Dr. Stephen Wolfe defines a nation as an intimate, intergenerational experience of place and people, critiquing "asymmetric multiculturalism" where elites sacrifice Western identity for cheap labor. He argues that Western prosperity stems from unique institutions rather than slavery, noting the paradox of being hated domestically yet desired globally. The discussion highlights the erosion of American identity through a Reagan-era myth versus online challenges, warning that losing shared culture and Protestant roots creates a fractured political community. Ultimately, Wolfe proposes six components—land, lineage, language, laws, loves, and liturgy—as essential for viable nationhood, urging a return to honoring history without devolving into hatred. [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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Defining Nation and Christian Nationalism00:01:51
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All right, here we are.
This is episode three of the series that we're doing, myself and Dr. Stephen Wolfe.
Today, we are going to be talking about what is a nation.
So, if you haven't already seen the first two episodes, you can go back.
We talk about Aristotle in the first episode, among other things.
And then the second episode, right before this one, is where we define Christian nationalism.
But to properly understand that, we get into our topic today what is a nation?
Because a bunch of moderns, classical liberals, and especially here in America, Have a very difficult time understanding what a nation is.
Is it just a set of propositions anybody at any time can come in and salute and all of a sudden be a part of that nation, or is a nation something more?
So here we are.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the way I build the idea of Christian nationalism is I start with nation and I discuss that.
And then I go into nationalism what would be nationalism?
And then, actually, I go from nation then to what a Christian nation is, and then what would be nationalism, then what's Christian nationalism.
Building the Idea of Place00:02:41
But I think they build upon each other.
So you want to, like a lot of people, they want to jump straight to these laws that we'd pass for the nation, but they want to talk about Christian nations, but what actually is a nation itself?
And so I sought to define that.
And the approach I went with was not this like bird's eye view, where let's look at cultural geography, let's look at these old maps where it shows that these people groups are here and that sort of thing, or deal with it conceptually.
The way I went about it is trying to ask the reader.
To reflect upon their experiences, like, you know, to think about how you relate to people, familiarity and foreignness, and work from there.
So, when I go by defining a nation, it's firstly an experience of place, of experience of people and a place.
That it's like I try to describe that in our world, we have.
We bring to kind of bare material these relationships of things and places that we like, even like a house can become a home by your experience with it.
So you can be in a place where there's very similar houses, but you're only going to relate to that one place as home.
And that's because you and your loved ones were in that house, did things together, and have made it a home by your activity and your love for one another.
And when you extend that out into a community, Community, you can think of a home ballpark, like a little league field that you hit your first home run or whatever, pitched your, won the game by being a pitcher.
You can think of your local school that you spent a lot of time with, with friends and teachers that you loved.
And your love for these places extends because into them, it's almost as if they become part of who you are.
Like your self has extended into these places and they're familiar.
You have an intimate familiarity with them.
So, you have to think in terms of place.
And then you can expand that out to your state and expand that out to your nation.
And so, you have this intimate connection to the place, but it's connected also with the people themselves.
When I was probably about, I don't know, 10 years old, I hit my first home run.
And actually, my only home run, I have to admit, in Little League.
And I'll never forget, I know exactly where I was.
Memory, Home Runs, and Roots00:14:49
And my father went running out.
And he found a kid because the kids would run out and were watching.
They grabbed the ball and, like, oh, I got a ball.
And my dad, he saw the kid and he's like, here, I got a $20 bill.
And so he gave the kid, and I still have that ball.
So, like, that place is a place of memory.
Sorry.
That place is a place of memory for me.
It's in Napa, California.
Anyway, whenever I go there, I would experience that place as a place of love for that sort of act that my dad did for me.
Real quick, when did your dad pass away?
It was about two years ago.
Yeah, a little over two years ago.
He loved Trump, right?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
You were telling me he had like a MAGA hat in every room of the house?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, in 2016, when he won, the first person I called was my father.
And he, he's like, he like broke down crying.
Like it was crazy with happiness.
But so, yeah, he'd love to see Trump win again.
Was your dad, was he blue collar?
Was he an academic like you?
Like, Yeah.
What kind of conversations would you guys have about your book?
Would he be tracking with you?
Would he agree with your political philosophy, your theology?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Broadly, yeah, he would agree.
I mean, I attribute to him really my instincts for basically paleoconservatism.
So he was, he was a kind of a news junkie.
And whenever we go on these trips, even like to baseball practice or to Yosemite and these hour long trips, he would play talk radio.
And so we'd listen to talk radio.
Rush Limbaugh.
Things like that.
Yeah, I'd be like Rush Limbaugh.
It was also a guy named Michael Savage, he was one we heard a lot just because of the time.
He was a local guy back then, and then he became national.
So we'd listen to those guys, and then during the commercial, he'd always turn it down.
So I never listened to music as a kid, except my mom's light 80s rock, which I didn't pick up from her.
But yeah, we'd listen to that, and he was a Pappy Cannon fan.
Cool.
Pappy Cannon voter.
He bought me the first book I have from Pappy Cannon and another one.
He's really the reason why.
And so, I mean, to tie to that, I mean, so my dad was, grew up poor, grew up in like a chicken coop.
Like literally, they lived in a chicken coop for several years.
But then they built their own house and they called it the Wolf Ranch.
And it's still there.
It's still the Wolf Ranch in Napa County, California.
And, but yeah, he became, I guess, a white collar guy later in life.
Eventually, he landed on the job.
So, yeah, I guess, rags to riches sort of guy.
Wow.
But yeah, but I guess the point though is that home is what we were saying.
Yeah, yeah.
Like he, yeah.
And so that, I mean, the Wolf Ranch to this day is a place where I'd go and play and there's a pool and, and like there's this intimate connection with it.
Even the driveway, there was like a 200 yard driveway going up a hill.
And I, even my relationship to that driveway is one of like a positive affection because I would drive up and I'd be all excited and they'd have like, you know, peacocks running around.
It's a very weird place.
But, uh, It was a great place.
So, through experience and through loved ones, you develop these affections and it extends out.
And it's also through time as well.
So, generations.
So, people in the United States have a connection to World War II, not because anyone here, very few people actually were part of that war, but they have loved ones who are part of it.
We have connections to Vietnam.
My wife's grandfather was in the Navy in the Korean War.
And the Inchon landing, he was one of those boat landing craft drivers and was part of that invasion.
So you have a connection of these great historical events through your loved ones.
And that connects you to that place.
It connects you not only to that place, but connects you to all the people who were a part of that same event.
So that you and I, I mean, I don't know, you know, your grandparents, whatever, but if they're in the wars, but like there's ways we can talk about it.
Like my other grandfather was a bandsman in Honolulu.
He played the trumpet for all the guys on RR.
So he was the guy playing the trumpet for all the bands, all the dance bands.
And he was training to jump into Tokyo before the bombs hit.
But we all have these stories and they connect us to the national, the great events of our past.
And they unite us in love.
And someone who's new to a place who doesn't have those historical connections, you can have the best intentions.
You can want to be a part of that place as much as all your heart's desire is I want to be an American, but you're from China or wherever you are.
You still don't have that historical connection to the nation.
It is very propositional.
It's very conscious.
It's very deliberate.
Whereas people who have been raised up with those historical connections, that intergenerational connection to a nation, it's unconscious.
Like you have this almost, yeah, like a subconscious love and delight in your people and place.
And this would be true if I went to Hungary or if I went to China.
I mean, I went to a few months ago, I was in Italy and I went to Hungary and I spoke in Hungary.
And Italy felt very foreign to me, like, you know, with the language, the customs, the way of life.
And if I moved to Italy, I would feel out of place.
I'd feel foreign.
They were all, you know, most people were very friendly and nice.
And so I have nothing against them.
There's no animosity or hostility, but it was foreign.
When I went to Hungary, I actually felt a little, I felt actually closer to home, but it was still very foreign to me.
And if I had moved there, I'd still be a foreigner.
And because I have no historical connection or anything like that to them.
And the same thing would be for like the United States.
And we as a people have a connection to historical events.
You can be hospitable, you can receive people, you can be welcoming.
But you welcome people into a nation in order to bring them into the life of the nation so that their subsequent progeny would experience life.
And in a way, you wouldn't become fully American.
You can have a citizenship, but you wouldn't become fully American until that second or third generation has integrated into the whole.
And I think that's just obviously true.
When people question me on this all the time, And it seems just obviously true that you're going to be attached to a piece of dirt in the ground more if your grandfather worked that land as a farmer than I would just walking outside and looking around.
Like if that wolf ranch means more to me, as even though it's really just dirt and some rose bushes and a cinder block house, it means more to me than any sort of grand mansion I could walk across or observe because of those family connections.
So, do you still own it?
We do not.
That's a whole other story.
It's very sad to me.
There were attempts to do that, but unfortunately, it was sold.
But yeah, it's still there.
And it still has a, if you drive by Third Avenue in Napa, California, you'll see a sign that's a metal, like almost like a cartoonish wolf that's on the side of the road in front of that driveway.
And that's, it says Wild Wolf Ranch on it.
And that's what my uncle, my uncle, Made that and it's still there.
And there's stories of like their friends stealing it and all this stuff.
Then they put it in like cement in the ground.
So you can't take it.
It's not going anywhere unless you get an angle grinder to it.
But anyway, so yeah, so I think that conception of nation seems to me to be obvious.
And if someone is, I think there's something inhuman about not letting your love for your loved ones extend into the places that they've been.
Right.
And this is why when people come here and from Mexico or wherever, Let's say Mexico.
And it actually, in a way, makes sense that when the Mexican team shows up in soccer, they would wave the Mexican flag.
Like, I don't think it's right because we've welcomed them and they should deliberately choose to support the people that have received them.
But there is still something natural about identifying with that place that your people came from.
Right.
And so I don't really fault them.
Like, when people come here in mass and they go in communities, like in my area, there's these large Indian communities.
And they congregate.
They congregate together.
And that itself shows an impulse.
Like, it's not a coincidence that, you know, with the Haitian migrants, that a bunch of them ended up in the same town in Springfield.
Yeah.
And why wouldn't you?
Yeah.
In terms of, from their perspective, that makes perfect sense.
Right.
Terrible for the town.
Yeah.
It's bad for the town.
It's bad for them, of course.
It's bad policy for our country.
But for them, from their perspective, it makes perfect sense.
Right.
If I were, like, my understanding, there's like some American communities in Mexico City.
So there's people who said, we got a bunch of money.
Let's go buy a huge mansion in Mexico City.
And if I wouldn't, of course, do this, but if I had to do it for some reason, I'd probably go to the American district of Mexico City, speak the language, same customs.
And not only that, they have the same history ancestrally that I do.
They have their grandfathers in World War II.
Right.
Right.
So this has been going on for a while.
Like things are crazier with immigration today than they've probably ever been.
But like the idea of Chinatown, little Italy, these different groups congregating in one centralized geographic region on American soil.
Because that's what we instinctively do.
If I moved to China, which God forbid, but for whatever, what madness drove him there, you know?
But if I did, for whatever reason, and this is things that some of my Christian brothers just can't, for whatever reason, they can't get or won't get, won't allow themselves to comprehend.
But none of this is a betrayal of my Christian faith.
I love the Lord Jesus Christ.
I love the Bible.
Like my ultimate allegiance is to Christ.
But the first thing that I would do if I moved to China for whatever reason is I would not seek out Christians.
I would seek out Americans.
I would seek out people that, like, first and foremost, that I can actually talk to and understand the language.
I'm sure there are precious Chinese saints in China that speak another language, and I will enjoy their fellowship for all of eternity in heaven.
And I look forward to that.
But here in this temporal life on earth, I would need somebody that I could ask directions from and be able to understand their answer.
You know, I.
I would seek out the temporal earthly familiarities.
And that's not a sin.
Yeah.
And when I was in Italy, you'd hear people in different languages and you'd hear people speak English.
And if they're speaking an American accent, you're initially drawn.
Like, that's my guy.
Drawn to them.
And they could be half the world away, they could be lefties or whatever.
But there's that instant ability for you to say, Oh, where are you from?
And then they say, Oh, I'm from.
I don't know, New York.
Okay.
Oh, interesting.
I went to college in New York.
Things like that, where there's a commonality where you can now discuss things you wouldn't be able to discuss.
There'd be a familiarity.
So you wouldn't be, the way I define like foreignness is when you enter a space and you become basically a spectator.
So if you went to a festival in Mexico, I would just be a spectator.
And even if I put on a mask or a costume, I'd be a part of it, but I'd still be a spectator.
I would just be a guy and a mad, be an American.
And it'd be fun and exciting.
It'd be fun, exciting, thrilling.
Yeah.
But I wouldn't want to live my life in that context.
It would be something that I'd want to go.
I'd want to visit.
I'd want to spectate and enjoy and appreciate the culture.
And I could do so in an honoring way.
But then after a while, I'd want to go home.
Yeah.
And this is even true in like church traditions as well.
So if you go to a, if you go to like even a black church, I could be received as a member.
I could participate in the fellowship.
I could receive the word and sacrifice.
Just as much as the guy next to me.
But there is a sense in which, because of the traditions brought to that context, I would be a sort of spectator because that is a very black church culture.
Again, spiritually fully communicant, but in terms of the culture, I would be a type of spectator.
Now, again, nothing wrong with that, but it just speaks to this there is a distinct, like, yeah, that's what foreignness is.
It's you become a spectator.
And even after years and years and years of living in Italy, there's ways that you could come to adopt that culture.
But I think you're always, you as the first generation, you're always going to be a spectator.
And it's even true for me.
I mean, less so, less in degree, but as a guy who grew up in California, who went to college in the Army and decided where are we going to move now?
You know, life, where should we go?
And so we decided North Carolina.
North Carolina is in the South.
We love the South.
We love Southern culture, but we're not Southerners.
You know, I don't like sweet tea.
I'm sorry.
I don't, I'm Californian, so I like non sweetened tea, iced tea.
I know that I probably offended a bunch of people on that.
But I don't, you know.
In Texas, you have to specify, you have to say non sweet tea.
The default, the factory setting is here's your tea.
In California, it's like you have to specify a huge cup of tea.
A huge cup of tea.
Either one.
Yeah, yeah.
But anyway, I know that when I go to, let's say, like a bluegrass festival, then there's that in California too.
But I feel like when I'm there, I still am kind of a spectator and I always will be.
But in moving there, I try not to disrupt, I try to support everything that is uniquely Southern.
And I want my kids, I want my grandkids to go to a bluegrass or some sort of country music thing and they're participants.
I know that I never will be.
Like, I really, you know, I have to realize that I'm not going to, but they can be that.
Assimilation and Theonomic Boundaries00:03:05
And that's integration.
I hope, I really hope someday that at least one of my grandkids has a Southern accent.
My kids will not.
I can't, I can do it ironically.
But I want someday that little grandkid to, You know, wow me with the Southern accent.
So, anyway, that's kind of integration.
Like, even from the theonomic perspective, on this issue, there is actually a lot of alignment.
The theonomic side of the aisle does begin to derail a little bit when it comes to propositions, and certain things can just be universal and imported as long as you are a professing Christian, you enter a nation legally, whatever legal processes they have, and as long as you're not going to contribute into work and not expecting welfare or government handouts, then you can go to any nation and be.
Part of it.
However, I will say this, even for the theonomist, there is a general equity extraction principle where, you know, the scripture that says that for those who, you know, not the sojourner, it was temporary.
They were expected to eventually go back.
But for those who really wanted to not only immigrate, but assimilate and become Israel, like a Ruth kind of situation, you know, like your people will be my people, your God, my God.
Well, for one, even in the case of Ruth, there's.
There really is a leaving behind and a forsaking of those things that were past, those things that were familiar.
She's giving them up.
She's not coming to Israel to say, Moab, Moab.
She's coming to Israel and saying, I'm done with Moab.
Your God is my God.
And not just, here's the problem the theonomic guy can say, in some sense, it's half of Ruth.
They would say, as long as you're able to say, your God is my God, Jesus is Lord, then that's enough.
But Ruth doesn't just say, your God will be my God, but your people.
Will be my people.
Right.
And their customs and their history and all these different things.
So, with that, back to this other text of scripture that says that in terms of the full rights, especially when it came to the temple and worship and those kinds of access to make certain sacrifices and certain temple rituals and customs, you wouldn't be able to do that as somebody who immigrated to Israel until the third generation.
And then the scripture etches out, In the case of some nations, as a judgment to them because of something in the past and the way that they treated Israel in an immoral sense, as a judgment, there were some nations that it says they wouldn't be able to be fully assimilated until the 10th generation.
But my point is that even from a general equity standpoint, aside from natural law, even with special revelation, the argument seems clear.
Whether you're coming from the side of the coin that's special revelation or natural revelation, either way, What seems obvious, as you said, I think that's a good way to say it obvious.
Ethnicity, Judgment, and Generations00:14:44
What seems obvious is that you can't move to a country and become that people in 15 minutes.
That's just not a thing.
And assimilation takes time.
And also, I don't think assimilation happens unless there are certain incentives.
So, to me, it's a sign of, in many ways, being a defeated nation when even in your elections, you have different languages on the ballot.
Like, I mean, you might as well just say to the world, We're a joke.
We've given up.
We're suicidal.
Like, what in the world?
Like, no, no, no.
It should be in English.
If you can't read the ballot, then you have no business voting.
I mean, that's insane.
But some of the invent, or not inventions, but incentives for assimilating, I think part of it is that you, like, I have to learn the language by necessity.
I need to understand the customs and the culture by necessity.
Otherwise, I'm completely isolated.
But one of the things, in my mind, just practically speaking, one of the ways that incentivizes that is by mitigating immigration.
If everyone can come all at once, then you never actually have to assimilate.
You just, you and your cousin and your grandma and 500,000 of your Haitian friends, you all come at once.
You all go to the same place.
You all stay right there.
And you're not becoming Americans.
You have actually no desire to become Americans.
You just want to be Haitians in America and take certain benefits for people who bled and died and fought and worked and.
Sweated without paying any homage or respect at all.
And that's, to me, that's just, that's a nation that's lost the will to live.
Yeah.
And a lot of people will, they'll come here for the economic benefits.
And like you said, that they, their own, and a lot of times they are the lowest skilled people because if you're leaving as a so called economic migrant, it's because the country that you're in cannot hire you.
You cannot get enough to live.
And so you go to a place where you can do that.
And a lot of these guys will make money and they'll send them back through remittance to, The Mexico and Central America and South America.
So you have a lot of guys coming who are interested in an economic system that the American people through generations have created and essentially to exploit that system for your gain.
Now it makes rational sense for you to do that.
Right.
If I was living in a country that was very poor and I couldn't get a job, I would want to leave as well to go to a place that's prosperous.
It's not sinister for the immigrant.
But it can be, especially in the case of like nations like England.
It's not sinister necessarily for the immigrant.
It is sinister for the political leaders to allow it and almost orchestrate it against, especially in England, when it's like a real case can be made that the English people never voted for that, never gave their consent to that, and have just been completely sold out by their leaders.
In England, there's been like anti immigration, not necessarily anti immigrant, but anti immigrant immigration sentiment for a long time.
And it's really been for them, for us, it started in the 1960s and 70s.
It accelerated a lot.
But for them, it only began about 20, 30 years ago.
It was a project of the Labor Party and then the Conservative Party as well in the late 90s, early 2000s.
And so what they see today in England, which wasn't a very large country relative to the United States back then either, is just a huge influx of immigrants that have essentially taken over London.
Yeah.
And even to this day, and you can be thrown in jail for questioning that.
Like you can be thrown in jail for saying that actually sexual assaults have increased because of the immigration.
This is true for Germany.
Some countries have said enough, like Denmark and Finland, or not, yeah, Denmark and Netherlands.
They've said basically enough is enough.
Ireland's living there.
Ireland's kind of.
It's incredible.
This shows how the Western mind is so broken because Ireland has the claim to being the victim.
For centuries, if not millennia.
They've had a reason to have a victim mentality and also a reason to say there is an ethnic Irish.
Like we are a true ethnic group with actual borders on an island apart from, yeah.
And yet now they are calling themselves racist as if they have some colonial, they didn't have any sort of colonies.
They have no reason to have a busted brain on this.
But it's infected the Irish to the point and now they're receiving.
Migrants and all the problems that come with that.
It's sweeping throughout the Western world.
And the Irish, the irrationality of the Irish situation is so obvious, but that same irrationality infects all of the West, particularly Germany, but also in France, surprisingly, in France, parts of Italy and other places.
And of course, the United States.
So it's, I mean, it's the post war consensus mentality, but it's.
The United States to me, Correct me if you think differently.
But the United States, to me, certainly, I don't think anybody should be operating under this bone crushing spirit of guilt.
But historically, and just thinking about it practically, the United States makes sense that it would be the most out of Western countries, the most susceptible in the sense that ever since our founding, we've had waves of immigration at various periods of time, whether it was the Irish are coming, the Italians are coming, and America was predominantly, certainly Anglo Protestant.
But from early days, even though it was a minority, there were different peoples and different ethnicities represented early on.
As a minority and much more of a minority than they are today, but still present.
And whereas if I'm, you know, if I was an Englishman, you know, or a Scotsman or an Irishman, I'd be like, what?
No, it's been a thousand years.
It's always been us.
What are you talking about?
You know, like, so I think that America, because of our history, our unique history, and the discovery of this massive landmass and everybody coming, and for a while we needed people to come because we actually needed settlers.
Today, there's no more settlers.
There's just immigrants.
Nobody, it's all It's been settled.
But we had waves of immigration when there was still lots of land that was unsettled and lots of places and lots of work to be done.
And a lot of different people at various points of our history, waves of different countries coming in.
A lot of them, there was always problems and animosity and things that had to be sorted out.
But a lot of these people came and they did get to work.
They really did get to work and became a part of American culture as time went on.
Not in 15 minutes, but by the time you get to their great grandchildren and stuff, it's like, yeah, like the Irish settlers here in America, you're Americans.
And that's great.
But And so, again, like that, you know, that mixed with slavery and other things like that, it's like I can see why America would be susceptible to the woke mind virus.
But, in my opinion, and you've already kind of said it, it seems like the common denominator is not history, like, oh, there's historical reasons.
It's pretty much anybody who's white, whether they have any reason for it in their history or not.
If you're white, you're guilty.
And you've given over to this Marxist.
Yeah, I mean, to be white means you don't actually have a people, you don't have an ethnicity.
Right.
Only non whites can have an ethnicity.
And this has been part of our language for a while.
I mean, I remember going to the grocery store as a kid and seeing the ethnic aisle and didn't think anything different about it, but I knew what ethnic meant.
Ethnic basically meant you're not white.
And so there was no kind of like distinct self conscious ethnicity.
And that's even, and for the United States, that's like, I guess a more difficult question than to say German or to say French or to say English or Scottish or Welsh.
For them, it should have been very easy to say, wait, we are a people.
But the guilt and subversion that Western Europe encountered since I think World War I started it, World War II afterwards actually made it, of course, much worse.
But that's led them to deny that they have a people and a place.
And so they'll affirm that everyone else has a people and a place.
And when they come here or they go to Germany or France or whatever, they still have a people in place.
And that people is their ethnic people and their place is the place they came from.
Right.
And so it's really only white people.
And this, again, this even infects the Irish mind of those in Ireland that somehow Ireland is no longer a people in a place.
And so it does extend.
And I think what this means is that white people have adopted a type of universal man.
Like this is the left kind of has a lot of leftists kind of say this as well.
And I think in this case, I think the left people are.
Left wing people are generally, or at least are onto something.
And that is that we tend to think that we are kind of the universal people.
And the way the left would frame it is that we demand them essentially make everyone else white.
Like we're the norm and you guys have to become like us.
That's the way the left would critique it.
The way I would critique it is it means you're the universal man, but you're actually, you're not bounded.
You're not particular.
You're just, you're the universal.
And so you don't actually have a, you can't actually claim a people.
And a place, your people have to be everyone.
Your people have to be all people in the entire world.
It has to be anyone.
So, whereas, like, blacks can claim, I'm black, black is beautiful.
Hispanics can say, you know, I'm Mexican, Mexico is beautiful, you know, shake the Mexican flag.
White people cannot have a bounded people in place.
And that's anywhere.
So, I don't mean white as like a racial category, as if I need to claim solidarity with the Russians or the Ukrainians or the Hungarians, but just any particular people that are, happen to be white.
Cannot have a people in place.
They have to be maximally open.
They have to be maximally self deprecating.
And ultimately, they have to, in their minds, displace themselves so that they cannot have that.
And so it's, I think it's psychologically set up so that we'll have, it'll be national suicide.
You'll be, you are, you're mentally prepared to be replaced.
So sad.
Yeah.
I think that's everywhere.
Like, I think that's happening absolutely everywhere.
What is it called?
I think Eric Kaufman's a sociologist.
He calls it asymmetric multiculturalism.
So, if anyone watches, break that down for me.
Type in asymmetric multiculturalism.
Okay.
And he wrote an article on this.
And what he says is that basically white people have to be multiculturalists.
But what that means is that white people cannot have a culture, they can't have a people, but they must, as a group, affirm multiculturalism.
Which means that all other cultures can have a people in a place.
Everyone gets to have a person.
That's why it's asymmetric.
It's that you have to affirm it, but you affirm their identities.
Your only identity is wrapped up in you affirming their identities.
So you can't actually have a people in place at all.
And so that's not just that's reflected in policy, it's reflected in the fact that even what I'm saying right now is causing people watching to be uncomfortable.
Right.
Because I'm actually identifying.
What you're not supposed to identify, like it's supposed to be by habit that you'll say that you affirm, you know, oh, look at that, you know, they got great food or this, that, and then you're like, oh, my food's bland, it's junk, and oh, we don't have culture, like you're by habit meant to be like all that.
What all I remember seeing, like TikTok videos of uh, uh, like black people making fun of white people for not using spices, yeah, you know, like uh, yeah, it's like your food's bland, and yeah, and we even pick on the English and say, you know, and I'll be honest.
As a white dude, I do think that the English food is a bit bland, but, but we, you know, but, but that, but even that is like me at some level giving into the stereotype that that's kind of, it's similar to what happened with feminism, you know, like all the sitcoms in the 90s, everybody loves Raymond, The Simpsons, and like the, the husband is always, he's fat, he's lazy, he's out of shape, um, and he's dumb.
And the wife is, you know, she's, she's sexy and, and, and fit and sharp, competent, smart, competent, and, and rules the roof, uh, the roost.
And, um, And we've done the same thing with race.
You know, what we've done with gender that white people are the butt of every joke.
And you don't have a culture, your food's bland, or white people can't dance, white people can't jump, white people can't.
Yet everybody still wants to live here.
Yeah, that is, yeah.
Well, I mean, the thing is, being able to laugh at yourself is actually a good quality.
It is.
And the groups that are unable to laugh at themselves, we tend to like it's like you need to lighten up.
Like we can make jokes about each other for all sorts of reasons, but you can do it in a way that still affirms the difference, still affirms there's something positive about you.
The thing about white people is we are required to not say anything positive about ourselves.
We're only required to say only negative things about ourselves.
So when we talk about Western civilization, which is largely speaking a white generated civilization because it's Europe, which is white, we have to talk about colonialism and slavery and repression of women and all these things.
We have to speak of the negative.
And then When we go to the obvious goods, we want to identify like political liberty, these sorts of things, then we have to speak to art, philosophy, dance, music, cathedrals.
Western Civilization and Slavery00:16:45
I mean, there's so many.
Yeah, we have to speak to all those in terms of universality.
Like they're actually political liberty.
Yeah, maybe like this was generated from the interaction of Europeans and also their own experience.
But in the end, like liberal democracy is just the universal good.
And oh, by the way, these other countries experienced it too.
So it's not unique to Europe.
And so you have to universalize it.
And so you see these guys like, I remember Paul Miller does this in his book.
But by the way, also these other countries practice them as well.
So it's not a white thing.
And so you have your impulses then, everything particular about white nations is bad.
You have to criticize them.
And anything that's good is actually universal, which then can be attributed to everyone else.
Universally.
It's not something we have to claim that is unique to us.
You always have to identify.
You can't claim that actually belongs to us.
White people can identify as a group only if they're identifying their evil.
For blame.
For blame.
Yeah.
But in terms of praise, the undeniables have to be universalized away from them arising from a European context into something all people would affirm.
And oh, by the way, they would have affirmed it if you didn't colonize them and you didn't.
Exploit them and you can turn them into slaves and all the right.
So, it's always, yeah.
On this, all this is really helpful.
But on the slavery thing, that was, I think that might have been the first big controversy that I had.
And on this one, you know, to be fair, part of it is I did word it poorly.
So, it was actually me and Eddie Robles, we were doing an episode together.
I think it was the first time I ever had them on the show, maybe the second.
We were just becoming friends.
This is close to three years ago at this point.
And And we were actually doing an episode defending Doug Wilson because he got in some controversy or whatever.
And we both appreciated him and still appreciate him.
I shouldn't say it like we don't anymore, but by now, Doug and I have had some disagreements.
And so I still appreciate him, but it's a little bit complicated at the moment.
But back then, we did a whole episode on defense of Doug Wilson because he's gotten a lot of flack and a lot of it really has not been fair.
And so we were doing that and we were talking about, like, oh, he's gotten flack on his book.
Southern slavery as it was, you know, and things about slavery, things about race.
And so we were doing a defense.
And the problem is, me and AD just, you know, we just have too much fun.
And so, like, so I said one thing and didn't get to finish the thought.
And then he made a joke or started laughing and cut in and said something, which we always do.
I cut in with him, he cuts in with me.
But then the thing is, the thing he cut in with, like, gave me another idea.
And I never, I, and this is one of the times where you've got to finish that thought.
And I didn't, I forgot and didn't finish the thought.
And then, of course, the hackling hens, you know, of the spiritual HR department of examining Moscow, you know, all the 60 plus.
Uh, feminist ladies, you know, whose husbands are uh live outside, you know, in a tent in the backyard, and I hate Doug Wilson and you know, and write you know, scathing, uh, unfounded you know, critiques every other day.
They you know picked me up, and they picked me up not because I was at the time nobody knew who I was, I wasn't a big deal.
They literally used me simply as a pawn to say, Here's one of Doug's disciples, and listen to what he just said.
And it was the irony was the whole episode, the purpose was to uh defend Doug, and I probably got him into more trouble.
You know, it's like, Thanks for helping Joel, you know, uh, because I didn't finish this thought.
Here was the thought, um.
I said, you know, like, you know, we talk about, you know, slavery and, you know, but the Bible, you know, it says that man stealing is wrong and punishable by death.
And not just the one who steals, but even the one found in possession of the one who was stolen.
These kinds of things are biblical principles.
We find it, you know, in Leviticus.
We find it in, I believe, Exodus chapter 21.
And so I was fleshing that out and I said, but at the end of the day, it's not like white people were going over to sub Saharan African countries with human sized nets, going into the jungle and capturing people.
And then AD cut in and we never got back to it.
And that one didn't look good.
So I'm going to finish it now.
Yeah, three years later, you're going to finish it.
Yeah, so three years later, I'm going to actually say what I meant.
But this is what I was trying to say.
So everybody took that as Joel thinks slavery is fine as long as you didn't capture the people.
And on one hand, I do think that slavery in some forms is permissible.
And the reason why I think that is because the Bible says it.
I love the Bible.
Let God be true and every man a liar, and I won't apologize for it.
That said, though, many of the Confederates, guys like Stonewall Jackson or guys like Robert E. Lee or even Dabney, Who I've read a decent amount on.
These guys who defended slavery, they did.
There's no denying that.
But even these guys, they hated the slave trade and they wanted to see the slave trade end.
And these guys were better guys than many of the people, you know, a part of the Union up north because, you know, they were saying, you know, slavery needs to end today.
And part of the concern was a defense of slavery and property and economic activity.
That's true.
There's no denying that.
But part of it also was, what are we going to do with these people?
And it was guys like Abraham Lincoln who.
You know, they either like, we'll just drop them back off in the bush in Africa.
Even if you accidentally, the ship goes the wrong direction, you take them to a whole other nation.
Who cares?
You know, or one of the more.
That was a common position.
It was.
Yeah, really.
The founders talked about that as well.
Yes.
Yeah.
And then another position, a little bit more humane, was, well, okay, we'll send them out west.
But the reason why that didn't work out wasn't even because of the Confederates necessarily, but because of the Northerners who said, well, wait a second, but we eventually, we're planned to get there.
We want to settle the West.
We don't want black neighbors.
So, as the Northerners, in so many ways, were really malicious.
And a lot of the Confederates, you know, and a lot of the black people fought, not at gunpoint from their masters, but they loved the South and they loved, you know.
So, anyway, so all these things.
My point was to say this.
So, slavery in some cases is permissible.
I don't think that it should be race based, and I certainly shouldn't be man stealing.
The Bible does condemn that, stealing people into slavery.
The point that I made about, well, it wasn't white people who were going into jungles in Africa with human sized nets and rounding them up.
The point that I was trying to make is number one, Europeans bought slaves in a race based slave market knowing that they were kidnapped.
That's true.
And the slave trade, I think, was a pernicious evil and it needed to end.
I praise God for ending it.
A lot of other nations, European nations, were able to end it without a war.
That sucks for America.
I think slavery was a judgment and I think the Civil War was a judgment in itself.
I think that that was wrong, the way that we ended it.
But beyond that, There's plenty of guilt and blame to go around.
Africans were conquering each other and selling themselves into slavery.
And when you look statistically, numerically at the number of slaves, far more of them went to South America than ever came to the United States.
And so, my point in all that is to say no, America is not absolved or immune to any critique that could be levied in terms of slavery or the slave trade or racism, which who even knows what that means anymore, you know, but whatever.
That's true.
And there really is genuine failure and sin.
My point, though, was to say that a lot of guys look at the West, especially in 2020 and 2021, the time that me and AD recorded that episode, and they would attribute that to the success of Western civilization.
And they say, well, yeah, sure, you've been successful and prosperous and all this kind of stuff, but that's just because you exploited the rest of the world and enslaved them.
And if that's the case, then what happened to South America?
They had more slaves than we did.
Yeah.
How come America is so much richer?
No, no, no.
God blessed these United States, and he didn't do it because of slavery.
He did it despite slavery.
And that's my point is to say, even for the critiques that can be levied with legitimate history to back them up, like slavery, the point is the whole world at some point, virtually every nation on the planet, has had slaves, and many of the practices far more inhumane enslaving each other, capturing, man stealing.
Africans were conquering and selling their own people and man stealing.
Europeans were aware of it and bought them, and there is guilt imputed for that.
The slave trade needed to end.
South Americans, though, they were doing it too and buying them at even larger numbers.
All these things were going on.
So, if you think that the West's secret sauce and its success is free labor through slavery, then you're an idiot.
The whole world has had slaves, and many countries outside of the West far more guilty for it.
The West, you have to account for the success of the West outside of oppression.
That just doesn't, it doesn't have the explanatory power.
That was my point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And yeah, every, like you said, every nation, every continent has seen massive amounts of slavery.
And I think it's been refuted like tons of times that the idea that the reason why the United States was prosperous is because of slavery.
Economically, I think that the economic powerhouse was more in the North.
So there's, if you want to say anything, it's because of, you know, The capitalists using cheap immigrant labor might be one reason.
That's probably a better explanation.
And just natural resources.
Yeah.
I think it's also, I think the better explanation for why the West prospers is not geography.
I mean, geography plays a part in it, but it's institution building.
The fact that the West was able to develop systems of laws, customs, like, you know, importation, like customs and for like markets.
And also technology.
So, you got the technology factor and you have the institution factor that enabled you to do complex market transactions, also with the technology to move goods from place to place.
Certainly, there was economic value in using slaves, but I think the predominant reason is, like you said, there's a commonality amongst all the countries, which is they all had slaves.
But the distinctive factor was the institutions and the technology.
Which now, by the way, the rest of the world is now relying upon.
They replicate Western institutions because they know those are more effective at creating good economic outcomes.
And then they use the technology that the West has developed.
Then they can develop it on their own as well.
But primarily, it's because of Western development that the rest of the world is prosperous.
So essentially, every time.
Someone leaves poverty and enters into the middle class in, say, India or China.
It's because of the Western civilization.
And yet, all this back to our main theme of what is a nation?
It's like this weird dynamic.
It's like the Superman, you know, of like everyone at some level has an expectation and is reliant upon him, needs him.
Except in this scenario, everyone needs Superman, recognizes the sense of his unique contributions, and simultaneously hates him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like we're the most racist country on earth, and yet everyone wants to come here, right?
It doesn't make any sense at all.
If people are rational, if they are rational and they're choosing to come here, then the conclusion is that we're actually not what the left and We tell ourselves it's just not the case.
And it's so obvious on its face that here's my suspicion.
I can't explain it.
I've thought about this several times.
I can't explain that phenomenon everyone wants to be here.
Everyone, the whole world, not just the West, but the whole world has economically benefited from the innovation and the contributions of Western civilization.
So everyone wants to be here.
And even those who aren't here fare better because of here.
And yet, also, they're the most oppressive, terrible people in the world, these whiteies.
How do you account for that?
The only thing I can come up with is I feel like that you can only get to this place that we've arrived at with your own people selling you out.
I don't think it's just a bunch of really hateful, spiteful people in South America or in Africa or in Asia.
I feel like white people, not all of them, Not even a general populace, but elites, leaders, leading white Western civilization people, politicians or corporations.
At some point, maybe it was slowly, maybe it was calculated, maybe it was organic, but at some point, elites in Western nations had to consciously make that choice to sell out their own people and to hate their own people in order to somehow use that guilt for the GDP to go up.
To get cheaper labor or somehow, some way, with some incentive.
I don't think it's just the rest of the world finally got tired of all those whites and their oppression.
Like, because there was a time I remember even as a kid, you know, watching news stories and where a lot of the world loved us.
Like, even the rest of the world learned American hatred from America, I feel like, in some sense.
And then it's like, well, then where did Americans get hatred for themselves?
And to me, I can't get away from it.
Like, I think it had to have been our leaders.
What do you think?
Yeah.
Man, this is the hardest thing to.
To understand, I think, I mean, after World War II, there was a change in mentality happened in the 70s.
And among conservative circles, it happened in the 80s.
I think that there's something to do with the Cold War as well, and that even the most, the strongest conservatives, I guess, some of them weren't the most right wing people, but they were on that edge, would differentiate the West from the communists.
And the West was freedom, economic opportunity, individual self determination, whereas communism was highly conservative.
Collectivistic, it was statist and controlling.
And so there is that.
And that allowed, I think, this mentality that was expressed in the 80s by someone like Ronald Reagan, who would then say that, you know, bring the huddled masses.
If they come here to work hard, just like the pilgrims, and to fight and obtain their freedom, then we want them.
And so then he retells, actually, I mean, recrafts the myth of the pilgrims.
You know, this was one of his big things.
The pilgrims came.
And they were freeing oppression and they just wanted a better life and economic opportunity.
You know, it's a shining city on a hill, and that's what we can become.
And he framed it in terms of like industrial production, like GDP.
And so, if someone comes here and they want to contribute to our well being in terms of material well being, then come on, let them bring it.
So, there was no sense of like common culture, common heritage.
As long as you make a connection to it.
If you want to come here and make us richer, That's fine.
And we don't care if you like apple pie.
Yeah.
We don't care if you like George Washington or a history or anything like that.
Yeah.
So he basically retold and refashioned that sort of myth of like the first founding of America with the colonies settling as, yeah.
And that to this day, that is what we deal with.
Cohesion or Going Somewhere Else00:08:38
So when you talk to someone who is 40 or older, 45, maybe 50 or older, they grew up and they're conservative.
They grew up with that mentality.
So you are.
When you get an argument with an older person on the idea of ethnicity, the idea of American identity, you're arguing with Fox News.
You're arguing with, yeah, you're arguing with Ronald Reagan mediated through Fox News, you know, decades of socialization through TV.
And you're probably not going to win that argument, unless they were listening to Pat Buchanan in the early 90s and some other guys and they followed that.
But if they had not, that's their conservative approach.
And so that's what you're up against.
But now what we have is people who are younger, like 40, 45 and younger.
And they did not experience that.
They did not grow up watching Fox News or talk radio.
Their alternative media is online.
So now they're able to access another narrative of American history, which is far more, well, it's actually true.
What Reagan actually said, most of what he said was false on the Pilgrims, anyway.
He also conflated the Puritans and Pilgrims, but that doesn't matter.
It's too academic.
But yeah, these younger people are able to now receive a different narrative of American identity.
And so people like you and I are part of that now.
What's Joel Barry's excuse then?
Is he secretly like 65 years old and he just physically hasn't aged?
No, well, yeah, no.
I'm like, you're too young to be.
He's a dude that's silly.
I think it's probably lingering dispensationalism is one of those causes that he loves him some Israel.
Yeah.
So if you, yeah, and it tends to go one goes with the other.
So if you have a theological connection to Israel, I mean, it's one thing to consider Israel a geopolitical entity in a world of states.
And like, that's a different question.
Like, in that sense, I'm actually a supporter of Israel as a geopolitical entity in the Middle East.
Not a comfortable supporter, I'll say, but I don't have any theological love for Israel.
But people have this theological love for Israel through dispensationalism and some of the hangovers from that.
And that also tends to coincide with the propositional notion of America.
Now, there's really no logical connection to those two things.
But they always come as a pair.
Those come as a pair.
And for whatever reason, that's the fact.
But yeah, it is like what we have to then combat is this notion that there never was American identity, there never was an American ethnos.
It was always multicultural, designed that way from the beginning.
We have to push back because that's all false.
It's all false.
You read the founders on immigration, on Protestantism, on the importance of having a similar culture to maintain American order to liberty.
They all affirmed that immigration can actually destroy this country because you import people of different customs, different conceptions of liberty, different economic understandings, different, you know.
So, with all of that, you can actually destroy.
And, I mean, we're.
Probably past time for this episode.
I could keep going on and on about that.
Well, finish that one last thing.
But yes, but we have to go.
The first thing is that it's what we experience now in a multicultural society is something that wars against human nature.
It wars against the human good as a political community.
You cannot have a cohesive political community in which a large portion of those people, in heart, Live somewhere else.
Right.
If you live here and your heart is for Mexico or your heart is for Israel or your heart is for, I don't know, Germany, doesn't matter.
Right.
That's great that you have a heart for a place.
I don't have any problem with that.
And let your heart be sweet with your home.
Go back.
Right.
Yeah.
Either go back or cut ties.
Right.
There's no dual loyalty.
You're here and you're an American and you are seeking to become integrate as an American, historically speaking.
It will not, we cannot function as a society in which.
Most, which increasingly, this is my fear my grand, my, my, my kids and grandkids and great grandkids will live in a society in which they are from here.
This is their home.
They have nowhere else to go.
Right.
But they'll be surrounded by people who all have someplace else to go.
They're all from somewhere else in heart, not just ancestral.
We're all derivative in some sense, but they have no, their heart's somewhere else.
And then, uh, And then you try to fashion and hold together a political community.
And then, by the way, you who are from here, who have nowhere else to go, are like the enemy.
You're the villain of the story.
All of the problems of the people who are from somewhere else fall down on you.
And now you're the minority.
So instead of the majority, you're the minority, you're the villain, and you're surrounded by people who have no or a very limited ancestral connection to the place that they live, whose heart is elsewhere.
Talk about an experiment in liberty.
That is far beyond the experiment of liberty from the founding.
And that's where we're going.
And that scares me for my love, my yet to be borns, you know.
Right.
Granted.
Yeah.
They are going to be subjected to that.
Like, I almost say, like, that is what most likely they're going to be subjected to unless something happens, unless we all change our mentality and say, you know, either be American or go somewhere else.
Right.
Yeah.
When I first started delving into some of these things and learning, My initial reaction was shock, surprise, then quickly followed up by anger.
I don't feel angry anymore.
That phase went pretty quick for me.
But I do feel sad, and not sad for myself because self pity is not really virtuous.
But I'm a dad.
I've got five kids.
And one day, Lord willing, I hope to be a grandfather.
And unless something changes with the will of the people in Western nations, And a real act and revival and work of God.
My grandchildren, it makes me sad to think that everyone else, all their neighbors, I mean, even now, like most of my neighbors are either Hindu or they're Pakistani, you know, they're Muslim.
It's rare when we go for a family walk and we see another white family.
And when I think of that, and that's today, 2024, when I think of my grandchildren, You know, in their mid 20s or early 30s, having kids and buying their first home.
And I think of if this trajectory continues, they'll be surrounded by all their neighbors having this place as theirs and another place where their heart is, home somewhere else.
And my grandchildren have nothing.
Like, this is, they don't have anywhere else to go.
They don't have another home.
This was the only home they ever had.
They're a minority in their own home that their fathers actually built.
And, uh, And they're a minority and have no say.
So they can't leave, but they also can't really stay.
And it's just, it's one, you know, at first you're like, oh man, we should be angry.
At this point, I'm just sad.
And I just hope, you know, like one of my prayers is I just hope that Westerners will listen and wake up and stop hating their future grandchildren.
Don't hate your kids and don't hate your fathers.
It's literally, it's a hatred of your fathers.
And it's like despising of the past and despairing for the future.
Whereas the only way that we can move forward is honor for the past and hope for the future.
Honor the past, hope for the future, versus despising the past and despairing of the future.
And yeah, but if we continue to believe all these lies that have been said about, you know, all the founders were terrible, oppressive people, this, that, and the other, like every nation has that history.
Every nation can look back to the 1800s.
Hundreds and find political leaders in their nation that were 10 times worse than George Washington or anything like that.
Honoring the Past and Future00:03:13
And yet, they don't, other people don't hate their nation.
They love their nation.
They're proud of it.
They're proud of it because it's theirs.
And we're the only ones who actually have a better history, a more moral history.
And yet, somehow, are just completely ashamed.
And so, yeah, it's just not viable.
I think going forward, like I emphasize the psychological aspect of it a lot.
And I think what people.
Need to do, and there is a pitfall on the side of this.
But I think there's a habit of the mind that, like, when you and I talk about this, we can talk about it very comfortably because we've essentially desensitized ourselves to what we're socialized into, which is to avoid these kind of conversations.
Like the idea of talking about white people and saying something good about them feels uncomfortable to people.
Psychologically, they say, wait a second, stop, stop, stop.
It's in your mind.
You feel like it's like when a lot of people, if they talk about stuff like this over like just you, like you and your spouse, and you talk about this, you're in your own kitchen by yourself and you start talking quietly.
You're looking over your shoulder.
There's no one in the room but you.
You know that, but you start talking quietly.
Well, I'll tell you why.
Because your wife might call the elders.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
And turn you in for church discipline.
Yeah.
But barring that, though, you're both on the same page.
There still is that tendency to do that.
Right.
And whenever you have that tendency to do that, you need to check yourself and do a self-assessment and criticize your own habits of your mind and get rid of that stuff.
And that includes all that.
Because it's not until you get freed from that.
That habit of the mind that's been, that's not the call of conscience to go towards what is good.
That is your mind having been shaped by socialization to not think in certain ways.
Right.
By the way, to not think in ways that everyone else but you can actually think and say and do anything they want and self affirm.
So you have to get in that habit.
And it's something that I discovered probably about like 15 years ago.
And it was a slow process.
The process of being able to desensitize yourself from these kind of conversations or these kind of thoughts.
The only thing is, I would warn people, is there is something that can evil can arise from that.
If you start hating other groups, love for your own does not necessitate hatred of others.
Yeah.
And I don't mean hatred as a left wing term, but literal animosity as a group where you would go so far as, again, a left wing term, but it's appropriate, dehumanize.
So, if you're like, don't, you know, you see memes going around of like blacks being like monkeys or something like that.
Like, don't, that stuff's bad.
If there is racism, that's racism.
So, that's where you've like, you've desensitized your conscience.
Right.
Like, that's gone too far.
Land, Lineage, and Nationhood00:04:02
That's not desensitizing.
That's searing.
You've seared your conscience.
Yeah, yeah, right.
So, there is that.
But in everything that's good, there's always a possibility of abuse.
Yeah.
So, always, you know, so don't put up a guardrail that makes you, Nationally suicidal, right?
Or makes you self degrading or self demeaning.
Don't, don't like take that away, but retain that natural guardrail, which is to prevent you from sin.
But at this point, there's actually, I would say, we're psychologically engineered to sin against ourselves.
Yes.
And you need to get that clear that sin out of your mind without going too far and jumping into sin itself.
Well said.
Very well said.
So, next episode, Did you ever watch the movie Inception, Leonardo?
Yeah.
The Cavalier.
Yeah.
So, Dream Within a Dream.
Sometimes, with these long form conversations with our special show that's multiple parts, sometimes you have to do a series within a series.
Yeah.
And so, this is what I'm thinking is, you know, this is episode three now, and we're answering the question, what is a nation?
Or at least trying to.
That's our goal.
And so, I'm thinking, you know, this is a 10 part series at large.
And I'm thinking, series, you know, mini series within the series.
I think we need a two parter on what is a nation.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
So, what we've hit so far is, and it's not like we didn't cover any ground.
This was, I think, this is gold.
This was a great episode.
I hope our listeners have enjoyed it.
But if I was to recap, I think what we've hit, you know, big picture so far in this first episode of What is a Nation, the series within a series, is home and history.
That's that's integral to a nationhood.
And so, what I would like to do in the next episode is again, like kind of a part two on What is a Nation.
And I have six components, all start with the letter L.
And I got these from my friend Michael Belch, who sent you actually a Part of his rough draft with the book and might get a blurb from you.
We'll get a blurb.
We'll get a blurb.
We'll get an endorsement for that.
But he's going to be publishing it soon, either with us, with Right Response, or we might publish through New Christendom Press.
And they've expressed interest.
But his whole book, you know, you wrote The Case for Christian Nationalism, and his is called The Biblical Case for Nations.
But it's basically answering that question what is a nation?
And he came up with six L's land, lineage, Language, laws, loves, and liturgy.
Land, lineage, language, laws, loves, and liturgy.
And so in our next episode, we've kind of been talking about land and lineage in a lot of ways family, home, heritage, history.
But then to go beyond that and talk about commonality with worship, that there's a shared sense of worship and that a nation really can't survive with.
All these different religions, you know, where none of them is.
It's one thing to tolerate other religions as minority representation, but to say that every religion is equal and none of them get any preference, or if anything, all the other religions, the false religions from foreign people who've immigrated in, that they get the preference and the dominant religion, Christianity, becomes the butt of every joke and gets the least.
That's just not, again, viable.
So I would love to, in the next episode, talk about those four L's land, lineage, laws.
Loves language and liturgy.
And I think that because nationhood, it is more than land and lineage, particular people, particular place.
But it's not less.
It is that.
And I think that's what we first established, and we can get into that a little bit more.
But it's never less than people in place.
But it also is, to be fair, more than people in place.
And I think you can add those other components without going full boomer into propositional nationhood.