THE LIVESTREAM - The Power Of Propaganda examines modern deception, from the hosts' admitted advertising errors to Sidney Sweeney's American Eagle ads and DHS deportation rhetoric. The discussion critiques corporate stereotypes like Ram Trucks commercials while analyzing Plato's "noble lie" and Machiavelli's strategies for stability. Speakers debate whether Christianity wears a "liberal skin suit," navigate the rise of Nick Fuentes, and explore theological disagreements regarding race, Noah's sons, and federal headship in Romans 5. Ultimately, the episode argues Christians must discern between propaganda sinning in right or wrong directions, avoiding both delusional optimism and nihilistic despair while acknowledging real historical disparities. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Why We Leave Google00:13:02
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
I get it.
It's annoying.
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.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
The topic of today's episode is the power of propaganda.
We're going to be looking at modern, recent examples like.
Sidney Sweeney and the DHS.
We'll also be looking at more historic examples, propaganda put forward by the communist and the Marxist, and looking at what Plato has to say and what Machiavelli has to say.
But first, I'd be remiss if I didn't address the firestorm over the last 48 hours.
This is our first time broadcasting since Wednesday, and this story broke after our broadcast on Wednesdays when we were alerted to it.
We have aired over the last month, if you've been following this channel, two advertisements for two different companies, both under the same LLC and headed up by the same.
Individual.
I want to start by saying this that individual, we have followed up with him.
It took a moment to do, you know, follow up and get his story and hear these things and ask these questions.
He is a Christian man and he has defrauded no one and he will defraud no one.
Okay.
So that's the first thing that nobody has been stolen from.
However, what he presented in these ads, here's the problem it was using present language for something that was future oriented, a hope, right?
An aim, a goal at best.
So to use language like, Our educators, right?
A school was one of these companies.
Our educators are being paid blank.
They earn blank.
Well, no, the educators don't earn that because the educators don't exist.
There are no educators.
Now, here's the bottom line, and I'll leave it here.
We'll move on.
These ads were read to the public by yours truly.
So at the end of the day, yes, this guy is a Christian man.
It wasn't a complete stranger.
We knew him.
That's why we felt comfortable doing it.
But here's the point we used present language, the language that was sent to us, but I used it.
I used it.
I gave the ultimate check mark and signed off to use present language for something that was future oriented.
And in that sense, objectively, it's not true.
It's not true to use present language for something that presently doesn't exist.
And so we're going to be far more careful moving forward in the vetting process for our advertisers.
For anyone who is offended or caught off guard or disappointed, we apologize.
For anybody who is worried or concerned, rest assured there's been no financial fraud.
And none of that is going to happen.
This is genuinely a Christian man who I don't want to unnecessarily, more than necessary, throw under the bus.
He is a Christian man with good intentions.
He wants to do something for the kingdom of God, but he presented something with too much ambition that said it as though it was something now, and it's simply not.
And I ultimately made the decision to read that on the air.
So for that, I apologize.
Please forgive me.
And now let's go ahead and dive into our show.
All right, GA, we are back.
Some would say so, back.
Real quick, I just realized in the cold open, I did not mention what the two companies were.
So, for your reference point, there's nothing to hide here.
So, let me be specific.
It was Covenant Matches and St. John's Academy.
Again, Covenant Matches and St. John's Academy.
This individual has taken the websites down for both of those companies.
They are a registered LLC.
One is a DBA in conjunction with the one same LLC.
But the websites have been removed, and he's obviously, you know, He's discouraged and, and, you know, and I get it.
And so he's going to rethink his inks and maybe someday in the future do something again the right way and present it, you know, as present when it's present or if it's future, make that very, you know, abundantly clear.
But those websites are down.
No one has been defrauded, but that's the name of the two companies, Covenant Matches and St. John's Academy.
And so we'll no longer, of course, be running those ads.
Okay.
So here's our episode for today.
Antonio, you're going to kick it off.
Yeah.
I think, I think what we're talking about today is, Really interesting, especially as you consider the shift that we've seen with the Trump administration and specifically DHS, I think has become really notable with some of the tweets, the base tweets that we've seen from that X account.
But essentially, we're talking about propaganda.
And I think propaganda historically is thought of as something that's intentionally deceitful.
And I think if you look historically at what propaganda has been, both in sort of the 20th century, characterized by You know, the World War II.
So you could think of like the Soviet era, the revolution that we see in Russia, but also in America and Rosie the Riveter and what you see in the thumbnail.
You have sort of that conception of propaganda, but propaganda actually going all the way back into the ancient times.
And I think propaganda, if you look historically, is probably better defined as ideal, the ideal and the popular imagination.
And so if you think about, you know, the workers' revolution in Soviet Russia, what that looks like is well, this is what life could be like under a communist government.
This isn't necessarily what it is like now.
And so you find this kind of propaganda is really powerful in capturing myth and what people strive for, how they shape their culture around truths, so on and so forth.
And then we look at some recent examples and we can talk about the American Eagle ad, which just in the last week or so has really.
Not a lot of people noticed it or heard about it, to be honest.
Yeah, right.
It's become like a really cultural fire point.
A lot of people are kind of confused by that.
I've actually seen it.
We're both wearing good jeans today.
That's right.
We're wearing some, yeah, great jeans.
Great jeans.
Yeah.
Some Abercrombie jeans.
My jeans are a little bit better than yours, Antonio.
Yeah, I've got some hybridization going on in the fabric.
There's literally like, I don't know if people can see it on the camera, but there's a little bit of a rip there.
That's kind of why you're saying it on YouTube.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
So, all that to say, like, this American Eagle ad has become a, Big topic.
A lot of people are confused why.
You know, you've got people on the left and, you know, they're claiming that it's fascist.
And then people on the right are like, no, it's just like a return to some kind of like prototypical American like ad of the 2000s.
Woke is dead.
America is bad.
Right.
We're so bad.
Yeah.
And we'll look at an example.
I think we have a RAM ad lined up that was ran on the 4th of July and it was all about, you know, not apologizing about being American.
And so you feel this zeitgeist kind of shifting and trying to put your thumb on it is really trying to, it's difficult to do.
But really what we're talking about is propaganda.
And momentum that shifts back and forth in the culture, both in music, in the arts, in the media, about what is our founding myth, right?
And I'll just, you know, you look at Rome, you look at Greece, any major civilization in the past has had a founding myth.
And that myth is always, I mean, in Rome's time, it was we were founded by these two people.
And now everyone in Greece, it was everyone born of this earth is of a specific classification and they've come from the ground, so on and so forth.
And even us here in America, we have those founding myths about who we are.
And we see the tug, the push and pull happening in culture.
And right now, I think we feel the momentum.
And so we'll talk about that and we can open it up to what exactly propaganda is.
How do you win the battle of propaganda?
And then we can also talk about a little bit of the Christian duty, I think, to see through the veil a little bit.
So it's not necessarily that you want to avoid propaganda, but you want to be able to see the world as it is.
You want to know that it's propaganda.
Exactly.
And when you say avoid propaganda, you do want to avoid it insofar as being able to discern what is propaganda and what's not.
When you say you don't want to avoid it, I think what Antonio is saying is.
In terms of the utilization of propaganda, it's a powerful tool and it actually can be used in ethical ways towards good ends.
But you need to be aware of what it is.
Yeah.
It's not if you will have propaganda, I guess, is kind of the point.
We remember during the peak of woke 2015 to 2020 or so, I mean, you literally had the ads.
Fat is beautiful.
If they weren't saying that implicitly with who they chose to model, Calvin Klein, American Eagle, sometimes it was literally just being blasted out there.
Fat is beautiful.
But it's not as though we had an era of propaganda and now all of that's gone away and now we're just back to advertising genes.
Now the message is not fat is beautiful.
That was a bad message.
Right.
But it turns out, I don't know, I might be the most negative one here even on the shift.
But now the message is being a whore is not a bad thing.
Right.
Like, okay, well, so, all right.
You're not the most negative.
Fat is beautiful.
I want to be clear.
Sometimes we disagree.
I'm with you on this one.
Okay.
You're not, I'm Wes and I'm to the right of everyone.
You've never met someone like me.
No, I agree with you on this one.
I'm just negative on a lot of this propaganda, like DHS, for example.
We'll get into it.
We'll get into it.
America's back.
No, we're not.
No, like.
Whoredom instead of fat people.
It's not upgrade.
Guys who we respect, they're great guys, but we see some of our friends and they're like reposting, you know, the videos and it's like, well, Joel, why aren't you reposting it?
You know, like we're so back.
Isn't that what you want?
Like DHS quoting scripture?
Isn't this the Christian nationalism?
Like, well, I think of Martin Luther.
We said, the imperative of the gospel as it pertains to the cobbler, the guy who makes shoes, is not that he makes shoes.
Christian shoes in the sense that John 3 16 is written on the bottom of the tongue.
But he does make Christian shoes, but by making Christian shoes, what that first and foremost means is he makes good shoes.
So I actually don't think it's Christian to use Bible verses for deportations, but not provide the deportations.
You see what I'm saying?
So I'm all for DHS.
Like the videos, I love it.
What I don't love is that they're not doing it.
They're not doing it.
Give me 10 million deportations lest I die.
Give me 50 million and now we're talking.
I'll play this ad for people to see.
Have the tissues ready if you need them for maybe a little bit of a teary eye.
This is good.
This land is your land.
This land is my land.
From California to the New York Island.
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters.
This land was made for you and me.
So, what do we not like about this?
The big thing that I don't like, for one, you mentioned deportations practically.
We're at, I would estimate, based on other sources I've seen, I know practically as far as physical deportations.
I'm not leaving.
Yes, you are.
Self deport, that's different.
But what would you do?
I'll get to self deport in a minute.
I think we're at about, probably 100,000.
Is that right, Antonio?
Yeah, I think the estimate I looked at was something like 150,000 ish.
And you've got people in detention, which is kind of that intermediate step.
That's about 50 something thousand.
And a big part of that has been the judges.
So just to be clear, this is not necessarily, I think Trump wants to do it practically.
The judges have said no, and he said, Yes, sir.
You said no, I won't do it.
So, practically, you have about 150,000 deportations.
We're about an eighth of the administration's of this administration of the way through.
Remember, in 2028, we are going to have midterms.
And practically, if we lose the house, more funding, more measures, more strict border stuff, getting the executive orders codified, that's probably not likely to happen.
So, you got about 150,000 active deportations.
Not great.
Now, we got funding with a big, beautiful bill.
We'll see what happens.
Maybe another six to 700,000 self deportations.
Individuals that were here illegally.
They saw the rhetoric and they said, I just, I might as well go home now.
It's not looking good for me.
I'm going to get out.
We could get a Stephen Colbert self deportation.
We could.
That would be great.
We've got some good celebrities out.
But practically, that's about a million.
Right.
I mean, the platform was mass deportations.
Right.
And the other subtle thing I want to draw your attention to was at the very end, you saw a woman mounted as border patrol.
So you have the helicopters, you have the soldiers, and the imagery.
One of the final images was there was just a woman there as border patrol.
Like, our borders being protected.
By the great men and women of the Border Patrol.
By a 125 pound woman.
By a 125 pound woman.
Well, actually, no, I'm not actually aiming for our border to be protected by this.
Protecting Our Borders00:02:42
And I get it.
It's a small point to quibble with.
But practically speaking, you're saying all these things.
You're using Bible verses.
You're putting together these emotionally stirring montages to stir the people.
But it's not actually being channeled into the actual change that you want to happen.
And then what happens is people see that and they're like, America's back and we did it.
It can be.
God, what I voted for.
It can lull you.
It's like, no, I didn't vote for a commercial.
I actually voted for deportations.
We have.
Quite literally, not gone.
Yeah, take away the propaganda and give me the things that I wanted instead of acting as though you did.
And then that way, propaganda is kind of like a double edged sword because it can either, it can actually inspire, it can inspire people to write action or it can appease and it can lull people to sleep, right?
And you have to, that's where you have to be cognizant of like, you know, the kind of propaganda that is being served to you and whether you'll accept it or not.
That's where it becomes dangerous because so there's propaganda from the left and that's dangerous because it convinces people that these things that are vices are virtues.
Okay, but there's actually a danger, a serious danger from the right, because from the right, what it does is propaganda that says a lot of things that we would support.
The danger there is it convinces people that we don't need to push anymore because it's happening.
Right.
When it's not.
No, we actually still need to be pushing.
Yeah.
And I can't help but think of just the parable where Jesus talks about, you know, two sons with a father, and the father asks them both to come and work in the field.
And one says, Oh, you betcha, dad.
I love you, dad.
I'll be there, dad.
And he doesn't show up.
And the other guy says, Sorry, dad.
I'm too busy.
I can't do it.
And he does show up.
And Jesus says, which one has done what's right?
And of course, like if there was a third guy, which there's not, but hypothetically, if there was a third guy in the parable who said yes and did it, that would be the ideal.
So Jesus isn't saying that the second guy who says no, but still shows up, that that's the best, the ideal.
The ideal is both in word and deed to obey the Father.
So both in word and deed, that's the ideal.
But Jesus does explicitly say in this parable, this is the obvious implication, because he asks, he turns to his opponents, which one did right.
And then he says, He affirms them.
The second one is who did better.
And in other words, what's better?
The ideal is to say yes and show up.
But given the choice between only two options to say no and not do it, right?
So, yes in word, but no indeed, or no in word and yes indeed, if those are the only two options, better to do it with actions than to merely say it with words.
Right.
So, that's Jesus' own teaching through his parable.
And that directly applies to what we're talking about you have the yes in word, right?
Here's the commercial.
But the no, currently, as it currently rests, indeed, it's not being done.
The Yes and No Parable00:13:57
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then we should.
So let's look at the next ad.
I think the next ad is a different sort of characterization of poor propaganda on the right, which is the appeasement.
It's kind of what we'll see this ad that was ran on the 4th of July or the 4th of July weekend from Ram, which essentially is this appeal to this pseudo conservative, you know, American patriotic vision that is sort of boomer and neocon.
You can imagine, you know, this is the kind of stuff that many people at like NASCAR.
Races and things like that are like celebrating and championing as, like, that's what it means to be American.
And of course, you see the roots are grounded.
So let's take, or ungrounded, I should say.
Let's take a look at this ad here.
Americans, we can do anything we want, except one thing we just can't stop being American.
Because since that revolution, they said we'd lose, we just couldn't choose to stop being American.
We put Hemi V8s back on the strip and packed eight layers in a seven layer dip.
We're body slams and blue suede shoes.
Rock and roll, jazz and blues.
Rockin' mullets and rap-pack suits.
Even our grandmas have tattoos.
We're NASCAR, Rockstars, Rodeo, Monster Trucks and Powerboats.
Welcome to our epic show.
Keep winning on Sunday, move horsepower Monday, shake the earth and carve terrain.
Rock the anthem like Kenny Wayne.
So get out there, take your swings, burn rubber after the American dream.
Lev your engines and let freedom ring.
And never, ever, ever stop being American.
Nothing stops America.
And nothing stops Ram.
Real quick, first thing I want to say that is propaganda, but it is good propaganda.
I have no doubt that that ad was probably a successful ad for them.
Yeah.
So we're here playing it.
I mean, yeah.
So we're not, just for the record, we're not saying that that propaganda was done poorly.
It was, I mean, they nailed it.
That was, but it is propaganda.
Yep.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
It's just, you can see the framing is like very shallow.
It's like, hey, let's celebrate being an American.
You drive a truck.
You like fireworks.
You grill.
Apparently, you like salsa as well.
WWF recipe.
250 years ago, you told England to suck it.
You're an American.
You're an American, yeah.
So it's boats, boats and hoes.
You know, like it's scantily clad women.
So it's literally boats and hoes.
It's voiced by Dana White with UFC, right?
UFC, yeah.
And Lord knows there's no shortage of just grandma's tatted up, which I'm like, that's not American.
Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of that.
I'm not the biggest fan of that.
And UFC is a big show, is the point.
Right.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
And it wasn't even UFC.
It was like wrestling, which is quite little.
Well, Dana Way as the president, that's what I'm saying.
It was his voice from UFC.
And UFC has that same kind of similar appeal, I think.
It's just, it's very shallow.
It's like there's no real appeal to sort of, you know, ancient, you know, I wouldn't, in America's case, we wouldn't say ancient, but historic kind of truths about, I mean, even if it is, it's in passing, like the revolution.
It's like, oh, you fought, like Wes indicated, you fought this war 250 years ago.
And now that's, you know, anyone who's living here and subscribes to these sorts of things and enjoys that, they're American.
But without even saying why, like it's like, yeah, we, we, um, like you're the guys who fought a war and won, correct?
Um, also, uh, what did we fight that war about?
Like, we fought that war because, um, because of pennies were being taxed that we didn't, we're like two percent taxed, yeah, we're like two percent taxed with no representation.
I will die, I will die for this today.
They're like, uh, 40% tax, please govern me harder, you know, like, yeah, yeah, we're not so it's like, so they literally have to change what's American.
Because they're trying to build you up and say, you're American.
But the reality is that we're not.
Historically, our fathers would be ashamed.
They'd be ashamed of all of us.
And so then they have to literally change what does it mean to be American now?
Grit, resolve, conviction, courage.
Nope.
What does it mean to be American now?
Boats and hoes.
Yeah.
And our guys have to get this.
Culture is shifting.
People are done with wokeness as we typically kind of brand it, whether that be on the LGBTQ side of things or just kind of this egalitarian idea of beauty.
And of hierarchy is the big one.
So that's going away.
So we're back to people can excel, people can be beautiful, people can do great things, some more than others.
But as we shift away from that, what advertisers are going to do, and you can't fall for it, is they're going to then appeal to that 80% of the country that thinks this way.
So nothing's changed about their heart.
Nothing about it is we're back to the Bible, we're back to traditional values, we went too far.
It means the common sense of what's selling right now.
This is what's selling right now.
Which there is some positive in that, and we'll talk about that here in a moment.
But I got to give a shout out to in the chat, we have Titus Weller.
And I just thought it was funny.
He said, it's actually the perfect advertisement for Ram Truck because it perfectly represents who they are shallow and extra on the outside, the body of the truck, but regrettable execution on the inside.
That's good.
It's a great Ram commercial.
Yeah, that's funny.
I was going to say, too, the big thing it lacks is courage.
So as the culture shifts, these ads are not making a strong stand.
This is not coming out in the middle of 2022, for example, where people were getting canned for this, for that.
For just even being a straight male, speaking up and having an opinion.
This is coming out when it's safe to do so.
And hey, we're glad for the worker.
It's like Twilight's coming.
He rolls in, he throws some bales of hay.
But we just got to recognize this is not the guy.
These are not the corporations.
They were flying pride flags, happy to do so when that was the thing to do.
And now, a little bit of traditional values are back.
We took the fat as beautiful, a little too far.
Not a problem.
American flags are back in.
And you're buying a $75,000 truck, right?
Right.
So that's vital.
Very insightful, Wes.
Good job.
But that's vital for us to understand.
Corporations are not going to lead the way.
This is not courage.
Corporations don't have courage.
All this is, in the case of corporations, much like politicians, sadly, because they actually should have courage, but it's licking your fingers, sticking in the wind, seeing which way the wind is blowing.
None of these guys were running these ads in 2020.
None of these guys were at the high water mark of the left.
And at that time, you had Amazon blacking out their screen to show their solidarity to George Floyd and all these kinds of things.
So all this says is, But there is a positive in that.
Here's the positive.
It says that the general consensus of the people, not the corporations, but the consumer, namely the people, has shifted to where the corporations recognized it is not financially advantageous for us to run a George Floyd ad right now.
And the only reason I want to point that out is for two reasons.
One, to say the consensus of the people, which actually does matter, is shifting, but it has not shifted nearly far enough.
And that's part of what we're getting into.
Secondly, though, I do want to say, as just a general standard, when you are thinking of politicians, and even more so when you're thinking of the local church and thinking of church leaders and pastors, if your pastor has less courage, and I don't think there's any courage, but if he somehow is able to produce less courage than Dodge Ram, right?
So here's my point.
If American Eagle, and we're going to get into this, which is owned by a Jew, J. Shotaman Skine.
There it is.
That's the most Jewish name I think I've ever heard.
It's a pretty big one.
That's a big Jewish name.
But if American Eagle, owned by Jews, is willing to run an ad that is being labeled as Nazi and eugenic about white Aryan people's genes, and your pastor is still complaining about white boys' homelessness.
My goodness, my goodness, my goodness, my goodness.
So, but what it says though is if American Eagle is willing to do it, it's not because the Jew who runs American Eagle is, you know what, I've reconsidered my ways.
And I actually think that there's been a lot of anti white propaganda and I don't think that that's ethical and right.
And so we're going to throw it.
No, that's the Jew saying, I run a business and I want to make money and this is actually financially viable.
That's how much the Overton window has shifted.
This is actually financially viable.
And so that's what we're seeing.
It's the consensus that's changing.
Right.
And I'll say this as the last part of the segment.
This is the time to see when people have courage.
Early on, this is those who are probably most courageous, is where you're going to see them.
Hey, this guy's been saying this now for a while, and he was right.
And people are starting to see that he's right.
But the more and more and more time goes on, I mean, probably 2035, you know, like a Christian denomination, the LCMS, will come out and say, oh, you know what, the great replacement, maybe that was real.
Like, okay, but there were guys 15 years ago paying the price for saying that it's real.
So it's in these shifts.
We don't get a lot of them in a lifetime.
There could only be a couple.
But in a cultural shift like this, look for who is stepping out, has been stepping out, and saying it early.
Whereas those that are, the minute they can tell, like, ooh, salary's about to go down, stock price is about to tank, I better hop on board.
Those are, at least for the time until they come to grips with it, they are followers.
They are not leaders, individuals, pastors, corporations.
Great time to get a calculus for that.
And that's why it matters.
Like, obviously, character always matters.
But there are, we've talked about this, you know, concentric circles, you know, like ripples.
And it's not just pass or fail.
It's not just like you're with me or you're totally against me.
There's, I think it's helpful to describe there's the brother circle, that's the tightest.
And then there's the friend.
And then there's the co belligerent.
And so when we get to some of these outer circles, like a co belligerent, like this guy's not going to be an elder in my church.
This guy might not even qualify to be a member in my church, right?
I'm Protestant, he's Catholic, whatever it may be.
But he is a good co belligerent.
When you're looking at those things, You're not giving your wholesale endorsement when it comes to co belligerence that we might partner with over every facet of their character and everything they've ever said and everything they've ever done and every single one of their theological convictions.
That's not what you're doing.
But as you look for co belligerence, especially that outer circle, when you're looking for co belligerence, one of the biggest things that you should look for is not perfect unanimity on every single list item of conviction.
But what you should look for, I think, is time.
And that's why, like, there are certain individuals that I'm willing to look at and say, okay, I disagree on this and this and this and this.
There's plenty of disagreements.
But the reason why this individual catches my attention is because this individual was saying these things when there was a steep price to saying them.
And so that doesn't necessarily mean brother circle, elder in my church, godfather of my children, but in terms of co belligerent circle, that actually should be considered.
Yep.
Okay, let's go to our first commercial and we will be right back.
Hello, brothers in Christ.
Let me ask you something real.
Are you truly protecting and providing for your wife and children?
Not just in this life, but the one to come.
Here's a reality check only 45% of adults in America have life insurance, and of those, nearly two thirds are underinsured.
That's not good stewardship.
And as Christian husbands and fathers, we're called to do better.
But what if you could protect your family's future and wisely grow your wealth right now?
That's where private family banking comes in.
It's a proven strategy that allows you to leverage your existing cash flow.
Build tax free legacy wealth and give your family lasting security, all while aligning with your biblical call to provide and protect.
This is what it looks like to turn post mill talk into post mill action.
Tap the link in the show notes to book your free discovery call and take your next step toward financial discipleship and multi generational impact.
Running your business with purpose means looking beyond last month's numbers to next year's vision.
Kaylee Smith offers CFO level strategy scaled just for small businesses.
At Mid State Accounting, she takes care of your compliance, bookkeeping, and tax returns while providing holistic advisory and fractional CFO services to help you steward your resources with a distinctly Christian perspective.
Ready to align your finances with your future?
Then call Kaylee Smith at 573 889 7278 for a free, no obligation consultation.
Mention the Right Response podcast to get 10% off your first three months.
Prefer to explore online?
Then you can visit midstateaccounting.net to learn more or schedule a call.
Again, that's midstateaccounting.net.
With Midstate Accounting, you'll plan for tomorrow while operating in faith today.
So, call Kaylee Smith at 573 889 7278.
Again, that's 573 889 7278.
Top-Down Propaganda Explained00:15:29
So, the big firestorm that we put it in the thumbnail, and it's worth talking about because everyone's talking about it, and Lord knows we always have something to say.
Are you talking about the ads that we ran?
Yes.
It's an advertisement.
Or are you talking about in the real world beyond the reform bubble?
Beyond, I mean, just about every news.
Every news outlet.
So, American Eagle, and we're not going to show it because it's perverse.
It's trash.
And it's slop.
It's slop.
But American Eagle ran an ad with actress Sydney Sweetie, I think that's the right way to pronounce her name.
I want to say Sweeney Todd, which is embarrassing for no one except for myself because it means, number one, you can't get her name right.
And you just reveal that you like musicals.
And I do.
And people tell me, probably more embarrassing than you.
The boys are telling me in the chat, you know, they're like common, common webbing L. You like musicals, but I do.
I like them.
So, Sydney Sweetie, for anyone not familiar, is she's an American actress, blonde, beautiful woman.
She's been in a number of movies, I think, and really honestly, like she just has leaned into using sex appeal.
Like, practically speaking, live in the real world.
In the real world, sex sells.
And that's what she's leaned into.
So she's kind of viewed as a, in many ways, a sex icon.
And American Eagle did an advertisement with her.
And the part of it that got everyone up in arms was a type of narration that went something like, genetics determine eye color, height, skin color, et cetera.
And then she said something to the effect of, and my genes are blue.
And the obvious riff there is, I have great genetics.
Like she looks good because she has great genetics.
That's just practically a big part of it.
And so American Eagle, just again, she's a white woman, blonde haired, blue eyes, and The ad itself is lusting over her, and a lot of there was a lot of celebration in some sense of woke is dead.
Here we go.
We're celebrating hierarchy, some are more beautiful than others.
We're celebrating genetics that some people just inherently have differences that are real and measurable.
And you have an American Eagle, and this is kind of a classic Americana brand, yeah.
American Eagle leaning into it.
Uh, Jay Schottenstein is the CEO.
I that name I'll let you uh, I'll let you just sort that one off.
Early life, yeah, just hit the early life on that.
Yeah, um, is a CEO, and of course, CEO in a company this big with an ad.
An ad campaign that this big, he's certainly involved in the approval, everything that goes on to it.
And so you had two sides to it.
And you had certainly the one side that said, This is eugenics, this is fascism.
And then another side that was, No, here it is, woke is finally dead.
And this happens a lot, right?
Democrats, Republican, which one are you?
Well, kind of practically, if we're looking at them, neither.
There's actually a third way, not to be gay, but believe it or not, here's the real answer it's not, Oh, woke is dead and America is back.
We're celebrating beauty again.
On one side, you have this kind of this artificial against nature.
Sin that's being promoted.
Fat is beautiful.
No, if you're obese, you will not live as long.
Your quality of life will not be as good.
That's not true.
But then here's the other thing being a whore is a good thing.
Well, hang on.
That's actually not true either.
And so what you have kind of posited is well, this is gone.
So now the true alternative is here.
And this is the power of propaganda.
It's supposed to look good.
Lust is, in many ways, a sin, as Peter would say, common to man.
It doesn't have to, you don't have to do these huge backflips and acrobatics.
Like, how is it?
That men are attracted to attractive women.
This is a sin, and it is a sin that is common to man.
And so propaganda comes in and says, Hey, this normal thing that everyone experiences, this is a go.
Wink, wink, nod, nod.
But it's not.
That is not actually an alternative.
We want neither whoredom, perversion in the public square, all of this, normalizing lust, nor normalizing ugliness.
That's not moral either.
And so you have to take a look at both of them and say, Actually, this propaganda is playing up a dichotomy that doesn't exist because I'm opting out and choosing the third option.
Yeah.
Propaganda is the story that people tell themselves about who they are, where they come from, who they are, where they're going.
And so it could be the case that there are many different wrong directions actually for people to go.
And, you know, one ad that is a little bit more in alignment with, I think, nature, and you could say that it's sort of momentum is more natural, still doesn't mean that that's the proper direction of the people, right?
And so, you know, you think about, What myths, what propaganda is.
It's sinning in the right direction.
I heard someone say that once and it was a fan favorite.
Everybody loved it.
So we'll just use that language again.
Okay.
Sending in the right direction.
Yeah.
Which, for the record, means there are sins which accord with nature while still being sins.
And there are sins which disaccord with nature.
Romans 1, men exchanging natural relations and being in.
It's a basic biblical premise, but people lost their minds.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
And of course, there's a sense in which we're trying, we strive for the supernatural, right?
Heaven coming on earth, which is.
Which is more in alignment with natural, but isn't necessarily the natural.
But anyway, going back to what propaganda is, we can think about what the ancients thought of it.
And so I've looked at Plato and how he discussed in the Republic what the noble, quote unquote, noble lie was.
And you talk about propaganda as both, as you think about it as a story, it's both truth and a lie at the same time.
Myth, for example, is both truth and a lie at the same time.
There are truths contained in it, which are actually the point that the myth is.
But also, you're weaving, you're telling a story about Aeneas, for example, in the Roman context.
And that's not necessarily factual.
And so propaganda gets into this, it operates in a weird space, so to speak.
And so I did want to point out, I think one of the most notable sort of examples of propaganda is the noble lie.
So I wanted to pull up this quote, if we could, from Plato and I'll read it.
I don't think we actually have it back there, so you'll have to read it off.
Oh, yeah, sure.
Or I can read it right here.
Yeah, go ahead and read it.
All right, so this is from Plato, the Republic, 414b.
How could we contrive one of those noble lies we were talking about a moment ago, one of those necessary falsehoods of which we spoke?
We want some single grand lie which will be believed by everybody, including the rulers if possible, but failing that, the rest of the city.
Yeah.
So it's super interesting in The Republic for those who haven't read it.
Plato frames up kind of the ideal city, right?
The Kalipolis, which contains both rulers, it contains guardians, and these are the young people, the disciplined.
Self controlled young men.
And then you have the sort of everybody else, which is the laborers, the farmers, so on and so forth.
And what's interesting, we talk about the noble eye and how it's developed in the Republic, is it's actually something that ought to be believed up and down the chain.
So even the rulers themselves, it should be desired that they believe the myth, the noble eye, the propaganda.
And the reason that that's important, according to Plato through Socrates, is because otherwise rulers become cynical.
And they become abusive.
In other words, if I'm playing a game or I'm the coach and I have all of my team playing a game that I actually think is silly, I actually don't think it, I have no stake in it.
In other words, I'm more likely to abuse it and use it for self gain.
And so to prevent from the selfishness and the abuse of rulers, rulers ought to buy into the propaganda.
And so that's a point that's made through Plato.
I also wanted to read a quote here.
From Machiavelli.
So, this is Machiavelli's.
Let me just say, too, on Plato.
Go ahead.
His position on, especially like music and arts and all of those, it's much more complex, as you're alluding to, than simply a good, bad binary.
But he's saying they're going to do something.
Like, if you read him on music, for example, again and again, he references the power of music, but not as a bad thing.
So, he's not saying there's music and it stirs heart.
And he even says, like, the change in music is powerful enough to make laws.
But he says, practically, it's then which music are you going to play?
We've used the axiom many, many times.
It's not whether, but which.
What music are you going to play?
What propaganda are you going to broadcast?
You're going to have one or the other.
And it's just kind of cool, even that far back, Plato's kind of recognizing hey, there's no way around it, but beware, it's powerful.
Yep.
Yeah.
And you could even, I've seen people make arguments about, you know, even there being such a category as like holy propaganda and the way that the church is engaged in beauty.
For example, you look at the Catholic Church and making these beautiful, sort of elaborate buildings, this architecture, these paintings, so on and so forth, as a form of propaganda to inspire the, you know, man to the ideals.
And so, even those kinds of things, it's unavoidable.
Everyone's going to be doing it at all times.
And so, you're going to, to some extent, have to subscribe to it.
What you need to be able to decipher is whether or not the ideals are actually Christian, whether or not they're actually good.
And it can be incredibly murky at times.
And so, if we could look at this quote here, we pull up a quote from Machiavelli.
So, this is Machiavelli's discourses on Livy.
Machiavelli, of course, was an Italian political thinker and statesman.
And he says this If someone who desires or who wishes to reform a state and a city wishes it to be accepted and capable of being maintained to the satisfaction of everyone, He is under the necessity of retaining at least the shadow of its ancient modes so that it may not appear to the peoples to have changed its order, even if in fact the new orders are altogether alien to the past ones.
That's America.
Yeah, precisely.
So you talk about how a nation changes, and very much the American life today is unrecognizable from the American life in the mid 19th century.
And it is propaganda, ultimately, that kind of binds us to the path.
The past, in other words, which is.
And it's not just American life, but it's like I would say a quintessential example as it pertains to our country and meeting that quote from Machiavelli is the notion that we're a constitutional republic.
Like when people speak of the Constitution, I mean, look no further.
That's the best example that I could present is when people say, like, well, we still have the Constitution.
And it's like, yeah, we have a document.
And people can go and visit it in a museum.
But there's like Christopher Caldwell, you know, did a good job, you know, in the age of entitlement where he talked about like, but we have a de facto constitution.
We no longer use the constitution.
Like the Civil Rights Act and then other things beyond that have all come and sat on top of the constitution.
And they are, for all intents and purposes, the effective constitution is no longer the original constitution.
But we assuage our, you know, our fears by, you know, telling ourselves this noble lie that like, but we're still, you know, a constitutional republic and, When it's like that hasn't been true for decades.
I have to think to a degree, the churches in the mainland, for example.
I mean, you think about the greatest break with historic Christianity.
And that would be Protestant mainline denominations, the Episcopalian church, the progressive Presbyterian side of things.
But one of the things they have going for them is that they typically occupy land that they've owned for hundreds of years.
And so you have them very radically disconnected from their historic Christian past.
However, they are able to present by owning old land, by owning old buildings, by being established in the center of the city.
That no, we are the normative Christian experience.
And it's not anything to do with the substance.
It's certainly not the pride flags.
It's certainly not the women that occupy the pulpit, but they're able to put forward a veneer.
We are the historical Christian tradition.
And you have guys, you have like our church, very much so connected to the Protestant reformers, very much so connected to all these stages of the past, the early church fathers, the middle ages, all the way through.
We're connected to all of that, but practically, just our building is not the same.
And so, in its feel, it can be difficult to try to convince people no, we're actually carrying the flame forward.
We're the sons of this movement.
But practically, the external trappings of it are very deceptive to someone that's just very surface level, just taking a glance.
That's, and that's like that would be the true church.
Yep.
That's Protestantism as a whole.
And then to get even, you know, more narrow, more specifically focused, that same principle is alive and well within, you know, Reformed Protestants.
And I, you know, I always feel bad for like Stephen Wolfe, I think is a great example where you have all these guys that have the trappings of we're historic, we're within the Reformed tradition, you know, we're just carrying the torch.
Ford and holding to Calvin and holding to this guy and that guy.
And whereas, like, Stephen Wolf presents literally the reformed political position, yeah, right?
The political philosophy from the reformers.
And people are like, This is crazy, this is extreme, this is novel, this is, um, and and he just sits there and just cites, you know, reformer after reformer after reformer after reformer to no avail.
And they're like, We're going to do a study committee to see if this is reformed.
Um, are you going to do the reading?
No.
Are there any anybody who agrees with Stephen Wolf on the committee to?
To represent that side, no.
It's just, it's a joke.
It's pretending, it's just, it's the skin suit.
We've talked about like, so Christianity as a whole, it's liberalism and a Christian skin suit, but it's not historic Christianity.
Protestantism getting a little bit more narrow, it's the blue haired, you know, lesbian feminist, but who has, is still putting on the clerical ropes, you know, and still has the candles and the stained glass windows and this old historic building.
And like, oh, we have this picture going around.
It's John Knox Presbyterian Church.
Knox was the author of a trumpet blast against the monstrous regimen of women.
And on the sign, it literally says Reverend, I forget her name, John Knox Presbyterian Church, pastored by.
It's incredible.
It's incredible.
Yep.
Yeah.
So it's happening at every level.
Right.
Yeah.
I like, as you were talking, I was thinking, like, you know, famously, I think the, I don't know if it wasn't the State of the Union, but do you remember Joe Biden?
He did that speech.
Maybe it was on the campaign where it was like the lighting was like dark red.
It was at City Hall, I think, in Philadelphia.
City Hall in Philadelphia.
And it was kind of like a Freudian slip of propaganda.
Which was like, and that's how people would interpret it.
Like, oh, this is actually.
I think it was during the height of COVID and the vaccination thing.
Yeah.
So it's dark red and menacing.
Dark and totalitarian.
And yeah.
And like, even that kind of things, those kinds of things, you know, in terms of propaganda being bi directional is really what I want to say, which is to say that it's not simply top down as we would think of it, like 1984, George Orwell, you're told to believe something.
But it's also bottoms up in the sense that, you know, in one sense, the zeitgeist, you talked about the consensus, Joel, kind of informs the elite.
In terms of where the wind is blowing and where they should hitch their cart, so to speak.
But it also, the people interpret top down propaganda.
And when propaganda is not in accordance with the real lives of people, right, where it's propaganda, look at America flourishing, look how clean our cities are, look how, and it's like, well, I live in downtown Minneapolis and it's terrible here.
Breaking Bi-Directional Lies00:05:10
They are called to prayer every morning.
Yeah, exactly.
So, Christian prayer?
No.
Abrahamic.
That doesn't hit as hard in this dispensation.
Yeah.
So, all that to say that propaganda is interpreted.
And so, I think there are various points in which we should talk about what are the ways that you can actually crack propaganda?
Like, you get an ad like this American Eagle ad, and people to your left and right are fighting about it, and you're sitting here like, wait, this is really stupid.
On both counts.
How do you talk to the person on your right who's celebrating this?
Oh, this is, we're back.
This is great momentum.
How do you crack the propaganda?
And how do you do that as a Christian, not just somebody who's right wing, but a Christian on the right, where you're holding in balance both reality but also Christian hope?
It's not Christian to black pill all the time.
It's also not Christian to be delusional.
And so that's something that we constantly have to wrestle with.
We've got good Christian brothers that we love, that we've partnered with, you know, and would continue to partner with, you know, if they were willing.
They may not be willing, but if they were willing, we would.
And yet, we just disagree, not on fundamental theological points, but in terms of some of the more political and cultural things that are happening now.
They would be more of the persuasion of, we're so back.
America's back, baby.
And we would say, are we?
It doesn't feel like we're back.
But then we also have to check our own hearts.
And okay, we're not back.
But do I believe, do I at least believe that by the grace of God that we could be?
Do I believe that there's at least still hope?
And I think that's like a tightrope that the discerning Christian has to be able to walk is on the one hand, not being delusional and falling for the propaganda and being willing to admit, like, no, we don't have anywhere near the deportations that we were promised.
And so, like, we need to be able to say, on the one hand, we need to be able to share the meme and say, you know, Donald Trump, you know, with the pawn shop, you know, like, hey, can I get 30 million deportations?
Best I can do is anti Semitism laws and keeping under wraps the Epstein files.
Like, that's where we are right now.
Yeah.
That is where we are.
And so, we like, if anybody who can't say that is being delusional.
On the other hand, anyone who is, there's a fine line.
I've noticed this with some guys where you're not just being realistic, but you actually now are, you can tell like when a guy starts rooting for the black pill, it's actually like he's hoping because it's become his whole shtick.
Right.
So, like, we have pivoted and started, you know, calling out some stuff with the Trump administration and some of our concerns about JD Vance and the tech right and Peter Thiel and these kinds of things.
And we're going to keep doing that.
At the same time, though, I'm not rooting for them.
Like, I don't want what I'm currently discerning and what I think is going on, what I think is going to happen.
I don't want to be right.
I don't want to be right.
And so, as a Christian man, I want to always hold that intention.
Holding the tension between the two, like, we're going to tell you what's really going on.
And you know what?
It's actually pretty bleak.
It's not really where so back.
At the same time, we believe in the Spirit of God.
It's not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.
God sometimes takes forever to do something suddenly.
You have no idea what God is capable of doing.
He's stronger than the tech lords.
He's stronger than this.
He's stronger than that.
So, number one, good things are possible.
We have hope.
And the bad things, we'll share them as they're happening.
We'll share some of our predictions, what we think will happen.
And when we share these predictions, If they are despairing, if they are negative, they are predictions in the frame of reality.
But in the frame of Christian hope, we're hoping to be wrong.
We're hoping the Lord is merciful and proves us wrong.
And if he does, we'll be the first guys to come out and say, we are, in fact, so back.
And we thought that this was going to happen.
We weren't wrong in terms of thinking that that was a possibility.
This is why we thought it, and blah, But by golly, the Lord was gracious, he was kind, and this happened instead.
We're so back.
Yeah, we're happy for it.
All right, let's go to our last commercial break and we will be right back.
America is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing Christians to do their duty before God, not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments of men.
Reese Fund exists in order to see the Ten Commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on the wall, but to actually be used in business as though they're commandments from God that we're supposed to obey.
Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.
We want to find manufacturing businesses.
And use them to make sure that we can maintain our capacity to do things here.
Reef Fund, Christian Capital, boldly deployed.
LARPing with Good Intent00:16:56
Heaven's Harvest takes pride in providing you with the best freeze dried emergency survival food kits on the market.
Their kits stand out because they prioritize serving sizes and calories that will sustain you for the long haul.
No gimmicks, no fillers, just a diverse array of nutritious options that will pleasantly surprise you.
But they're more than just emergency food, they're advocates for sustainable preparedness.
Their heirloom seed kits include heirloom.
Non GMO, non hybrid, open pollinated seeds, ensuring that your garden produces the same quality and variety year after year.
Packaged in high grade Mylar foil, their seeds have a 10 year shelf life.
So get 10% off your Heaven's Harvest order by using our special discount code RRM at checkout or by clicking the link in the description below.
Made in the USA and free shipping on orders above $99 for the US only.
Want to protect the digital devices in your home?
Victory by Covenant Eyes provides a clear view into the digital behavior of those in your household.
Its screen accountability technology scans each screen, analyzing it for explicit content.
It blocks concerning images and generates a report that is sent to an accountability partner.
Covenant Eyes is offering our listeners 30 days free when you sign up using our promo code.
Whether you're concerned about online safety for yourself, your kids, or even your workplace, Covenant Eyes has your back with its powerful screen accountability and filtering services.
Covenant Eyes provides peace of mind by monitoring and reporting digital activity in a way that's both effective and respectful of privacy.
Plus, the Victory app offers free resources to guide your understanding of why people get stuck in pornography.
And what you can do to help them.
Try it out for an entire month absolutely free using our code.
So don't wait.
Take advantage of this exclusive offer and start protecting yourself, your family, and the people around you today.
Visit the link in the show notes and use promo code RRM for 30 days free.
All right, cool.
I did want to add just a practical note here.
We've got some great super chats we'll get to.
Practically, you, especially speaking to young men, the way you carry yourself is propaganda.
So there's propaganda that's advertising it to blare it out to millions of people.
There's propaganda online.
There's propaganda in media.
There's propaganda in print.
But you yourself, in many ways, the way you carry yourself too, to make this practical, like we're all wearing suits, for instance, we're wearing suits and collared shirts.
Because men in the past that had important things to say that were men that were studied, dressed themselves in a certain way.
If it's Tuesday, you're going out to Walmart, you're wearing sweatpants, you're wearing Crocs, you have no watch on.
You are at some level, and I'm being a little bit facetious and overplaying it, but practically speaking, hey, I dress in sweatpants, AKA, I have no one important to see.
I'm not wearing a watch because it doesn't really matter when I go there because of the time.
I have nowhere to go because of the time.
Crocs.
Well, if you have kids, are you carrying them?
Are you able to chase them down?
I saw a video where someone literally snatched a toddler just right out of a shopping cart seat.
So practically, am I ready?
How about grooming?
Do I comb my hair?
Take care of my beard?
Even practically, there's propaganda at the high level.
But the way you carry yourself, if you want to move up, and it's hard out there as far as jobs, vocation, getting ahead, the very small ways that you carry yourself, they send a message.
You will send a message with the way you stand.
You will send a message with the way you talk.
And you will most certainly send a message, portray yourself, come off a certain way in the way you dress.
You can't avoid it.
It's not as though, well, I could dress neutrally and it'll give off no impression, or I could dress well, or I could dress badly.
You are always going to be, at some level, getting across to people this is the type of person I am.
This is how self disciplined I am.
This is how reliable I am.
And so to kind of wrap it all up at the very end, Sort of this propaganda that's working on us, propaganda that's coming in, but also think about and what am I showing to the world in terms of what I present to it?
I think it's always good, especially for young men.
You're a young man.
I want to move up.
I want to make more money.
I want to make good connections.
I want to network.
How are you presenting yourself?
That is a great place to start.
Yeah.
Propaganda is like quintessential, fake it till you make it or LARPing, right?
It's all of that is sort of propaganda.
I've said for a couple of years now, you know, because everybody gives such a hard time to LARPing and You know, and I've said again and again, you got to LARP before you can fly.
Yeah.
Like at a certain level, a lot of it, I think, depends on trajectory and it depends on intent, on motive.
It's one thing to be, you know, tradcath or something like that with no intention to actually, you know, as a woman, to actually, you know, submit to your husband, respect his authority, have several children, raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
Like it's one thing.
If it's just like, I'm going to wear the sundress and I'm going to bake the sourdough.
But in my rhetoric and in my relationship with my husband, I'm going to be as much of a feminist as anyone has ever been.
That's different than someone else wearing the sundress and making the sourdough.
And it's not an end in itself as just a facade, but it's actually the stepping stones of trying to get somewhere where they know they should be.
And there's an admittance of like, no, I am not the woman that my great grandmother was.
But I want to be.
And so I'm working toward that.
I'm working toward that.
So it's like, you know, like Christian nationalism, like, oh, they're LARPing, you know, this is a joke.
Yeah, like we do not currently have Christian nationalism, you know, established in these United States.
Of course not.
Nobody thinks that we do.
But what we're saying is, but we'd like to.
We'd like to.
And so we're going to talk about it.
And then behind the scenes, we are working with individuals who are working toward it politically and this, that, and the other.
So there's a difference in LARPing for the sake of LARPing versus I'm going to LARP before I fly.
And sometimes it's difficult to distinguish the difference unless you know the person personally or the person happens to be you.
But there is a difference nonetheless.
Yep.
Okay.
Just for the job you want, not the job you have.
There's a truth to it.
That's LARPing, but LARPing with good intent.
Yeah.
You're actually trying to achieve something.
I think that's the distinguishing factor am I trying to achieve something or am I just pretending?
Am I putting forward a front as an end in itself simply to pretend?
Or am I putting forward a front so that I can actually attain what this represents?
And doing that too is an ascent to the propaganda of the age, right?
Like you dress like the men that you've been told you should dress like when you want a particular job.
And so you kind of have to buy a little bit the propaganda, which is like, oh, I need nice shoes.
I need a particular kind of jacket.
Like all of these things are going to be Slim fit is out, baggy fit.
Right.
All of these things are going to be kind of told to you.
And you have to have the Christian discernment to know when and when not you should.
You know, and acquiesce to that.
Yep.
Yep.
There, you're right.
Cool.
We'll hit the super chats.
I'll start with this first one.
Okay.
Mine eyes have seen the glory.
Reference to a Yankee hymn.
It's good.
I have the comedy of the Lord.
It is a good name, but the hymn is not.
It's about Sherman's march to the sea, I think, when he basically decimated big portions of the South.
And it was kind of like this religious imagery hymn that it's like the Lord is marching on and executing vengeance upon the like 99% Christian South.
Wow.
So, not great.
Love the name in isolation, greater context.
So, all right.
Super chat $10.
Thank you so much.
He or she said this.
Speaking of propaganda, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson were on today trying to discredit Nick Fuentes.
We saw that.
I support America first, but needs more Protestant influences.
Would be great to see him on the show.
As far as the Protestant influences, people don't get it.
Like, as far as Protestant versus Catholic, and it's funny, me and Antonio, a mutual friend, will argue about this with.
But if things continue as they are 10, 15, 20 years, like, you're going to see Catholics taking a large proportion of Christianity in America.
Like, practically speaking, as far as Protestants, we've already mentioned the mainlines, those are huge denominations with millions of people.
Millions, if not billions, in land and in buildings that are fully liberal.
So, as the culture swings away and wants nothing to do with it, many Protestants, big denominations, big Protestant denominations, smaller ones, if they don't kind of come to the times and realize, hey, you're young men, they're to your right, but a lot of them are good men, they need guidance, they need discipleship, they're going to leave and they're going to go to Catholicism and they're going to be bigger.
And we're going to be like, how did this happen?
Well, for 15 years, we were telling you not to kick young men out of your church.
For having right wing views.
And you did that, and they all went to Catholicism, and now they're bigger.
And part of it also is the propaganda, actually, that the Catholic Church puts out that Protestant Church just can't, as a consequence, I think, primarily being fragmented.
And it's hard to have a unitary message when you're so fragmented.
But I think the vibes, if you will, the propaganda that people feel from Catholicism and its appeal to tradition, its appeal to beauty, so on and so forth, is a big reason.
So, of course, we're Protestant.
We disagree with Catholics on the merit, but we recognize that it's not men aren't convinced on the merit.
I mean, the merit?
Not on the merit, but on the merit.
On both.
Yeah.
You know, we believe in the merit, but of course, we recognize that it's not simply rational arguments that convince people.
It's also a story that you tell us, of course, what we've talked about in that episode.
Yeah, I think a big part of that, from my perspective, and this is just being descriptive, so I'm not even giving a comment on whether or not it's right headed or wrong headed.
But just descriptively speaking, Catholicism in both directions, both liberal leaning when it comes to political expressions and cultural expressions, whether it be left or right, Catholicism doesn't tend.
So, again, not necessarily saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it does not tend to police.
Yeah.
Meaning that you could be Joe Biden fully giving your consent.
In full communion.
Yeah.
I'm going to murder as many babies as possible.
Nancy Pelosi.
Yep.
And going and being communed and receiving the Eucharist.
And you could also be a Groyper and be, you know, fully supportive of, you know, positions on the right.
And same thing.
So I do think that as the Overton continues to shift, I do think for like a lot of young men, they're going to be like, well, I tried the Reformed Church.
And theologically, I have far more agreement there.
But I, um, You know, I held this view on World War II history, or I held it, and it actually became a mark of my salvation.
Like we saw, it wasn't that long ago, you know, a guy wrote an article and it wasn't, he wasn't being silly.
Like, I mean, if you didn't know better, you would think that it was like a spoof, like it was just a joke, you know, parody.
It was not parody.
And he was saying that he was counseling reformed ministers to incorporate as a part of their membership process and their membership interview to ask young men about their World War II historical views and to bar them from membership.
Right.
If they don't come down hard on the mainline consensus, historical views of World War II.
So, if it's like, hey, how come you didn't end up being received as a member in Providence Presbyterian Church?
Did you push back on the statement of faith?
Did you disagree with the Apostles' Creed?
No, I didn't make the cut because I had some critiques of Schindler's List.
What?
This is real.
This is real.
And I'm telling you, these young men, they're going to be like, Man, I love Reformed theology, but Reformed ministers are the gayest people I've ever met.
And I just like, I'm going Catholic because I'm not gay.
Like, I can't do Reformed because I'm not gay, you know?
And I'm sitting here and I am Reformed, and I'm like, oh my goodness, this sucks.
This is a tragedy, you know, to hold these things as markers of if someone is in the faith.
Yeah.
Like, that's just, that's never how churches, even Reformed churches, Have historically operated.
It's okay.
Are you an adulterer?
It's word and deed.
Do you have a credible profession of faith?
Have you been baptized?
Can you affirm the creeds?
History has to be affirmed, but it's the history of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
There is a historical requirement for Christianity, but it's that history, something 2000 years ago, not 80 years ago.
In addition to that, do you have, right, guard your life and doctrine?
So then in your life, are you living in such a way?
Are you a faithful husband?
Are you a faithful father?
Those are the kinds of things.
But as reformed ministers are adopting extra biblical criteria, and not just for a discipleship class, but for the membership roster, then I actually do think, and again, I think there's, you know, the reason why I wanted to start with the example of like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi is to say, I think there are cases where I think the Catholic Church, I'm like, How is this person in good standing in the Catholic Church?
The Catholic Church has a position.
I don't know if they have a position on World War II.
I haven't looked into the Catholics, but they do have a position on abortion, on the sanctity of life, and they're not operating by it.
Not only can you privately believe that the murder of unborn children is permissible, but you can be the highest civil ruler in the land actively working towards it.
And it's like, you're great.
You are great.
And so I'm not even saying that's a good thing because obviously I think that's a very bad thing.
But the point still stands, descriptively speaking, if you have one church that feels old, tried, true, traditional, these kinds of things, as we're in this crazy modernity and people are quickly shifting back to wanting something old, wanting something historic.
If you have this older church and it's not going to ask you questions, About whether or not you agree in the six million number as a requirement for membership, then you betcha.
Yeah, I think a lot of young men are going to go over there and not even for the theology.
It's not necessarily they're going over there because they're like, man, I just really, really, really believe that Mary is co redemptrix.
It's not a theological persuasion.
I think in many cases it's just, it's old.
The Protestant church down the road has smoke machines and laser lights.
This one is old.
And then this one also, Wants to ask me, do I affirm the Apostles' Creed and Schindler's List?
And this one is just asking me about the Apostles' Creed.
And that right there, for those reasons alone.
You throw in a TikTok edit of the Latin Mass too?
It's over.
Never stood a chance.
Speaking of propaganda, though.
Yes.
So what was the original question on that one?
Oh, it was just talking about Candace, Tucker Carlson.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So I saw that clip going around today where Tucker and Candace were talking about, you know, is Nick, you know, is he a Fed or is he a spy or whatever?
And Tucker Carlson was saying, Now, I don't know.
I like Tucker Carlson, and I don't know his heart.
Cleaning Up the Optic00:12:30
I'm not omniscient, so I can just go off of his words.
But in terms of his words, he was saying, Well, Nick said that my dad was in the CEI, and I said that that was a lie.
And then my dad died, and it turns out Nick was right.
And even Tucker Carlson said, This guy has native talent.
This guy is just inherently talented, very gifted, and charismatic.
And he admitted, He was like, How in the world does this kid from Chicago know more about my dad than I do, at least in this regard, on this topic?
So, Tucker is acknowledging the dude's talented and he's not lying.
He's not lying.
Turns out he was right.
He does his homework.
I was actually wrong.
But then they began to speculate on okay, but why does Nick get in the personal, what seem to be personal petty squabbles with some of the guys who, other than Nick himself, are at least publicly known as guys on the furthest right within the mainstream discourse that there currently is, like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens?
And you could tell, and I'm not even saying that they're, you know, I'm, yeah.
I'm not saying what I'm not saying, but I am saying what I am saying.
And what I am saying is this you can tell that the beef was not, it's not so much in terms of, well, he has this objective position that I disagree with.
It was more so, he said something about me personally.
He says something about me personally.
And that's just a whole other gambit of tactics, strategy, optics, you know, those kinds of things.
What is the best strategy?
And how do you like Nick?
Is a smart guy, he's made his calculus, that's what he thinks works.
He's gone for it.
And I feel like the dodgeball gift is a bold move, Cotton.
Let's see if it plays out.
And we'll see, time will tell.
But I think the final question there was it'd be great to see him on the show.
And we might as well, I think that folds into the next one, right?
So, Resurrection Design Co., do we want to read that one?
And then we can respond to both.
I'll pull that out for you.
Resurrection Design Co., super chat $20.
Thanks so much.
Hey, RRM, been listening to Fuentes of late, many such cases.
Because he's been right about a lot and is saying what needs to be said.
He is slandered a lot, and I think it would be cool if more people got the chance to hear him speak for himself.
Yeah.
So that's kind of what I was building up to is okay, so what's happening?
What's the phenomenon here?
Because it is palpable.
Anybody who says it's not, you're just not being honest.
Nick Fuentes is making a comeback into the mainstream conversation.
That doesn't mean that he's going to be on CNN.
Anytime, you know, but he is, they play his clips already, so it's only a matter of time.
Yeah, you're right, a long time.
He literally quite literally has been.
But what I'm saying is that individual personalities may not invite him on the show because of his tactic of calling those guys out by name.
And there's not many people that he hasn't called out by name.
So there's not that many platforms left.
But you're not going to get rid of him.
And the reason I think there's a, you know, so like, how do you explain it?
Because I like to, I'm a student of culture and like, what's going on here?
And it's fascinating, you know, to ask these questions.
So I think one is simply the age of cancel culture is over.
Right, right.
The woke cancel culture kind of thing, they had their high watermark and it's over.
And a guy like Nick, the only way that you can really, I think, successfully get rid of him is you have to de platform him.
You have to.
Because if he's allowed to speak, if he's allowed to speak, he's going to win.
That doesn't mean he's going to win everybody.
There'll be plenty of people listening to this and be like, what?
He's not going to win.
He's a Fed.
He's this.
He's that.
Well, let me say it like this it's not just he's going to win, he's winning.
And you may just not have admitted it yet, and that's perfectly fine.
You have your reasons or whatever, and I'm not going to insinuate interior motives for why people might feel that way, but the facts still exist.
I had not listened to anything from Nick Fuentes once, not even a clip, nothing, until about six months ago.
And six months ago, I started listening because people that I trust, right?
Not just somebody who's off in left field, but people that I trust started sending me clips.
And why did they start looking at these clips?
Because all of a sudden he's on TikTok and he's on Instagram and he's let back on Twitter and the clips go viral on Twitter.
For a while there, it's like he couldn't be on any platform.
He's still not allowed to be on YouTube, or at least his personal channel.
I think he's gone as a guest on other people's channels and YouTube has allowed it.
But I think as the suppression of free speech continues to dissipate, you're not going to be able to get rid of him.
You're not.
And so then you can't just use the tactics of, well, he said this and this one clip, because now people are going to listen for themselves.
And so now that people are listening for themselves, like, yeah, there may be something he said seven years ago that's just like, whoa, oh my gosh, like, that's, I don't agree with that.
I have some massive problems with that.
I even may find it morally reprehensible.
But now he's back on the platforms, he has a voice again.
And it's not just, so like I said, two factors.
One, suppression of free speech is lessening greatly.
Number two, three factors actually.
Number two, the Overton window is moving right.
Things that sounded crazy five years ago sound a lot less crazy today.
And then the third one is I really do, and again, I'm not watching every show, I don't watch everything from anybody, but guys have shown me clips, some of the recent clips that have gone viral.
And at least from those, I can't speak overall, but from those, It's quite clear that not that Nick is moving left, not that he's changed on his positions, but in terms of his optic, in terms of his presentation, he's not compromising his former views, but he is cleaning up, I think.
And what I mean by that is some of the clips where he's like, look, we want to be a legitimate operation, and so we can't say this word anymore.
He's like, we're not going to say this word anymore.
The bar is high.
Because we want to be taken seriously.
It's clear to me that he.
Now, plenty of people would say, well, if you want to be taken seriously, you know, maybe don't call Tucker Carlson a spy, you know, and maybe so, maybe not.
But the point is, you know, you may not think he's taking the steps that you would take to clean up.
But I don't think that any debate can be had that he is taking some steps.
They may not be all the steps that you would want to see or whatever your requirements would be, but he is actively regular.
It's not just one or two clips, it's like every week.
There's something where he's like, I saw one the other day that someone sent to me where he's like, You think that you're going to win the West because you're white?
You're not.
Your whiteness is not enough.
It has to be Christ.
You need Christ.
And I'm like, yeah, dude, I don't care who says that.
I like it.
Right.
Because I'm a Christian and I love Christ.
And, you know, like, I think of like Jesus when he says to the disciples, he's like, if they're not against us, then they're with us, you know?
And that's what I mean by these larger categories of there is a co belligerent category.
Co belligerent, again, does not mean this guy's an elder in my church.
Right.
Right.
Because differences, distinctions matter.
And we're not saying they're insignificant.
Right.
The distinctions between Catholics and Protestants, like, the reason we're divided is because those distinctions are significant.
But in terms of co belligerence, there is a different calculus when it comes to that.
And I think even Jesus acknowledged that by saying, whoever's not against us is for us.
So don't stop them wherever they're saying the truth.
Paul has the same kind of concept where he says, people are like, hey, people are preaching Christ while you're in prison, Paul, just to spite you.
And Paul says, well, regardless of their motives, I thank God that Christ is being preached.
So Paul even says, even if people are preaching Christ sarcastically, Even if people are preaching Christ while not believing in Christ sarcastically, even that is W's in the chat.
And I don't think, I think Nick actually believes in Christ.
I don't think he's doing it facetiously or sarcastically.
So I think one is the speech suppression has stopped.
He's back on the platforms.
Two, the Overton window has moved.
And three, there's all these clips of, we're not going to say this anymore because we want to clean up, or being white is not enough.
You, You got to have Christ.
Or there was another clip that I saw that somebody sent me where he's like, You want to make a difference?
And I thought it was insightful.
He encourages these young people.
He basically essentially said, You want to make a difference, and I want you to make a difference.
We need you to make a difference.
So here's my counsel don't be me.
You can't afford to be me.
We can't afford to have everybody on our team unemployed and unable to open a bank account.
Don't be me.
Go into your local GOP chapter, keep your head down, be respectful, bide your time.
And eventually you'll be in charge.
And like encouraging young men to put, like, I'm just saying that's, that is, that may have always been his position.
Cause again, I was not watching Nick Fuentes seven years ago or even seven months ago.
This is a recent, you know, he's recently come into my orbit, as other guys in my orbit have shared some things.
But I'm just saying that, that seems, at least from the rumors that I heard from years ago, that seems like a different calculus.
Not so much I've sold out and I've changed my positions.
But in terms of tactics, there's a difference between positions and disposition.
And it seems like his disposition is just he's older now, right?
He's 26, he's not 17, right?
That changes a man.
Like he's growing up a little bit, cleaning up a little bit.
Plus, he's allowed back on social media platforms and the whole world has moved right with the Overton window in just, I mean, every month, it seems like.
So, my point is he's not going away.
And anybody who just, you know, thinks he's going away, I, I hate to disappoint you, but I don't think that guy's going away anytime soon.
And one of the biggest things he has on his side, here's the last thing I'll say he's 26.
Here's the thing you think, like, oh, he's a joke and blah, blah, blah, and like, oh, he's irrelevant.
There are millions of young men who are following him.
And you want to win the culture, win the hearts of the young men.
And he has.
He has young men that he has won.
Like nobody, I mean, even Daryl Cooper, you know, on Twitter, you know, a couple of weeks ago said something about Nick.
And Nick said, thank you.
And immediately, you know, his comment of thank you on Twitter ratioed Daryl Cooper's original post.
And then Daryl Cooper took a screenshot of it and shared it.
And he said, say what you will about Nick.
But the dude has the most committed following ever.
It's pretty rare for me to get ratioed by a compliment.
Yeah.
And it was like a 10X ratio.
It was nothing small.
So the guy's not going away.
He does have power and influence with young men.
And all these young men, you can sit there and say, well, these young men live in their mother's basements.
Well, number one, I don't think that's entirely true.
For those that it is true, here's the thing about young men eventually they grow up.
So these young men may not seem powerful now.
Right now, it may just be their anon accounts and sheer numbers and just volume loud on social media.
But 20 years from now, it'd be one thing if Nick was 75 years old.
He's 26.
So, barring an assassination or some kind of tragedy, he's got 50 years of potential relevancy.
And all of his following is pretty much 26.
And they've got 50 years.
Like, some of these guys will be CEOs, some of these guys will be politicians.
Some of them already are, you know?
And so, yeah, I think that you're going to have to engage with Nick in terms of sheer influence, position, and relevance.
Yeah.
That doesn't mean that you have to.
Some guys will like them, some guys won't.
Some guys will be co belligerent.
Some guys will be brothers.
Some guys will be enemies.
But you're the prior strategy of just close your eyes and don't say his name and maybe people will forget about it.
Like that.
They had their shot.
They had their shot.
It didn't work.
That's done.
So, all right.
Engaging Sheer Influence00:15:34
No, those are my thoughts on that.
Andrew Cox writes in $10.
Said, have you guys considered?
Okay.
This is another question kind of in that same vein.
Have you considered working with the guys at American Mantle, Michael Spangler and Cody Justice?
I am familiar with them in a peripheral kind of way.
I've seen some of their material.
I've read a couple of the articles.
There's some things that I've read that I think are fantastic, I think are really good.
And there's other things that I've read that I would say, and here's what people want me to do.
I'm just going to be honest.
It'll get me in trouble.
But at the end of the day, what's Joel's greatest aim in life?
My greatest aim in life is to not go to hell.
Like, literally, every day when I'm thinking about my calculus and what I'm going to do that day or how I'm going to respond to this controversy or what, my guiding principle is don't go to hell.
Don't go to hell.
Do right by God, is what I mean.
Clear conscience before the Lord.
So, this is not, well, I got to stand up for Michael.
It's no, I want to do right by Jesus.
I want to do right by Jesus.
So, here's the deal I have, in terms of position, Positioning, and then we could talk about strategy, but positions.
I have some objectively clear difference in my positions on things like race.
So he would hold to one thing, and I've read a couple of those things and agreed with some of it and disagreed with other parts of it.
And I would hold to my view.
So I believe that race is real, I believe that there are distinctions, I think that's undeniable.
But then the question is as a Christian, one, how do you account for it?
He's trying to account for it from the scripture.
He's putting a lot of emphasis on Noah and his three sons and those things, whereas I'm not accounting for it in that way.
Not because I don't, it's in the Bible, right?
Like, well, that's racist to believe that.
I, well, who cares?
I believe the Bible.
Like, it is actually true.
It's objectively true that Noah pronounced prophetic words, including blessings and cursings for his three sons and God, let all, you know, let God be true and every man a liar, you know, and that it came from God.
And those things panned out.
The question is, are they still active today?
So, my position, I've said it many times, I'll say it again, real brief.
I believe, you know, I'm a big fan of Christmas.
I love the Christmas hymns.
And it's just a way of summing up my belief theologically.
He comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.
So I believe in the work of Jesus 2,000 years ago that all these covenant curses were broken.
However, kind of like a Juneteenth situation, right?
So like slavery is abolished, but some of them don't get the news till later.
Well, there are people in sub Saharan Africa that did not get the news of the gospel and the kingdom that has come until centuries and centuries later.
In some cases, depending what region, what country we're talking about, some of these guys did not hear.
Any of this until 200 years ago.
And some of them, like some of these nations, did not even have written language.
Some of them didn't even have the wheel.
And then, you know, Christians go, European Christians go, and they bring innovation and these kinds of things, but they also bring theology.
They bring the gospel with them.
And so, my point is, I just think logically, just practically, even if the curse was broken 2,000 years ago, if you didn't hear the gospel until 200 years ago, like, let them cook would be kind of my position.
Let them cook.
Like, that crock pot just started.
Right?
Because when I think of Europe, we're thinking of arguably, definitely a millennia, maybe a millennia and a half if you're going back to Constantine, and there's arguments for even early, but you're talking about 1,000 to 1,500 years of being in the Christendom crock pot, saturated in the gospel for a very long time.
And I've said it much to people's chagrin, they get mad at me, but I've said, I believe, you know, like, you know, sue me, but I believe in the power of the gospel and not just in the 17th dimension.
I believe that the gospel changes everything, including, I know it's crazy, including the physical.
And what do I mean by that?
What I mean is, look at religion.
Every religion has all these stipulations for spiritual things.
Yes, but also physical things, including diet.
Did you know every religious text tells you what you can eat?
Now, does what you eat, and not just for one lifetime, but for consecutive generations over the course of a thousand years, would that have an impact on that people and their lifespans and their physical health, and maybe even The full development and functioning of their mind?
Could it even affect IQ?
I don't think that that's an unchristian view to say, yeah, I think that's possible.
I think if you have the Christian gospel, the triune God, the true God, the only one that actually exists, and his regulations, the law of God, all the spiritual implications of that, and even the tangible and physical implications, even pertaining to things as practical as dietary restrictions, and not just that, but then also you think about sex, monogamy versus promiscuity and polygamy.
Eating a cow versus using cow dung.
And it's actually unreligious to eat cow because they're holy.
Would that have an effect on people physically over the course of a thousand years?
Yes, I actually think it would.
So for me, I think race is real.
I don't actually think race is the best word, but until we get a better one, the reason why I use it just real quick is if we say, well, why don't you just speak of nations, nationality?
Well, the problem is there's a bunch of Haitians that, in terms of their nationality, they're Americans.
Because they've been Americans for 15 minutes.
And so I'm trying to speak, I am speaking of nationhood, but I'm speaking of historic nationhood.
I'm trying to speak of nations of origin.
And that's part of the problem is that we've mixed all the nations up through globalism over the last 15 minutes.
So now, when you speak of nationhood, it doesn't mean as much because you could say this guy's an American.
It's like, well, you know, like the gun mean, what kind of American are you?
The Somalian American who's running for governor or mayor, you know, who wasn't even born here?
There's different kinds of Americans and there's different kinds of Englishmen and this and that and the other.
And so, nationality is not super helpful today because globalism kind of messed that up.
Ethnicity, I don't like that because I really like.
The way that Stephen Wolfe would describe and others.
Ethnicity, I think, has more, it's not just genetic, it has a lot to do with culture.
So I believe that America, even if we have different races, because again, lack of a better word, I still would say with different races, I want to have one ethnos, I want to have one ethnicity, one culture.
He speaks of it as experience, which is the best way.
Ethnicity isn't a biological reality, it's something you experience in the religion that I use, the language, the songs, the holidays that.
Calendar, the customs.
So, if we're using ethnicity in that sense, I would say that me and Clarence Thomas share an ethnicity in that sense.
Now, obviously, I wouldn't just say that without explaining what I mean because then people would be like, what are you talking about?
He's black and you're white.
And that doesn't make any sense.
But in that sense, so I'm wanting words mean something.
So, I don't want to use ethnicity because I think that ethnicity should more so refer to the shared experience, which also comes over time, not in 15 minutes.
But it is conceivable because it's happened and it could happen again that you could have.
Two different people in the same nation with shared experience and shared culture and history and religion and language, but who are, even over the course of three or even over the course of 10 generations, are still different colors, black and white.
And so, because of that, I don't want to use ethnicity.
And because of nationality, that doesn't help because we're talking about nations of origin and not just who's a part of our nation as of 15 minutes ago.
So then I'm kind of stuck using race.
So that's why, just for the record, so that's why I use race.
So I think what makes it Christian.
Is to say, well, there's only one race, the human race.
I just don't think that's true.
Yes, we're all human beings descended from Adam.
Any kind of doctrine, and I've seen some of those guys more on the fringes of pre Adamic races, I think is heresy.
I really do.
I think that Eve is the mother of all living.
The Bible says that.
Eve is the mother of, and that gets into gospel implications because when you go to Romans 5, so too by one man's disobedience, sin entered the world, and through sin, death.
So too by one man's obedience, the second Adam, the second federal head, father, Christ, Right, and so how is Adam representative of all mankind?
It's not just that God took a random person, even though there were already all these other human beings who were created through macro evolution and day in Genesis means actually a million years, it's metaphorical.
Like, you have to be old earth, I don't like that.
You have to be an evolutionist, macro evolution, not just adaption, little adaptions over time, I don't like that.
And then you would have to say that Adam actually came later, so death didn't enter the world through Adam and his sin, death was already.
Alive and well.
Death was alive and well and functioning as God's tool for creating mankind through macro evolution, which is millions and millions of deaths.
And then eventually he made Adam.
And so then you have to ask now back to federal headship in Romans 5.
So then, how is Adam, if he's not the first man, how is he federal head of all men?
And there's really no answer I've ever heard anybody give that's not at some level arbitrary.
Whereas the easiest way, and I think the most faithful biblical way, is Adam was head.
Federal head is always through fatherhood.
He was the federal head of all mankind because he is the father of all men.
They all descend from him.
And in the case of Adam, he's the father by natural birth, physical birth.
Jesus is also father.
Now, heretic.
Let me explain.
There's the Father who is not the Son, right?
And the Son who is not the Father.
But there is one particular verse, and it's not a coincidence, of course, it's God's Word, in Isaiah that references Jesus as, you know, a mighty God, counselor, prince of peace, eternal Father.
Why?
Because there is a sense in which he is the one who many spiritual sons are begotten through.
And so Jesus does have a fathering function in the sense that the reason why he's the second Adam in a federal headship capacity is because he has spiritual sons.
So, Adam is federal head, not because he was selected millions of years in after all these other brown people lived.
I think that's silly.
Because those people would have been dying again and again and again.
Death would have been a normative thing in the world.
Before sin entered the universe.
They would have been eternal and undying, immortal.
And then Adam came along, also immortal, or dying, dying, dying.
And Paul was like, eh, really, death entered thousands of years ago.
So, Paul would be lying.
Romans 5 falls apart.
So, it's a big deal, guys.
It's a big deal.
And this is not, from what I understand, this is not Spangler's view, but I'm saying some of the guys who are more French.
But it's a big deal how we view Romans 5, because now we're getting to not only creation, Genesis 1 through 3, but gospel.
So, Adam, in my view, I think what the Bible teaches is he's the first man, and Eve is the first woman, and Adam is federal head through fatherhood, in his case, natural birth.
Jesus is federal head.
Also, federal headship comes by fatherhood, eternal father.
Isaiah says through spiritual birth.
And so, for that reason, back to race real quick all people, there is one race in the sense that all people are descended of Adam.
That said, I do think that there are distinctions, not macro evolution distinctions, but there are distinctions in adaptation over time.
And some of them, they're not just cultural, but I think some of those distinctions are genetic because religion is powerful and religion affects everything, not just culture.
But it also, I believe, religion can have a quicker effect on culture, can change someone's culture in a generation, but it has a longer effect over the course of 30 generations on even a person genetically.
What you eat.
Right, and religions talk about eating and diet and all these kinds of things.
So, that's my view.
My view is that there really was a curse, um, and and God really did speak through Noah, and the word of the Lord never returns void.
Um, but the curse was really broken in Jesus Christ, but the news of it being broken still had these people are still worshiping false gods and demons in different you know corners of the earth.
And so, the news of Jesus broke the course curse, but that news has to be brought to them in some cases, depending what country we're talking about, wasn't brought till centuries, centuries.
You know, 1800 years later, 1700 years later, and then you got to let them cook.
And in the case of Europeans, it's a thousand to 1500 years head start, which is just the providence and grace of God.
So that's my position for accounting for race.
Whereas my understanding of someone like Spangler or Cody Justice is they would account for it differently.
Here's the last thing I was going to say because back to the I don't want to go to hell philosophy, one of my most, you know, chief guiding principles for life.
I cannot say, nor will I say, that Michael Spangler and Cody Justice are not brothers in Christ.
And that they're apostates or false teachers and going to hell.
I won't say it.
They affirm the creeds from the people who do know them personally, like mutuals, somebody who knows them personally that I also have contact with.
They all say that they have upstanding character, that they are bearing the fruits of the Spirit.
Michael Spangler is not a situation where it's a single man.
He's married, has multiple children.
From what I've heard, his wife adores him, his children love him.
He's a good father.
He's providing for them.
He's seeking to model.
And I simply disagree with his position.
I don't think that the curse of Noah is still in effect.
I don't like he reads that as this was God's design for these three families stemming from the three sons, and it would be in effect indefinitely.
That's his view.
That's a difference of exegesis.
You don't call someone a heretic for that.
You can say, I think he's wrong.
I think he's wrong.
He thinks I'm wrong.
I'm sure.
But I'm not going to say, and therefore you're out of the kingdom of God, because I'm not going to say that about Dabney.
Dabney held that view.
A lot of guys have held that view.
And they could be wrong and it matters.
I'm not saying it doesn't matter.
It matters who's right and who's wrong.
But we do theological triage, right?
There's top tier issues.
You're wrong on that, you're a heretic.
You're outside the faith.
I would just refuse to say that the perpetuity of the curse of Canaan and how long that lasts and what its effects are should be held at the level of the Trinity.
I just refuse to be that guy.
And I know this will get clipped out.
It won't serve me well.
But I just want to be honest because here's the thing again, because you want to do right by Michael?
Well, yeah, a little bit, because I do think he's a brother in Christ who I disagree with, or because this or that.
No, first and foremost, again, here's my guiding principle I want to do right by Jesus.
I don't want to go to hell.
And I actually think it is a big deal.
And your soul is at stake.
I think that there is a slow, damning effect.
At least the potential of it being damning when we are going around and anathematizing people who, in the final analysis, turn out to be brothers in Christ.
It is a big deal.
Avoiding Damning Rhetoric00:03:42
And that's why the whole impetus of Scripture, when it talks about church discipline or even the civil realm, when it talks about doing justice, is when in doubt, innocence, unless proven guilty.
Innocence.
Why?
Because at the end of the day, there is a God in heaven who's the judge of all men, and no one will ever get away with anything.
And so, better to let someone who is truly guilty get away with something on earth and then get justice in the life to come than to punish an innocent man.
And so, I think he's wrong.
I think it matters.
He thinks I'm wrong.
But I'm not willing to just say, and therefore, I bet he beats his wife.
That is such cheap rhetoric.
Guys use it against me all the time.
How hypocritical if I turn around with a guy who's to my right and use that same rhetoric.
Garbage propaganda, and because that's what guys do, like because they can't take me out in terms of position, what do they do?
Well, I bet he's a really bad person, or here's something that he did in his past 12 years ago, or you know what?
Those companies, I bet he owned those companies and he's trying to steal people's money.
Like, what you do is you try to impute, you make it moral.
I don't think it's moral.
There's no evidence if it gets produced one day that you know that it turns out he is beating his wife.
Okay, well, now it's a different story, but until something like that comes out, I have to assume, especially because I've heard from other individuals that I trust.
That he is a faithful husband, faithful father, a faithful minister in his case.
Michael's a minister.
And he holds a view on race that I, not only do I think is wrong, I don't like it.
I'll be honest, I don't like it.
I don't like it.
And I wish he didn't hold that view.
But that doesn't make him a non Christian.
So, all that being said, would we ever, I don't know, maybe, maybe.
So, like, would we have Nick on the show?
Maybe.
Would we have Spangler on the show?
Maybe.
And if we do in either of those cases, Right?
Now it's just going to be super chats of would you have this guy on the show?
Would you have David Duke on the show?
Would you?
So let's just, I think this covers all the bases.
So just fill in the name.
Here's what I'll say as a principle the principle is I'm willing to talk to guys that I disagree with.
I am.
That said, if I disagree with them, I'm going to not be disrespectful, but I am going to have them on the show and voice some of my disagreement.
Not as a gotcha interview, not in a way to try to embarrass them or be disrespectful, but I just feel like I have an obligation to my hearers to make it clear.
This guy's on the show, and I just want to be clear for the record.
He thinks this and I think that.
So we actually do disagree, but we want to talk about this other thing, and I think it matters, and blah, So that would be number one in terms of conditions for having someone on the show.
I would have someone on the show that I disagree with, but I would want to make my disagreements clear and publicly state them.
And here's the other thing, and this gets back to the Nick thing.
I also, just like Tucker Carlson, is probably not going to be having Nick on the show anytime soon.
I don't think it's just because Nick is too far out there.
I think it's because Nick has said personal things about Tucker.
And I'm sure it's just for the record, Tucker just today said personal things about Nick.
So I'm not saying it's all Nick.
But my point is when it becomes personal, it's different than just we hold a different position.
When it becomes personal, it's like this guy has been online saying things about me, then yeah, guys, like I don't know what to tell you.
You may not like it, you might not agree with my answer, but yeah, if people have been publicly online blasting me by name, you know, calling me uh B I T C H, you know, or something, then those guys aren't going to be on the show, right?
So that's where I'm at.
The Manufacture of Consent00:03:09
Um, let's uh, Antonio, can you try to hit the last ones?
Yeah, we'll hit the last uh, two here.
We we get a super chat, two dollar super chat from Renee Dean.
She says, Mention Freud and his relation to Bernays, SDG.
I'm not sure what SDG stands for.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Okay.
Yeah.
So Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays, if I'm not mistaken, Bernays was his nephew or some kind of relation to Freud.
And first, we can talk about who Freud was.
Freud, a lot of his work, he was a psychologist, and a lot of his work was in psychoanalysis and revolved around the concepts of the unconscious, unthinking, unrational aspect of.
You know, human life.
And so he talked about suppression and things like that and went all sorts of wonky places.
But for the purpose of propaganda, the reason that that is an astute observation here with Bernays is Bernays actually, in large part, took these concepts of suppression and the unconscious and applied them to propaganda and brought some of Freud's ideas to America and applying them in politics and business.
And so you get, you know, campaigns around tobacco and the use of tobacco, you know, appealing not to, Simply the enjoyment of the thing, but appealing to senses, you know, a sense of freedom.
And this is where you get all of the layered on meaning and, you know, appeal that happens, that you have in products nowadays, right?
Like that wasn't how people approached marketing, for example, in the 19th century, which was like, hey, this thing is of utility to you.
And this is how you'll know now this thing means something, it says something about you.
And so that's the modern concept of propaganda and politics in business.
And Bernays obviously was a big, Proponent of that, or you could say where it originated.
I actually want to point to something because this is important.
Bernays actually represents a unique kind of, or you would say, development, a new generation of propaganda.
Walter Lippmann, who was a reporter, he covered the Cold War, actually.
I think he actually coined the Cold War and sort of identified it early on developing, talked a lot about the propaganda both on America and the Soviet side.
And he said something to the effect of the manufacture of consent.
Has reached a new development in technique.
It is now based on exact analysis rather than the rule of thumb.
And Bernays is sort of the originator of that kind of data analytics.
What can we know about people and how they behave?
And obviously, we've seen that to the absurd now in this day and age with AI and technology.
You have sentiment analysis and you can scrape the internet and say, What are 97% of people's thoughts on this topic?
Now let's build a product that's marketed in that particular vein.
And so you get this super dehumanized.
Version of propaganda that's actually, if you know what to look for, is actually quite simple, you know, easy to see through.
So it's a good point in the way that propaganda's changed.
Dude, you're an encyclopedia.
AI and Dehumanization00:11:54
I'm impressed.
That was good.
I'm glad I didn't even read the question yet.
I just gave it to you because I just got done talking a bunch.
And I'm glad I gave the question to you because you actually knew what it was about and I did not.
So well done.
Here at the very end, the last question, Resurrection Design Co.
He gave us 10 bucks.
Thank you.
I just want to at least shout out your name and say thank you.
But it's, and I think he would agree, whoever this is.
He asked the same kind of question, like, would you have Nick or so and so on the show?
And I feel like, Lord knows, I gave a long enough answer to that.
But I am curious.
So, guys, none of this is secret.
But, guys, know that Wes and I have some disagreements, but I just want to honor publicly Wes.
Wes always does a really good job in just saying, hey, Joel, at the end of the day, it's your show.
And yes, I'm giving my opinions and my thoughts, but if it's something that I know you feel strongly about and I know where your position is, Then I'm not going to sit there and hijack the conversation and push my position.
It's your show, and so I'm letting you lead out.
But Wes is to my right on some issues, and obviously we have way more in common than any difference that we might have.
But for those of you, Antonio is newer to the show, and I just thought it would be interesting to ask you here at the end.
We've talked a little bit outside of podcasting, but all that stuff that I said about the view of Noah and my view of how I think the gospel, I think.
Not just the gospel, actually, in this case, even false religions, I think impact people biologically slowly over multiple generations.
I just want to ask you do you like where you at on that?
No, I think what you articulated is my position as well, which is I take a covenantal view of race through history.
And so I think that through covenants, that's parents and teaching their children in some sort of practice and some religion, so on and so forth, that that manifests in physical, genetic reality.
And that would be per capita.
So neither of us are saying, like Thomas Sowell is my intellectual superior.
But I'm saying per capita.
Correct.
On average, on the average.
And of course, you're going to have our statistical anomalies and edge cases, so on and so forth.
But I think, like, not only is that my position on the merits, but I also think that, you know, we talk about eschatology and the post millennial hope.
I actually think that is the white pill.
The white pill is that the gospel changes everything.
Exactly.
When the gospel moved into Germanic Europe, you can see a.
Through history and the telling of history, you can see a manifest change in art, in sophistication with literature, in education, so on and so forth.
And through and actually in prominence, and as their civilization started to flourish more and more in Northwestern Europe and in Germania.
So, yeah, I think that's a white pill for all people.
I think so too.
So, you and I would both say, yeah, race is real, and maybe there's a better word, but as a placeholder in the meantime, until we come up with it, because nationality, for the reasons I gave, isn't great, and ethnicity.
But race, whatever the word is, That'll do for now.
And we both agree that it's real.
We both agree that there are distinctions, and because necessarily by distinctions, there are some who are better at this and some who are worse at that.
All that seems to be undeniable.
I think the one thing is we're just saying, not in 15 minutes, not even in one generation, but we're saying if the Lord tarries in his providence over time, multiple subsequent generations, that the deck could shuffle.
Correct.
Yep.
So in that sense, we wouldn't be race determinist in the end game.
But we're also not saying, and in the meantime, You know, one race, the human race, and everybody's the same.
We're saying, no, there are real differences.
Like Haitians are not Americans.
Yeah.
I think that, yeah, it's a silly thought.
I will say, like, I think the important thing for my position sounds like it would be your position too, is that to recognize that God is not partial.
He's not partial with respect to race.
It is not a lie that we should earnestly desire that all men be saved.
Yeah.
And so, in that sense, you know, I don't believe that God would have, as some people believe, created a distinct group of A whole group of people he never intended to save.
Exactly.
So he is saving from every tribe, tongue, nation.
He's not partial in the eternal salvific sense.
He loves all people, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
We think the deck slowly could, it's up to God.
It may not, but it could change slowly.
And then the last thing that I would say, adding on to my position, is the one wrench that sometimes people will throw into my position, into the gear.
Like somebody like Spangler would probably, I'm just thinking, what would somebody who holds that position say?
And I think one thing is they say, okay, but how do you account for some of the undeniable historically recorded innovation and just complexity of philosophy and art and engineering pre Christ among Greeks, for instance, or whatever?
And I think that's where I would say, see Noah.
So my position is no, that is in the Bible and it is true.
You got to, as a Christian, you may not like it, but you got to do something with the fact that Noah had three sons, everybody else drowns.
That's it.
So, this is all of humanity represented.
And some of them are going to be higher and some of them are going to be lower.
But one was cursed too, on top of just the natural disparities.
One's cursed and one's blessed.
Correct.
Correct.
So, that's where I would point to know.
And I would say that that's for me, that's how I account for some of these races, some of these peoples, because I want to put, and part of it may be me being a lib.
Yeah, I'd like to think it's primarily me being a Christian.
I want to give the gospel all its due.
All it's due.
And so, when in doubt, I'd rather give the gospel even too much due.
And so, I want to say, man, what makes the big difference at the end of the day?
Why did Europe take over the world?
Why did England, the empire for which the sun never sets, why so much success?
And not just success in terms of power, but benevolence and kindness and all this.
And I want to say, because Jesus saved England.
And Jesus, I want to be the kid in Sunday school who says, the answer is Jesus.
And I want to give Jesus all the credit.
And I truly believe that in my heart of hearts.
I really do.
But I also want to say, but also what God did through Noah is real.
And so then, so I guess, and people could say, well, it feels inconsistent.
It feels like you're playing both sides.
But I think these are two things that don't force, I could be wrong.
I can always be wrong.
But I don't think it forces a logical contradiction in the objective sense that I could say very early on, pre Christendom and those kinds of things, there were differences even then.
And those differences had to do with Noah's three sons.
And now later on, I think those differences have, if anything, have only maybe increased.
And the reason why is because the curse, although the curse has been broken, and I think the debt can shuffle now.
I don't think it's for all of time written in the stars, you know, European descent will be up here.
That's not my position.
But providentially, I think the sons of Japheth had a head start because of what God said through Noah.
And then providentially, in where the gospel first went and took root, it was in European countries.
And the news didn't even come to some of these other places until much later on.
And so we're just.
We're always a product of time and place.
Where do we sit in history and where are we today?
And so that's for me, just I was just thinking of playing the devil's advocate for the listeners like, well, okay, Joel, well, you're saying it's because the gospel changes genetics and the gospel changes everything, but how do you account for the Greeks or how do you account for this group pre Christendom, you know, being ahead?
And there I would say, well, I think that's a Noah thing.
Yeah.
And I would just say to that as well, you know, one of the important things I don't like about racial determinism is that I think it actually steals.
Grace from the equation, it steals God's sovereignty and his providence from the equation in the sense that, you know, for me, let's say I'm of European descent, I'm many, many generations down the line.
And there's a very real sense in which I was just sort of born.
And I can sort of, there can be a pride in just simply being born as sort of God's favored.
And we see another group of people who experiences that kind of pride to this day.
But what I actually would say is that there's so much, even if you think about Christ.
Pre Christian differences in Africa and Europe.
There's providence involved, right?
God's providence and governing and preserving his creatures.
It just so happens that not only were practices different and practices that lend to genetic differences like diet and so on and so forth, but you also have things like geography.
And you talk about Noah's sons and them going into different places on the earth.
And geography plays an important role in economic development and the diet that you're eating, the food that nourishes your body, that through time develops IQ, so on and so forth.
And all of these things, I think, are providential.
And there's a grace involved for those peoples that were in better places.
Yeah, it's funny.
I even looked it up just out of curiosity on Grok, I remember like a month ago, just for fun, and just said because it's been recorded that IQ for the first time in a very long time has gone down, lifespans, those kinds of things in the West.
And so I was looking at that and blah, blah, blah.
And then it's also on record that like, All people in America are like a full standard deviation above what they were 100 years ago in terms of IQ.
And so I was looking at that and I said, Grok, account for this.
Give me the reasons why.
And it was funny, like even Grok said education was a big factor and then also said nutrition.
And I was thinking about like all the Christians who have, I mean, lost their mind when I did an episode.
We did an episode on genetics and the gospel and nutrition and how diet actually does.
Religion has something explicitly to say about diet and nutrition and what you eat and what's off limits, what you don't eat.
And here's Grok that you know is lib coded, except for six hours when it was J-pilled for a little bit there, when they took away the code.
But then right back to the, it's left-leaning.
It has built into its code certain politically incorrect things that it cannot say.
And even Grok is sitting there telling me: well, one of the reasons that IQ went one standard deviation up in America over the last hundred years is because of better nutrition.
Because there actually is something to the old adage of you are what you eat.
And so, even the lib AI is like, yeah, Joel's right.
So, anyway, so I just say that at the end because I know people, for a lot of people, it's just they haven't thought about these things.
And the episodes on propaganda, you want to talk about things that we've been propagandized by.
Oh, my goodness.
We have the egalitarian propaganda that everyone's the same, no one's different.
I mean, that has been a full court press for 80 years.
And so, I know that for a lot of people, this would be sound novel.
It would feel foreign.
And all I'm saying is that you don't have to agree, and maybe I'm wrong, but this is not a crazy position.
It's not a crazy position.
So thank you guys for tuning in.
I hope that you found this episode helpful.
And we hope that you're blessed by it.
Today's Friday.
Tune in for the Friday special this evening at 8 p.m. Central Time.
And then, other than that, Lord willing, we will see you again on Monday.