The Conference panelists debate America First tariffs, arguing economies must serve families rather than GDP metrics. They redefine American identity as rooted Anglo-Protestant tradition essential for stability, warning against generational disconnect and theological "fluff." Speakers emphasize discipling men to counter cultural shifts, citing farm legacies and the Ridge Runner Project as signs of recovery. Ultimately, they conclude that rejecting pure ideology for lived tradition offers hope through common grace and divine providence amidst moral decay. [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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Serving the American Economy00:06:10
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Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
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We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
All right, we're going to kick off first.
There's a lot of topics that we're going to do our best to get to, but first, We want to start with some current events, some political things that are going on right now.
All six of us, we love the GDP going up.
Bottom line, and we are against tariffs.
Not really.
We think a lot of the global economic stuff is a little bit fake and gay, and we are America first.
And so we're going to talk about tariffs a little bit.
And so I am going to tell you everything I know.
That was it.
So now here's Orrin.
You guys might have noticed there's a little bit of panic right now.
Things change slightly, and all of a sudden we're all doomed, and it's over.
Capitalism is done.
I'm sorry.
It was a good ride.
Glad everybody enjoyed it.
But no, it's really hilarious to watch the way that everyone has reacted to this.
Trump has been very clear about the fact that he was going to use tariffs in an attempt to reshore and re industrialize businesses in the United States.
I think we all recognized during COVID when we found out that the very country that had created a virus that was ravaging us was also the only place that created antibiotics that we could consume.
That maybe having all of our production in foreign countries, even if it's a little bit cheaper, isn't the smartest thing in the world.
That's a pretty common sense thing.
That's pretty easy for people to grasp.
But that doesn't show up on your 401k, it doesn't show up in your stock portfolio.
Your kid dying because you don't have access to antibiotics doesn't show up in your retirement account.
And so that's a very difficult thing for people to quantify when all they're focused on is the line going up.
Now, I don't want to see anybody lose any money, and I don't think anyone likes seeing the stock market not do well.
But we all knew that at some point, if we were ever going to make these things right, there was going to be some level of adjustment, some moment at which we were not going to have the optimum number in our 401k as we made this transition.
That doesn't mean that every tariff is great, that doesn't mean that everything that Trump does.
Is, you know, you can't question it.
However, the people who are panicking right now, just a few days into this process, I feel like have completely forgotten what's going on.
We were all living through the economy where no one could afford a house as a young person, right?
We were all living through the economy where people were talking about financing pizzas.
Like, what are we doing?
Who are we kidding?
Did we really think we had a great economy just because we saw big numbers somewhere?
Like, it's nice, I own a house, it's nice that my house has become more valuable.
But if I need to sell my house, guess what?
I have to buy another one.
And so the fact that the numbers have inflated does me no real good, and all it ultimately does is hurt the next generation who cannot form families because they cannot afford to move into a house of their own, because they can't have a father who works while a mother stays home and educates her children and loves her children.
When we build an economy like that, we are not servicing the American people, we are servicing the economy.
And that's not what economies are for.
I like a good economy, but I like a good economy because it benefits my people, my country.
It grows families, it allows people to do well.
And so I understand the panic right now, but I think people need to recognize that ultimately the real good is adjusting things back to an economy that serves the United States.
Well said.
That's good.
Can I jump in on that?
Steve, thoughts?
Well, I will tell you, I have reevaluated in the last decade or so, and especially post COVID, a lot of my pre existing orthodoxies.
I mean, I was way more involved in politics and conservative causes.
Long before I was converted.
My wife is here with me in the front row.
When we first started dating, she got two books to learn more about me The Way Things Ought to Be, and See, I Told You So, Rush Limbaugh's two best selling books.
I was college Republicans.
I learned all the orthodoxies.
I read all the Thomas Sowell.
I knew all this stuff.
I mock pastors who wear sweater vests now in July, and I used to wear the Alex P. Keaton monogram sweater vest when I was a kid.
I wanted to be Alex.
Speak heat when I grew up.
So, all the panicky talking points we're hearing now, this was my pre existing orthodoxy before my spiritual conversion.
And, you know, the thing that a biblical worldview does is it puts things in a context that not even the most learned philosophies of any era, as Paul says, where is the sage of this age who would dare stand against the word of God?
And I think when we forget some of the basic Fundamental facts of existence that the word reveals to us, our philosophies have a tendency to fall apart because they're operating in the world as the philosophies want it to be, and not necessarily the world as it is.
So I'm really big on honesty, I'm really big on transparency, and as long as it doesn't violate a third party confidence, I'll tell you guys pretty much anything you ask me.
All right?
So let me be really open and honest.
Returning to Firm Foundations00:15:50
Two years ago, we made more money.
Amy and I did.
She has a Christian therapy practice now as well.
We made more money combined than we've ever made as a family.
We made 400K two years ago.
We went out and did Tim Pool's show two years ago, and Amy was like, We have got to do that for you.
This is like our dream.
Like a house big enough where you can put the studio, the staff can come in and out all of the time and have their own access while we have privacy.
So, we looked at the possibility of buying and owning that kind of home in Des Moines, Iowa.
And I'm just going to tell you, I mean, for what I could sell, just to what Oron said, it doesn't matter what they tell me my house is worth on the market if no one can afford it, my current home.
There's no buyer for it.
They're just numbers on a page, they don't matter.
All right?
And then, with where interest rates currently are, even with a massive down payment on that style of home, We were looking at a mortgage payment in the Des Moines, Iowa suburbs of over $5,000 a month.
Could we afford that?
Sure, but then we would just be house poor in a nicer home.
And we're at a stage of life now where we want to pass things on to our kids.
We're in a stage of life now that, you know, when our daughter, our oldest daughter calls and her oven stops working, we can just buy them, her and her husband, a stove and an oven for our granddaughter and them to, you know, have warm food if we can do that.
Or we want to take the family on a vacation.
We can do that.
And because it's the quality of life things that ultimately matter.
It's the relationships you make and the connections you have that ultimately matter.
You know, when Amy's father, who served our country for 30 years in the 101st Airborne, we buried him three years ago.
And we went through after that military funeral and we walked, I walked the funeral grounds.
There weren't any tombstones on there that said, had the best GDP, made the most money.
Everything was about relationships, what they left behind, the legacy that they left.
And to me, I am concerned with technocratic utilitarian ethics on both the right and the left.
That on the left, we are mere constructs to serve their cog in the machine.
And on the right, to quote the great prophet Bob Seeger, we feel like a number.
We're just numbers on a page.
We're making money, but who's making it and for what point and what purpose?
And I think that's the kind of context that a biblical worldview brings to the table.
That does not mean what Trump is trying is going to work.
It's not as if the rest of the nations on earth are like, that's just adorable that they want to reassert their leverage in the global marketplace.
We're just going to go ahead and roll over and let them do it.
And for every Vietnam that will do it, there'll be a China that will say, well, we're going to go ahead and quadruple down on those now.
This is going to be a fight.
They're not just going to say, you guys go ahead and reassert where you were as a country in the 50s when your people worked in the meatpacking plants out of high school and your people worked in the factories that no longer exist and made a really good living and could raise a family and mom could stay home and you could send the kids to college or.
Your son could follow you in that same mill or in that same plant and do the same exact thing.
We're not going to give you, just automatically give you that life back because you want it.
This will cause some pain and it may not work.
And this may be the thing ultimately that costs us 40, 50 House seats next year and ends the Trump presidency and makes him a lame duck the morning after the midterm elections.
That's the gamble that is on the table right now.
But even though it violates my pre existing orthodoxies, I am going to support what he's trying to do.
Because I understand there's more to the law than just the letter of the law.
You can tithe on every ounce of dill, cumin, and spice, but if you reject mercy and sacrifice the spirit of the law for the former, you've ultimately misunderstood God's word and misapplied it.
And I'll just close with this the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
As far as we know, we are the only beings in the cosmos that are the image of the creator of the exact same cosmos.
And so the quality of our lives matters more than the quantity of our lives.
Our lives are a qualitative study, not a quantitative one.
Well said.
Let's shift.
If you have thoughts about that, anybody else on the panel, feel free to work that into your next answer.
But let's start over here with John now.
And let's just go that route.
You said, I'm concerned, which is the most frequent comment that I get in my threads.
I'm concerned and troubled, but also concerned and troubled.
But let's talk about that.
What are some of our biggest concerns?
Broadening out now, it can include tariffs, but all these kinds of things.
We've had some victory.
We praise God for it.
The fight's not over.
There are some victories that create new potential threats.
So I want to start with you, John.
Start over there.
What are some of your biggest concerns looking for?
What are some of the things that we need to focus on?
Well, thanks, Joel.
I'll start with myself personally.
Something I've been thinking over the last week or so about my own life.
One of the concerns I have, and I think this is broader than just me, is I really want to love Jesus.
And that sounds very cliche and simple, but it's so profound and true.
I don't want to love the things that Jesus gives me and just pursue the blessings that Jesus can afford me.
I want to love Jesus.
And it's the same with my wife, right?
Like, I love my wife, and there's all these great blessings that my wife brings to my life.
But ultimately, it's her that I want.
It's her that I want to be close to and I want to know.
And all of these other things are just ways in which we facilitate that enjoyment of each other and that passion that exists within a marriage.
And I want the same thing with Jesus.
And I think for any conservative movement to be successful, An American Christian conservative movement that needs to be centered.
It's a relationship with Christ.
It's knowing our Lord who laid down his life for us.
And he gave us some rules.
He gave us a law.
He gave us an order.
And he wants us to conform ourselves to it.
And the motivation in conforming ourselves to that order is not because necessarily all the blessings we'll get.
We love that.
That's good.
That's great.
But it's because we love Jesus ultimately.
And so, and I think we may get on this a little later, so maybe I'll preempt it.
But Conservatism in the American tradition, at a basic level, what I see is there's a created order.
We're supposed to conform ourselves to it.
This order is mediated through tradition, applied to our specific context.
And so we have a very positive vision.
And for Christians, Christ is at the center of that vision.
And what we've been dealing with over really my whole life, and we're still dealing with, are people who want to reduce it to simplistic principles, ideologies.
It's not really so much a tradition as it is.
A firm, fixed, scientific way to approach the world.
And then we live and die by these ideologies and excise and cut off anyone who disagrees slightly.
So, I think, really, ultimately, at the end of the day, for us as Christian conservatives, we need to center Christ, look to Christ, and then root ourselves deeply into this rich heritage that He's given us in this country.
And I know many of us are cut off from that.
We're deracinated.
We don't know what even that looks like.
And it's part of the reason I wrote the book I did, Against the Waves, is to try to get back to that.
That positive standard because we need a positive vision.
It can't just be transgressing liberalism.
It's got to be coming back to something firm and fixed.
And in Christ Jesus, we have that stability.
Amen.
Dr. Wolf, what do you think?
Yeah, I want to, I guess, respond and follow from what Stephen John said.
So, about the tariff policy, so I can't give an expert defense of tariff policy.
All I can say is that someone I respect, Pat Buchanan, always supported tariffs, and so I support tariffs.
So that's really the best I could do.
But I will say that it represents, like, even if tariff policy does not succeed in its aims in their current iteration, I think it does represent a move to America first.
So even if these ideas don't succeed, they still represent an underlying idea that is recovering, that is America first, that should be reflected within our immigration policy, our economic policies, social policy, all that.
And then combined with that, with what John said, one of my concerns is a lot of people, particularly young people, young millennials and Zoomers, they're not tied to the American tradition.
They're not tied to any tradition.
They're tied to sort of transgressive attitudes, and they tend to latch on to things, whether it's medieval knights or World War II revisionism, something other than American.
And I think that as Americans, and I think one concern we should have and something we should work towards.
Is actually reestablishing something that I think a lot of millennials still feel, partly from influence from the boomers and that generation, this feel of love for your country, which is America.
And when we hear America first, but it actually means Vatican first, or if it actually means let's return to monarchy, or if it returns, dump the, you know, if it's something to sort of dump the Constitution, I think we should reject that as actually un American.
And so what we should do is kind of rekindle within the hearts of young people.
A love for their particular country and not try to find meaning outside of that country in another place, in a different history, a different people.
It's certainly fine to have hobbies, such as you know, you want to look into World War II and say, actually, that's not true or this is true, whatever.
But in the end, your desire should be to have a connection to a people in place that are actually your people in place.
So that's my kind of central concern, and it's something that I know John and I are very interested in pursuing.
Could I add one thing to that, real quick?
And this is, I guess, a heuristic here, but if you, and I don't mean to make anyone feel guilty, but it's something to assess in yourself.
If you know more about a fantasy world, if you know more about Middle Earth, or if you know more about an anime world or the Marvel universe than you do your own country's history, it's time to get to work.
It's time to reconnect yourself to your own Christian heritage that exists here in this wonderful country we call America.
Stephen said that it's fine as a hobby.
To maybe explore World War II revisionism.
I just want to remind the audience it's not fine, you will be excommunicated.
So, check with your pastor first.
In some churches, it may be fine, and others not.
Calvin, you've been here.
What do you see?
What are you concerned by?
What are maybe some things that we might be missing?
Well, as the token foreigner, I think America First is a great policy.
I think the tariffs are a great idea.
I was celebrating them yesterday because.
Britain got a 10% tariff, but the European Union got a 20% tariff.
So it justified our decision to leave the European Union and get our sovereignty back as a nation, which is always a good thing.
But then also, your president said he's going to use his soft power.
He said to the UK, there is no free trade without free speech in the UK.
And as a Brit, that really hits home because we have no free speech.
Our prime minister was in your Oval Office just a couple of weeks ago and he sat there and said, We've had a long history of free speech in the UK and we're very proud of it.
But your vice president pushed back on that, thankfully, because we do have, as I mentioned earlier, people being arrested for thought crime, never mind what they're saying.
So it's good to see that America First does also extend out.
But in terms of the GDP part that we alluded to earlier, we have that in the UK too.
We see this problem of we have to get the numbers up, we have to get the numbers up, more numbers, more numbers.
And that's an argument to be made, and if you want to go down that route, fine.
But if you're pumping the numbers up, the question is from where?
And in the UK, we have the issue that most of our immigrants are from Islamic countries.
What we're doing is we're ignoring our Christian duties to South Syria, Northern Nigeria, Artsakh, places where there are Christians being persecuted by Mohammedans.
We don't let them in.
But for some reason, there are more Albanians in the UK than there are in Albania.
And so we've got it back to front.
And I think America might want to ask the question soon is, well, the Christians left in the UK, would we want them coming to America instead of X, Y, and Z and certain hundreds of thousands of Indians that Elon Musk wants coming over?
You've got to look at the people that you're inviting and the values that they have and do they align with your values.
But I think the wider question to all of us is well, to you guys, from the foreigner, is what does it mean to be an American?
Because I look around America, many people say things like it's an idea, America is whatever you want it to be.
Anyone could be an American.
But America is now what?
I would say 250 years old.
Someone else earlier said 400 years old.
It's time now that America can settle on.
Who and what it is.
It's time now to identify the ethnic group, the cultural group, the faith group that makes an American an American and be bold with that, be unashamed, be proud of that and patriotic in that, and not let other people tell you you're not allowed an ethnicity, a culture, or a faith.
You're not allowed to be a people because you're so new.
You're not that new anymore.
That's the truth of the matter.
And to push back a little bit on what Stephen was saying, because we agree on much, but I think there's some nuances there, there is no one single solution, in my humble opinion, of American.
Christian nationalism, because there's no one solution for American conservatism.
There's no one solution for American anything, because America is the United States.
And yes, many of those states will have been reformed.
Some of those states were certainly Anglican in their constitution, one of those states was Catholic.
So there are certain different Christian traditions for different parts of America.
It's important, I believe, to hold on to them too.
Don't let them tell you, like the Unionists did back in the day, that there's just one America, you're one nation, one country, one idea, one faith, because there are different expressions of different traditions.
People are searching for tradition left, right, and center.
And we had a little chat in the green room.
People are looking at Eastern Orthodoxy and foreign traditions, Eastern traditions.
There are many Western traditions that have a birthplace in this very nation that people could be looking to if you signpost them and let people know that this is also American.
Well said.
Stephen, I'm going to give you a chance to respond, but real quick, I want to get back to Oren.
So, same question, but let's maybe.
So, what are you concerned about?
But since Calvin broached the subject, and it's a good subject, we need to get into it.
Let's say, what is maybe one of your biggest concerns, and also can you try to somewhat concisely answer for what is an American?
Building a Christian America00:08:23
Can you do that real quick, Warren?
And then I'll give it to Stephen to respond to Calvin.
So, sorry.
So, there's this center left Harvard professor named Samuel Huntington, and he wrote a couple books, one you might have heard of, Clash of Civilizations, which was an answer to what happened after the Cold War and how nations should.
Understand themselves.
He pointed out that when you had the Cold War going, you basically had the communists versus the Western liberal democracies, and this became a very ideological conflict.
The entire world had to sign up with one side or the other.
There was just no way to avoid either aligning yourself with the United States and its allies or the Soviet Union and its allies.
And because it was so ideological, a lot of people's national identities got subsumed by these ideologies that capitalism or communism became the only thing that they understood themselves as.
This defined who they were as people.
But as the Cold War ended and this need for these two poles to stop pulling each other apart, We had this moment where national identity had to reassert itself.
The ideology that had dominated the globe one way or another was fading away, and nations had to re understand who they are.
And so Huntington wrote a second book called Who Are We?
He said this is going to be the defining question of our times.
And the conclusion he comes to ultimately is that the United States is an Anglo Protestant nation, that that is the core of who we are as a people.
Now, Huntington was a center left guy, he's a Harvard professor.
He's not going to come out and say that.
You have to be Anglo or you have to be Protestant to be inside the United States.
But he said this had to be the baseline for everything that we do.
We have to have a culture for people to assimilate to if they're going to assimilate at all.
And so if you come into the United States, if you are gifted the gracious ability to join this amazing country, then you need to conform to that.
You may not immediately convert to Protestantism and magically become Anglo, but you do need to shift your way of understanding your way of being and recognize that that is what you're assimilating into.
And ultimately, I think that is what defines the United States.
Even if you have Catholics or others inside the United States, even if you have people from outside joining you, ultimately, the Anglo Protestant nature of the United States is what defines who's an American.
And if you're unwilling to conform to that, if you're unwilling to assimilate to that, then there's just really no reason for you to be here.
Well said.
Well said.
Real quick, he did not ask me to do it, but I want to honor our very own Michael Belch.
He's been helping a ton with.
Conference, and he's on the podcast with us with Right Response.
He did just publish his first book where he does his very best to answer that question What is a nation?
And so, this is from him and not myself, so I want to give him credit.
But he gives six L's land, legacy, language, laws, loves, and kind of in hindsight added a six liturgy.
So, that would be you know the Christian aspect in the case of.
These United States.
So land, lineage, language, laws, loves, traditions, and liturgy, worship.
And basically, in a nutshell, I think it's important for us to remember that a nation, so land and lineage, soil, place, lineage, blood, people, ooh, I bet they even drink water there too.
The point is, though, what Michael did well, and I think everyone on this panel would agree with, is Michael was saying it's not just those two things, it's more.
A nation is more, but it's not less.
And I think we have to keep that in mind.
If it's actually a home, even JD Vance recently said, People don't die for an idea, they die for home.
And a home includes people and place.
And so a nation is not limited to that.
A nation is more complex and includes more than people and place, but it can't include less than people and place.
And right now, when you look at the globe as a whole, there are two kinds of people there are Americans.
And potential Americans.
Right?
Who lives in India?
1.3 billion potential Americans.
That's not going to work.
That's going to be a naw from me, dog.
No, that's not going to work.
You're going to have to figure that out.
And those are the conversations that need to be had.
Stephen, do you have thoughts on this, but then also in relation to what Calvin said?
I want to give you an opportunity.
Yeah, first of all, the Vatican first comment wasn't directed towards you.
I'm not a Roman Catholic.
Other sorts of people.
I guess, well, yeah, I don't know if this is a response, but just a thought.
When I say that America is a Protestant country, what I mean is that the.
The founding documents, the founding ideas were products of Protestant experience.
They certainly, Roman Catholics developed political theory in the early modern period, early 17th century.
They were very influential, even to Protestants.
But in terms of the sort of rights and our language that we enjoy, from freedom of speech, freedom of religion, order to liberty, those are all products of Protestant experience.
And I actually think they're principled Protestant positions.
And that's because Protestants, very early on, Affirmed the sacred right of conscience.
Even Calvin did, and everyone, not this Calvin, well, I'm sure you do as well, but the John Calvin, and others, of course, affirmed the liberty of conscience.
They still thought that you could act upon erroneous religion in an outward sense, but you always protect the conscience.
And eventually, Protestants, over time, through various forms of violence and other things, but also thinking through can we live together and can we form a civil society together with different views amongst brethren?
And so, this is why Presbyterians and Baptists and Congregationalists and Anglicans could form a civil society under a sort of pan Protestantism or a principle of Protestant liberty, have their differences, and yet still be equal members of a society.
And so, I think the culmination of Protestant experience was in the founding, and it's reflected in our documents, particularly in the Bill of Rights as well.
So, that heritage then is a product of Protestantism, of various Protestants from the Continental Protestants to To Britain, to Ireland, elsewhere, some of the Protestant Irish, and an American experience as well.
And so, for that reason, what defines us I mean, I tend to bash the idea of a propositional nation, but there is something to that.
When there is a founding of a people, which occurred at the American founding, there is a recognition of certain ideas that come to define that people.
It shapes the language, the rhetoric, the policy.
How we relate to each other.
And those, I want to say, were thoroughly Protestant and continue to be that to this day.
Now, with Roman Catholics, this actually kind of had to happen by papal dictum.
I mean, this is where the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of religion was actually denied in the 19th century by popes.
And it wasn't until the early 20th century and then culminated in Vatican II in the 60s where those were formally recognized.
And so now, in a way, Roman Catholics have become Protestant, at least in that sense.
And for that reason, that's why I say that I think as going forward, American Protestants can actually join with Roman Catholics in forming and having a Christian America.
At the same time, recognizing that foundationally, those ideas and that way of life was thoroughly Protestant.
So I'm going to get back to Steve and John, but it would be unfair if I didn't let you, Calvin, if you have a response.
Discipling the Church for Men00:12:52
Anything you're thinking?
No, no, that's fine.
I don't want to make it Protestantism versus Roman Catholicism, but that was fine.
Okay.
Just in case you wanted to respond, I wanted to make sure you had a chance.
Okay, so Steve, you can stay in that lane or you can go back to just big concerns, looking forward, whatever you want.
I think the big concern that I have, and you're seeing this if you guys, I don't know how many of you guys follow our show, but we are emphasizing a couple of themes right now.
I mean, we recently took the extraordinary step of moving the category our show is listed at on iTunes, and that's the biggest.
Contact point for our long form content at the blaze.
More of you have iPhones than any other form of device.
And so even though Spotify seems poised to surpass iTunes as the largest podcast platform in America, maybe as soon as later this year, for what Oran and I do for a living, you guys still own way more iPhones and still utilize the app within, the native app within Apple to access us more than any other platform.
And so, for us to switch categories is a big deal.
And we made the decision a few weeks ago, we switched our show into the religion and spirituality category.
And it was in the news category from the beginning.
And that's its more logical home, frankly.
But the reason we did that is when I first got into this business, I always had a goal of I wanted God to use the talents and abilities and opportunities that He gave me.
To do for a biblical worldview what Rush's talents and abilities did for conservatism as a political construct.
That his talents and abilities allowed conservatism to get back into the mainstream of the American conversation all over again.
And I wanted to use our show as an inflection point, an entry point for a biblical worldview.
Let the lion out of its cage.
We've quoted, we've attributed that from everybody to Spurgeon, to Augustine.
They probably all have used this reference, but let the lion out of its cage.
Let's get back into the arena.
Of where the back to the city gate, you know, and it's these devices in our pocket, that's the city gate nowadays.
But bring the biblical worldview back to the city gate and it'll defend itself just fine.
And so I thought the path to do that was the fact that I was converted late in life.
You know, all the pop culture minutiae that John was rightly putting in its proper context.
I know so much about that stuff, guys.
My wife would tell you, she's sitting there in the front row.
And she would tell you that if she had not had my three kids, she'd swear I'm still a virgin, okay?
I mean, I can still nerd out with the best of them on this kind of stuff, you know?
And so I thought that those, my knowledge of that nothingness would maybe help me broaden with the platform, whatever God did with it, would help me broaden the appeal of a biblical worldview.
And in the last couple of years, I started to change my thinking and my paradigm began to shift.
And this last election cemented it for me that we have to actually disciple the church.
And, you know, one of the things I've said to candidates and causes I've worked with and for over the years is you cannot win in politics without a base.
And one of the classic mistakes a lot of candidates make, and very good ones, is they immediately try to broaden their appeal before they've established a base.
And you have to also understand who you are and be self aware and who your base could actually be, not who you want it to be.
Okay?
And I realized I was actually violating my own orthodoxy.
That I'm trying to reach a broader culture with some of the expressions and the way that I communicate that could be at times borderline crude, but would be understandable, like that scene in the movie Father Stew, where the classic priest gets up to try to talk to the prisoners there in the cells, and they don't understand anything he's saying.
And Mark Wahlberg's priest gets up, and he comes from the streets, so he knows their language and their curse words, and suddenly they completely understand what it is he's trying to communicate.
That's kind of a crude metaphor for my methodology up until this point.
But this last election now, for the first time, the broader culture, MAGA in particular, whatever you think of it as a movement, as a brand, MAGA in particular is ahead of the Christian church collectively in engaging the moral fights of this age.
That is both a credit to MAGA and a shame to the church.
And I can promise you that is not a long standing.
Path to victory.
No political philosophy can withstand the spirit of the age.
Cannot happen.
We are fighting a spiritual war here.
And so, to have young men who are not here today, they're roughing somewhere or they're pouring concrete somewhere, and they don't understand why something has gone wrong, but they know something has gone wrong.
Or that young Hispanic man, Trump won Hispanic men outright by 10 points.
A lot of those young Hispanic men, frankly, are the kids we once called dreamers, that their illegal parents brought with them when they were here, or they were pregnant with them and had them when they were here.
Well, they're now embedded in America.
They're second generation Americans now.
And they're like, I don't want to go back to Honduras, and I don't want whatever the same hell is going on in Honduras.
I don't want to bring that here.
So build a wall, secure the border.
They don't kind of really know what we're talking about up here, but instinctively they kind of get it.
Way more than your sweater vested, pleated khaki pastor, Hawaiian shirt in January wearing pastor gets it.
And the church has got to catch up here.
And if it does not systemically catch up here, what happened in this last election is not a movement.
We got a TO baby like Dickie V used to tell us to do when we're down by 20.
We got a timeout.
We stopped their momentum, but we didn't actually start putting points on the board.
And I looked at the scoreboard.
After the timeout, we're still down by 20.
We're going to need the church to have a long standing movement.
And I just don't think much of the church is equipped.
And again, just being brutally honest, I probably had a dozen people reach out to me that I know and tell me not to come here today and not to do this event.
And I'm going to tell you what I told every single one of them.
After spending 20 years in this business trying to get the church to rise up.
And be tougher.
I'm not really in much of a mood to suddenly say, but not like that, not quite like that.
Now, that does not mean necessarily that we don't have standards ourselves that we have to uphold and God will not hold us to.
And that's if we want to win, we have to live by kingdom rules, not by worldly rules of engagement.
And I'll talk about that in my talk later this afternoon.
But the church has to catch up because what we're trying to do here is rerun the American Revolution, not the French Revolution.
And, you know, the Vaux Populi, those people are still totally depraved sinners, too, even if their instincts are correct.
Give them power, they won't do any different than the aristocracy.
They'll just put a different group of people in prison.
They won't do any differently, right?
We're just going to swing the pendulum from one.
The whole thing about, well, today it's about being based.
Well, really, what are you based in?
Who are you based upon?
Based on what?
Right?
And I think this is where real discipleship and catechesis that can only come from the church, it's the only transcendent institution God ever gave mankind.
And if it doesn't take discipleship seriously again, all the stuff that we're up here, the back and forth with different sects and movements, That I get people try to drag me into on X all the time, and I try to stay away from like the plague because I got enough of my own enemies when I open my own mouth, frankly.
All right, but but all those things that we're we have the luxury of discussing and debating ourselves right now, they're going to be all irrelevant in the next midterm election if the church doesn't catch up and quick.
And that's what I am concerned about.
The church has spent the last 20 years trying to reach Karen in the suburbs, your Christian music station uplifting and hope filled every that's always about reaching Karen and Mildred in the suburbs.
And beta maxing her husband, and it's done nothing.
It's lost the culture completely.
And, you know, headship means if you get the husband, you get the whole family too.
All right?
And that's what we have to do.
We've got to reach the men before it is too late.
I have lots of friends, high ranking people in Moms for Liberty.
Some of them have been guests in my home.
I love them to death.
But frankly, to some degree, it is a shame to the men.
That such an organization was even necessary in the first place.
And I want to grab those men who scroll their phones while they spent all those years driving their daughters to all those soccer practices and swim practices and track meets, only then just sit there and scroll their phones in the stands while men with gender dysphoria and demonic oppression in their lives go out there and steal their valor and the hard work that they did, and they cannot be bothered.
And so Mama Bear has to show up again.
It is time for the men to show up.
All right?
And we have to have the men.
That's my concern.
But the church doesn't want to reach the men.
And the reason why it doesn't want to reach the men, and this is where men and women are different, all right?
If you have a vibrant men's ministry and you go after the men, what'll happen is the men will come together once or twice, disclose their sins, seek forgiveness, restoration.
But then, if all we're going to do here is just talk every time, we're not women.
We don't necessarily gain a constant reinforcement from just dialoguing like women do.
We're not as relational as creatures.
We're more.
Bottom line oriented that they are.
And so for us, we're going to be like, after week three, we're like, okay, I got a lawn to mow.
I've got a business to run.
I've got stuff to do.
So are we going to go to war or not?
And most of your pastors don't want to go to war.
And that's why they don't want to engage the men.
Okay?
So to me, I think we have to disciple the church.
And the church has to catch up at least in the next couple of years, has to be where MAGA is, at least.
Okay?
And if it's not, all the stuff that we came out of this last election excited about, It's going to be very fleeting, in my opinion.
Well said.
I have a couple men that follow me, Steve.
What's that?
I have a couple men that follow me.
Yeah, I've noticed.
See, the church wants the men until they get them, and then they don't.
Right.
Because men are rowdy, and men don't always play nice, and there are things that need to be discussed, but there's a difference in correcting men versus trying to longhouse them and turn them into women.
Spiritual transgenderism from the church is a thing.
And I refuse to do it.
John.
I agree.
I agree.
But let me add this, Joel.
But we also, and I don't say this passive aggressively.
If I wanted to accuse somebody of something specifically, I would just do it directly.
That's just how I roll.
All right?
But as a general rule, here's what we also must remember.
All right?
As men, we are beholden to the kingdom of God as well.
All right?
The standards and what God, the expectations placed on us, and we must remember that.
Ultimately, headship is responsibility.
It's responsibility that comes with authority.
But ultimately, it is responsibility.
When the home goes wrong, God is coming to you first.
When the church goes bad, He's coming to the pastor and the elders first.
That's what comes with headship, is that level of responsibility.
And inherent to responsibility is accountability.
Responsibility Comes with Authority00:02:30
And we're being watched all of the time.
Let me give you just one for my own life, and then I'm going to shut up and let everybody else talk, okay?
We are in the midst of, we have taken the momentum.
I'm on the Cruz campaign.
I'm one of the strategists on the Cruz campaign in 2016.
And we have taken the momentum away from Trump.
We have won five straight states.
And there's a presidential, the last debate where all the candidates were on the stage together.
And, you know, the week before there had been a debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
And I was following that debate for the campaign as well.
And I saw Maggie Haberman at the Federalist.
When Hillary Clinton played the woman card on her very first answer, Maggie Haberman at The Federalist tweeted out, Hillary Clinton's gone full vagina five minutes into the debate.
All right?
And I did what you guys did.
I laughed out loud and I said, I'm going to use that one later.
Okay?
Yeah, I shouldn't have done that.
All right?
And so the last debate we have where all the candidates are on the stage.
And Carly Fiorini, you guys remember, she started every debate talking about she was the only woman on the stage.
She's going to call her good friend Bibi Netanyahu.
Like she had it memorized.
Every debate she did, she had the same opening statement no matter what the question was, right?
And little did I know that our campaign in a couple of weeks was going to make her our running mate.
So, yeah, joke was on me.
All right.
But I, my, you know, my brain kicked in.
And sometimes your brain's ahead of your conscience or your self awareness.
And I'm like, I really like that Maggie Haberman line.
So I jumped on X, what was Twitter back then, and I tweeted out Carly Fiorina, she's gone full vagina already.
And I was very proud.
I sent that around to several of my friends.
I texted it out to them.
I thought it was great, you know.
I go back to the rest of the debate, my phone starts blowing up, literally all hell has broken loose.
Over the course of the next 24 hours, Fox News, which has pretended most of my career it doesn't know who I am, the only person who ever put me on Fox was Tucker, or that my last name was Deese and not Dace, I was Fox News' programming every hourly block for the next 12 hours, as they were clearly aligned with Trump at the time, and they were using my, they finally figured out who I was, and they were trying to use my comments to essentially drive Ted Cruz out of the race.
And it was a dumb comment.
It didn't have to be made.
I mean, it was funny, at least I thought so.
Finding Stability in Tradition00:09:04
Okay?
It was true, but it also wasn't constructive in any way, and it played right into our enemies and opponents' hands.
And I actually called the senator up and offered my resignation.
He should have taken it, frankly.
But Ted's too nice of a guy.
That's probably why he didn't beat Trump, frankly.
He should have taken it and blamed the whole thing on me, and I would have walked away and done the honorable thing and taken the political hemlock at the end.
And yes, it was me.
I was the fool.
But he didn't do that because he's too nice of a guy.
But my point being is, we're going to need the culture's not used.
To patriarchy and masculinity.
And so we are going to have to make sure we have accountability amongst ourselves.
Otherwise, we're going to fulfill every stereotype that the broader culture has of us, and they're going to stillborn us before we actually get started.
That is a concern that I have.
John, concerns.
I almost, I just want you to keep talking, to be honest.
That was great.
If I keep talking, I don't remember that I have to pee really bad, so go ahead.
I told them the story in the green room.
I said, You know, I was there on January 6th, and my dad, who's obviously older than me, was there.
And he said, Of course they stormed the Capitol.
There were no bathrooms anywhere.
Anyway, stability, identity, virtue.
Stability, identity, virtue.
Three things that we need.
I want to tell you three brief stories.
So, stability, the first one.
One of the questions I ask millennials sometimes when I'm talking with them as a millennial myself is How many generations off the family farm are you?
And it's interesting to hear the answer.
So, I'm three generations off the family farm.
The reason I ask is I had never been to the family farm.
I had never been to the old homestead.
My grandpa's from Mississippi.
He was, you know, Great Depression, World War II, just amazing life story that he had.
He died last year at 101.
I was very close to him.
And for people who want to know why I have Southern, you know, interests and things, I mean, it's really him, it's his legacy.
That was my grandpa.
Anyway, I went to the family farm with him probably about 15 years ago, and he gave me a tour.
I had never been there before.
And it was almost like I had.
And I can't explain it to you.
I'm getting tingles just thinking about it.
I said, I belong here.
I knew that I belong there.
And there was something stable about it, there was something deep and rooted in it that I can't quite explain.
And this is one of the things that I think, especially Zoomers, are very detached from.
And I understand not everyone has the same experience I have, and we're all coming from different places.
I mean, Steve just talked about migrants who have come here who are second generation and they don't want to go back to Honduras or wherever it is.
But each of us has a story that God has written, and He's brought us to a point, and hopefully it's faith in Jesus Christ.
And by the way, if some of you in here don't know Jesus Christ, please talk to me.
Please talk to someone who knows Jesus Christ.
We'd love to introduce you.
I mean, that's the first place to go to find stability.
But one of the things that He has offered us, too, is this story that He's woven into our lives.
And we're meant to understand that and tap into that and not ignore that and not run from that.
You know, as a grandpa who's a World War II veteran, I mean, I talked about this in an article in American Reformer.
I call it the plane test.
I see World War II airplanes, I'm going to want to salute right then because that's who we are.
That's what this country is about.
There was a generation that showed valor and character, and that's the kind of thing we got to get back to.
So I would just encourage you to stir up those things.
Get involved in veterans groups, voluntary organizations, civic groups, things that help men in coming of age.
You know, now it's not Boy Scouts.
I wasn't Boy Scouts.
Man, have they departed?
Trail life, I think, is the alternative.
Get involved in something like that.
Men need that.
They need examples.
They need that kind of stability.
They need to be tapped into something that's bigger than them.
So, stability.
The other thing is what did I say?
Heritage.
But I had a conversation.
What was that?
Oh, identity.
Yeah, identity, heritage.
So, I had a conversation with someone recently who wanted me to come speak in Florida.
And this was more of like your establishment Republican type.
I don't know why they're talking to me, but yeah, yeah, I'll come speak.
And so she said, tell me a little bit about your book.
And so I'm telling her, and the Anglo Protestant thing comes up, which we've already talked about.
And she goes, that sounds kind of racist.
You know, Anglo Protestant?
Why not just Christian?
Why can't we just have Christian?
And so this is what I told her.
I said, look, Christianity teaches that churches should meet.
That's kind of a baseline, right?
We should get together and meet with believers.
My Anglo tradition tells me at the county level, a sheriff can tell the government no when they say my church should shut down.
That's Anglo Protestant.
And she got it right away.
This is part of our identity.
It's part of what Stephen was talking about here.
I reject the proposition nation too.
But we would be wrong if we said that there aren't these amazing ideas that were in the minds of our founders, that they put some places on paper, but they're certainly woven into the fabric of our identity.
And we still operate by some of these things without even thinking about them.
And so that's something else I think that any conservative movement we have, any Christian conservative movement, is going to have to have.
And then the last thing I'll say, the last story here, and this really gets back to the To Christianity and to Christ specifically.
I was in seminary at Southeastern Baptist a few years ago.
Some of you know me from those days.
I kind of whistle blew on the seminary, and the Southern Baptists don't tend to like me that much since then for whatever reason.
But I was in a class.
I remember I went to the professor of the class because they had just changed the curriculum around.
And they were, I call them fluff courses.
They dropped hermeneutics as a requirement, they dropped a theology course, they softened everything.
It was a joke.
I felt like I was in high school.
I'm reading like Radical by David Platt from Missions.
I'm like, what is this?
Like, we're going to be pastors?
What are we doing?
So I go to the professor, I say, what's up with this?
Why are we dropping the requirements and replacing them with these fluff courses like discipleship and like leadership?
You know, I go to leadership class, sit there for three hours.
I get out of leadership class and I'm like, I guess I know how to make my church more diverse.
You know, I go to discipleship class three hours, I get out, I guess I should pray.
I mean, that would be good.
I mean, these are basic, basic things.
And he told me, he goes, look, there's a problem at the seminary.
They are fielding guys out there leading churches, and they are breaking these churches apart because they have moral failures in their lives.
They're addicted to porn and they didn't tell anyone about it.
There's moral indiscretions.
They're immature.
They get into the church, they destroy it.
And they need to know Jesus.
So we have to put in courses on discipleship, on leadership, on the basics they should have had before they even entered this program.
And we have to take something off the back of the cart.
So we're going to take off hermeneutics, we're going to take off theology so that we can at least have people that love Jesus.
This has been a problem for years and it continues to be a problem.
And this is something that I've been evaluating in my own platform.
We have spent, many of us up here too, have spent time discrediting these legacy institutions because they need to be discredited.
And they have managerial elites who don't have virtue, they have an allegiance to themselves.
But we desperately need something to fill that vacuum.
And this is the moment we're in now.
We are in that sweet moment where it's time for men to rise up and to be virtuous.
And that means that.
We're going to have to guard our tongues at times.
That means that we have to see ourselves as, at some time, especially if we're pursuing the pastoral role, we are called to a higher standard.
And that mountaintop experience of being with God, alone with your Creator, wrestling with Him, finding the purpose for our lives, and then going and doing it and not letting the forces of hell tell us to stop at any point, no matter how hard it gets, that's the kind of man we need.
And we need more of them.
And I know some of them are sitting in this room, and thank you for your faithfulness.
And there's some of you who are considering filling these roles, and I would just encourage you.
Stand up, step up.
We need virtuous men at the helm, and we need men that are going to help establish the stability and the identity that we've lost for so long.
We got about a half an hour, and I've done this a couple times where you do a series of podcasts, or maybe it's a single show, or maybe it's a panel like today, and you spend 90% of the time talking about the problem, you know, and then just kind of like wrap it up with 10% on the very end with solutions or hopes.
Leading with Virtue and Direction00:15:10
And so I want to shift gears before it's just 10 minutes till.
We got about 30 minutes to go.
And shift to hopefulness.
So, we've talked about concerns.
I want to start to my left.
We'll start with Calvin.
We'll work our way down.
I'm actually going to cheat and go first.
So, then we'll start to the left and skip me.
But, hopefulness what are some things that you're hopeful for?
I've got one that I wasn't even going to mention because I was not aware of it until this panel.
But I've just discovered because I. I'm a distinguished man who appreciates diversity in its own right.
I like to be diversely hated.
And I don't want to be hated for one thing.
You don't want to pigeonhole yourself.
You want to be despised for a variety of different issues.
And so I'm hopeful in the sense that I thought maybe Steve might have just gotten flack for some of the things that I've said about Israel.
But it sounds like, Steve, you might have gotten just as much flack for, because you mentioned.
Women and patriarchy.
So I was like, hey, that's some diversity of opposition where it's not just one issue, but the patriarchy thing as well.
So I'm glad that I'm getting out there, sowing in some different fields.
That's a joke.
It's a little serious, but it's a joke.
In a real sense, I am hopeful because of young men.
I do agree.
I think what Steve said is a good word.
And I think John, in many ways, just confirmed it because he had similar things to say.
So I do agree that.
Young men, if it's just raw power, like you guys have probably heard it, maybe it's a cliche, but the illustration of the elephants.
Have you heard the story about the elephants where they took the young male elephants and they were like tearing everything up?
You know, they grew their tusks and, you know, and they're like, I'm an elephant, I'm big and I'm powerful.
And they're like, you know, bullying all the other animals and scratching up, you know, uprooting trees and all these things.
And they're like, and they, you know, how are you going to control an elephant?
You know, so that like the people couldn't do anything about it.
So what they ended up doing was they took two bull elephants, old male elephants.
And they put them in there with them, and all these young male elephants, you know, started to, you know, they shaped up.
They shaped up real quick because the older male elephants had more strength, more power, but it was harnessed.
It wasn't long housed, it was controlled.
It was power that was harnessed and it was controlled.
And I think that's, you know, on the concern side, and I'll get to the hope, but on the concern side, that is one of my concerns.
And I don't, you know, I say this sometimes, I say it as a blanket statement.
So I want to be careful today.
Because I don't want to disparage.
The same way that I feel like older men have disparaged younger men, I don't want to just turn around and do the same thing in the opposite direction.
So, hear me, there's a little bit of nuance here.
We do have some incredible old men, older men.
So, I'm not speaking to everyone.
But I do think that that is part of the problem, is that all of a sudden you have young men who are strong because there's a strength.
Sometimes I feel like my role is like when you're watching movies and every time you find yourself rooting for the bad guys, you're like, what happened to me?
But, you know, like if I'm watching Star Wars, you know, and Anakin is seething with rage, you know, and Emperor Palpatine, good.
That's how I feel, you know, I'm like, you know, young men are getting angry, and I'm like, good.
But, because you should be angry, and honestly, there is a strength that comes from anger.
But there's also sin that comes from anger if you're not careful.
In your anger, do not sin.
So there's something to be said for strength harnessed, and there's something to be said for strength that's fueled by anger, but it has to be a righteous.
Indignation.
It has to be a holy anger.
Jesus got angry, but in his anger, he didn't sin.
And I think that those are things that have to be taught and shaped and formed.
And ideally and ordinarily, they would be shaped and formed by older men.
And we have some.
I gave the nuance, I gave the disclaimer.
It's not like every man over the age of 50, you know, that they've all failed without exception.
That's not true.
But it is true to say that in a general sense, right, we can speak of Group dynamics, and we understand like, is there one woman who could out bench press, you know, one man?
No.
Yeah, maybe, you know, but so there, you know, like, it's so funny.
I saw an ex, even just the other day, you know, somebody said something about group dynamics, and he said, well, you know, men are generally taller than women.
And immediately a woman was like, well, I'm this tall, you're not taller than me.
And it's like, there's my point.
Yeah, thank you for making the point for me.
So there are exceptions.
There are some wise and strong, courageous, Older men.
But in general, in general, part of the difficulty, this is my concern and hope wrapped up together, part of the difficulty is that there aren't a lot of them.
And in a group sense, in a general sense, older men have fallen asleep at the wheel.
And part of the problems that we're having to fix are problems that they caused either directly or indirectly by apathy.
So that's the concern is where are the older men?
The hope, though, is that we've got a whole lot of younger men.
We do.
And the younger men are angry and they're strong.
But they do need direction.
But there is a fine line between direction and disparaging.
There's a fine line between the two.
And I think that's the challenge right now.
And because younger men have been so disparaged, if you're a young man under the age of 45 and you're a Christian, And you're not gay, and throw a cherry on top, you also happen to be white, then you were hated before you were born.
And you felt that.
You don't have to be told that.
You know that.
All these Fortune 500 companies that told us that they were going to emphasize over the last four years the actual dark ages, 2020 through 2024, and they told us what they were going to do, right?
That they were going to hire minorities and they were going to put forward diversity and equity.
They did it.
The studies came back.
They did it.
Have you seen the study where it says that over the course of, I think it was in the year 2022, that like top few thousand companies in America hired 3% straight single white men?
3%.
Which means a bunch of you couldn't get a job.
You couldn't get a job.
And so you've been hated from birth and you've been disparaged instead of encouraged.
And I guess.
The hope is that the young men are present.
The concern, the need, is that we do need the older men.
And I know it sounds funny coming from me.
But you know, I say funny.
Maybe you'll listen if it comes from me.
Because I haven't disparaged you.
I'm the guy who stood up for a member of my church who's here.
He's a bigger celebrity than I am.
And said, You cannot have him.
You cannot have him.
Pound sand.
So, I don't disparage men, and I hope you believe that.
I hope I've earned my stripes in this category.
So, you'll listen when I say what I'm about to say.
There are some older men, they're fewer and further between than we would like, but there are some older men who are trying to direct.
And because many have disparaged, you cannot universally categorize all direction and every attempt at direction from older men as though it's disparagement.
Sometimes it really is direction.
And they're really not trying to disparage you.
They really are trying to direct you.
And we all need some of those older men in our lives.
And here's the deal they're probably not celebrities.
The older men in my life that I'm able to go, nobody knows their name.
But they're older men, they're strong, they're wise, they're not long housed, and they're not disparaging me.
They're trying to direct me.
It's like Gandalf with a Bilbo.
He's like, I. I'm trying to help you.
I'm trying to help you.
And not trying to rob you.
There's a lot of older men, they're trying to rob you.
They are.
But some are trying to help you and doing whatever you can to find them.
And that's why local flesh and blood relationships matter so much.
If you haven't found one of those older men, then you've got to do whatever it takes.
You've got to move.
It's not like they didn't go and tell all these young male elephants.
There's a concept somewhere in the ether out.
There, there's such a thing as an older bull male elephant, and then the younger elephants got no.
They had to put them in the same pen, and once they were in the same pen physically, then all of a sudden the younger elephants were able to get in line.
And you need that.
And if it means you have to move your family across the country to be in a church that has those older men who do not disparage but they do direct, it's worth it.
So, I'm hopeful because of the young men, we have a need for the older men.
It does exist.
We don't have it in spades, but it does exist, and you do what you got to do in order to find it.
So let's go ahead with hopefulness.
Let's start with Calvin.
That's my speech.
So obviously, we're a faith of hope.
But after my last speech, people have been coming up to me to say, It sounds like your country is dead.
Where is your hope?
And yes, I think it is.
I think it is the end of the United Kingdom as we know it, as we've known it.
But the message there is that God's picture is broader than ours.
And we've taken Western civilization for granted, and we kind of, because we are narcissistic, egotistical beings, we kind of expect it to always be the case.
What we see around us now, we take it for granted and we think it will always be.
But I think the message is that every single empire has risen and fallen.
We happen to be fortunate enough to have lived through Western civilization, but I think for the last hundred years it's been on a downward trajectory.
So, where do I get the hope in seeing my country implode?
Well, the hope is in what's to come.
If we've just lived through a great Christian society and we're seeing it crumble, the hope for me is what rises from those ashes?
What do we build next around Christ, for Christ, in Christ?
We've got to rebuild this earthly kingdom in his image.
And so we've learned many, many good and bad examples and things we can take with us in that.
That's on the big level.
On the local level, I get hope from this.
This fills me with hope.
Things like this event, thank you for organizing this and inviting me.
Every time I speak at a conference like this, I'm filled with hope from, as you were just talking about, the young men who are out here, but also not just the young men, the old men, the young women and the old women, everyone who is out here thinking, there's something wrong with our society.
I want to make an active difference.
And it's a shift from passivity to being active participants.
Participants in creation.
That's what makes a difference.
Just listening to John and Steve saying very similar things when John talks about virtues and Steve talks about accountability, I think they're saying the same message in modeling best practice.
And this is what I see that fills me with hope as well.
I've just learned this lesson myself.
When you were talking about basically prudence, isn't it?
Your joke was funny.
I think it was funny.
But was it prudent?
Probably not.
When I spend 10 minutes speaking about the importance of the sanctity of life and then end with my heart goes out to you, I think it was cheeky.
I think it was funny.
But was it prudent?
Probably not.
Did I need to do it?
Probably not.
Did it undermine my message?
Probably did in the end.
And so the lesson there is repenting of that, learning from that, and then sharing it.
And I'm appreciative for my brothers on the stage for sharing their messages and their testimonies as well.
And that's how we learn together as men.
You're right, we don't sit around gab like women do.
We all have our different strengths and weaknesses.
But men, we share through our experience.
And so, that prudence is important, but also just off the back of that, humor is important.
It's important to make funny jokes, just in the right context.
And we can't let them take our humor away because that's what they want to do.
And so, fighting back with humor in a prudential way on a local level, being active participants, and taking from the ashes of Western civilization something to rebuild it like a phoenix around Christ is where I get my hope.
Thank you.
One of the things that I think really gives me hope is the fact that so many people in my generation and the generations that are coming behind are rejecting the consensus mainstream conservative ideology.
And the reason I think that's so important is Russell Kirk said that ultimately conservatism is never ideological.
Conservatism is about protecting a tradition, protecting a people.
It is specific, it is particular.
It understands that its real role is to continue to fight for the continuance of those traditions and that way of life.
And I think more and more people are looking around at all of the assumptions that were built in to the popular conservative politics and say, does this really protect my homeland?
Does it really protect my faith?
Does it really protect my family and my community?
Or is it serving someone else's interest?
And we've talked a lot about ideology on this panel, and as Dr. Wolf and John both pointed out, That traditions have ideas in them.
They have very important ideas in them.
And so you might be saying, well, what's the difference between an ideology and a tradition?
And the difference is that an ideology is abstractly designed from the top down to try to bring about a result.
As where a tradition is built, it is grounded in experience and success.
It is continuing a way of life that, yes, is incorporating important ideas and understandings of the way that God has made the world and the way that we should live, but it is also working them and weaving them through the way that we live our daily lives.
Hope Through Recovered Traditions00:14:52
And one of the things I want to reinforce, as Steve pointed out, is that we want to be careful because, in this moment, and all of us have done this, we have all said controversial things because controversial things need to be said.
However, we should not say things just to be controversial.
We are not revolutionaries.
We are not here to tear down the system or the way of life.
We are here to revivify the tradition and the way of life of our ancestors, our people, our faith, our God.
And so ultimately, if we say something controversial, we should only say it because it's true and because it needs to be said.
We should not inhabit the form of our enemies, the one that they want to fight.
They know what they want to fight and they want you to be it.
And that doesn't mean you shouldn't transgress, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do things that make them angry.
You will and you should.
But ultimately, you should do them because they are true and they are right and you are following God's word and you are following what is best for your family, for your homeland, for your faith.
That is why you should say those things.
That's why you should take those stands.
That's why you should take those actions.
Not to be edgy, not to be punk rock, not to be the coolest guy who is doing all of the stuff that will get you all the most likes on Twitter or social media, but because ultimately these things have to be protected, they have to be said, they have to be lived.
And that's what gives me hope as I see more and more young people, especially, reaching out for a lived tradition.
Not just looking at the ideology, but ultimately looking for a way that they can live a meaningful life.
They can have a family, they can have a faith, they can have a real national identity, and I think that is ultimately what is going to restore what's best about the United States.
You guys are getting likes.
You guys are getting likes on social media?
Every now and again.
I didn't know we were going for that.
Stephen.
Yeah, I'm hopeful because it seems to me that the central question of our time now is what is a nation?
And that's being asked not only by us, of course, we're asking that question, but it's across the political spectrum.
People are having to address the question what is a nation?
And so that gives me a lot of hope.
I think the other thing to kind of like what Warren's saying is that, like, there's, like, we were talking about this before, that more than any time in my life, like, right now, the ideas that are surfacing, that are being enacted in policy, especially by conservatives, I've never seen anything like this before.
It's probably akin to maybe the Reagan Revolution of the early 80s.
But things are, like right now, in a way, the political ideas of our time are up for grabs, in a way.
So you're living in a, I think, a strange moment, at least in my lifetime, where people are asking questions that really, under neoconservatism for decades, we were not allowed to ask.
And there wasn't a medium in which to ask them.
So I think we're in this great time and a time where we can assert our ideas and actually.
People can listen and access it and dialogue on that.
So that's really great.
One of the things that I've encountered just my couple days here is people telling me that they appreciate my work because, and to put it in my words, I've tried to reconcile a universal religion with a particular people, to say that there are particular Christian nations.
And I think we, both in Christian theology for a long time and also within just modern ideas in general, That idea of reconciling that universal with the particular was not on the table.
It wasn't addressed.
At best, it was conflated or not asked at all.
And so that gives me a lot of hope that now people are thinking about that.
Okay, Christianity is a universal religion.
What does it mean to have my country be a particular nation that is Christian?
And so it's really great when people say that to me.
It's like, yeah, that's what I'm doing.
So thank you.
Well, my concern earlier was that the workers are few, but my optimism is that the harvest is plenty right now.
I mean, first of all, on a personal level, one of the main reasons I came over some other objections, because I just wanted to know what it felt like to not be the most radical person in a room for once.
All right?
So, as I get older, I'm in my grandpa era, and I'm realizing as I get older, you know, not only do I have to pee more, but I kind of like being liked for a change.
And many years went by that I was not, you know.
But in all seriousness, I am.
I've actually flirted, maybe that's the right word, I have flirted with optimism in my career for the first time ever.
And you know, here's why though, even though I have deep, deep concerns about what the state of the church is right now.
But I was becoming convinced, and this is why I was going Vanta Black, I was becoming convinced that there was no common grace left in the culture.
We were Romans 1 now to the core, that there was not going to be any amount of vile, that some instinctive natural pushback would occur in the broader populace.
And therefore, the whole debate we're having right now what is a nation?
Are they propositional?
Is it something else?
Is it something more directly attached to the land itself?
What is nationalism?
Does Christianity transcend those things?
To think otherwise, that it's more embraced, does that make you another form of some kind of xenophobe or racist?
And all these debates that we're having right now, the reality is that if there's no common grace left in the culture to just basically say, watching a guy that, in his hairy nether regions with almost nothing on, twerk in front of our children at the public library and call it story time is absolutely vile.
And what every previous generation of American did, regardless of their socioeconomic status or the melon level in their skin or what religious tradition they had, the ways they would have reacted to seeing that would get everybody banned off of social media today for saying that out loud.
All right?
If that's gone, if that level of common grace is gone, then this meta conversation we're trying to have up here is never going to take place.
And we're ripping each other's spleens out over nothing.
These are dry bones, Ezekiel, and they ain't coming back to life.
This is a carcass, not a country.
And so I'm optimistic actually that the normies struck back.
Common grace, there is still, you know, it's, I'm saying there's a chance.
The common grace is still there.
But that light there, it's flickering, but we found the country's disgust button.
And now I didn't know who Theo Vaughn was until Trump went on his show.
I'm 50, I live in another America than he does, okay?
I didn't know who he was.
Two weeks ago, I'm on YouTube, I watched an entire 30 minute interview he did.
About why we have to ban pornography.
All right?
And I thought, this is a way better argument than I've seen from most of America's pastors.
And to me, that harvest is plenty, man.
I mean, those seeds are taking root.
One plants, another waters, and God gives the increase.
All right?
The church needs to water that ground.
I am concerned about that.
But I am optimistic that the Lord is not done with us yet.
That the last election demonstrated a level of common grace, a level of providence.
And I will say this much of my career, I have pushed back on the whole Trump is God's anointed stuff.
I find it creepy, and it reminds me of TV networks hosted by the chick whose hair lost the fight with the paintball gun kind of stuff.
All right?
And it's just not my thing, okay?
But I, and that's why I went out and put a sign in my yard on July 13th for Trump for the first time ever.
Because I cannot deny what I saw with my own eyes when a bullet, the spirit of the age, meant for his face.
Missed a kill shot by literally millimeters, and chance is what the world would call it.
I would call it providence.
And the Lord chooses His vehicles and vessels.
Lord knows if you've known me, my wife again is here.
We almost got divorced five years ago.
Now we do nothing apart from one another.
All right, so the Lord chooses His vehicles, He chooses His vessels, right?
And you can see by the fruit on the tree whether or not that choosing, that anointing is on that person.
Clearly, there is some level of anointing on Donald Trump, and I say that.
Still with some trepidation, all right?
But it's clear for whatever reason, he is a vehicle for this moment.
And the question is now are we going to take advantage of this moment?
But I'm optimistic that we even are having this challenge because I have to tell you, after the last few years, I was thinking no such moments existed anymore.
There was nothing the spirit of the age could do that there would be not some natural, instinctive disgust and pushback against.
People finally went full Jean Luc Picard.
They drew the line in the sand and said, here, no further, finally, okay?
That is a good starting point, so I'm optimistic about that.
John, you get the final word.
Go ahead and close this out.
What do you got to say?
I'm very optimistic when I look at a God who uses the weak things to shame the strong.
And we have a whole book that's filled with stories of Him doing just that.
I'm optimistic when I look at my daughter and I see that He still has a plan for people, that people are being born, that people are being raised, that the sun comes up every morning.
I take a lot of hope in the stories of my own Christian ancestors, men and women in the Bible, of course.
You study history and you start seeing times when there's this book, Last Stands, where these times where you think it's all over, it's all done, and then all of a sudden the winged hussars arrive, and you can ask Maren about that later.
He'll play you the Sabbaton song.
That's right.
That's right.
But those are the kinds of things that inspire me.
It's looking back at the past, it's seeing God's hand.
It's the recovery of tradition that we're experiencing, and maybe we're at the early stages of this, and a wanting and a desire to adhere to God's order.
And some of the stories I've even heard here with some of you on the local level just stories of people that are faithfully standing up, couples who are giving their time to the local Republicans and going to meetings of the town or the school board and standing up for the truth.
I think some of the things on the local level that I see that maybe we're in the beginning stages of that I think are really good too is.
Letting the chat group become something real, right?
Like the Ridge Runner Project is a great example of this.
Like people who have a similar vision, they want to see some tradition, they want to see some prudent Christian America retained somewhere, and so they're starting at the local level.
And that's what we need, you know?
Chat groups online, just this is like a little addendum, but it's like online dating, right?
Like the purpose isn't to have the chat group and to have just a form and in group preference for these people you don't really know.
It's to actually do something in the real physical world, to take institutions, to And to wield that power, whatever influence or power you have for the good of the people you love.
I'm inspired when I see the Zoomer potential, the Zoomer power out there.
There's some of it in this room.
But a lot of the Zoomers that I know in my local area are interested in things like going to the gym and making sure that they have standards in their lives.
And older people can talk all day about the problems or the standards that aren't being upheld that need to be upheld.
And we should listen to that.
We should be self reflective.
But the point is, there is a desire for stability in standards.
And this creates a great opportunity for us.
I think of young guys who are kind of random.
I'm like, you're 18.
And they're like, oh, yeah, I just was reading Edmund Burke the other day.
I'm like, well, why?
Why are you reading him?
And so these stories are inspiring to me.
Obviously, there's bad actors that are out there that want to kind of woo people to ideology.
And that's something that we have to avoid.
We're going to need gates and stuff.
But the fact that people are looking for something real and they know that they've been given something so fake their whole lives, that is.
A starting point, and I think that you know, I want to see God work in that way.
And then finally, on the national level, I'm inspired by JD Vance.
I mean, the order, literally, I have a chapter in my book Against the Waves that I purposely did not use the word order amarus because I'm like, no one's gonna know, like, that's Latin.
I'm just gonna say the love and the preferences of love, and so I use these other terms.
The vice president of the United States, after I write it and I have it, you know, ready to be published, he's like, oh, order amarus, and I'm like, the whole country now knows.
What that is.
Can I just interject for a second on behalf of Calvin?
Have you noticed all these guys up here want us to follow JD Vance and Pat Buchanan?
Which I believe they were Catholic, correct?
Just saying, just saying.
Someone's got to stick up for Calvin a little bit.
My bad.
Go ahead.
You should also be reading Mel Bradford and Richard Weaver and Good Protestants.
I do love that the concern of me coming was that I'm too Catholic, and Steve gets up and says, Become Catholic.
Small C.
So, I'll say this in closing, though.
People know evil exists right now.
They may not know what good is.
They know, though, that evil exists.
And because of that, there's an opportunity to show them and introduce them to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the standard of goodness and who died for our sins.