Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 793 | An Atheist & a Christian Define Christian Nationalism | Guest: James Lindsay

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Today we're joined again by our friend James Lindsay, founder of New Discourses, to discuss Christian nationalism. We first look at how prominent Christian figures define Christian nationalism and how it's easy for conservative Christians to accept a definition of Christian nationalism that can result in unwarranted control over all Christians. Where is the line between morality shaped by a biblical worldview and Christian nationalism, and who decides which worldview shapes policy? We debate a bit where right and wrong and the basis of law come from, then discuss James' quote-tweet of Allie's Nashville shooting take and why he doesn't disagree with her, he's just weary of the Left's trap to fragment the population. We share the truth behind the trans movement and the false omniscience necessary for that worldview. --- Timecodes: (01:05) Definitions & traps of Christian nationalism (24:13) Morality vs. Christian nationalism (37:04) Reformers (39:20) James quote tweets Allie about Nashville shooting (49:55) Trans movement is the inverse of Christianity (57:30) The body and authenticity/autonomy --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers — get FREE bacon, great meat, a secure price, and a bonus of $20 OFF today at GoodRanchers.com – make sure to use code 'ALLIE' when you subscribe. Carly Jean Los Angeles — use promo code 'ALLIEBASICS' to save 25% off your first order at CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com! Constitution Wealth — align your values with your investments through your financial management. Go to ConstitutionWealth.com/ALLIE and schedule a FREE consultation! Quinn's Goat Soap — right now through Mother’s Day save on the Four Seasons of Soap package. Normally this package is $120, but during this Mother’s Day sale it’s only $99. Go to QPGoatSoap.com and use code "ALLIE". --- Links: James' tweet: https://twitter.com/conceptualjames/status/1640476679226155009?s=46&t=IGTV9qnuTBev_h7iiA0GDg --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 791 | The U.N.’s Push to Decriminalize Child Rape | Guest: James Lindsay https://apple.co/41P5v8F Ep 559 | An Athiest's Take on Christianity & The Power of Truth | Guest: James Lindsay https://apple.co/43WQqDo Ep 547 | The Christian Nationalist Bogeyman https://apple.co/3N48O70 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. What is Christian nationalism? Is it this dangerous, fascist movement? Is it a push for theocracy? Or is it just Christians exercising their faith as they try to influence policy and culture, just like everyone else with a worldview does? We are going to discuss and kind of debate this a little bit with our friend James Lindsay. He is an atheist, but he pushes back a lot against critical theory, critical race theory, queer theory. And so we agree on a ton, but we also disagree fundamentally on where right and wrong and

therefore on where the basis of law comes from. So a really, really interesting conversation. I learned a lot from it. I think that you will too. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Code Ranch. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Alley for American Meat delivered right to your front door. That's good ranchers.com code alley. James, thanks so much for joining us again. How you doing? I am doing better. So I'm good. Thank you.

Good. Okay. We've got a lot to cover. People know last week you were supposed to be on. We had technical difficulties. Now you're back. Everything is good to go. This will probably be a two-part thing because our conversations are typically lengthier. before we get into all the topics that I want to talk about with everything going on in the news, I want to discuss something that I've observed on your Twitter feed for, I don't know if it's the past few months or past few weeks, but you seem to be, and you just clarify where you need to clarify. My impression is that you are in greater conflict with like Christian conservative Twitter than you have been previously. There seems to be like a lot of back and forth in arguments between you and Christian conservatives that you probably agree with in a lot of ways, but there seems to be some, I don't know, dissent there.

There's one issue, actually. So the nitpick, I honestly don't think I'm arguing with Christians. I'm arguing with people who think they're Christians. But that's a very Christian thing to say, which I can't claim. So I'm arguing with people who are in favor of the Christian nationalism movement. I don't think that the Christian nationalist movement is a good idea. I have absolutely no problem with Christians, believing Christians. In fact, I think that preventing the Christian nationalist move is part of protecting

Christians' rights and freedoms to believe according to their pursuit and understanding of scripture that they work out with their pastors. So like Stephen Wolf, William Wolf, those are two examples of people who advocate for Christian. Yeah, I just released a podcast about them. Okay. So I called it the two wolves of Christian nationalism. Their names are kind of funny. situation, I guess.

Kind of a funny, they're not related, as far as I know. It's kind of funny that their last names are both Wolf. Okay. Yeah. And tell me, I mean, you're probably about to do this anyway, but how would you define and maybe all three of you define Christian nationalism and what's your issue? Well, that's the problem is that actually if you follow both Stephen and William, and this is the point of my podcast that I did about, or part of the point of my podcast about

Christian nationalism, there's not one definition. And there are, in fact, multiple definitions. And there are people that are kind of arguing within this Christian conservative space that are pointing out that this is kind of strategically advantageous because it allows for the so-called Martin Bailey argumentation strategy, which is that there are more kind of aggressive or activist views. And I think Stephen Wolfe's having read a good part of his book, the case for Christian Nationalism. The book's 475 pages long and I've got things to do that involve communism and not reading that. So I didn't finish it, but I read a good part of it. He's got a much more aggressive kind of activist position about what Christian nationalism means. Williams is actually

a bit softer. And that gives the ability to play between the two. You can say, you know, you can push for this idea of Christian nationalism. And then are you talking about, say, the view of of somebody like Stephen. Are you talking about the view of somebody like William? You're talking about the view of some of the pastors and things that we have friends with, I know we're both friends with, who have a much more kind of soft idea where it's, well, we're going to bring back Christian values throughout the nation and think of ourselves as a Christian nation. So there are a multitude of definitions. And there are people, and I feel like Stephen Wolfe could be named in this regard, and William Wolf can be named in this regard, who are very happy to move around between definitions.

mean different things at different times, which is obviously not just something that we associate with the woke. It's something that a philosopher named Nicholas Shackle in 2005 defined as the woke's defining characteristic. He called it in a paper, he defined the Martin Bailey strategy in a paper in 2005 that he titled, On the Vecuity of Postmodernist Methodology. And it's the idea that words don't have stable, clear meanings and people go back and forth between them. So if we read Stephen Wolf's book, and I have done a fair amount of this, and you talk to a lot of people who say that they believe in Christian nationalism, they say they don't recognize what is being portrayed there, like that we're going to have a Christian prince who is going to be the highest

political office in the land that's going to rule over everything as the avatar of Christ on earth. That's in the book. I don't think most Christians in the United States agree with that idea. I think they actually want religious liberty. So I'm not sure what it means, and that's a huge part of the problem. Okay. I haven't read Stephen Wolfe's book. From my understanding, there are, as you said, different definitions that people use when it's kind of lobbed by the left or people who consider themselves as maybe progressive Christians. Really, like they might call me a Christian nationalist. They might say, oh, that's Christian nationalism simply for holding mainstream conservative Christian views. Like, I am against abortion. I am for these abortion regulations. I am against drag queen's story. I am also for, although I understand this is debated and things like that, I am for the traditional

definition of marriage that was enshrined in law for hundreds of years. But I do not believe in a theocracy because I don't believe that's what Christians are called to. I don't believe in, you know, forcing people to abide by the same biblical tenets that Christians abide by because we just don't see that model in the life of Christ and in the New Testament. And so, So I think that there is, there's a shifting definition there, especially when it's coming from the left to kind of use as a pejorative, basically believing that Christians should be the only ones that should check our beliefs at the voting booth, that we should not allow our faith to inform what we think about politics or culture. And I just think that's impossible. Yes,

my faith is going to inform how I vote. That doesn't mean that I believe in forcing everyone to abide by my beliefs. But of course, I am going to submit to the belief that God created the heavens and the earth, and therefore his ways are better. So I would have never called that Christian nationalism. I think up until now, it would have just been, you have a worldview. Everyone has a worldview. Everyone votes in accordance with their values. Progressive atheists vote in accordance with their values. They wouldn't call it worship. They might not even call it a worldview, but it is voting in accordance with their value. So, like, help me understand. Is what I am talking about dangerous Christian nationalism, Christian simply doing what I think everyone does,

voting in accordance to what we believe is good and right and true? No, and as a matter of fact, I think that you should be doing that. I actually think that, frankly, that the pulpit should be getting more political right now. And, you know, I've talked about this publicly before. You know, I get to very controversially. I get to go speak at the Pastors Conference for Turning Point USA and everybody I saw that, James. I saw that. And I do have to say, like, I thought it was interesting. I did think it was interesting. I was like, obviously, you have so much to tell pastors. And that's why I have you on the show. I want people. I want Christians to hear from you. I will say, I was a little surprised that you were speaking at this conference, if I'm honest. Well, I spoke at it last year's too. So I'm great friends with Charlie. I'm great friends with Rob McCoy.

they respect what I have to offer to the conversation. They know that they can trust me not to come in and try to step on people's theology or tell them how they should interpret the Bible. I never do that or very little. I only do that kind of to shoot back when I see somebody being kind of a snot on social media or whatever. Because I did bother to read the Bible. I did bother to try to understand, you know, something of Christian theology before I started opening my mouth about it.

But no, what you're characterizing is, in fact, the opposite of, what Stephen Wolfe has characterized. Stephen Wolf has said quite openly in podcasts, for example, that he, the atheism will be stomped out. It will not exist under his view of what the country is supposed to look like. And so that's a little bit strident. And I kind of wonder when, when this kind of thing comes up, you know, well, okay, so I'm, I guess technically agnostic, not atheist really, but I don't believe in God.

Which church are you going to force me to go to and which government? agency or you're going to set up to force me to go to church. I don't want that. I don't want a country where we have a government agency which determines which churches are legitimate and which ones aren't. Even if it's not about me personally forcing me to church, do Mormons count? What about these woke churches? Are they Christian? Are they going to get stamped out? Or do they have their religious freedom? Now, it's uncomfortable to say that we should protect the freedom of these woke churches. But this is a country built off of religious freedom. So when we talk about the left in the way that they use the word Christian nationalism. And then we see these kinds of things

that are being said that are much more strident. It's to me very clear that, you know, you've got this label stuck on you by the left. We know that the left has cultural hegemony in this country. In fact, they have the Department of Justice basically under their umbrella. And we know that the Department of Justice and the FBI are extremely concerned with this so-called rise of white nationalist extremism and all of this nonsense, which they are tying to. to so-called Christian nationalist extremism. And so people like you are going to get labeled under these kind of more extreme views when they're playing this multi-definition game.

And I think that the left has set a trap to get people, to get conservative Christians to feel desperate enough to kind of say, you know what, I woke up yesterday, finally, I'm angry and I'm going to put my foot down and assert myself, and we're just going to do it this way. And they think that they can reclaim, to be as generous as possible, they think they can reclaim this term. Even if we step away from the idea of Stevens' very kind of strident Christian nationalism, look at Williams' kind of more soft form that he's kind of pushing, a little more vague and ambiguous form. We're going to use Christianity to inform the laws. We're going to use Christianity to inform politicians.

This is the kind of thing that he's saying. We're going to have a seat at the table. Again, I ask, which government commission are you going to set up to decide which faiths get to come in and inform? Do the Mormons get to come in and inform? Do the woke Mormons versus the kind of more conservative Mormons? which ones are allowed at the table, which ones aren't. Does the Presbyterian Church that has the drag queen preaching from the pulpit, are they allowed to come? Why or why not?

Which government agency are setting up to decide which faith is legitimate and which faith isn't? And what do you do with people who aren't? These are questions. But what I feel like is that even these people that have this kind of vaguer, softer definition of what Christian nationalism might represent, even to the point where it's just what you are describing for yourself, I feel like the problem is that the most, hard core pressing definition is going to get stuck on all of them. And we're going to see something very much like January 6th all over again. And there's going to be this kind of wide drag net for Christians who have publicly admitted, yeah, I'm a Christian nationalist. And they're all going to get labeled as extremists by an angry Department of Justice after some kind of an event. Maybe it's

something like Charlottesville again. Maybe it's something like J6 again. Then all of a sudden, there's this, we need to fix the Christian nationalist extremist, white nationalist extremists, because they're going to get mixed together. And Stephen's not helping that. He had his very controversial tweet the other day where he said, you know, that whatever he meant by it, he said that the white evangelical block is the only thing they can save America. This doesn't help the case. He said only the sole or the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.

And just to clarify that, I actually responded to that last night because I saw a lot of people, a lot of conservative Christians who like, you know, very conservative Christians, anti-woke for sure, disagreeing with him and saying, you know, this is racist. Of course, this is not necessarily true. And I haven't read his book. And so just looking at that tweet alone, I took it to mean what we see statistically that if you look at every Pew Research poll that breaks political, cultural, moral views down by subgenres of Christians or by religions, the white evangelical block, of course, it doesn't have one for black evangelicals. But the white evangelicals, Angelical block is the most conservative on every issue, marriage, gender, abortion, guns, immigration.

So I took his tweet to mean that a lot of people took his tweet to mean just like racism. We're back to the same problem. Yeah, I didn't see it that way. But I, I frankly, I don't know Stephen very well. I read most of his book. I read many reviews of his book. I've watched his behavior online and this is the most important. I think he knows what he's doing. I think he knows that. the statement was ambiguous. I think he knows that actually somebody asked, well, you explain it. And he put a funny, you know, Jiff image saying no. He won't explain himself. I think he knows exactly what he's doing. He's playing on both sides. Well, he might have later, but his initial reaction was that he refused to explain himself further. And so I think he knows what he's doing. I think he's

playing in that ambiguity that the same Motten Bailey ambiguity that we constantly see. And now Christians, conservative Christians in particular, are arguing and they're arguing across the race line. I know that Virgil Walker got upset about this, for example. Yeah. Who I very much. These are all people, like the people pushing back against him, I totally respect them in every way. They're not like liberals pushing back against a conservative take. These are people who I totally align with theologically. So I just thought it was an interesting conflict online. So I see a guy that's sowing division when he's doing things like this. I think he knows what he's doing. I see the same with William. He plays this kind of

Maude and Bailey game all the time. And so I'm concerned about what the purposes that they have are. Maybe it's totally benign. Maybe they're just, you know, clumsy with how they phrase things. Maybe they're playing a game that they know what they're doing. Maybe they're trying to create a power grab. Maybe it's something else. But I do know that what's going to happen is that the left is going to seize upon every single one of these examples. This is already a term that the left is horrified by that when I was before I got kind of more involved in sort of spending time with conservative regularly, which has only been in the past, what, four years or so, right? When I first met, for example, Michael O'Fallon, I didn't know him.

He called me, said, well, you come to this conference. It turns out it was the G3 conference that year and talk about woke. And I was like, no, I don't know who you are. I don't know what this is. And I typed him into the search engine and a Media Matters article came up. And I was still left enough to think Media Matters might be something real. It has an authority. Yeah.

And it said that he's a Christian nationalist, even though Mike has, spent years very studiously avoiding that label because he knew the trap that was being set and advising people to avoid that label. So they labeled him a Christian nationalist and in my brain, now I'm not right for this. I'm just saying this is what happened. As somebody in, you know, vaguely at the edge of no longer being left, you know, kind of emerging from that cocoon, low information, meet this guy or encounter with this guy. And I see the words Christian nationalists. My brain immediately switched and said white nationalist. And I, I remember calling my colleague Peter Begotian because we were both invited together.

And Peter's like, we have to go. We have to do this. And I was like, no, this dude's a white nationalist. This is like Nazi stuff. And so what I'm saying is that if that's where I was in 2019, how many thousands or millions probably of left-leaning Americans are going to see things like what Stevens putting out on Twitter playing this game? And they're going to associate that with this. And then they're going to when the Department of Justice decides to throw down the hammer, Guess what? Dragnet you're getting caught up in.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clear. over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I think that you would probably agree that our primary motivation and arguing for anything, it's not what the reaction is going to be, but whether it is true, whether it is right. And I'm not agreeing with them or any of their

methods or whatever, but if we are to take what they're saying at face value, if we are to be as generous as possible. Maybe they're saying these things because they genuinely believe it's right and it's virtuous because, you know, I get called by people on the left divisive all the time. If I disagree with any mainstream narrative, if I disagree with President Biden, if I disagree with a false teacher presenting false theology, I get called divisive. Now, should I not do that because someone's going to call me racist, someone's going to call me divisive?

no, I'm still going to say those things because I believe they're true no matter what the response is. So from a more like charitable perspective, maybe they're just saying those things not thinking about the response, not even thinking about sewing division, but but just because they think they're true, the same way that you do. Well, I mean, I don't disagree with that. And I don't think that we should be that concerned with what the left is going to label us, but we're also in a war. So we need to be strategic. And they may be saying things that they genuinely believe for, and they probably are. I encourage you, and you get the time to read a 475 page book, you didn't have time to read

Stevens book. I encourage you to read it and see what you think of his theology and what you think of his argument. Of course, like I said, Williams is very different. And then if we were to go to our friends like Tom Askell, who are very soft on this issue, a very gentleman, wonderful guy, you're going to find an even softer definition. But when we're playing around in these different definitions and we know how. We know how this game is played. We're not talking about what the left is going to call us.

We're talking about what the Department of Justice is going to do in order to discredit a wide swath of the country or to intervene and start saying that the churches are some kind of a problem and use that as a pretext to start bringing government influence over the churches. We have to play a smarter game than one where the entire basis for the argument is 10 different things that people that are involved in the argument are open. saying it's strategic to use this Mott and Bailey strategic equivocation between definitions. So it's just a kind of it's almost a tangential point that it's a, it's definitely a trap the left is setting for for Christian conservatives to discredit them like the deplorables, but something that it'll actually stick instead of becoming a rallying cry that has a lot of effect. And then it's sticking a way where we're talking, you know, legal definitions of domestic extremism. You know, what are we going to see? Are we going to see another stand down in the military where Christian conservatives get thrown out of the military for domestic extremism or disarmably discharge or whatever on the other side of, say, Charlottesville 2.0 because of these kinds of definitions.

So if they want to forward this kind of idea about making an argument for Christian nationalism, the first thing that needs to happen is they need to sit down and they need to get it clear what they mean. I actually went to a conference. I sat in the audience and listened to Stephen Wolf talk about this. There was a panel. There were five guys on the panel. And I listened to them for an hour, hour and a half, whatever the panel lasted. And my impression was that the bun just ain't ready to come out of the oven. Like they have not organized their thoughts in a way that's sufficient to push a mass movement in Christians across the country.

Because it is a very large, as you said, it is the largest kind of single voting block. except for maybe, you know, suburban wine moms. And so the bun isn't ready to come out of the oven, but I get the impression looking at the way that they're playing this game and that they're not sitting down and trying to clarify these things, that the bun isn't meant to be ready to come out of the oven. I see what you're saying. There's this opportunity.

It's the same opportunity the left does where, you know, they say, oh, or, you know, Christian nationalism is going to destroy our democracy. I can guarantee you that sentence is coming sooner or later, right? And then they mean something by Christian nationalism, but that's not the point, because the real tricky word there is democracy. Our democracy means something different to the left, right? And so they play in that space. You say, oh, you're against democracy if you don't go along with us. No, I'm against your democracy, as a matter of fact, which means that the deplorables or the Christian nationalist or whoever else don't count for whatever reason as people. Like Mao said, to have incorrect political opinions is like not having a soul. So you're not a person. So you don't actually have any political rights. And this is, you explained that very clearly in 1957.

I get very concerned about that as a practical matter. But from a position of what's my take on the issue overall, it's very, very clear that we don't just have disagreement between different voices. We have people who are espousing more than one position at the same time, depending on who's looking and how much pressure is on them. And it's very unclear. Like Stephen, for example, was asked some very pointed questions in the Q. and A at that conference, and he backed off from almost everything that I read in his book. It was very circumspect when all of a sudden he had to present his ideas out loud, but his book is very strident. And so what's going on there? He's espousing two different positions that don't

necessarily line up with one another. That's a concerning place to be. And the reason I think it's most concerning is that it sets up Christians to plant a flag into something that is not ready to have a flag planted in it. You don't know what you're actually standing up for and that definition might change out from under you at any time. Yeah. Here's my, before we move on from this, I guess my question is because I think you would agree. Every law that exists speaks to a moral view.

There is a definition of right and wrong from which we get laws. this idea that it's not good to murder. Not only that it's not good, but that it should actually be illegal, this idea that you have a right not to be assaulted, that you have a right not to get your property stolen from. These all come from somewhere. Now, I think the founders, some of them Dias, some of them agnostic, some of them probably actually religious Christians,

still thought, as in the tradition of England, as in the tradition of Western civilization, that as a general basis for our morality and our laws, we should look to the Bible, which I would say is different than a theocracy. It is simply acknowledging that every law speaks to a moral view, speaks to a belief in right and wrong, speaks to a belief in human rights. So is it quote unquote Christian nationalism to say that I is a Christian, And if I believe that God created all things, that means he defines all things, that means

he believes, that's one of the central tenets of Christianity, Genesis 1-1, then of course, I'm going to believe that the laws that we have should in general be based in a biblical morality. Now that is different than saying everyone must go to church. Everyone must read their Bible. You are not allowed to not believe in God. So, like, what's the difference there between Christian, nationalism and what I think is an inevitable conclusion or an inevitable product of Christianity or really any belief that believes in the supreme authority of a being, which is that

morality then comes from that being, which means laws come from that morality. And so everything kind of does fall under your worldview. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, I understand. I don't know why we- I mean, this is why, again, we have to be very clear on what we mean by Christian nationalism. Because it's very obvious that some people will mean that this is going to be a Christian nation in a very kind of theocratic way. Other people will not mean that.

It also comes back to the question of how do we decide whose theology gets to inform the state? The answer that we actually have now, what it turns out is that while we do have a deep and long Judeo-Christian value set informing the United States and the founders were a mixture primarily of Christians and deists who are kind of working this out. out, which is a point, by the way, at that conference, they equivocated upon. They actually tried to say that all the founders who count were actually Christian, and somebody asked about Madison and Jefferson. And the answer was, we don't have to live under what they called Virginia supremacy. That's Virginia supremacy. Jefferson and Madison aren't that important. They were fringe members, as what was said. I mean, they wrote the declaration of the Constitution. They're a little not fringe. And so what the American legal tradition is based in, while it is informed by Judeo-Christian value sets underneath, it's actually based in English common law, which was also based in certain, you know, Judeo-Christian value sets as well. So it's a tradition, a long tradition of liberty that actually begins with religious liberty. And so when we start talking about this is a Christian nation because its laws are informed off of a biblical morality, we have to be very, very cautious about what we mean by

that. When you say informed by, you know, what does that mean? In the broadly liberal, you know, post-enlimate secular tradition, the idea is that, yeah, you can inform your laws based off of, say, the Bible, but you have to make an argument that's not rooted, not rooted purely in a sectarian interpretation in order to convince people who maybe don't have that particular interpretation. And what we've actually kind of chosen is a natural rights theory rooted in English common law as the pathway that that's going to happen. So the Bible can inform people and they can come and Christians, of course, have, I mean, there's the National Prayer of Breakfast. There's, they're, you know, religious advisors. We had Paula White advising President Trump, for example, and whatever you think of her theology,

is irrelevant, that the character exists. This position exists. This is actually a thing that happens. The question has to become, how does that apply to every American? And what other basis for the law, other than merely a religious tradition, because even among Christians are massive disputes in theological interpretation. And so does Stephen Wolfe get to come in and say, well, the Bible clearly says because of some interpretation, and this is his argument, because of some interpretation of the prelapsarian state preceding the fall in the Garden of Eden about how Adam and Eve were organizing what was like kind of a proto family structure that he makes the argument that had the fall never occurred,

what would have happened is that there would have been nations forming anyway within the garden, and that those nations as peoples in the garden would have had a biblical morality, because obviously they're in a pre-fallen state. So they would have to have a, you know, genesis-driven biblical morality, whatever God's law was as it was dictated in the garden. And so it's perfectly reasonable and natural to extend that and say that, well, whatever interpretation, I guess that Stephen Wolfe has, is going to inform the government.

And I start to wonder how we're going to pick and choose and how we're going to enforce that. Because the second we switch from, yeah, we have a kind of cultural underpinning of Judeo-Christian values and those inform how we select our laws and they inform how we behave culturally and the kind of cultural moors, because there's legal enforcement and there's cultural enforcement of values and norms and so on. Yeah. And we slip into all of a sudden a position now where, no, this is what the state says and everybody has to do this because of, you know, whatever particular confession decided that it has

enough power to plant its flag in the federal government or the state government or a local government, we've now slipped into a completely different entity, political entity, literally something that's like at least light theocracy, which requires creating government institutions that decide which faiths are valid and which aren't. And if that's what you mean by a Christian nation, I mean, what is it? Like, is it a, is it a, is it a, you know, whichever I get confused about these details, as you know, I'm not, this is just a little bit outside of my ken. But, you know, is it like the 1689 confessional nation? Which one is it? And if that's the wrong year, just bear with me. It doesn't matter. Yeah. The, this is, those are two different things.

and until the Christians who want to push for something as bold and obviously dangerous, given what the DOJ, etc., would think, before they want to push kind of blindly into the space of, oh, we need a Christian nation. They'd better start sorting these things out and being very clear so that they're not misleading. This is why so often I end up having these conversations with Christians that are, you know, much more theoretically grounded than I am, and I talk to them and they read Stephen Wolfe's book or William Wolf's articles, and they come back to me and they say something about like Jeremiah 23. They immediately go to the like false teachers documents.

And it's like, oh, goodness, you know. And so without that clarity of meaning, you should not be pushing a movement. And if you're deliberately, as I think we aren't seeing debates between William Wolf and Stephen Wolf about what it should mean. We see both of them using the term content that they don't mean the same thing. and content that it doesn't matter because it's all kind of moving in the same direction, what you will see invariably in those situations is that the most intolerant will seize the direction of the movement in the end and drive it into whatever direction it's going to go. And frankly, in this case, a lot of what's driving the so-called Christian nationalist movement

where we get back to the brass tax is a integralist movement, which is a Catholic program that's been made ecumenical. So you have a Roman Catholic integralist movement. Integralism is to reintegrate the church and the state into a single entity. It was developed by one of the popes, I think in the 1800s. It was a disaster in South America every time it was tried. It turns out liberation theology was applied on the left from an integralist standpoint. So it can be a lot of different things.

It isn't necessarily this right-wing phenomenon. It can occupy a lot of positions. but there are also this kind of new ecumenical movement. We're all going to pretend that Catholics and Protestants and this Protestant and that Protestant are all kind of on the same team. And what we're going to do is integrate that into the state kind of very formally and officially. And that's what's actually, if you get to where the money's coming from, that's what's actually driving the movement. And so I wonder, because I've talked to some of these Catholic integralist guys, and they're like, we're going to have an inquisition. We're going to force convert people to Catholicism.

I wonder, honestly, if Protestants are getting used by these people. I know, I'm like, okay, so when you talk about that person who I probably agree with on a lot of things, I'm like, are you talking about me too? Like, are you going to try to convert me to Catholicism? I told them that they were going to bend my knee and I told them I was going to bend their knee backwards. So, like, I don't, I'm not down with that. Yeah. It's not a country I want to live in. And so I don't know.

I mean, sometimes they say yes and sometimes they say very much like what you see in kind of radical Islam, which by the way is sometimes categorized as an integralist movement as well. well, you see them say, you know, no, there's going to be people who are of the book, more or less. You're close enough, so we'll tolerate you. So, again, that depends. Who's in power? Yeah. You know, are we talking about something like Adrian Vermeel's common good Christianity,

which means somebody gets to define what the common good looks like, which means there's going to be a stakeholder council that gets, this is the same thing that, that Cloud Schwab is doing. Well, I mean, just like anything else. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. Or are we talking about something, you know, much more. Literally, we need an inquisition and we're going to force convert people.

Yeah. You know, maybe they're going to go around and find the Jews by feeding them delicious pork and things like that and force them to become Catholics, which is what, you know, the Spanish Inquisition actually did. That's why they have such delicious prosciutto and, you know, Salty Chon and so on in Spain. Who could refuse such a gift? So I think that, and we can't go through all this. We've got to close this portion of the conversation out because we've got so many other things to talk about. But if you look at the tradition of the reformers and what they believed about governance and what they believed about morality, is that, yes, there were some, I would call them fringe reformers who believed in maybe that more theocratic form of Christian nationalism. But I think that I am from the tradition of Augustine, who obviously wasn't a reformer, but Augustine and then Calvin, who was a reformer who said, he said things like this.

how malicious and hateful toward public welfare would a man be who is offended by such diversity, and by that he means people who have different beliefs and different backgrounds, which he believed is perfectly adapted to maintain the observance of God's law for the statement of some that the law of God given through Moses is dishonored when it is abrogated and new laws preferred to it is utterly vain. And then he says, it is a fact that the law of God, which we call the moral law, is nothing else than a testimony of natural law. and of that conscience which God has engraved on the minds of men. And he believed even unbelievers can participate in a society like this.

Even unbelievers can rule a society like this. Actually, we see that in Romans 13. Paul says, look, God has instituted these governments for your good to punish the wrongdoer and to reward the one who does right. Not talking about whether or not that leader is Christian. And so I know that this is kind of confusing language just because of the era that it that it comes out of, and I don't necessarily expect you to agree with it. But I think that that is the kind of traditional Christian thought that anything that is moral, anything that is right

is going to be of God ultimately. And we believe that that is kind of naturally intrinsic in moral men, if that makes sense. And so that is different than theocracy. That is simply saying, of course, Christians believe in a Christian morality, and we are going to vote in accordance with that. But we also believe that that can be debated. We also believe that that can adapt to a pluralistic society. It just depends on to what degree. So that's kind of where the debate is, I think. And I think you're right. That point that the bun is not ready to come out of the oven with people saying, yay, Christian nationalism, I don't think that they always know exactly what they even mean. So, okay, good discussion on that. Let's talk, okay, since we're talking about disagreements,

before we get into the rest of it, I do want to, okay, so you broke my rule, which is okay. My rule is that friends don't disagree, quote, tweet friends. That's my rule. And so if I disagree with a friend on Twitter, then I will, like, message them or I'll text them or something like that. But that's okay. You disagreed. I said about the Nashville shooting, it's an anti-Christian terrorist attack motivated by

pervasive unabasheded top-down anti-Christian sentiment, which I believe is part of it. And then you said, uh-oh. And then you posted this picture, which we can put up on YouTube. I don't know if we have it right now. And so basically, I just think that you disagreed with me saying that. You said, don't do a Christian reaction and it's not a well-reasoned argument. So break that down a little bit. Why am I wrong? Oh, so actually, I don't think you're wrong. So I'm glad you asked me about it. actually am not, again, you should speak, we talked about this before, you should speak truth the way that you see it. And I don't think that you're wrong. I do think there's a strong anti-Christian sentiment. I do think that, say, for example, the woke and the trans movement in particular have a massive

acts to grind against Christianity. They blame so much for Christianity. They're in fact, kind of an anti-Christianity, like an upside down or inverted Christianity, then that they're a Gnostic hermetic kind of spinoff or, you know, perversion of them. And we can, thank Marx for that, mostly, kind of historically speaking, but I'm very worried, and it kind of ties into the Christian Nationalist thing, that what we're going to see is a dissension into greater identity politics, that this is Christians against trans, as opposed to this is a normal, healthy society that's under assault by what are very obviously radical activists. So what I'm concerned, the uh-oh was about, are Christians going to get baited into this idea of a

kind of standpoint-driven identity war, because I don't think identity wars are going to behoove anybody. I think that the actual fight, to kind of be very Harry Potterish, is that it's normal people against people that are somehow mentally deranged by critical theory. I think critical theory actually is designed to mentally derange people, is to create psychopathologies and entitled narcissism and vulnerable narcissism. And these people are not particularly well. Harry Potter, I brought up because it is a morality tale of the normal kid, the normal person,

his capacity for love being ultimately what allows him to win in the end. Sorry, spoiler that Harry wins over the seven books. Against Voldemort, who's the kind of quintessential psychopath, who's lost his ability for empathy, who's lost his ability for love, who's lost his perspective, his, you know, tagline is there is no good or evil. There's only power in those too weak to seek it. And I think that critical theories derange people into seeking and believing that the world only operates in terms of power, power that they're being unjustly excluded from.

So the uh-oh is actually that I hope that we stay broader-minded and we don't start hauling ourselves up or siloing ourselves into, oh, this is a war Christians versus this. These people are waging war on the entirety of civil, frankly, of civilization. And Christians are a very important part of that, an important part of the American civilization, a Western civilization in particular. I mean, like we already said, I completely agree that our traditions are largely Judeo-Christian in their orientation. Their faith and reason working together, which is kind of the magic sauce of the West. And what they do is they box out this kind of entitled narcissistic Gnostic Gnostic.

And so I didn't disagree with the analysis. I am concerned, I didn't know you had this rule, by the way. I am concerned that there will be a new identitarian movement that's a very us against them reaction. Because the way that the left operates operationally, and I talked to Vivek Ramoswami about this recently, is that what a lot of conservatives don't understand is that the left is very operational. They are actually, I don't think they're terribly smart. We shouldn't underestimate our enemies, but they are actually very strategic. They're very, very tactical.

I mean, they can't be that brilliant because they can't figure out what a woman is. But they're very tactical, very strategic. And there's a principle that they have in their activist manual, which is called Beautiful Trouble. It's derived from Saul Olinsky's work. It's kind of an updated version. It's online. It's at Beautiful Trouble.org. I encourage people to go look at it.

There are thousands of tactics and principles and maybe hundreds and not thousands. There are a lot of tactics and principles and examples of examples of. how to do leftist activism. And one of their core principles is your real action is your target's reaction. So if you can get Christians to hole up and say to try to silo off a part of society, and then to argue in terms of Christianity versus trans, instead of that this is an assault on sanity itself, which is Christian to bring up, because it's assault on the logos, which is, you know, in John 1, that's Christ. And so it is an assault on Christianity, but it's also an assault on sanity itself, if you get people to silo up and start to argue this is Christian identity versus

trans identity, then they get to create a dynamic that's actually been very fruitful for them. Like we talked about before, the shift in cultural hegemony is strongly on their side. So you are, you should be making these statements very clearly, but I think it's actually important, or I guess not but, and I think it's very important because I don't want to cancel out that you should be saying the things that you truly see and believe. And it is very important to be very clear that this is much broader than just a war on Christians in particular, because we don't want people to start siloing off and fragmenting society further. So I don't actually disagree with you. This was a hate crime targeting Christians on purpose because they're Christian.

And that's the thing. This specific instance did seem to be targeting a Christian school. and we have the manifesto out there that for some reason they are just not able to reveal to us, presumably because it, I'm guessing that it says, look, this school didn't affirm me, this school oppressed me with the gender binary, and so I wanted to exact revenge against them, which would be, I mean, I don't really like the term hate crime because anytime you go murder a bunch of children, it's hateful. And so whatever the motivation is. But it's a targeted crime. anti-Christian. I agree with you in one sense that the trans movement will label everyone on the

wrong side of history, no matter what their background is, even if they consider themselves a left-wing feminist, but they are not for this idea that you can just become the opposite sex via declaration. And so it is broader, but I guess my argument would be, like you say it's normal people versus insane people, which really great point. I do. believe that critical theory causes psychopathy and just instability. But like what is our definition of normal? Where do we get the baseline of normal? Again, as a Christian, like I believe that what is normal, where I shouldn't even say normal, what is good is just like eternity, as Ecclesiasty says, like is written on the human heart. There is this innate sense of right and wrong. There's actually

objectively a definition of perverting what is. normal. And you and I, even though we're not Christians, we agree on that. But my perspective would be, even though you're not a Christian, and even though you don't believe this, I would say that that's of what you are calling normal, I would call goodness that has been written on your heart and that you have been given the wisdom to see. And so ultimately, like I do believe it is light versus dark. Ultimately, I do believe it is God's truth versus a lie, even if it's not necessarily Christians versus non-Christians. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, that's just the key.

The only reason I said, uh-oh, which wasn't actually, you know, contradicting you. I'm not offended. It's just that I do have this concern that the goal of the left is to fragment the population so that people have a harder time getting along. So you say, you know, it's a target on Christians, and Christians start saying this is about Christianity, which isn't totally wrong. And then a bunch of other people who might have been, you know, colleagues with you or co-belligerence with you, get alienated.

And so now what happens as you start to have a, is this Christians or is it something else's argument instead of being able to focus on the fact that we have deranged people doing violence against our society and against our people. And in particular, against Christians who obviously just got completely washed out of the story. I'm sure we'll talk about these Tennessee three here before along in terms of how they washed out of the story. But, I mean, there is a very real, when I said this as an anti-Christian movement. And I mean that in the kind of technical sense.

Not like a just being against Christianity, meaning the trans queer theory movement. It's also like the inverse of Christianity. I mean when I say anti, I mean like perverted or inverted. Because what it is, transition is a process of death and rebirth, you know, kind of like with Christians when they profess or they become a new creation or whatever. Yeah, you are reborn. It is born and born. again Christians, right? That's right. Well, this is the same for them, but they have a completely different religious ritual, a completely different outlook about what they're dying and being reborn into.

And I'll just, I think I've said this with you before, but this is actually deeply rooted in their literature. If you go back and read not even trans people, but certainly the queer and trans literature, it's all over and there. That is kind of a death and rebirth process. But if you go back and read, say, Paulo Ferreari, who's writing about education, he says that the process of education has to be in becoming an educator or becoming a true student has to be a process of death to the old world and a rebirth into the new on the side of the oppressed. And so there is a very deeply religious element here that is taking the idea of Christian renewal and turning it into something that's actually, if I might get religiously technical with you, it's actually a hermatic idea. The goal is to actually, in the first step, realize that you have this power over yourself, that you are, in fact, your own deity. And so

then what you do is you become your own begetter. You self, you get to the stage where you're self beginning. This is what trans is. They are literally saying, I know how I was meant to be, despite what body I was born into, despite what the doctor assigned a sex to it, despite how society had all these social constructions of what it meant to be a boy or a girl impressed upon me. I actually know the secret truth about myself. That's Gnosticism.

It's salvific self-knowledge. the secret knowledge, hidden knowledge, and I can undergo this process to beget myself into what I was always meant to be. And so the hermetic faith has a Trinity, and it's not Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It is in fact the undifferentiated all, that's the Father position, which is the unbegotten God, and then there is the self-begotten God, which is the mind of God. So in place of Christ, there's the mind of God. And then the third position is man. And so the goal, is to first remember that you are, in fact, God, and then you are to disavow yourself of your own body, which is fallen and corrupted, so that you can become a self-begetting entity. In other words,

you are meant to realize that you are God and then become your own Christ. So the trans thing is, and this is what this young woman coming to this school is ultimately rebelling against, is a different path that denies that this is possible. For her, salvation comes. from realizing who she truly is, and then begetting herself as she was always meant to be. And the Christian story says, no, that is not possible. You are not God. Salvation is through Christ alone. You don't get to become your own Christ.

You don't get to save yourself on your own terms. And I'm not saying that this is just some kind of like thing. This is in the chief religious scripture of the hermetic faith, which is called the Pymandres, which is the first book of the corpus hermeticum. And it explicitly says that your goal is to awaken to this, to overcome your body, and to become your own Christ so that you can save yourself and all of mankind with you. So why would you delay? I mean, I could find the exact passage and read it. It's very, very close to that.

And so what we're seeing is, in a sense, when you say it's good against evil or dark against light, you're not wrong at all. This is a religious battle. And there's a reason why Christianity has to be targeted so much, which is because, you know, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth in life. There is no other way. And you're going to humble yourself before God. And you're going to humble yourself. You don't get to save yourself. But the trans religion is 100 percent. We're going to save ourselves. And the way that they save themselves following, it turns out Foucault who said that it's not that the body imprisons the soul, it's that the soul imprisons the body, trying to be, you know, oh, what's this weird postmodern

sentence mean? What he's saying is that what they're going to do is they're going to change themselves and then force society to affirm them. So that the social constructions around gender transform and when that's the soul. The soul is your part of the social construction, of the socialization network of society. And so they firmly believe with religious fervor that the only way that they can have salvation from the suffering that they have, the inequities that they suffer, we could get as biblical in our language to copy what they're saying as we want to, is to be able to beget themselves and force society to affirm what they have done to themselves and thus save themselves in all of humanity.

And Christianity is an absolute rebuke of this concept. And so they have to be vigorously anti-Christian. The idea that there is absolutely no true renewal outside of Christ is anathema to the idea that they must actually renew themselves and use their renewal and social enforcement to transform all of society to affirm that renewal. it's completely anathomime. But if you are biblically minded, you'll immediately see that what this is is God versus Satan. There's no question as to what is meant by believing that you get to become your own self, your own savior.

Of course, it goes back to the garden. It goes back to the garden of either that you can be like God. It's three and four. Christians also believe that it's not just transgenderism that does this. We also believe Relove Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. I always recommend that on this show to people. But she also argues that any kind of what we will call sexual immorality, promiscuity, homosexuality, abortion are all assault against the Amago Day and are all this exchanging the God of Scripture for the God of self. I mean, you hear that just even in the mantras of the abortion lobby, my body, my choice. And I've heard it, it's that it's kind of like a perverted Eucharist, whereas like Christ says, this is my body. So are abortion. advocates, this is my body, whereas Christ's body brought us life, the sacrifice of his body

brought us life. We are saying, this is my body. I will bring death unto it and those who inhabit it, those who are advocating for abortion. And so Christians don't believe. Do you see that the abortion is the same, by the way, is this? Go ahead, finish your thought, but I want to come back to that. It is what I would say, what I argued in my book is that when you elevate, when autonomy and authenticity become your gods. When they become your primary guides to what morality is, then you will end up justifying all kinds of atrocities. You will end up sacrificing truth and reason and the well-being of other people in the name of autonomy and authenticity. Autonomy and authenticity, so autonomy, having control of your own body, having responsibility

can be a great thing. Authenticity, being yourself, not being a liar, not being a hypocrite, not putting up a facade, that can be a great thing. But when these are your number one priorities or your ultimate gods, then you'll sacrifice anything to, quote, unquote, being yourself or being authentic. If you are your own God and authenticity is your highest priority, then why can't you define yourself? Why can't you identify yourself? Why can't you be whatever you want to be? What is objective truth if you are your own God? And then the same thing with autonomy. autonomy can be good, of course, and we're talking about we don't want the government to tell us that we have to put vaccines in our body. But when autonomy is your God or is your number one priority, then of course you will even sacrifice the life and well-being of a child inside your body because autonomy is number one. So I would argue that autonomy and authenticity, while they can be virtues, have to be submitted to a higher authority than yourself. And of course, I believe that higher authority is God in biblical morality. Maybe you would believe that. leave it's natural law or truth or reason or just compassion and empathy for other people,

whatever it is. Yeah, that's what I would argue. So I don't think abortion and transgenderism are the same. Do I think that they are absolutely derived from this same satanic idea that you are your own God? Does it matter how it affects other people? Yes, I do. They share that commonality. So that's what I mean is the abortion position held by the majority of the left and the kind of powers that be in the Democratic Party. I don't want to throw average Democrats that are low information under the bus here because I don't think they actually think about it like this, most of them. But when you start talking about this all the way to the moment of birth and absolutely, you see how the activists are. We all know how the activists are. They're absolutely

about it. I'm quite certain that what they're actually, what this feminist position is of absolute autonomy for, you know, over, over, it's my body. I get to make the decision up to the moment where it's, you know, outside of my body or whatever, that this is Gnosticism, that they believe that they know what their life was supposed to be, and that's secret, salvific knowledge, that they've seen a glimpse of what was meant to be written in the, you know, the book of life or whatever metaphor we want to use for that. And that the idea that they were, they didn't ask to be born in a woman's body that could become pregnant, even by accident. They didn't ask to be. put in the position where they have to rewrite their entire life all of a sudden because of a decision they made that resulted in a pregnancy, especially if there are medical techniques that can allow them to, you know, and somewhat with relative safety, you know, liberate to use their word themselves from that case. When we understand that the position that, I think there were actually three positions in the debate, not two. It's not pro-life versus pro-choice. It's actually there's pro-life, pro-choice, and then feminist Gnosticism, which is kind of a third literally

you don't get to tell me what to do because I am the arbiter of my own life because I've seen what my life was supposed to be and I get to make that decision. And when we understand that there's a third position like that in that position, this is the same as the trans issue and it's kind of one step back because it's the same Gnostic idea that you believe that you had a glimpse of what your life was actually supposed to be. And the demiurge, which is society, doesn't get to tell you what to do with it. And of course, when I say the demiurges society, that's the modern incarnation. It's not what they believed in, you know, the first century with the Valentinius or whatever, like the Gnostic Christian cults. The demiurge has taken on this idea of the social, the cultural hegemony and the powers, whether it's the bourgeois classes, whether it's the whites, whether it's the patriarchy, whatever it is. This operates as a demiurgic power that is constraining people and imprisoning people beyond their desire. So the Gnostic impulse is that you've been flung into this situation that you didn't ask for.

Again, you didn't ask to be born a woman. You didn't ask to be born fertile. You didn't ask for the situation that, you know, by decision likely unintentionally for the way that they are, that you're going to have to rewrite the story of your life rather than believing that, you know, the story of your life contained this event. And now you're going to take that chapter. This is ultimately that same Gnostic entitlement that says that you, get to be the ultimate arbiter of your life. And so my point, when I say that you see how they're the

same, and I agree with the way that you framed these things, actually, my point is that the impulse behind both is Gnostic. It's fundamentally, when you say it comes from that same satanic place, that satanic place is a name, it's Gnosticism. And that name is the, it's the same story like we already acknowledged that's in the third chapter of Genesis when the snake said God hath not said. And I think it's important for us to start to clarify. I'm not disagreeing with you in any way. I'm trying to say we should clarify our understanding of what's motivating the left. And what's motivating the left is a Gnostic impulse for liberation from what they believe is a life of imprisonment.

That's why they say emancipation, liberation, constantly. A life of imprisonment that's imposed upon them by the social structures of a dominant power structure that they didn't ask to be born under. And if you actually listen to the language, you'll hear this again and again and again and again. It's very clarifying, but it also gives Christians in particular a very powerful route to ministry to help people understand this, but also to reach to them and understand why the story that they're living under in their lives is actually a very dark and dangerous story and that it's not the best way to think of these things, rather than getting caught in the same kind of circular arguments that we always end up caught in that don't move anywhere. So my interest here is in trying to give people on the side of sanity the ability to have this discussion in a way, especially Christians, where they're going to be able to reach to that kind of very dark view of what it means to be a woman and a fertile woman and a pregnant woman eventually. And to speak to them in a way that maybe brings them back from that, you know, you get to be the ultimate arbiter of your life because you think you've seen the truth. but you don't know what's truly in store for you. You don't know what you might be missing.

You aren't actually God. I think it's an important point for people to realize where the mentality comes from. Every time I bring it up, I get firebombed because people don't seem to want to talk about it. But I'm just trying to offer a little clarity on how the left, the hard left, the radical left, actually thinks about the issue. They were flung into a woman's body beyond their desire, beyond their choosing, and now they're trapped in a prison of their fertility. And when you realize that that's their mentality, then you can talk to them where their mentality is and start to pull them away from that very poisonous way of thinking.

It informs so much of the articulations that feminism has about what a woman's life should be like and why they should favor career over family and why families are actually toxic, so much of it unravels when you realize that it all boils down to this Gnostic belief that they've been imprisoned in a woman's body that they didn't ask for. All right. So if it sounded like that conversation and did kind of abruptly, that's because, remember, this was actually the first part of a long conversation that James and I had. And the second part of that conversation, we actually played first because it had to do with news stories that were circulated in the news cycle last week. So go back and look at it.

listen to last Wednesday's episode if you are wondering what the second part of this conversation sounded like. So I just wanted to provide you with some clarity there. Just a reminder, guys, we've got awesome merch. I'm wearing some of my merch right now. I think the version that's being sold doesn't have the With ABS. It just has the little relatable on it. Mother's Day is coming up, guys. It's coming up, Related bros. You're related gals. You're related bells. They want some merch. We've got amazing merch. Look, I've even got my little hat right here. Isn't it cute? It's a quarter of a hat. Um, so go to Alleymerch.com. Yeah, just Alleymerch.com. I almost forgot my own link. Alleymerge.com. You can use code Alley 10 for 10% off. That's All right. I will see you back here tomorrow.

Hey, this is Steve Daste. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true, about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave,

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