53:45]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:53:45]  When you're at that position, 100%.
[01:53:48]  He's rich, he's successful, he's smart, and he's generous.
[01:53:53]  And I bet he gets taken advantage of.
[01:53:56]  And I'd like for our ministry not to be a ministry that takes advantage of David Reese.
[01:54:00]  But all that being said, my point is so David Reese is an example on the positive side of the aisle that I think very highly of.
[01:54:08]  We do have some differences, but we have a lot in common.
[01:54:11]  And, but so much of it, I like, and this is why, and I know it's like it gets old.
[01:54:17]  It's like post war consensus, your made up word, you know, whatever.
[01:54:21]  Like, I don't know how to describe it because it's not just on the basis of the doctrinal differences.
[01:54:30]  Right.
[01:54:31]  There's something else going on there.
[01:54:34]  There really is.
[01:54:35]  And I don't know how exactly to make it tangible and how to describe it, but there's an ethos, there's a vibe.
[01:54:42]  There's a sentiment.
[01:54:45]  It's not just theological, it's political and cultural and psychological.
[01:54:52]  I think it's generational.
[01:54:54]  I think that's a big part.
[01:54:55]  I think it's a generational divide because at the end of the day, it's not just like, well, the actual tenets of the theological tenets of theonomy are wholly incompatible with Christian nationalism.
[01:55:11]  It's really, that's not what it is.
[01:55:14]  And I think that's why, on the face of it, just looking at it theologically, that's why Cannon was perfectly comfortable publishing Stephen Wolfe's book.
[01:55:21]  But then, as time goes on, now we're two years in, it feels like this big divide.
[01:55:25]  And I don't think it's the substantive tenets of the theological differences.
[01:55:31]  I think it's more than that.
[01:55:32]  It's this intangible, whether you call it the post war consensus or whatever.
[01:55:37]  But David Reese doesn't have it.
[01:55:40]  He doesn't have it as much.
[01:55:41]  Yes, he is a theonomist.
[01:55:42]  And sometimes I think, like many theonomists, he's overly idealist, more idealistic than I would be willing to be.
[01:55:48]  I'm probably more of a realist, and he's more of an idealist.
[01:55:52]  And when we get, when it comes to, when it, you know, the rubber meets the road and me and him are arguing about something charitably as friends, but we're arguing about, I remember there was one moment we were sitting around a fire at the Ogden conference and he was saying, well, I think this could happen and this can happen.
[01:56:07]  And I remember I objected and I said, David, but from a practical standpoint, what would be the incentive?
[01:56:13]  I don't think people, I think you may be right, but I don't think you're going to be able to get enough people on your side in order practically to get the victory, to get the substantial win that you need to get in order for that idea to work.
[01:56:25]  I said, like, what is going to win people over?
[01:56:29]  And I remember his answer.
[01:56:30]  And a lot of people, you know, it would be a Jesus juke.
[01:56:32]  With David, I don't think it's a Jesus juke.
[01:56:34]  I think I genuinely believe he means it.
[01:56:36]  And he looked at me and he, like, leaned forward in his chair and he said, Joel, what's going to incentivize them is the spirit of God that moves the hearts of men to virtue.
[01:56:47]  And I was just like, I was like, well, damn.
[01:56:50]  That's convicting.
[01:56:52]  I can't argue with you.
[01:56:53]  That falls in line with my theory.
[01:56:55]  And my theory is.
[01:56:59]  Theonomists, for a long time, it's kind of like the Republican Party.
[01:57:02]  I'm not saying they're like the Republicans.
[01:57:04]  I'm telling a side story to illustrate the point.
[01:57:06]  When Newt Gingrich came in as a young congressman, he asked the Republican minority leader, he said, What's the plan for us to take over and get power?
[01:57:21]  And the minority leader said to him, There is no plan.
[01:57:24]  We're the minority and we're pretty happy doing that.
[01:57:26]  And we just give them some concessions.
[01:57:28]  They throw us some concessions.
[01:57:30]  And he, from that Now, whatever you think of Newt Gingrich, he decided from that point on, I'm taking over the Republican Party and we're going to win.
[01:57:36]  And you know what?
[01:57:36]  They did have some victories under his leadership.
[01:57:38]  The point is, I think that there's a sentiment where theonomists have had to propose ideals from the Bible that had no chance of getting traction in the practical world, in the world that they lived in, that you kind of resign yourself to, well, this is just an idea out there.
[01:57:57]  And I think the Christian nationalists are willing to say, and maybe to their detriment, maybe not, this goes to the abolition.
[01:58:04]  Versus non abolition argument, we are willing to deal with reality.
[01:58:07]  And reality means maybe not having the ideal situation right away, but we're willing to work towards that as a step towards another one.
[01:58:14]  And part of it is we're willing to deal with reality, but the criticism is dealing with reality means making perceived or real compromises on the ultimate good to make an advance in that direction.
[01:58:26]  Right.
[01:58:27]  That's well said.
[01:58:28]  If you're training for a marathon, imagine you hurt yourself.
[01:58:31]  You have to do surgery, you have to take eight weeks off.
[01:58:33]  You could think, like, wait, this is so counterproductive.
[01:58:35]  Eight weeks off the training, I'm preparing to run this thing.
[01:58:38]  I can't take that time off.
[01:58:39]  I need to be out there.
[01:58:40]  But you can have temporary setbacks to achieve a long term goal.
[01:58:44]  And it's not the same as a moral compromise.

=== Honoring Fathers As Americans (02:27) ===

[01:58:46]  It's not the same as I'll cheat on my wife just once.
[01:58:48]  That's moral and that's a compromise and that's off limits.
[01:58:51]  But politics is the art of the possible.
[01:58:53]  What's the goal?
[01:58:54]  How do I practically functionally get there?
[01:58:56]  And does it take going the long way around on this one?
[01:58:58]  Does it take a setback here?
[01:59:00]  That's the difference.
[01:59:01]  Well said.
[01:59:02]  Were there any other questions that we wanted to get to?
[01:59:08]  Oh.
[01:59:09]  I answered someone.
[01:59:11]  I just actually messaged someone an answer to this the other day.
[01:59:14]  Actually, they were Slavic and they asked about this.
[01:59:16]  I think the question was in the last week's chat, too.
[01:59:18]  Yes, that's who I messaged.
[01:59:19]  Yeah.
[01:59:20]  I'm an American with a Slavic heritage, and I love both America and the land of my grandparents.
[01:59:24]  I've been wondering about how I can honor my fathers and be an American first.
[01:59:27]  Any pointers?
[01:59:29]  And probably the tension is how do I, you know, the language, the heritage, the customs, the habits, the familiarity that I have with my parents, my grandparents, how do I then bridge that?
[01:59:37]  And I think what you do is you decide that as far as it goes, honoring your parents, absolutely attend any type of dinner, do any type of custom that honors them and they agree with.
[01:59:47]  But then in your own home, as you're going forward, making it distinctly American.
[01:59:51]  So in your home, maybe.
[01:59:52]  The only language spoken is English.
[01:59:54]  You could teach your children maybe, maybe you're bilingual, you know a certain language, you know Spanish, you could teach it to them, they could continue it.
[02:00:01]  But you make the conscious choice and say, well, no, actually, we're American and we speak English, not forcing on your parents, not telling them, not going to speak this language around here, we only want to hear this.
[02:00:11]  But saying at this point, as far as I'm concerned and what I'm passing down to the next generation, it's going to be distinctly American.
[02:00:16]  It's going to be the language, it's going to be the holidays, it's going to be the values, it's going to be the vacations.
[02:00:21]  Instead of vacationing back to Maybe this land that we came from, we vacation to another part of the United States.
[02:00:27]  Or in 2025, you go to Iowa and the great American Fair, making the choice not necessarily impressing on your parents and dishonoring them because they love their land and they love their heritage.
[02:00:36]  Not dishonoring them, but at the same time, not continuing and making a future generation kind of make that break and really commit to assimilating.
[02:00:43]  I would tell esteeming stories of your parents, things that make your children's grandparents look honorable, and tell stories about how they were honorable and how they, you know, maybe part of their story was they.
[02:00:57]  Put money aside or work extra hard so that the move could be made for a lady.
[02:01:01]  You honor the things that you can honor.
[02:01:04]  And they're all true.
[02:01:05]  Praise God for it.
[02:01:06]  Real quick, Cameron Stevenson said, Thanks, Stryker.
[02:01:11]  They were going back and forth in the chat.

=== Natural Law Ambiguity (03:26) ===

[02:01:13]  I thought Joel was more of a specific, I think he was a special revelation guy than a natural law guy.
[02:01:20]  At least that's what I heard him saying back in 2021.
[02:01:23]  That's true.
[02:01:25]  I guess his position has shifted a bit.
[02:01:27]  So, I would say on that, like, that's why I still am willing to wear the moniker of General Equity Theonomist.
[02:01:34]  Yeah, I think wherever scripture speaks, then you go with scripture.
[02:01:39]  So, that hasn't changed for me, Cameron Stevenson.
[02:01:42]  That's a good question.
[02:01:45]  I'm always going to side with special revelation wherever the Bible speaks clearly.
[02:01:51]  You know, I've used, like, the analogy, like, I would rather use Exodus 20 than, you know, the migration of certain, you know, patterns of deer.
[02:02:00]  Like, I, you know, like, and Sabbath laws, yeah.
[02:02:03]  Like, and one of the things to consider when it comes to natural revelation natural revelation is God speaking, um, but the Bible is infallible, and um, and natural revelation you have to remember that nature itself is under a curse, so nature, um, is not totally destroyed by sin, um, it still remains intact in the same way that human beings, a vestige of if it was totally destroyed, then humans would no longer maintain the image of God, the Imago Dei.
[02:02:32]  The reason why.
[02:02:33]  The image of God, theologically speaking, we would say it's been tarnished by sin, but a vestige of the image of God remains intact, even for all people, even for the unregenerate.
[02:02:44]  So every time a child is knit together by God in their mother's womb, they bear the image of God from the womb.
[02:02:52]  And so the image of God remains despite the fall, despite living in a post lapsarian world.
[02:03:00]  So nature does still speak true things about God and about.
[02:03:04]  The world that he's made, and about human nature, and about God's design and purpose for human beings, and how to flourish, and all those things.
[02:03:13]  But nature, it speaks truthfully.
[02:03:20]  But there is sometimes both an ambiguity that exists within natural revelation.
[02:03:28]  And that's not to say that we hold to the perspicuity of Scripture, which means clarity.
[02:03:32]  Not all Scripture, we believe Scripture is sufficiently clear.
[02:03:36]  Not all passages of Scripture are equally clear.
[02:03:40]  So there are some passages of Scripture that are more difficult to understand.
[02:03:43]  But even the most difficult passages of Scripture, when it comes to perspicuity, And understanding them and interpreting them rightly, I think, are still maintain more clarity than natural revelation as a whole.
[02:03:55]  So, natural revelation speaks truthfully about God, even though nature itself is under a curse.
[02:04:01]  But I don't believe it speaks with the same degree of clarity as special revelation.
[02:04:05]  And because of the curse of sin, there are certain points and certain moments and certain aspects of nature that can steer us.
[02:04:13]  Man's reason, unregenerated, can steer us in the wrong direction.
[02:04:17]  So, as a general equity theonomist, I'm always going to prefer special revelation to natural revelation.
[02:04:23]  But my point in being more sympathetic towards natural law and embracing natural law, probably to a larger degree than I had in the past, is simply coming to the point and seeing that within special revelation, there are certain things that remain unsaid.

=== Theonomist Idealism Limits (06:36) ===

[02:04:39]  So, like immigration, for instance, I believe from special revelation, we can ascertain that a Christian nation should require a Christian profession.
[02:04:49]  It should require that the people actually want to be, they're Christian, they want to be American, they want to hold, you know, your people shall be my people, your God, my God.
[02:05:00]  I'm going to love Yahweh and I'm also going to love Israel.
[02:05:03]  I'm saying goodbye to false pagan gods, I'm not bringing them with me, but I'm also saying goodbye to my people, the Moabites, and I'm actually going to be an Israelite.
[02:05:14]  And my grandchildren will experience the full benefits of having assimilated over generations of being full Israelites.
[02:05:20]  That's, I'm thinking of Ruth.
[02:05:22]  So, Christian profession would be necessary for immigration, desiring to actually hold to America's history and its customs and its culture and its values.
[02:05:31]  Wanting to be an American would be necessary for immigrating here.
[02:05:35]  Doing it legally, going through legal channels, that would be necessary.
[02:05:40]  Abolishing within a theonomic concession and looking at special revelation, you can make an argument for abolishing the welfare state.
[02:05:46]  And so that would get rid of financial incentives of we want to just free money and a handout.
[02:05:51]  So you can do all those things.
[02:05:53]  But here's the deal people don't just move to America because they want free money.
[02:05:59]  It is entirely possible that if America really became the full ideal Christian nation that it could be, and that I believe eventually it will be, what if in the nations flocking to Mount Zion, all the nations being saved in this great post millennial hope, what if America beats the rest of the nations by a thousand years?
[02:06:16]  And America doesn't have welfare anymore, but what it does have as a Christian nation is safety.
[02:06:22]  It has safety, much lower levels of crime.
[02:06:25]  And so you don't come and get a free check, but what you do get is economic opportunity.
[02:06:29]  For a fair wage and safety from mobs and gangs and violence and war and all these things, well, it would still be appealing.
[02:06:36]  So, then what happens if America Christianizes a thousand years before all the other nations on the planet?
[02:06:41]  And what happens in that conception, which is possible, if 4 billion people, half the planet, wants to move to America and they make a Christian profession and they're willing to go through legal channels and they're willing to get a job and try to work hard and they want to start loving apple pie and George Washington and the heritage and forsaking their people?
[02:06:59]  Your people will now be my people, your God, my God.
[02:07:02]  But 4 billion people want to do it.
[02:07:04]  The theonomist doesn't have a mechanism to say no.
[02:07:07]  The natural law guy can say, No, nature just doesn't allow for 4 billion people to immigrate to one country.
[02:07:14]  And the Bible doesn't speak to that one way or the other.
[02:07:18]  The Bible does speak to, Well, you need to, if you're going to be in Israel, no false gods.
[02:07:24]  So you need to be a Christian and you need to come legally.
[02:07:26]  The Bible speaks to all that.
[02:07:28]  And you need to work hard and all those kinds of things and not get a handout, not get welfare.
[02:07:32]  The Bible does speak to all those things.
[02:07:34]  And it's true that by getting rid of the welfare state and requiring a Christian profession, that would mitigate the numbers.
[02:07:39]  But if America, on the other hand, I think it would also bolster the numbers of people who want to come in because it would be safe.
[02:07:46]  There's less crime and it would flourish economically.
[02:07:49]  We would be rich and safe.
[02:07:51]  Rich and safe are always, those are going to be two powerful incentives, always throughout all of time, for other people to want in.
[02:07:58]  It's like you don't get free money, but you can work hard and get a job and make 10 times what you're making there.
[02:08:03]  And nobody's going to steal it from you.
[02:08:06]  And there's not violence and mobs.
[02:08:07]  And that is going to be incentivizing.
[02:08:11]  To the whole world.
[02:08:12]  So you're never going to get rid of those things.
[02:08:15]  I think the theonomist sometimes is overly idealistic and wants to say, if we had these things, then that would solve all of our immigration problems.
[02:08:23]  I don't think it would.
[02:08:24]  I actually think that welfare, initially on the front end, less people would want to come here.
[02:08:31]  On the back end, over time, America, by doing righteous things, would flourish and you'd actually even have more people want to come to America.
[02:08:38]  And you can't have 4 billion people come.
[02:08:40]  You just can't.
[02:08:41]  You have to be able to say no.
[02:08:43]  And theonomists have yet to give me.
[02:08:46]  A chapter and verse for how I can say no.
[02:08:49]  But I know from nature and reason, you have to be able to say no.
[02:08:56]  So that to me is not, so now I'm a natural law guy, not a general equity guy.
[02:08:59]  No, general equity doesn't speak to it one way or the other.
[02:09:02]  So I'm a guy who's always going to side with special revelation when special revelation speaks to something.
[02:09:07]  And when it doesn't, I'm going to appeal to nature and reason.
[02:09:10]  And to be fair to the natural law guys that we're talking about, we're not talking 1700s enlightenment and natural law.
[02:09:15]  I mean, Stephen Wolfe himself.
[02:09:17]  Has a whole section on Sabbath laws and blasphemy laws.
[02:09:21]  They're not like the Bible has no.
[02:09:24]  The founders of America and the common law of England was quoting the Old Testament as its case law.
[02:09:30]  Even those who at that time would not have known the term theonomy, they would have said, we look at nature and we look at God's book.
[02:09:37]  They would have been some fusion of the two.
[02:09:40]  These are Christian natural law practitioners or believers.
[02:09:45]  And there's really a lot of overlap.
[02:09:48]  That's why I think, Joel, you've been able to fit comfortably.
[02:09:53]  As a general equity theonomist who looks to the clarity of the word and also says, we're not going to be dumb.
[02:10:01]  Yeah.
[02:10:02]  So I don't find attention yet.
[02:10:04]  I've had plenty of theonomists tell me that there must be attention and that I should feel the tension somewhere.
[02:10:10]  But I don't feel the tension.
[02:10:12]  And I feel perfectly comfortable in this space that providentially God has carved out for me.
[02:10:17]  And so for the foreseeable future, I plan to remain in this space.
[02:10:23]  And again, back to like names and ministries.
[02:10:27]  In this space, I have been permitted to minister alongside Ogden and Stephen Wolf and Isker and CJ and a whole host of individuals on one side of the aisle.
[02:10:39]  And yet I have been increasingly less warmly invited on the Theonomist side of the aisle.
[02:10:48]  David Reese would be an exception.
[02:10:50]  But there are others on the Theonomist side of the aisle as I've kind of become more comfortable in this position and more clear in my views.
[02:11:00]  There's one side of the aisle that says, one of us, one of, you know, and is willing to welcome me warmly in.
[02:11:09]  And then there's another side of the aisle that has felt by the day increasingly further away.

=== Generational Divides On Aisle (03:33) ===

[02:11:16]  And so I wish that wasn't the case.
[02:11:17]  I wish we could all just get along and be friends.
[02:11:21]  And maybe one day, by God's grace, there'll be, you know, some robust reconciliation and maybe that we can.
[02:11:27]  But in the meantime, right now, The muscular wing of the reformed world, Christian nationalist and theonomist, are fractured.
[02:11:38]  It's fractured.
[02:11:39]  And I don't think it's really, I could be wrong, but I don't think it's ultimately on the merits of the actual substantive theological distinctions.
[02:11:47]  I think it's more of a generational divide and it's some of the intangibles.
[02:11:51]  And I think the post war consensus actually is a good descriptor for explaining why, as much as people think, you know, they don't like it.
[02:12:00]  So, all right.
[02:12:01]  Great.
[02:12:03]  Well, thanks everyone for tuning in.
[02:12:04]  Yeah, thanks for tuning in.
[02:12:05]  We'll catch you before Thanksgiving next week with Lord willing, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
[02:12:10]  Yeah.
[02:12:10]  Oh, yeah.
[02:12:11]  So we're going to get free tickets.
[02:12:15]  So online, I saw, like, they said that if you're anti Semitic, you get a free ticket to Bonhoeffer.
[02:12:21]  So me and Wes were joking.
[02:12:23]  We're like, hey, dude, let's go get our free tickets.
[02:12:26]  A free movie?
[02:12:27]  We earned them.
[02:12:27]  Yeah, we earned them.
[02:12:29]  But no, we're not going to do that because one, we're not really anti Semitic.
[02:12:32]  We're probably not going to do that.
[02:12:33]  We're not going to do it.
[02:12:34]  The tickets are $15 on a Monday.
[02:12:35]  No, I mean, we're not doing it.
[02:12:36]  We're going to pay.
[02:12:37]  This is why.
[02:12:38]  Because anybody who gets that free ticket, I guarantee that list somehow is going to wind up with the ADL and all sorts of crazy Southern Poverty Law Center.
[02:12:47]  It's just name, address, number, social.
[02:12:50]  They'll be like, oh, we've already got this.
[02:12:52]  They're going to come after that response.
[02:12:54]  You're going to shut it down.
[02:12:55]  Yes, shut it down.
[02:12:56]  But you think we're not on that list?
[02:12:57]  I know.
[02:12:58]  I know I'm on that list.
[02:12:59]  But, anyways, no, we are not anti Semitic in the sense of actually hating Jews and wishing them harm.
[02:13:06]  Sadly, if it's the ADL's definition of anti Semitism, then everybody is anti Semitic.
[02:13:12]  So, anyways, but yeah, we plan on watching Bonhoeffer and paying for our tickets because we don't want to be added to a list.
[02:13:21]  And then, yeah, it'll be, we're going to do a full movie review and sadly just crush a lot of boomers' hopes and dreams.
[02:13:32]  I've been reading Cost of Discipleship just to be informed, like, honestly engage with him.
[02:13:36]  He's a little bit smarter than Martin Luther King Jr.
[02:13:38]  He doesn't fall into some of the mistakes or say it quite as explicitly, but his pietism is poisonous.
[02:13:44]  It really is.
[02:13:45]  He denied, I mean, he didn't believe in a literal virgin birth.
[02:13:48]  He didn't believe in a literal resurrection, bodily resurrection.
[02:13:51]  He was very much influenced by Karl Barth in terms of his hermeneutic and his view of inerrancy that the scripture became scripture in your heart and in your mind in a mystical, emotional kind of way as you're upon reading, but not actually in its.
[02:14:07]  Written form.
[02:14:08]  So Bonhoeffer was terrible.
[02:14:10]  Bonhoeffer was truly terrible.
[02:14:13]  And so we're going to talk about Bonhoeffer next week and just absolutely just burst every boomer bubble that you could possibly find.
[02:14:23]  All right.
[02:14:24]  Thank you, guys.
[02:14:25]  Bonhoeffer is boomer fuel.
[02:14:27]  That's what you said, Wes.
[02:14:29]  He really is.
[02:14:29]  He's profoundly influential in American evangelicalism, of course, because of his historical role.
[02:14:34]  But he just writes these books that, yeah, it's pure boomer fuel.
[02:14:38]  It sounds so nice.
[02:14:39]  It sounds so humble.
[02:14:40]  It sounds so rigorous.
[02:14:41]  But it's not saying anything at all.
[02:14:43]  Yeah.
[02:14:43]  All right.
[02:14:45]  So tune in next week for us to pour cold water on Bonhoeffer.
[02:14:49]  Thanks.