Joel Osteen, Michael Heiser, Wesley Hill, and Ron Dodson dissect Trump's tariff strategy as a revenue tool against flawed GDP metrics, advocating for taxing transnational transfers to counter "financial Dutch disease." They predict a shallow recession driven by credit delinquencies while debating whether the current administration represents a true victory amidst rising anti-Semitism risks. The discussion concludes that ministries must exercise courage against formidable enemies rather than rehashing past cultural wars, warning that many will retreat while independent polities remain steadfast in this fractured era. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Tariffs and Working Families00:02:03
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We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
Before the income tax was ratified in 1913, the U.S. government funded itself the old fashioned way.
Almost entirely through tariffs.
For over a century, duties on foreign goods weren't a last resort, they were the default.
Now, in a global economy where everything from lettuce to lithium is imported, the word tariff triggers panic in boardrooms and headlines across cable news.
And this month, that panic is starting to look justified.
Markets have swung wildly, smaller nations are blinking and falling in line with Trump's tariff threats.
But China and a handful of economic powers are digging in.
This standoff could drag on for months, and if it does, the impact won't just hit portfolios.
It'll hit paychecks, it'll hit grocery prices, and come November, it could hit the ballot box.
Here's the reality if this strategy works, it could rewire global trade in America's favor.
But if it backfires, working families will be left holding the bag, and Republicans will get crushed in the midterms.
This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors.
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GDP Measures and Social Productivity00:15:51
To help us break this down, we're joined by Ron Dodson, someone who actually understands the mechanics behind tariffs, the fragility of modern markets, and what's really at stake in this economic tug of war.
So, let's dive in.
All right, GA, good afternoon.
We're glad to be back in the studio.
We took a little bit of a break for our conference, Christ is King, How to Defeat Trash World.
I had a thousand people who came out to participate in that conference.
It was incredibly encouraging.
And we're back and we're ready to go.
And as soon as we got back, we've got plenty of news every single, basically every 30 minutes from the White House with Donald J. Trump.
And so today, as we already announced, we have a special guest, Ron Dodson.
Who actually knows what he's talking about?
I don't on this subject, but I'm here along for the ride and I've got a few thoughts.
We're going to be bringing him in, but quickly, because we want to get to our guests as quickly as possible.
Michael and Wesley have prepared some charts because if you're not chart maxing, we all know charts save lives, right?
Donald Trump, that chart saved his life.
So if you're not chart maxing, it's like, what are you even doing on your podcast?
So we're going to show some charts and try to talk a little bit about historically what tariffs, you know, what we've had in the past and what we have now.
And we're going to try to do that in just a couple of minutes and then hand it over to Ron.
So, Michael.
You want to start?
Absolutely.
The one thing I want to say before we dive into some of this historical evidence and charts is that the world is not what it was when the country founded or even leading through the 1800s.
That's obvious, right?
Like the government did not need as much money just as a simple one to one comparison.
The government did not claim that it needed as much money to function as it claims it needs now.
And so it is a little bit of comparing apples to oranges if you account for the fact that.
What the government says it needs is spending for entitlement, spending for Social Security, all of these things.
Nevertheless, I think we all know it was President Trump who said, well, you know, when President McKinley was president, tariffs were the main way that we funded our government.
And it's true.
For most of the U.S. history, tariffs have accounted for all or most.
I can't even say most, but for the first couple, you know, 150 years of the U.S. history, tariffs accounted for all or most of the money that the U.S. government brought in.
So, Nate, let's go ahead and start with graph number one.
This is a graph that shows tariffs revenue as a share of total federal receipts, right?
And so you can see that from the very beginning, from the very first Congress where they passed the first law that taxed foreign goods coming in, it was 100% of our income, the federal government's income.
And then it actually stayed about that high until the late 1800s.
And then it dropped precipitously.
And then we had the Civil War, of course, during that time, and then a variety of historical trends.
And now you see the yellow on the end, and of course, tariffs account for almost none of the percentage of U.S. federal receipts, which, whatever you think about tariffs or your position on them, is they have been a primary way that the U.S. has funded itself for a very long time.
Nate, let's look at number two.
I find this one particularly interesting because it shows the tax revenue as percent of the GDP.
Now, I realize that we are suspicious of measuring all financial stability by just the GDP metric.
Nevertheless, this was federal GDP.
And what's interesting to me is that when tariffs were a much higher percentage of the money that the US government was bringing in, it was, as far as the entire GDP, a much lower percent.
You look all the way to the right there.
And most of the GDP is accounted for by U.S. government spending or taxing of some sort, whether it's some tariffs or whether it's income tax or whether it's payroll tax, which for those of you who are watching, payroll tax is things like Social Security, Medicare.
That's not income tax.
It's what your employee or your employer is withholding from your paycheck to go for some of these social welfare programs.
The surprising thing about this is not just that taxes, payroll tax, and income tax have overtaken the tariff.
It's the percentage of total GDP that is accounted for by U.S. government taxation of some sort.
And I'm sure with Ron, we can get into the question of is GDP the best metric to measure the health of a nation's economy?
But nevertheless, it's surprising.
I wanted to show, Nathan, I wanted to show just these last three images quickly.
You can just scroll through them as I'm.
As I'm talking, but this was from the very first Congress.
And this was the list of things that they allowed the federal government to put taxes on.
So essentially, those would be tariffs.
They called them duties at the time.
But they have a very specific list here.
And I'm not going to read through all of it, but for the listener, they have things like distilled spirits from Jamaica, other distilled spirits, molasses, Madeira wine, malt, all sorts of things.
These are products that were coming in from other countries.
And as I understand it, kind of the last bit of historical data that I'll give here, initially, Alexander Hamilton especially was in favor of tariffs because he saw that the U.S. needed protection to build up its manufacturing base.
Even though they had been a colony of Great Britain, they didn't actually have all the manufacturing facilities that they needed to be self sufficient.
And it would be probable that if goods were available from other countries that already had those manufacturing facilities, Productivity plants set up that what we would do is we would just import them all from other countries.
And so, Hamilton and others, this first Congress, they passed quite a few tariffs, which was allowed in the Constitution and Article I.
But it was so that America would be incentivized to build up its manufacturing.
So it would be cheaper for the country and for Americans to build a factory and then sell their goods in America.
And it was really quite well thought out that they thought we can't just rely on Jamaica's rum.
We should have rum distilleries here.
And so they put tariffs on foreign goods so that it would kind of cause and incentivize Americans to build factories here and sell their goods here and get the best possible cost for it.
So, Wes, anything you wanted to add about this?
I was just going to say the brilliance of that is you still get the rum.
There's obviously more necessary items on that list, like shoes, for example.
You're bringing them in, but what you're offering then to those that are onshore is opportunity.
So, all right, we're having to bring in these spirits or to bring in these shoes, and it's costing.
It's just more expensive to do so.
You've got to ship them, that's not as safe.
Here's an opportunity.
We're providing the advantage for you to do it here.
And even still today, I know in a global economy, it's very easy to not think about nations and boundaries and manufacturing.
But if you think about something that is made exclusively in China, like for an example, creatine, very popular sports product, I don't believe it's manufactured anywhere else in the world except for it might be Germany or either China.
So you have one place where it's manufactured.
You begin to think about that, especially with tariffs.
Wait, if it's being taxed big time as it's coming in, that's a huge opportunity for me to do it and have no tariff.
Whatsoever.
And so I think it's a really brilliant plan that, again, you're not without creatine.
You're not without these things.
They can still come in, but it's giving the people of a nation the opportunity to do it at a much better cost with much less overhead because you don't have to ship it.
You don't have to pay tariffs, all of that.
All right.
Super helpful.
Let's go to the expert now.
Ron Dotson, thanks for coming on the show.
What do you think about it?
Is this going to be like one of those Billy Madison scenes where you were awarded zero points?
Everything that you've said is not.
Are we on track so far?
What do you think?
Joel, may God have mercy on your soul.
God have mercy on your soul.
Go ahead.
Well, thanks for having me, guys.
I mean, we went through quite a bit in that open, so there's a lot to talk about.
I think the thing I'd love to mention first is we went originally from economics as being a descriptive social science to, in the last hundred years or so, it turning into this prescriptive hard science, and it has failed.
And the reason it has failed is because it denies a biblical truth.
It assumes that the individual human is fungible as opposed to uniquely created by God and bearing his image.
And we know that that is the case.
And so, economics in this gets to your question of is GDP a good way to measure the health of a country?
And the answer is no, because it assumes this fungibility, this aggregate measure of humanity.
And especially as we've turned into with mass immigration and so on and so forth, a factionalized salad bowl rather than a well heated melting pot, that's impossible.
So the assumptions are wrong.
So that's my, I think Charles Haywood wrote an absolutely excoriating piece against GDP as a national measure about a month ago.
And if you're not, Familiar with the Worthy House, I highly recommend the work of Charles Haywood.
But he did a very good, oh, if you listen to it, half hour, 45 minute takedown of GDP as a measure.
So I really recommend that.
However, you've got to measure certain things somehow.
And it does give, you know, whether or not the federal government should be that which is doing it is, I think, a valid question.
I think these.
These measures would be much better served coming from private or even the state, private sources, or even the states.
But it is what it is, and it's what we have.
With regards to tariffs and the percentage of income, I think the key thing is: wow, the amount of money our government takes in is enough.
It needs no more.
It could do with a lot less.
It's just mind-blowing.
What that our federal government, and this isn't even including the states, that our federal government is taking in over 20, was it close to 25% there at the end of total, if you're going to look at GDP, of total GDP is sponged up by the federal government.
And make no mistake, you know, income taxes and payroll taxes, it's all coming out of your back pocket.
So they can.
You know, the Social Security, this quote unquote IOU, don't look too hard into that system or you'll get black pilled really quick.
It's all just taxes.
It goes into the general fund one way or the other, and our deep state spends it.
With regards to tariffs as a means to generating income, you know, it's the world has gone to a system.
Over the last hundred years, following our lead largely in taxing productivity.
Whether or not that's the case, I would argue that that's just simply immoral.
That the role, that's taxing a person's blessing and productivity is the role of the church, or at least the kingdom, the churches being the mechanism of that.
And I don't even like calling it a tax.
Our tithes are.
Are a voluntary free will offering.
We've been given this guideline by God.
But it is in the taxing of transnational transfers that is the role of the state because the state is there to protect the borders and protect the safety within.
So I just find it somewhat immoral that the federal government, that is distant from us, and we are a collection of states of different peoples, that the federal government would choose to.
Raise its income by taxing us, taxing what we make and disincentivizing income.
That seems strange to me, but we all know the real reason is well, number one, they can collect a lot more money that way.
But the real reason is they can exert a tremendous amount of influence over what we do.
The tax code, if it were simply about raising money, it would tax our top line, not the bottom line.
There would be no All these manipulative exemptions and deductions, and it would be a low flat percentage.
But instead, we see a tax code that would fill up this room in all its rulings and regulations.
So it's Talmudic, and even that's probably gracious.
So show me voting nay against the entire system.
And I think, personally, I think the current.
It's due for a massive rethink.
And I think Trump is serious when he says, look, let's have the federal government tax the world for the opportunity to do business here.
And let's not tax at the federal level the productivity of the citizens.
And what a tremendous unlocking of value and talent that would be.
How many people, how many smart, capable, talented people, their entire lives are given to tax preparation as a way to make a living?
And how would they be unlocked if?
If they were allowed to go into productive industries, I think this entire, the questions that have been raised by the president in bringing tariffs to bear and questioning the income tax is set up to unlock tremendous amounts of talent and value within the American economy.
Now, that can't be done overnight.
It is a transformative process.
And anytime you transform things, there are eggs that are broken when you're making that new omelet.
And we need to be sensitive to that.
Free Trade vs Christian Wealth00:15:25
I really believe that collateral damage in any kind of liquidity event is real.
I know some people in banking, you know, last night the basis trade about locked up, and there were some people in my business that were not sleeping well last night.
And we need to, you know, not that we need to be too concerned with the health of hedge fund managers.
You know, we all do pretty good, most of us do.
But Collateral damage is a real thing, and we need to think about that.
But that being said, I'm a huge fan of what's going on.
I'm a big fan of what Besant's doing.
I think he's very impressive, even though I might disagree with some of his life choices.
I think he is a guy who talks like a trader.
He was a very successful macro trader.
He knows the levers to pull.
Show me voting aye on all this.
I'm very impressed.
Yeah.
Cool.
Thank you.
So, can you, this is pretty basic, but could you talk just for a moment about, you know, I think the temptation sometimes of Christians, especially post millennial Christians, is, well, free trade, you know, and all taxes are bad, you know, and, you know, somebody makes something, you know, a widget on the other side of the world and he wants to sell it here, and why should we have to pay any taxes, you know, but as you start to think about these things a little bit more, it's,
Like it destroys at some level, like unfettered free trade without any regulations whatsoever is an enemy of national sovereignty.
Uh, that's impossible to really be America first if, um, if there's you know financial incentives for us to export all of our manufacturing and all of our jobs and all these kinds of things to where you know future generations don't have any opportunities that uh they can buy cheap things you know from China that break you know in six months, but uh but they can't.
Actually, get a job with livable wages.
Their wife has to enter the workforce.
Every single household is two income.
Then the kids have to be pawned off on the state, you know, in public schools and grow up to be Democrats and, you know, rinse and repeat and do it all over again.
And that's kind of where we've been for a while.
And so I, you know, I appreciate free trade as much as, you know, the next guy.
But as I've, you know, looked into these things further, a lot of my opinions have started to change.
And, um, You know, even you know, there are some streams of post millennial reformed Christians where you know they have a Bible verse.
You know, I'm not saying that they don't have any exegesis to support what they're doing, I know that they do, and I'm friends with some of these individuals.
But at some level, it just becomes financial libertarianism walking around in a Christian skin suit.
And uh, you know, like the famous G.K. Chesterton quote, you know, if man will not have 10 commandments, he will have 10,000.
To which I would respond, yes, and amen.
I that you know the spirit of that quote I appreciate and resonate with very much, but I can see certain guys in the industry of finance, you know, appealing to mosaic laws and these kinds of things.
But the real appeal for them is not necessarily the glory of God and the good of his people, but less regulation so that we can continue to be really rich.
So, all that being said, I guess my question is with all these tariffs, it's like, yeah, it's going to hurt your 401k at least temporarily.
And we've already seen the volatility, you know, things bouncing back even this afternoon or late this morning when Trump announced a 90 day pause with all the countries that were willing to come to the table and bargain a little bit and play ball, you know, and then increased tariffs were, you know, threatened to China because of their refusal to play ball.
And so, you know, these things can go back and forth.
You know, the pain could be long term, the pain could also be very temporary, and things could, you know, there could be a V shaped recovery.
All these things are possible.
But for me, As a novice, and I admit that looking in, I have some investments.
They're not doing great.
But I would rather my investments not do great, but my son be able to grow up and get a job and feed his family.
And so for me, I'm pretty pro tariffs.
And so I guess my question is if we just have unfettered free trade, I don't know how to do that without also fully embracing globalism.
It seems like sovereign nations are just not possible.
How should we think about that?
Tariffs and nationalism?
I think it's a great question, Joel.
We go back, you know, the godfather of all this is Adam.
Well, God is the author of what really is we call free trade, but it's free price discovery.
Even Jesus, when he talks about one anothering, the arm's length transaction where both people are able to say thank you, both people are blessed, that is a manifestation of.
Of this free price discovery, but it reflects the will of God that men should be economics in that sense is a God given thing, you know, and ancient.
But when Adam Smith was talking about it in a transnational standpoint and he spoke of wealth of nations, what most people don't realize is that Smith was assuming, he wrote in the context of Christendom, and he assumed common presuppositions with your trading partners.
And what does that mean?
Presuppositions.
Well, these are just common, the common basic values.
We would say some people, you know, we used to have, you know, worldview was kind of, there's problems with that term, but you'd say we have a common worldview, view of the world, of why, what is, what conservatives would say need to be conserved.
We hold none of that in common with the Chinese Communist Party.
And I've got absolutely Let me be perfectly clear before I go down this road because I'm going to say some pretty direct things.
But I have no quarrel with the Chinese people.
We used to host Chinese exchange students.
I had the daughter of a Communist Party official stay in my house.
She came to faith in Christ while staying with us.
My two goddaughters are Chinese.
I have a great love.
For the people.
The Han are an incredibly gifted people.
That being said, through no help of ours, because we abandoned Chiang Kai shek, and may have been prudent.
I don't know.
I don't think it was.
But the communist Mao took over and the communists won that deal.
And these are not the regime that rules China, these are not our.
Our presuppositional partners.
These are not people who would agree with what we would consider should be the basics of life and should be conserved.
So, Adam Smith would think it crazy that China, number one, was admitted to the World Economic Forum and given full trading partner status.
Even understanding why Nixon did certain things back in the 70s, I'm speaking of the changes that came about in the Later on in the 90s, Adam Smith would have never countenanced that.
And so our understanding of free trade is kind of a bastardization of what would be Christian wealth of nation understanding.
So let's take that.
Should the United States have a commonwealth with other Christian nations eventually, to where we generally have open trade among Among the Christian Brotherhood, so to speak.
I'm great with that.
Absolutely.
But free trade and its modern understanding of frictionless capital movements at light speed that are borderless does nothing but hollow out, as you said, national sovereignty.
And again, hey, look, my industry is largely based on this of finding.
Arbitrage across national boundaries, setting up a rentier relationship there and then levering it to the hilt.
It's not what I do, but that is hedge fund 101.
But it's not good.
Just for disclosure purposes, I do statistical volatility arbitrage.
So I basically sell insurance into the market.
So I would like to think of myself as a good guy.
Just for clarity's sake.
But Nick Land, I don't know if you're familiar with Nick Land, your listeners and viewers, Nick Land, a continental English philosopher, prominent in the last, probably one of the more prominent philosophers of the last 30 years or so.
Nick's a couple years older than me, 60, has written a ton on this about how.
These friction capital being able to move across borders, what that has done, and I'm going to simplify, Nick is a very esoteric writer.
But what he said is that has basically meant that dollars are now the true rights of citizenship more than the citizens themselves, because dollars have more rights than citizens.
So that, and that's a, it's very much related to corporate personhood.
And we can talk about that as well.
But these things absolutely erode as international frictionless capital movements, free trade, we can call it that, as that has risen in importance and the euro dollar market has risen.
And those are just dollars that are created by banks offshore with no supervision of the US Federal Reserve.
Whether you're a fan or not of the Federal Reserve, it's the system we have.
Those notes are Federal Reserve notes.
And so the federal, we should have some governing authority over them.
But as this has all moved, you've seen with it the erosion of the rights of U.S. citizens.
So this whole process is known in a way as financial Dutch disease.
And the Dutch disease is named after in Holland in the late 60s, early 70s, they found in Dutch territorial waters tremendous reserves of natural gas.
And traditionally, Holland is one of the breadbaskets of Europe.
It was really a farming nation.
And, you know, the Netherlands, the lowlands of Europe, which is very well watered and very fertile soil.
But when these natural gas reserves were found, the entire economy pivoted and all the talent went towards natural gas and it hollowed out the rest of the nation.
Well, we've seen that in the United States with the financialization.
Financialization of the US economy to where if you're a smart, if you're very, very smart and you go to a top university, you're going to study finance and you're going to go into this industry to where all of the other industries are hollowed out.
And what is our Dutch disease?
What's the, if it was natural gas for Holland, what's our Dutch disease?
It's the dollar itself.
And so even to the point of you say, well, hey, the country makes, has always produced great art.
And entertainment, our movie business is the greatest in the world.
When was the last time you went and saw something that was a uniquely American comedy, for instance?
It's all this, you know.
Now we have superhero movies that are slop.
That are slop, exactly.
And so I completely agree.
Now, again, if we have a commonwealth of nations that agree with us and are.
Something we need to get in later on the show, geographically tied to us, you know, would it be great if Canada and Mexico and Ecuador could rise up and be great Christian nations and together we had a true Christian commonwealth that was tied to us geographically that we could have some level of freer trade with?
Well, sure, I'm great with that.
We're a long ways from that right now.
I mean, Canada has turned into a You know, communism light.
And I have lots of friends.
By the way, my wife's from Canada.
My kids have, you know, in theory, have Canadian citizenship.
They don't want, I mean, you know, whatever.
But I have a real love for the people and traditional Canadian culture up there.
It was a great Christian nation at once upon a time.
But we're far from that now.
And Mexico's one step away from a failed narco state.
So, but that would be the goal.
Is moving towards something like that.
Okay, I've talked long enough.
I'm sure y'all have some thoughts.
No, that's good.
Wes, you got some thoughts.
I was going to say, that's profound, that point that you made about being the dollar being the citizen of the world.
The 70s and the 80s and 90s, you have a market that 247 is awake.
Now, it wouldn't necessarily be the stock exchange, but all across the world, you have trade happening.
You have money that can move at the speed of light.
This is a profound technological turning that our grandparents just didn't live through.
Global Markets and Investment Games00:07:51
Never before in human history would you know what's happening in China.
Would you be aware of their impending real estate crash?
Would you then be as you think?
I used to work for like biotechs when I worked in consulting.
And I mean, in their mind is do we do manufacturing in the Netherlands?
Do we do it in India?
Never before in human history would you have this kind of global frame of things.
And I don't think it's at all a coincidence that you have these global markets, you have instant money moving, you have your question of, I can get this labor, I can get these parts, I can get this done for pennies on the dollar.
And as that happens, as that grows, and people see, of course, the margins on it, that all of a sudden we come to a place where Americans have no identity of themselves.
And it's of course, we're interconnected in so many ways to the rest of the world in a way that's probably not possible for human beings to do well.
It's impossible to be a citizen of the world, to appreciate every culture, to know every place, to track every market.
We're just human.
We're limited, not as a result of the fall.
So it's not like the fall creaturely.
Exactly, introduces to us, like, oh, now we couldn't contain or comprehend all this information.
We're just creatures.
And we weren't meant, I don't think, to be interconnected to 8 million people, to dozens of financial markets, 8 billion people.
Dozens of financial markets, billions of dollars of transactions, all the news, all the events, everything going on.
And trying to do so has eroded, I mean, in many ways, for one, a sense of place.
This is home.
These are my people.
But we can do it.
This is what I love.
You're forgetting there are 330 million Americans.
And then there are, you know, like 8 billion potential Americans.
So we're all American.
These are all our neighbors.
We can do it.
Being a little bit sarcastic there.
Michael, I want to hear your thoughts.
And then, real quickly, I want to hit a couple super chats.
And one question from Neville that I thought was insightful, and let Ron answer that question.
But what are your thoughts?
Well, my thought is maybe it's actually just a follow up for Ron.
Maybe you could touch on it briefly.
You know, we on the show, we often talk about what we think would be the ideal, but what would be a viable alternative?
Is tariffs the viable alternative to this sort of globalist free trade?
That still is global markets.
It's just controlled global markets.
And so is there any returning, like I agree with what Wes is saying, but there's also the, the, Statement that we come back to all the time well, the tube's out of the toothpaste.
You know, what is there a viable years or decades long alternative to that we ought to be building towards that would be something different than the almighty dollar working 24 7, global markets, tracking stock exchanges in Japan, all of these things that we're talking about?
Like, I understand what we say this is not ideal, but what do we do about that?
Like, what are Alternatives that could be built towards?
Well, that's a big question.
Again, I don't have a problem with, for instance, certain rare earths and certain other minerals are only God-only put in certain places.
I mean, if you're going to, you know, although I think there's quite a bit of titanium, maybe in Tennessee, we've made it to where it's almost impossible to mine in this country.
So if you're going to get titanium, I think you got to go to Russia right now.
For instance, in rare earths, well, that's Eastern Ukraine, a lot of the rare earth minerals in China.
Copper and beryllium, I think it's South America somewhere.
Again, mining's not my game.
But God distributed these things forever, all the petrochemicals, that was in the Persian Gulf.
Now they're all in my state, Texas.
So I think.
The goal isn't, hey, we do away with trade.
That's not the idea.
The idea is that you can't have frictionless capital movements without having the erasure of borders.
And again, this is coming from somebody who grew up.
I mean, I was a member of the Ludwig von Mises Society.
You know, I grew up reading Hayek and von Mises.
You know, I have price and theory on my bookshelf at home.
I really came to a Modern understanding.
This is in the early 90s.
Yes, I was a nerd.
I was reading Hans Hermann Hoppe, who I still find absolutely breathtakingly brilliant.
I think that movement went off the rails when it went the anarcho capitalist way because the idea moved from the trading of goods to To which is good, trade is not a bad thing.
I believe God wants us to trade.
The problem is that if I only have to move this fiat currency, then I'm not really invested.
I am just playing a game.
And this is going to get philosophical, and I don't mean to get pie in the sky, but think about how our capital markets work in the US now.
Everybody owns everything.
No one, very few people buy individual stocks anymore.
You go and buy the SP and you buy the NASDAQ, we're buying the spiders and we're buying the cubes and we're so on and so forth.
Well, I used to think that everybody owning everything was called communism.
And so there's no responsibility and investment just isn't my dollars.
It's not just rentier.
Rentier just means.
I have dollars that I can use to without work soak up value.
Okay.
It's not a good thing.
Traditionally, you want as little rentier opportunity in an effective economy as possible.
What you want is because rentier, there was a certain faction that found rentier opportunities and levered those up with, you know, usurious rates and you create these massive returns.
That's not really, you're never going to get completely rid of it.
You know, Europe fought wars over this kind of stuff.
And again, I don't want to get weird, but.
No, no, no, no.
You're speaking our language.
Yeah, I think you know what I'm talking about.
So, anyway, the point is that you want to encourage, for instance, there are opportunities right now for American smart, hardworking young guys to go make a killing in Africa right now.
That's not free trade, that's investment.
You're going and actually, because there's.
There's minerals and there's stuff in the ground, and there's some, you know, hardworking people who you give them some opportunity to work hard and they will.
Okay.
Unless they have a different set of giftedness than the average American.
Sure.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm just talking about that's a different thing than me just sending, oh, look, there's this African ETF and I'll just throw some dollars at it.
New Wife and Marriage Updates00:03:05
At light speed, and now you know again.
And I'm not, I don't want to paint with a mop here, but the former is good.
That is God taking his people with different giftedness and using them to minister to one another.
The latter is saying that what's most important is just this, you know, it's almost like this phantom reality that's going.
And again, I really recommend if you've, If you've got the horsepower and wherewithal to read some philosophy, Nick Land is great on this stuff.
Xenocosmography is his Twitter too.
And he's a fun, he's healthy again and he's active on Twitter and he's a fun follow and absolutely brilliant.
I mean, the guy, Nick's got to be 160 IQ kind of guy.
But, oh, you asked about something else.
Golly, how do we get off?
You asked one other thing.
That I'm meant to answer now.
No, I think you hit on what I was getting at.
So, yeah, thank you.
Let's do this real quick.
I want to get to the super chats.
I want to try to address a couple questions, and then we need to go to a commercial break.
So, first, this is from Ben Huffstedler, who is almost single handedly keeping Right Response Ministries afloat.
He gave us a $200 super chat.
God bless you.
I don't want to just grift here, but I'd like to think that somebody today, Could beat Ben Huffstedler for the largest super chat.
I, you know, I think somebody's got it in them, they can do it, but if not, he's the reigning champ.
Uh, so this is Ben Huffstedler, a regular uh giver towards our ministry.
Incredibly grateful for you.
Thanks, Ben.
He said, Stay bold, gents.
Uh, people are being changed by your work.
Attended the conference via online this year, already bought uh tickets for the next year.
See you in June this year, though.
Uh, so I imagine he's going to the new Christendom conference, I'll be there speaking.
I'm excited about that.
And then he said, smash the like button or Trump will put personal tariffs on you.
Amen.
So true, King.
Absolutely.
Yep.
If you are not liking this video, if you're hiding out in the chat and you haven't given us a thumbs up and you haven't liked it, Trump will personally, he will come to your house.
125% tariff.
125% tariff.
And your entire family will starve.
We don't make the rules, but under Christian nationalism, you will like this video or you will starve.
All right.
Simple as that.
Okay.
This is Chase Cormick.
He gave us a $100 super chat.
That's pretty big.
Pretty generous.
We appreciate you, Chase.
Thanks so much.
He says, Thank you for these streams.
They've been really helping my new wife and I.
And new wife, we're going to assume he's newly married and not that he got rid of his old wife and traded her for a new one.
So, newly married, my new wife and I have been helping us tremendously.
And he said, Joel, I have a question about your Sunday sermon.
Uh oh.
Let's see.
What did I say?
Gods, Testament, and Creator Views00:08:14
My wife was confused when you were talking about the small g gods, lowercase g gods, being real gods.
I think I know what you mean, but can you help expound on that a little?
Since it's not the topic for today, I'm not going to talk about it a whole lot, but because you gave a $100 super chat, I'm going to talk about it briefly.
So, this is what I meant.
I was simply saying that I think a lot of the Old Testament gods weren't just carvings on a piece of wood, that it wasn't just.
They weren't figments of their imagination.
They weren't figments of their imagination.
Now, Paul does talk about that an idol is no god at all in the New Testament.
So, Paul does say this.
But I really believe that during Old Testament times, I think there's still.
Remnants of this truth, even to this day, and especially during the interim period between the first coming of Christ and then AD 70.
I think these things were being wrapped up.
But especially in the Old Testament, pre incarnation of Christ, his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Before that happened, these were real gods.
And so, what I was saying is that when you're talking about Molech or the Asherah poles or the balls, whatever you may be looking at, I really do believe that these were real gods.
Lowercase g, meaning that they're not the one true triune god, they're not the creator.
So, they're still creatures, but angelic beings that were.
Gods, sons of God, Job.
Fallen.
Right.
Fallen gods.
But Job, the first two chapters of Job talk about that, this divine council where there are the sons of God, and I take that to mean angelic beings that are present, and the Satan, Satan, he's one of them.
And I would hold that he was one of the chief of these fallen gods.
Psalm 82 1, for example, God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods.
He begins his judgment.
Right.
We're not saying equal to the triune God.
So there's only one creator.
Only one creator.
So every other lowercase g god is a creature.
But if we're under the impression that there weren't fallen angelic beings, lowercase g gods, that they were just figments of people's imagination, or if we just say that because they're creatures and they were creatures and are creatures, that they're equal to us and not vastly superior in terms of their capabilities, their intelligence, and their power, then we're being naive.
Satan in the book of Job had the power even over weather.
He caused a great wind to blow, and the house of Job's children fell upon them and killed them.
And so I believe that even Jesus, throughout the gospel narratives, and that's the particular text that we were preaching Jesus casting out the demons, but that comes on the heels of him crossing the sea where there was a great storm.
And I think that that was a demonically cultivated storm.
I believe that there were old gods, Baal, he was known for many things, but one of the things that he was known as was the storm god.
And Asherah was also known as the god of the sea.
And in different cultures, they went by different names, you know, old Neptune, you know, or Poseidon, you know, different gods for different cultures.
But I think they all actually represented a real being, a created being, but a powerful being and had power over different regions.
So principalities were regions.
Princes, demonic princes, were the actual powers, the actual angelic, fallen angelic being themselves.
And so I believe over different earthly regions, including the sea and the mountains and this place and that place, you know, the Prince of Persia that we see in the book of Daniel, that there were certain gods.
Lowercase g gods, angelic beings fallen that had rebelled against God that were assigned to these different domains had real capabilities, real intelligence, real powers.
But Jesus, he came into the house, the earth, the devil has been cast down to you.
He bound the strong man.
And now we, as the New Testament church, are plundering the house.
But I do believe that there still is demonic activity today, but it's not like it once was.
So that's what I was saying.
When I said they're real gods, what I meant is that it's not just, you know, just.
Carved images, I believe that especially in Old Testament times, that these were real creatures, powerful creatures underneath the ultimate sovereignty of God.
They weren't the creator, they were creatures, but they were real.
That people were actually worshiping real gods, and there was a reason why people would give their first child to Molech because they would actually get 10 children in return.
That there really were fertility gods, there really were gods of harvest, there were gods of the hunt, there were gods of the sea, there were gods of all these different things.
So that's what I meant.
And here's a question.
We'll turn it back to Ron and then we'll go to our commercial break.
The question is from Neville, and he says, Matthew 17, 25.
And he admits, you know, he says, is this relevant?
He admits that this is not necessarily the chief purpose or interpretation of the text, but I think that there are implications.
I think it's insightful.
He says, of whom do kings of the earth take custom or tribute?
Their own children or strangers?
That's verse 25.
And then verse 26, Matthew 17, 26, Peter saith unto him, of strangers.
Jesus saith unto him, appreciate that King James there, then the children are free.
And so he's asking, Ron, Neville's asking, is there some kind of implication that we could take for kings of the earth today when it comes to sovereign nations and saying, no, as a civil father, as Matthew Henry and many, many, you know, reformers would say, and certainly before the reformers, whether it be, you know, Tertullian or whether it be, you know, Augustine or different guys, that, no, as a civil father, there's a A particular special duty to your citizens,
the natural citizens of your country where God has appointed you, and that you're not going to extort them and you're not going to put the primary burden on them, but that you would deal with different measures with foreigners.
That if they want to benefit from your people and your resources and your land, then they're going to have to pay a different price than what you would charge to your own natural citizens.
Could we take that away from that text in Matthew 17 25 and 26?
Ron, what do you think?
Man, amen.
What a great application, a terrific verse, one that I wasn't thinking of immediately.
But yeah, a king owes, a state owes its first loyalty to its own citizens.
And tribute comes from outsiders.
You see this with Abram and Melchizedek, where Abram gives a tithe.
To the king of Salem, Melchizedek, Malki Zadok, king righteous.
And what does Melchizedek give him in return?
He gives him bread and wine.
That's probably nothing to do with this.
I wanted to say so that's absolutely a perfect application of this.
It is the domain of, it is not the domain of the earthly state to tax its citizens this way.
Everybody goes to Rome, give to Caesar what is Caesar.
Jesus.
Was specifically talking to the Pharisees who he knew would pledge their loyalty to Caesar rather than him.
So, I mean, that gets misapplied.
But I wanted to mention about your sermon.
Amen.
Great stuff, Joel.
Michael Heiser is great in speaking on this stuff about the divine counsel.
And in just the The Hebrew word Elohim has the sense of both gods and judge.
You see this, Paul mentions this idea a little bit on Mars Hill at the Areopagus.
Jim Jordan and Business Advice00:04:36
So great stuff.
And I would, you know, also the idea of stoikeia, of the elemental principles or the old, you know, the old means of the old covenant, the old world was administrated by.
We know by angels.
And Paul says, you know, the manifestation of the new covenant is that men now rule the world.
Don't you know that you will one day judge the angels?
So, absolutely fantastic application all the way around.
Somebody's been Jim Jordan Maxing, huh, Ron?
Oh, you know it.
Angels mediating and now men rule the world.
I cannot escape my mentor who has had an immense impact on me.
God bless you, Jim Jordan.
BiblicalHorizons.com.
Go there now.
You will not be sad.
Don't go there right now.
100%.
I mean, Now and then, after the live stream, after the live stream, after you've finished listening to me and Joe, of course, that's what I've done.
Well, uh, well said, yeah, Jim Jordan is great.
Um, let's go ahead and go to our first commercial break, and then we'll come back and uh, we'll deal some more with the chat.
If you guys have questions for us, go ahead and put your questions in.
Um, it doesn't have to be a super chat, we try to prioritize the people you know who are being generous, but uh, if you just want to put a question in, just make it clear, say question, colon mark, you know, and then da you know, so make it clear that it's a question.
We're going to go ahead and bifurcate those in the chat over.
And try to deal with those and give as many of those questions as we can while we still have Ron on the line because we'll be able to answer some of them and he'll probably be able to answer more.
They're finance related.
Yeah, especially finance, finance, finance, all of it.
Exactly.
And I would love, because I'm a sucker for this and I did not tell Ron ahead of time because sometimes you just ask forgiveness instead of permission.
But I just like to just be a little bit of a degenerate predictor, concluder, what's going to happen.
So, I'm going to try to ask Ron a little bit of, you know, what do you foresee?
What do you think is going to happen, you know, as we start to broaden out and think of, like, are we coming into a recession?
What's that going to look like?
You know, and obviously, all that will be alleged with a grain of salt.
You know, none of us are a prophet or the son of a prophet, but it's still fun to look ahead and see what might be coming down the pipeline.
All right, so here's our first commercial.
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Mr. Ron Dodson.
Would you do me the great honor of just trashing all of your credibility right here live on the show and making some degenerate predictions of what might happen in the future?
What do you think?
Well, you can say it allegedly as many times as you need to say it.
Rising Delinquency Rates Explained00:02:57
No, it's okay.
I mean, I don't, I'm not worried about anything.
All right.
Past performance is no indication of the future.
It actually is, but go ahead.
Anyway, if you look at the delinquency rates in the market or in the economy right now, then you'll see that we've probably been headed towards some type of shallow recession since late Q3 last year.
And what am I talking about?
Well, if you look at delinquency rates on credit card loans, well, That number has risen from a low in the third quarter of 2021 and is now about 2x what the kind of long term trend is.
If you look at, and by the way, a lot of the numbers, the employment numbers and everything seem to have been pretty cooked because the revisions have just been ridiculous lately.
That shouldn't surprise us.
These are the deep state.
You know, collects and runs a lot of this stuff, and they sure didn't want Trump elected.
If you look on the delinquency rate on single family residential mortgages booked in domestic offices, that has actually been down.
So I don't think we're looking at a, or hasn't risen.
So you're not talking about a deep recession where people are, a lot of people are losing their homes, you know, like we had in, Uh, you know, late 07 through a 08 and early 09, which was just a real disaster.
If you look at the delinquency rates on consumer loans, all commercial banks, and so these are consumer loans, uh, you're talking about a tremendous rise again since a trough in the third quarter of 2021, those have risen precipitously.
If you're looking at the delinquency rate on commercial real estate loans, uh, uh, Those have been rising over the past 18 months.
Delinquency rate on credit card loans, not among the 100 largest in size by assets.
So you're talking about the lower credit quality.
Those have been greatly elevated.
Delinquency rate up close to 8%, which doesn't sound crazy, but it's much higher than normal.
And then delinquency rate on all credit cards.
Other consumer loans.
Taiwan Elasticity and Inflation00:15:46
And by the way, you can look at this data.
You don't have to be a professional hedge fund manager like me.
You can go to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which is the Federal Reserve Bank that collates all this data.
And again, since the trough in quarter three of 2021, that number is accelerating and going up.
So you're seeing this the lowest quality of Consumer credit really performing poorly.
These are leading indicators as far as possibly a shallow recession.
And then, you know, changing any type of regime in an economic sense is going to have, like we said before, it's going to have a certain amount of collateral damage that harms liquidity.
And so I think that is a.
I wouldn't be shocked if.
I don't think that, for instance, Joe Sixpack, the tariffs are not going to impact him nearly as much as the doomsayers are saying.
Why do I say that?
Well, I mean, if he wants to go buy a 75 inch TV screen, I mean, that might be impacted.
Although those are mostly made in South Korea.
But there is a concept in economics called the elasticity of demand that is poorly appreciated.
I'll put it that way.
So, medicine, for instance, and we do have a Problem.
Most of our medicines are made overseas, and that's we'd make some of them here, but we've got, but we need to reshore that in a bad way.
But that's inelasticity of demand.
If you need medicine, you've got to have that medicine.
But consumer goods are largely these are, you know, washing machines or TV screens or, you know, whatever it is, guitars.
We're right back here over there.
A lot of those are made overseas.
But these are economic decisions, purchase decisions that are made by choice and not by need.
And that's a very elastic demand.
So, due to elasticity of demand, a lot of these tariffs won't be inflationary in that sense.
We make our own fuel and we make our own food.
Those are the things you've got to have.
We make our own housing because it's got to go here.
So, there's an issue with lumber.
Although we ought to be, we've got the world's biggest forests, so we ought to make them, you know, that you can still farm.
You know, we ought to have no problem sourcing lumber.
That tends to be a regulatory issue, but I think Trump is all over that.
So, anyway, elasticity of demand, I think we'll be okay.
But I do see a high likelihood of at least a shallow recession, hopefully only one or two quarters.
Now, that's.
What do I see middle term?
Well, if this continues, we could push the Chinese into a corner.
I think that is part of what's being intended, actually, because for a lot of reasons, but there's a chance that China could move on Taiwan.
Now, do I think that they will attempt a very dangerous.
Uh, invasion.
I kind of doubt it.
That's a although, if anybody's seen the latest pictures of the ramp ships they've built, and very, very impressive.
Uh, the engineering on that, where they can send tons of soldiers and material on shore really quickly.
Um, but I, I would, I wouldn't be surprised if in late Q3, early Q4, if if we haven't come to some kind of understanding, if there wasn't some type of blockade of Taiwan, and then the U.S. would need to have some real.
Decisions to make.
How important to us is Taiwan?
Now, you know, I tend to follow the John Mersheimer school of geopolitics, which is the realist school.
And Taiwan sits right off, you know, 40 miles off the coast of China.
And we, again, we abandoned Chiang Kai shek way back in the day.
I think Taiwan eventually is going to be Chinese.
It's culturally and linguistically and genetically China.
The hope for Taiwan is us helping to reform China, not somehow miraculously defending.
You know, I wouldn't be real happy if I had sons.
I have two daughters, but if they got drafted and sent to defend Taiwan, I wouldn't be real happy with that, just to be perfectly honest.
So we've got to be real smart about reshort.
You know, I published a paper internally during the first Trump administration about suggesting that West Texas is pretty open and empty.
We could move all of Taiwan's semiconductors, people, and practices here, give them all citizenship, give them free land, and we should have a Texan Shenzhen, build a couple of nuclear plants to power it, and let's go.
Why something like that hasn't been pursued, I don't know.
Politically, maybe it's difficult, but it seems like that would be smart.
But we would, so that's what I foresee in the middle term and how we respond to that.
is it would drive a lot of our economic, you know, economics.
I'm not a big fan of, you know, the realities of what's happening in geopolitics with regards to the reason we have this globalization is the United States had the world's most magnificent, I sound like Trump, the most magnificent Navy in the world.
And we could police all these shipping lanes.
And you're seeing now that policing Malacca, the Malacca Strait, which is there at Singapore, And I love Singapore.
Lee Kuan Yew, a real hero.
But we can't police Malacca and the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus.
We can't police the Suez.
And we can possibly police and retake the influence over the Panama Canal.
But these other choke points, due to the changing calculus of war, it's just too hard to defend a carrier battle group against drone and hypersonics now.
So you're going to see a regionalization.
Of the world.
I just wrote about this in the American Mind, the Claremont Institute publication that was published yesterday.
And so I think regionalization is just what's going to, that's the new reality.
So even if we weren't concerned about our own citizens, even if we weren't concerned about this dollarization and Dutch disease, we'd still be pursuing a lot of these same exact goals because it's the new reality that is facing us.
The worldwide Global hegemony is, I think we're seeing the waning days of that.
Yeah.
It seems like the whole world is, there's a snapback to nationalism.
Go ahead.
I was going to say, I like the Chinese tariffs for one reason in that we just get a bunch of junk.
They go out, Sheen and Timu.
Those have discipled in many ways the American consumer to want to buy just cheap, mass produced.
We couldn't make it here.
There's no way we could make those products here at price.
Pay a livable wage, all of that.
But we have gotten almost addicted, I would feel like, in a sense, to just some of it's even straight up toxic.
It has metals and lead in it.
It's cheap.
It's toxic.
It's made in sweatshops and factories and manufacturing conditions that are terrible.
But we've become addicted to it.
You think of like a kid that has a sugar addiction.
That's what we've become.
And so I would love to see, especially if these go on long term, it'll have all of its other ramifications, like Ron, you just talked about.
But it'd be really good for Americans to start thinking about well, actually, maybe my priority shouldn't be can I get this for the lowest possible price?
And I don't care if it's just rebranded from the same plant as everything else comes from.
And I don't care.
No, like start thinking about can I buy American?
Who's actually making this?
Are they being paid a livable wage?
Am I just exporting?
You know, just big pennies on the dollar.
So, at least as far as China is concerned, specifically, because the service we give them is not military.
We're not protecting their borders.
We give them 300 million people that are consumers at the end of the day.
That's one of our big exports.
So, I'm excited for that.
It's the McDonald's Happy Meal toy that your kid plays with at McDonald's and then you throw away at the gas station on the way home.
Right.
Well, a lot of the Chinese products that you're speaking of are actually stolen US tech.
There's countless stories of innovation and engineering prowess on these consumables.
And I did a Twitter thread on this today.
No, I wrote on my Substack today about this of these American ideas.
And then you form a company, you have a good idea, you have this amazing product.
And then you go to try to manufacture it here, and due to regulation and other things, it's not just because Americans can't afford a living wage.
I think you can pay a living wage and still make maybe not cheap, but not ridiculously expensive products.
But the issue is that you have the regulatory hurdles to opening a manufacturing business, to powering that business, and having the real estate.
Is ridiculous.
And by the time you jump through all those hurdles, you could have already just contracted a Chinese factory to do it for you.
The problem is, they then steal the idea.
They turn off their phones.
You have no recourse.
And you turn around and three weeks later, you see your product under some new name being marketed on Amazon and Timu.
So that is a real problem.
Swiss and how many watchmakers there have spent 100, 200, 300 years perfecting beautiful watches that I think bring glory to God, like Rolex.
And then China, they'll go and they'll make and everything externally about it.
Like internally, obviously, it's not machined to that caliber.
It's not precise.
It's not going to last as long.
But hey, it gives the American consumer, it's 98% similar.
And exactly like you said, you have a trade, you have something good, you have something beautiful that people work really hard for.
And then they say, well, we can make that for pennies on the dollar and just slap a logo on it.
Obviously, literally copying it with the logo.
There's copyright laws and stuff.
But they, They still get to America, if not knockoffs that look very much similar but have maybe a different brand.
Yeah, yeah.
I was just showing you talking about Swiss watch.
I was just showing my vintage Breitling here.
Nice, yeah.
The I when I uh became a pilot, that was my uh that was my gift to myself.
So, uh, 30, 33 years ago, y'all.
Wow, uh, one day you'll be able to say you're old.
Um, all right, well, let's uh let's see if we can get to some of the questions.
I have a question about Gareth, though, if you don't mind, Joel.
Um, Ron.
There's been some speculation and the Trump administration has been holding their cards pretty close to the vest.
There's been some speculation about what Trump is actually doing with this tariff.
And I've heard three, actually four.
You mentioned the one already, which is just trying to kind of put China back in its place.
So that's one.
But the other three are he is trying to revive American production.
He's trying to generate an alternative revenue stream, either to pay off the debt or to pave the way for getting rid of the income tax.
And then the other potential option is that he is simply trying to negotiate more actual fair trade deals with other countries.
And the thing about it is, some of those are mutually exclusive because if it's about production, then he doesn't care about the fair trade deals as much.
If it's about generating revenue for the United States, then maybe it's not so much about building up U.S. production.
So if you were to take your guess based on even, I know it changes every day.
Like I prepared the outline for the episode last night.
And then today things changed with the 90 day hiatus on the tax and the tariffs.
So, if you were to take a guess, what do you think the Trump administration is actually about?
What are they trying to do with this whole process?
Well, I think it's a rebalancing of all of it.
I don't think it's a linear relationship.
I think it's an optimization on multiple axes.
So, like old linear programming, a Lindo.
So, you are, I think that you are trying to create a different revenue stream for the government that isn't taxing your own people.
I think you're trying to create some friction for capital flows because that ultimately increases the value of nationhood, citizenship, all these non, I say non financial, Uh, everything, uh, you know, in the modern sense is financialized, but these non financial issues, uh,
can be heightened in value by creating some friction for dollars.
Uh, and also, you kill you help kill the euro dollar market.
So, um, and you know, uh, what that does is if there's more dollar, I mean, I would, I'm not a monetarist, a strict monetarist, but I do think Milton Friedman was correct when he said.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
If you have no ability to control dollars created offshore, then you really are going to have far less control over inflation when you need to have it.
So, part of this is a greater control over your own money supply, a heightened value for your own, what it means to be a citizen of the United States rather than a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, which is really meaningless.
All that does is create.
Market Makers and Liquidity Friction00:03:44
We believe, I think we're all on the same page here, that we believe that Pareto is reality.
That generally, because of the differences in giftedness and the differences in opportunity, 80% of resources tend to go to about 20% of the people.
And there's not a lot you can do to fix that.
We don't live in a, that raw, complete, and utter egalitarianism is a lie.
And you would have to strip people of identity and borders and all these things in pursuing that.
And you're still going to get.
So, I think we all agree that, or at least I would think we agree that some level of Pareto is just reality.
But if you have, again, without any resource friction, you get Pareto times rentier times leverage.
And so instead of 80 20, you get 99 1.
And that's obscene.
So, we don't want that.
That is, I don't think God's really happy with that.
And so, creating some friction.
And people, very smart people in the market, after, if y'all remember the flash crash from 2011, some smart people suggested perhaps a tiny, very tiny transactional tax for stocks would help prevent this.
I tend to agree with that.
I, you know, where you would do away with some of the high frequency trading, which all that does is it robs market makers.
So now you don't really have market makers anymore.
You just have now.
Again, I don't want to get into a big argument on that level of liquidity, but it's the same idea that if you have some level of friction, you increase investedness.
So, do I think Trump is ultimately for increasing the importance of American markets to Americans for the benefit of American citizens?
Yes.
Do I think he's trying to increase the level of U.S. control over the currency?
Yes.
Do I think he's trying to have an alternate source of revenue for the federal government that is less than income tax?
Yes, I do.
And so I think all the, and do I think that for the trade that is going to be there, do I think he wants a level playing field for all parties?
Yes.
And all, you can't maximize one of the, The idea isn't to maximize one over the other.
It's to increase the efficient frontier.
If you remember from your microeconomics, your efficient frontier of risk and return.
Well, it's similar among multiple fronts.
You're just trying to get as far onto that frontier while realizing there's multiple goals at play.
That's really helpful.
Thanks.
All right.
Let's go check out some of the questions.
Nathan's going to take us over.
Okay.
All right.
Darth Amalgamation, he asked, Did you manage to sell enough of the cigars at the conference so that you didn't have to bring them home and kill yourself by smoking all of them?
It's a thoughtful question because I would have done that.
Yeah, we sold them all.
I actually didn't get a single cigar.
I didn't either.
Yeah, so they're gone.
You guys did well.
Thank you.
We appreciate it.
Generations and Immediate Fathers00:07:29
This is Jeff Halfley.
He gave us a couple super chats.
Thanks, Jeff.
We appreciate it.
He said, Great meeting.
Oh, nope.
Starting up higher.
Great meeting, y'all.
At the Right Response Conference, your staff is great.
Thanks, Jeff.
And then he also followed up.
He said that a certain group of individuals, Reformed Christians, they're not actually arguing with you, they are instead arguing with their own parents' generation.
And then he has some other comments back on the main thread to kind of flesh that out.
If you can go back real quick, Nathan, scroll up.
Yep, scroll down.
There it is.
He said 1950s, 60s Christian right wingers were anti feminism, anti CRM, anti MLK, Martin Luther King.
Anti egalitarianism, and they were race realist.
So, I think what Jeff is saying is that there is a certain sector within the reformed world that aren't really arguing with you.
They're actually arguing with their dad.
Their dad is probably dead at this point.
But he's basically talking about some of the older guys that are, you know, they say that you're extreme or you're novel, you're different or, you know, this, that, and the other.
But in reality, it's really just kind of skipping the immediate.
Earthly fathers to get back to ancient fathers.
Matthew Henry talks about this, you know, ancient fathers, civil fathers, familial fathers.
There are different kinds of fathers, ecclesiastical or spiritual fathers.
Or no, I'm sorry, that's Thomas Watson.
But I think what Jeff Hafley is saying is there was a comment for all the listeners who weren't at the conference or haven't had a chance to sign up for our Patreon to watch the live stream, which I need to remind you guys about here in just a moment.
But there was a moment where basically I was saying, yes, we want to obey the fifth commandment, we want to honor our fathers, but what do you do?
What do you do if your immediate fathers, meaning the immediate preceding generation to your own, happens to be a generation that, of course, there are always exceptions.
There are some guys who stood the test of time, they went against the grain, they were faithful, they were countercultural and obedient to God, and we praise God for them.
But on the whole, speaking in generalities, the boomer generation in general, not universal, but in general, what do you do if that immediate generation?
Proceeding generation to your own is demanding that you honor them in keeping with the fifth commandment.
But by honoring them, if that honor means agreement, like unfettered allegiance and fidelity and full agreement, if agreeing with that immediately preceding generation to yours would then necessarily, it would automatically translate to a full fledged rebellion and disagreement with every single other generation.
In the history of all humankind, because that's kind of where we're at.
So I think that's what Jeff Hafley is getting at.
I talked about that at the conference briefly, but just saying that yes, we want to honor our immediate familial fathers, especially your father, like your earthly, your literal dad.
We want to honor our fathers as best we can.
But in general, a lot of honoring fathers, what it's going to require is respectfully, but But steadfastly disagreeing with the immediate preceding generation to ours because they dishonored all of their fathers.
I didn't do this.
I don't want it to be this way.
I'm not trying to pick on anybody, I'm not trying to be disrespectful.
But the hippie free love movement of the 60s, I mean, that's literally what it was founded on.
It was literally founded on rebelling against dad.
That's literally what it was.
It was, I'm going to, if I'm a dude, I'm going to grow my hair out, you know, just to stick it to the man.
I'm going to have long hair just as a sign of rebellion.
If I'm a chick, I'm going to cut it short.
We're going to do drugs, you know, drugs, rock and roll, all this kind of, you know, whatever.
And, but the whole thing is, we're raging against the machine.
We're going against our fathers and their fathers and their fathers and their fathers and their fathers.
So, yeah, so if the train is going to, you know, it's been derailed, if it's going to get put back on the tracks, you can do it respectfully.
You don't have to be a jerk about it.
You shouldn't be a jerk about it.
But what it's going to look like is telling an entire generation no.
That's what it's going to look like.
And you do that respectfully, but it's going to look like saying, I'm sorry, but your gay race communism is not going to be distilled down to my children.
Like it stops, the buck stops here, it's stopping with my generation.
That was gay.
That was wrong.
I'm not rebellious.
You're rebellious.
You literally had t shirts made about rebellion.
Your generation, you were proud of it.
The rebellious generation.
So for me to not be rebellious, I have to rebel against the rebellious generation.
I'm sorry.
I don't make the rules, but under Christian nationalism, the boomer mindset will be defeated.
So I think that's what Jeff Hafley is talking about.
Nothing to do with our conversation today, but he gave a super chat, trying to honor it.
Jeremy Kearns, he gave a super chat.
He said, Great conference, right response.
Glad that God has put y'all in our lives.
I believe your conference will be talked about in the history books.
Probably not, but I appreciate that.
The tide is turning.
And I think that's true.
It will be probably not in the history books, but it will be talked about in the Twitter streets.
I guarantee you it already has been.
I saw the form going around.
Did you guys see this?
Yes, I saw it.
Somebody was saying it was a church disciplinary form.
And it was saying if you have anyone that you personally know who was at the Crisis King Right Response Conference, here's a form and you need to write down their name.
And there's two boxes that you could check.
Is that real?
That sounds like fake news to me.
No, it's real.
No, he made it real.
Yep, he made it real.
It's absolutely real.
Yep, you can check the box if.
If the person's repentant, but if they're unrepentant, you know, then you need to check that box.
They're an impenitent, ongoing sin because they attended the white nationalist conference that had Calvin Robinson.
We're not doing very good, you know, if that's the goal.
You know, Calvin was, you know, he was there and it was funny in the green room.
He was like, now I know it's tough, you know, with me being an Anglo Catholic.
And I said, no, man, it's tough because you're half black.
And he laughed, you know, so, but this was a real form and he's saying, fill it out and find what church people go to.
And send it to their elders, send it to their pastors.
So, we're already getting my point is, yeah, it's not going to be talked about in the history books because there are better men than us.
And hopefully they'll make the history books and maybe we'll be a footnote, you know, or in the appendix or something like that, an honorable mention, you know, maybe that, probably not even that.
But it will be talked about in the Twitter streets.
And what we're doing, just so you guys know, so this is where I'll make the plug, we're going to put out one piece of content.
So, there were seven main sessions and three panels.
Two of those were panels where we're just having a conversation.
And then one of those was.
A discussion/slash debate.
There was some formality with open statements, closing statements, but then in the cross-examination, we made it more conversational.
Heavenly Good and Civil Duty00:03:12
But that was between Pastor David Reese and Dr. Stephen Wolf, predominantly focusing on theonomy versus natural law.
And I think that they actually did a fantastic job getting to the crux of the argument because everybody's like, What are we?
Where do we disagree?
Where do we disagree?
What is the crux of the argument?
And they nailed it with this 90-minute debate four minutes before the end.
They got to the crux.
That's right.
It was four minutes before the end.
Where they finally got to this point, and this is where I think the crux of the debate was.
And it was literally four minutes until I had to go up and stop it, and so it was kind of a bummer.
But they finally got to the point where it was Stephen's position that he believes that civil government is an institution that would have existed in a prelapsarian world, and that the obligation, the duties that God has given to the civil magistrate, is not just to punish bad guys, but to promote the good, earthly good for the heavenly good.
And that's basically his premise.
So, his premise when he thinks of the civil magistrate, he's not just thinking about tamping down on crime and punishing bad behavior, but he's thinking about incentivizing and structuring and even rewarding positive behavior, temporal earthly goods, and promoting that in such a way that it serves the heavenly good.
Whereas for David Reese, he feels like that's a noteworthy calling, but he believes that that belongs to churches and the family.
And if you want that role to be done poorly, promoting the earthly good that leads towards heavenly good, then give it to the stair.
And that's in a nutshell, that's his position is, you know, if you want a job done poorly, then go ahead and make sure the government does it.
And so for him, he believes that it's the Noahic covenant, Genesis chapter 9, that that's where the civil magistrate really comes into the picture, that there wouldn't really be a government, a civil role in a prelapsarian, you know, if there had been no fall, prelapsarian, no fall, no sin entering the world.
And so this is actually a postlapsarian, it's because of sin, and it's instituted in the Noahic covenant, and it's strictly to punish evil and punish evil.
Yes, Romans 13 says praise the good, but not so much incentivizing or rewarding or promoting the good.
And so for Stephen, government would exist whether there was sin in the world or not, because it's not just to punish sin, sin particularly that becomes in the realm of crime.
It would have been in a prelapse area, and if sin had never entered the world, it still would have existed.
And it's a larger, broader banner.
It's not just get the bad guys, but it's promote the public earthly good and even the heavenly good in such a way that the temporal orients towards the eternal, and uh, for David Reese, he's saying, Yeah, that's an important job.
And to be fair to you know, to Pastor Reese, he's saying it's got to be done, but I trust households and the families and churches to do that.
And the state is going to make a mess of that, he just needs to get the bad guys, and it's a post lapsarian uh type of government.
And we and and I think like that was the clearest I ever heard it was like, Oh, here's the difference, and they they nailed it, they got right down to brass tacks, um, after 86 minutes, and so uh, with you know, with four minutes to go.
So that's That was the debate.
Northern Tribes and Biblical Theology00:05:29
All of these, what I was going to say, all of these are going to be posted.
They're going to be, you know, P-P-O-A-S-T.
They're going to be posted.
And they're going to be weekly.
So we're going to put it out, but we've got to take a couple weeks because Nathan literally just set the studio back up like an hour before we started live streaming and has been unloading and all this kind of stuff at the conference.
There's a lot of logistics on the backside.
So it's going to be a couple weeks before we start doing it, but it's going to be seven main sessions, three panels, one of them being the debate that I just summarized.
And it's going to be weekly.
So probably expect, I would say, two to three weeks from now, expect one.
Once a week, we'll drop a piece of content from the conference.
But if you want to see it all ahead of time, you can go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
Patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
We are reserving this for our gold tier members.
And so you will have to sign up to be a gold member.
But for 10 bucks, and believe it or not, I know it sounds like, is that even possible?
I've been reliably informed that it is possible.
It's not probable, but it is possible to subscribe to something.
And to make use of it and then cancel the subscription afterwards.
So it is possible, but not probable.
But you actually can spend $10 and only $10 and get all the conference content and have 30 days to watch it.
So go to patreon.com forward slash write response ministries.
You'll get it all and you get early access and you'll be able to watch it now.
But when we start posting it, I think Ron Dodson would be able to confirm that this is true and not hyperbole.
Once it starts coming out publicly, There will be screeching and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
People will just be like, I can't believe it.
I can't believe that these heretics did this conference.
And I just don't know what to do.
There will be pearl clutching.
People will hide your wife, hide your kids.
They did a conference where they believe that Christ should actually be king.
It's crazy.
All right, that's my pitch.
Joel, we have lots of questions, but some at the bottom that are specifically financial related.
Do you want to?
Yeah, let's give it to Ron.
You ask it, Michael, and give it to Ron.
From Colin Erb, Ron.
Colin says Does the upcoming recession that you guys foresee impact thoughts on starting a business?
What's the business?
I'm not opening my consulting shop today, but I mean, that's dependent upon what's your financing source.
Is it a typical operating operator and capital partner type of relationship?
Are you just doing bank financing or is it savings?
That kind of thing.
What's your.
What need are you, you know, before you open any business, you're trying to meet a need that isn't currently being met or meeting it in a more efficient or better way.
And so if, and then you have to decide how elastic, see, full circle, how elastic the demand is for that need.
So is it a want?
Is it a luxury good?
Is it meeting an actual need?
And all those things play into, A business plan that is resilient, that you either determine is resilient or not to recessionary concerns.
So that's about the best I can do on that.
I did want to say, I did want to say that regarding one thing I forgot about Matthew 17, we were talking about tribute.
You know, Solomon, when he split, ended up because of his actions, split the kingdom.
And what was it over?
He taxed the people over and above.
The tithe to the temple to go and do certain things.
And that's why the northern tribes left.
And so you see a, and God never judges the northern tribes.
God judges the northern tribes because of their unfaithfulness, not because they left due to that.
And so I think that's a, we can get some principles from that about the right relationship of the righteous king.
And then regarding what you were saying, Jill, by the way, very good distillation of that.
I caught up with.
Isker about this stuff.
With the theonomy debate?
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, it's really good because, you know, but, you know, you have to ask yourself was Jesus not going to, in a prelapsarian, if Adam had not fallen, would Jesus have ever been king?
And so is there an eternal purpose in king?
And who reformed the priesthood?
Was it a prophet?
Was it the high priest or was it the king?
It was David.
David reformed the priesthood and David was no sinless man.
He was just the king and he had the authority to do so.
And even if you look at the geography of Jerusalem, it is not Mount Moriah that is tallest, it is Mount Zion, the traditional home of the Davidic king.
And so you have to look at some of these eternal purposes and not just think.
Sometimes, in our reformed zeal to be forensic about everything, we lose some of the more exciting typological insights that come from a literary reading of scripture.
Treasury Bonds and Market Advice00:08:53
Yep, well said.
Sorry, I'm not doing biblical theology, so sorry.
No, we know.
We do tariffs, we do biblical theology.
We know.
We do it with you.
Ron knows his Bible.
You can speak to the Bible.
Ron, this is a question that is beyond at least my pay grade, probably all of our pay grade.
This is Corey.
He says, Do you think China will dump bonds in response to the tariffs?
If so, how would that affect the U.S.?
Well, they don't own nearly as many bonds as has been advertised, but sure, they could dump bonds.
The question is, how else are they going to?
I mean, there are some, they don't have complete and utter freedom because.
Their buying of bonds has to do with the fact that they take in dollars.
If they take in fewer dollars, then they're going to buy fewer bonds.
The issue is, though, is that we had a, everybody was very, very concerned about the treasury auction today, and it was so oversubscribed.
So there's no lessening demand for treasury notes and bonds.
The issue that the reason rates have risen over the last Three or four days it has to do with the breakdown of the basis trade because the that gets real arcane, it's kind of beyond this discussion.
You can look it up if you look up hedge fund basis, treasury basis trading, and probably get a you know, have Chad GPT or Garak explain it to you.
Great, right?
Deacon St. John asks, As of an hour ago, there's reporting that today the SP rose 2,900 points over 10 percent, best day ever recorded.
Allegedly, is MAGA winning the market?
Was great here towards the end.
What do you make of that, Ron?
Well, it wouldn't be the SP rising 2,900 points.
That would be the Dow, I believe.
The Dow is 2,900 points.
Well, I mean, then the Dow is capper weighted and the SP is price weighted and the SP is cap weighted.
They're just different instruments.
One's 30 stocks, one's 500.
What do I make of the reaction today?
I think the reaction, what we're seeing is you better have your big boy pants on if you're trying to trade this market because It's not acting stochastically.
So, guys like me who are quant oriented, we trade based upon that which we can model.
And you can't model, it's very similar to the latter half of 2008, where it's really based upon the market is trading upon policy decisions.
And there's no way to model that unless you can read minds or, you know, have inside information into policy decisions.
Personally, I believe that.
Sorry, we got some kind of noise going on here in the worldwide offices of Dodson Incorporated here.
Anyway, what I take away from the response today is that the people who make decisions at the margin of whether to buy or sell stocks are doing so on short to middle term risk.
And that short to middle term risk was set aside for the collateral damage.
That is absolutely part and parcel of a tariff regime, mostly with Europe and other stuff, other nations, not China.
So, this was a response simply to that.
And I don't think it goes beyond much of that.
And then you have momentum that comes with just people suddenly feeling, oh, okay, it's okay to buy again.
Maybe the mess is over.
I think this whole year is going to be choppy.
The quantitative look.
At the market going into January 1st, before all this stuff happened, tend to suggest that the market was going to close the year somewhere between six up and six down, six percentage points up, six percentage points down.
That's kind of what, if you have a year like last year and you have the first year of a presidential cycle and so on and so forth, that doesn't mean that's what's going to happen, but that's kind of where the big fat part of the bell curve is for a year.
You know, going into the year.
Now, it looked like I would tend to stick with that, except maybe widen that out a little bit because of some of the boldness of our president.
And I think that boldness is good, but it's going to cause some volatility.
And, you know, I'm not dodging the question, I'm just being honest.
I've been out of the equity markets other than what I'm mandated in my family office to be.
I'm at my lowest percentage in my family office, I'm only 25% invested in stocks there.
And I have zero volar positions on right now in my hedge fund.
So that tells you my view of the volatility in the market.
I think it's going to continue.
If I'd been short any calls today, I would have had my head ripped off.
But I'm in and out of the market.
I analyze the market for something called stochasticity, which is, is it performing in a pseudo random way?
And that's what, you know, I'll put all your watchers to sleep on that.
But But that's what I'm looking at.
And we're outside of a stochastic, a pseudo stochastic market.
With a bounce like today, Ron, I'm curious do you, because like you said, I think there's going to be a lot of volatility.
And I don't see a V shaped recovery happening, at least for a while.
So with a bounce like we had today, do you think we go up from here or do you think we touch back down?
Well, I am not a day trader.
And I don't, you know, My stock portfolio will rebalance at the first of next month.
And my Vol ARB.
So, what Vol ARB does in a very concise way, I'll try to be very quick about this, is I try to take, I try to ARB out the difference between implied and realized volatility.
That's called the volatility risk premium.
But I saw, you know, due to some quantitative things that, That there is not going to be an ARB.
And thank goodness, because realized has been way beyond implied over the last three weeks.
So that's very good.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for good models.
So, but as far as what it does in the next few days, generally these things sort themselves out in three day cycles.
Traditionally, I would look at, I mean, if you want to get real technical, you can look at, you know, put three.
Three percentage point bands around a 21 day moving average around the SP 500.
And if the market trades outside of that, good luck trading it.
If the market is inside of that, then you can kind of have some level of normalcy.
The problem is we moved back into those bands at the close today, but off of an almost 10 percentage point move up.
Well, that in and of itself is that's five sigma probably move up on the SP.
So I'm I'm probably not even jumping in the Vollarb space until the first of next week.
And that's if things calm way down.
So that's where my mind is as far as what it does in the next few days.
That's not really my knitting.
I trade on a longer time scale than that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Jill, I don't know if legally I hear all the cool podcasts do it.
If we have to say something about how this is a guest and we're talking opinions and none of this is legal advice or trading advice or, you know.
No, this is financial advice.
No, it's not.
None of this is financial advice.
Ron is not your financial advisor.
Neither are we.
But you want to make some numbers.
Matter of fact, I'm telling you, I am not a day trader.
I trade in and out of stocks for my family office account once a month and I rebalance.
I am a, I'm a, I'm a, you want advice on Volarb, then you're my competitor and I'm not giving it.
So there.
Fair enough.
Any other questions that look worth addressing?
Practical Tailwinds for Media00:13:31
Jesse S., he says, what's the theme for next year's conference?
Honestly, I couldn't tell you.
I, you know, not that you won't, you couldn't.
I couldn't tell you.
I would tell you.
No, like, I'll say this.
I just think everything is shifting and changing so quickly.
There's been so many fractures in the world, in our country, politically and ecclesiologically, ecclesiastically, like within the church, that it's hard to predict.
Honestly, it's hard to predict what the Lord may be doing, what would be most useful, what would be most helpful.
And it's perhaps even exponentially more difficult to predict.
Who to invite.
I think that that's in some sense, that's one of the mistakes that I've made in previous years is trying to solidify our conference, you know, too soon, well ahead of time.
It's nice for people to plan, but then something happens and all of a sudden, you know, the person that, you know, one of the people that you invited is like, oh, you know, like maybe he doesn't really like you.
Anymore, you know, and so it feels like every six months there's like some earth shattering, you know, transition and uh change that's uh happening.
And so, I don't really know if I had to guess today.
One of the things I'll say this um, I don't know what you know, a year from now, what will happen.
We'll start you know, making plans, and as we make plans, we'll make announcements and uh, and make that you know, public information.
But for now, um, the biggest my biggest takeaway.
From the conference, and it's not really because of anything that somebody specifically said at the conference, but I've just been feeling this leading up to the conference, and I feel like it's all the more confirmed after the conference, just in conversations that I've had with people.
I think Dan Burkholder and I had a conversation on Wednesday night, and I thought it was really insightful.
It was the two of us, and the other Octoboys were there, Eric and Ben.
And so the four of us were talking, but Dan and I were primarily going back and forth.
We're talking about like the next four years now that we've had a Trump victory and these kinds of things.
And the first thing that Dan said was that because we've had this victory, you know, which is far from perfect and there's a ton more work to do.
And honestly, in my opinion, you know, not speaking about finances or tariffs or those things, I'm pretty pleased.
But there's some other issues where I'm like, ah, I think the verdict's still out, whether or not, how much of a victory this is actually going to be, right?
Like if all of a sudden, you know, income tax is done away with.
And, you know, America enters, you know, financially a golden age.
But I have to think about how to plan my prison ministry because Trump's greatest contribution is anti-Semitism laws, and Palantir's facial recognition puts me in jail.
Then, you know, I don't know for me personally.
I don't know if I'd be looking back and say, yeah, that was a victory.
All right.
Yeah, we're winning.
You know, at that point, I'd be like, yeah, I think I am sick of winning because winning threw me in jail.
But so.
Here's my point.
Dan was kind of saying, like, I think it's going to be harder for ministries and different media companies and stuff like that to distinguish themselves in the next four years on the backdrop of victory.
Whereas the last four years, there were so many headwinds, and now we may have some tailwinds, but there were so many headwinds that it was really easy to distinguish yourself.
And I know what he's saying, and I generally agree.
He was talking about COVID, he was talking about mostly peaceful riots, and the Summer of Love, and George Floyd, and BLM, and all these different things, and saying that, like, You know, if you just had some courage, then you could distinguish yourself from all the big even, all this group, and all of a sudden you start to stand out.
And I think that's a generally right instinct.
I think he's correct.
But I actually told him, and he ended up agreeing with me I think it won't be harder to distinguish ourselves in the next four years.
I think it'll actually be far easier.
And the reason why is not because, you know, after careful consideration, I've decided to become worse.
It's not that scenario, although I have.
After careful consideration, I have decided to become worse.
But without becoming worse, this is my point.
You will not have to step forward.
This is my prediction for the next four years.
You will not have to step forward.
All you have to do is stay put in terms of courage and what you're talking about and what you're willing to address.
You don't have to take it up a notch.
You don't have to step forward.
You just stay put and you will distinguish yourself because all of your friends are going to be taking 10 steps back.
And I'm watching that happen in real time.
I'm watching that happen in real time.
I'm watching.
You know what?
Now that we've had this win, I'm doing the calculus.
And for me personally, you know, my goals are really more suited towards this.
And I don't know if I really want to go after this issue, you know, that gets you in trouble.
And I don't really know.
Like, this is enough.
Like, a lot of people right now are, and I'm not talking about, you know, a bunch of heathens.
I'm talking about reformed ministers.
I'm talking about Christians.
And I think a lot of them are doing the calculus, and they actually are saying, it's enough winning for me.
This is enough winning for me.
I've won enough.
And for me, I'm looking at that, and it's not enough winning for me.
I think that there are formidable enemies of Christ that are still at large in the world.
There's been zero threat posed to them.
They're walking around free as a bird, terrorizing whole swaths of the church.
And I plan to go for their throats.
And.
And I plan to talk about those kinds of issues.
And it's not really so much a change for me, but it's just I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing.
And I have lots of friends that I respect.
And I'm not even saying they're wrong.
So I'm not even saying, hear me, I'm not saying this is objectively compromised and this person is in sin or this person is selling out.
I'm not saying any of those things.
Everybody has to decide individually.
But the reason why Ogden and I, Georgetown and Ogden, are so aligned, part of it, just to be frank, it's not just conviction, it's not just theological.
But there's a practical calculus.
Ogden, in addition to, you know, like they're insulated.
Like, who's going to fire Brian Sauvet?
They're elder rule.
They're not a part of a presbytery, right?
Like, like all the guys who became presbyterian, you know, in the last five years.
It's like, well, are you presbyterian?
Because kind of the key word there is presbytery.
Like, you're just pedo Baptist.
You're John Owen.
You're Congregationalist, you know, who baptized babies.
And that's great.
I'm here for it.
That's, you know, I support you.
But my point is, just in terms of their church polity, they're not a part of presbytery.
I thank God that Brian Sauvay and Eric Kahn actually can't be canceled.
They are bulletproof, they are uncancelable.
And outside of their church life, pastorally, what they're doing there, and that's first and foremost, and that has to be the priority.
But beyond that, what are they doing as they're making the calculus for the next four years?
What are they trying to do?
They're starting a media company.
And so, in starting a media company, they have every incentive to distinguish themselves and not just be Big Con Inc., you know, and like, you know.
Daily Wire 2.0.
Yeah, Daily Wire, you know, the Israeli Wire 2.0.
Like, no, they're going to want to distinguish themselves and exercise.
For them, courage is currency.
For them, it is in their practical best interest, aside from theological convictions and their fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ.
They have every practical incentive to exercise courage.
There are plenty of other guys that we love, guys who are on the broader team.
So, what I hope doesn't happen, I'll add this disclaimer, is we don't need any more fracturing.
We don't need any more divisions.
We don't need any more brother wars.
I really hope that we could be done with that.
So, what I foresee is actually more divisions, but more charitable divisions, where we can have a broader team, where we genuinely love each other, but it may get to the point where there's still enough separation, distinction between us.
Where it's simply not advantageous, for instance, for someone like William Wolfe, who I admire and respect.
But it just may not make sense.
If he's trying to unseat the ERLC and Brent Leatherwood with CBL and win normies in the SBC, that is a noble and honorable cause.
And it just may not suit his practical purposes to speak at our next conference and get blacklisted.
And so that's just a practical calculus.
That doesn't say anything about.
William compromising or anything.
That's my point.
So I don't want anybody to read it, like think, this is cryptic.
What's he actually saying?
Is there another brother war, you know, brewing behind the scenes?
Not that I'm aware of.
I'm sure there is, but not that I'm aware of.
I'm not saying any of that.
What I am saying is there have been the brother wars where it's like, it's the reformed, you know, they call it the reformed longhouse.
I think in some ways there is that, but there's also the reformed deep state where it's like, this is a hit job.
We're trying to take somebody out.
Like, we're literally trying to destroy you.
And I think that we'll.
Probably get a little bit less of that because I think a lot of those dividing lines have already fallen and people have just kind of, you know, let bygones be bygones and go in their separate ways, right?
I think a lot of that dust is settling.
Hopefully, by God's grace, we don't have that, like just full on shootouts.
But I do think we'll still have fractures.
They don't have to be, they can be, I think they'll be amicable fractures.
I don't think they have to be mean, spirited.
I don't think they have to be bloody.
But I do think we're going to have fractures where it's like this group that two years ago we might have partnered on something, or this group that six months ago we might have been doing this, or he might have come on the podcast, and now he's not going to.
And it's not because he's not an ally.
It's not because he's not a part of this broader banner of like a co belligerent.
And it's not even because he's not a friend.
I can still pick up the phone and call him privately.
I could get counsel.
He loves me.
I love him.
Even behind the scenes, there might still be some partnering.
There might even be a donation from someone, you know, from time to time.
But in terms of public facing, everybody's doing the personal calculus.
Now that we have some tailwinds, all we've had is headwinds forever.
Forever.
Like we as conservatives, we didn't even think tailwinds were a thing.
We forgot that that could actually happen.
So now that we actually have some tailwinds, people are going to be making the calculus of what to do with those tailwinds, which chart to do.
Course or which course to chart.
And they're going to be, you know, and some of the guys are going to say, these tailwinds are enough to get me what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to start a business.
I'm trying to win the SBC.
I'm trying to just pastor a church.
And it's a bunch of normies or a bunch of boomers or a bunch of, you know, whatever.
And they're not ready for a conversation about X, Y, and Z.
And so there's going to be a lot of people making that calculus based off of what their ministry is.
What is their vocation?
What are they doing?
What are their goals?
Um, Ogden and Georgetown are unique in the sense that we're both highly insulated.
Um, just like Ogden, uh, you know, our church, Covenant Bible Church, is independent.
Um, and in terms of internally with the church, um, people can drop whatever hit piece they want.
And because I've been honest and forthright, um, the church is not caught off guard, they're not surprised, and they're for me, they're in my corner.
And so, uh, Brian Sauvay and Eric Kahn are bulletproof, Joel Webbin is.
Bulletproof, and in addition to our local church ministries, we both also have the same practical goals we're both starting media companies.
And, um, and in that world, when that's your objective, um, we have every practical like everybody else who's going to be taking you know five steps back or 10 steps back or 20 steps back saying that it's please, Mr. President, it's enough winning.
This is all I need for me, my family, my vocation, my goals.
Um, and they're going to play ball a little bit and just say, Hey, it's good, you know, this is.
This meets my goals and what i'm trying to achieve.
For for guys like Ogden and guys like us um, that actually is counterintuitive to our goals.
Leviathan, Wokeness, and LARPing00:03:06
We do that.
If we do that uh, we lose our entire listening base.
And for all those who are listening right now, I would say, kudos, well done, you should leave.
If uh if, if I back down, you should leave.
You should stop watching, you should stop supporting.
Um, if I back down, you have, you have my unadulterated blessing to absolutely abandon me.
And it's the same, Ogden, it's the same calculus with them.
Like Eric and I, you know, we talked just yesterday morning and we were like, yeah, everybody's still our friend.
We love them, wish them the best privately.
If there's anything we can do to help them, serve them, absolutely 100%.
No public counter signaling, right?
No, no, you know, subtweeting.
And, you know, like, no, we're not doing that.
But for ourselves individually and what we're overseeing, After careful consideration, we've decided to become worse.
So anyways, all that back to the conference question, you know, what's the theme of next year's conference?
TBD, it's to be determined, but it'll probably, if I had to guess, if anything, it'll probably be something along those lines.
It'll be identifying what are the dragons, right?
Because lots of people like to LARP.
They like to go to the dead carcass of the dragon that was killed 50 years ago, you know, like racism, you know, and they just, they kick it, you know, and hit it with their pretend wooden toy swords.
You know, and pretend to be, you know, knights in shining armor fighting a dead dragon that somebody else slayed 50 years before they were born.
That's not what I'm going to do.
That's not what Ogden's going to do.
So for us, I think, you know, in looking at future themes and things that we're going to address, it's going to be whatever the reigning terror, whatever the Leviathan is presently.
Not the Leviathan of 50 years ago, not the Leviathan of four years ago.
It's not just going to be rehashing CRT and wokeness.
Like, you know, like we're not going to LARP anymore.
Wokeness, yeah, there's plenty of people who are not putting the woke away.
But a lot of people are.
Like, a lot of people are putting the woke away, even if they didn't want to, because just capitalism is saying no to wokeness.
And so a lot of people are putting it, so we're not going to just go and address wokeness while fully embodying woke light.
You know, like, no, we're going to keep pushing the ball forward.
You know, what's the next thing?
And.
And I have some ideas, and we'll probably have to save that for another episode.
But I think there are at least three pillars, formidable enemies of the church in our American context that must be addressed.
And I'm going to address them.
And I'm talking about doing series on these topics.
And there's a lot of things that we'll be announcing in the near future that I'm excited about.
Final Thoughts on Future Episodes00:01:29
So that's it for conference questions.
That's it for all the questions.
That's all the time we have.
Ron, do you have any?
Final thoughts or final words that you'd like to leave the audience with?
Where can we find you, too?
Oh, yeah.
How can we follow you?
I'm Ronald Dodson on Twitter, at Ron Dodson.
And then I have a substack, The Eyes of Apillies, which is rondodson.substack, however that works.
Then I write for American Reformer.
I was just published, as I mentioned, in The American Mind yesterday.
I think I'll have another piece coming out with them in the next week or so.
And, you know, I'm on with the guys Contramundum often and with several other.
I've been on, I got an appearance with Pete Canonas coming out in the next day or two.
Nice.
And so you can find me if you just put Ron Dodson or Ronald Dodson in.
I'm out there.
All right.
Great.
Well, thanks for coming on the show.
We appreciate your expertise and your willingness to address this topic that was a little bit above our pay grade, but we did our best and it helped to have you on the show.