The Eric Metaxas Show - #107 - John Zmirak

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with John Zmirak about the latest attempt on President Trump’s life, the shocking security failures, Tommy Robinson, the rise of political violence, and why parts of the left now seem to justify violence against their enemies. They also discuss Eric’s new book on the American Revolution, the difference between America’s founding and the French Revolution, and why Darwinian materialism leaves young people vulnerable to destructive ideologies. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.⭐ PRE-ORDER TODAY:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:📢 Don’t Let the Financial Storm Destroy Your Wealth and Future!https://www.metaxasgoldira.com/⚖️ Legal Help Center - Get Free Legal Help Today: https://www.legalhelpcenter.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show. I'm Eric Metaxus, and it is my joy this week and many weeks to have, as my guest, John Smirak. John, welcome back. Hey, Eric, good to talk to you. So when last we talked, that was before the latest assassination attempt. But not just on the president. The inexplicably, the entire administration was gathered in one room with lame security, literally if they had. had if this this psycho left-wing Christian Caltech grad had managed, let's say he had a grenade,

he could have gotten a grenade in, he got a rifle in, he could have taken out the whole administration to the point where Senator Chuck Grassley would be president of the United States. Senator Chuck Grassley was like the next in line for succession because so many members of the administration were idiotically gathered together. in one place in a country that has a radical left that justifies terrorism. It has mainstream institutions justifying terrorism. Well, the whole thing I have to say, I was myself shocked that so many members of the cabinet were in the same place.

That was kind of strange. And then the security, I mean, people have been talking about this. But I kind of don't get it. I guess I live in a world where I would assume that the White House would vet everything, that they would have the ability to make sure that nothing bad could happen. So, Sue, there's a part of me that doesn't understand how it's possible that this could happen. Why would you think that when two close calls happened to President Trump and nothing has been done to dig out the rot? Remember, in Butler, the shooter got off five shots while FBI sniper.

had their rifles trained on him, they let him get off five shots before shooting him. And Trump just praised the FBI officer who was one of the people who should have taken this killer out. If I were President Trump, that FBI sniper who failed to take out the assassin before he had actually wounded the president, I would have that sniper in Gitmo being waterboarded until he gave up the name of who gave him the order to let someone shoot the president. That was 100% orchestrated. That was not incompetence. There are people in the deep state who wants to see the president dead. And eventually, I think I'm afraid it's going to happen.

I'm sorry, what? Okay, John, I think Trump maybe feels like, I think Trump maybe feels like he's immortal or something. I don't know, but he's not taking with requisite seriousness the repeated attempts on his life. he's putting more energy into unseating Congressman Thomas Massey for disagreeing with him on a few bills than he is in finding out who was behind now three assassination attempts on him

and why the security was so bad. This strikes me personally. Well, look, this is not the Alex Jones show. I want to be clear to my audience, but I will tell you, the Butler thing definitely made me wonder what's going on. I have to say that I'm sure there are people in the deep state who wish he were dead and whether we could ever get to the bottom of that I don't know I don't know but I

this is what black sites and waterboarding are for all right then so is struck me I want to say why this strikes me so close to home this happened on what Saturday night on Thursday night I was at an event in Richardson, Texas, with someone who is even more hated, and I think even more important than President Trump. British patriot Tommy Robinson. Tommy Robinson has been fighting against the Islamicization of England. He has been exposing the Pakistani rape gangs that have raped tens of thousands of British girls with the collusion of the Muslimization of England. he has been exposing the Pakistani rape gangs that have raped tens of thousands of British girls

with the collusion of the police who refused to investigate because they don't want to be called racist, right? I don't be a racist by stopping the Pakistanis from raping our girls. He has put out film after film exposing the complicity of the Labour Party in letting Muslim rape gangs rule the cities of England.

There is a fatwa calling for his for his assassination from ISIS. Those people don't mess around. The British government has imprisoned him over and over again just for exposing the truth about this. Last time they dumped him in a prison full of young radical Muslim criminals and he got all his teeth knocked out.

He got a visa he's giving speaking engagements in the United States. He gave a talk in Richardson, Texas on Thursday, which is why I missed your talk in Grapevine, Texas at the same engagement. exact time. Robinson gave an amazing talk telling all this story. We also had Congressman Chip Roy, who's trying to fight Sharia in Texas, Texas state representative Brian Harrison, all the lead, the global leader of the anti-jihad movement, Tommy Robinson, and all the Texas

leaders of the anti-jihad movement in this event put on by a very nice organization. I don't want to name them because I'm going to be critical. They're nice people, but they're naive. The security for this event with the most hated anti-Muslim activist on Earth and all the Texas leaders who are cooperating with him consisted of one guy with a rifle who asked me if I had a weapon. I said, no, because I didn't. And that's it. They had wands and like metal detectors. They didn't use them.

I or anyone else could have had a suicide vest dot, could have had a grenade in my pocket. I was so shocked by this lapse of security. The whole event, I was waiting for some jihadi to take a shot of Tommy Robinson, and I was determined to throw myself in front of him because Tommy Robinson is a lot more important than I am. But these nice Texas people, these nice conservative Christians and conservative Jews, they have an event where we say, look, there's a global jihad with thousands of terrorists that's trying to destroy your civilization. If you really believe that, act like it and have proper security. A few months ago, Herit Wilders, the heroic former Prime Minister of the Netherlands,

who has lived under armed security and seclusion for 12 years because of a fatwaat, ordering his murder because of an anti-Muslim movie he made. When Steve Bannon had an event for him in Texas, there was serious security. It was hardcore. They patted you down. They used metal detectors. I felt safe and I felt the Heralders was safe. Tommy Robinson was not safe Thursday night.

Donald Trump was not safe Saturday night. It's because we have not internalized the fact that it's a war now. It is a war. The time of Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and all the other appeasers is over. We are in an internal war with institutions that think it's okay to murder us. Who's this Ilan Pilker?

Who's this guy? Hassan Piker. Asan Piker is going on mainstream media with liberal journalists saying that it's okay to murder your political opponents,

that it was okay to murder the United Health Care Executive. And he's walking around. He's perfectly fine. He's perfectly safe. This is the difference between you, you and I,

we know that murder is unacceptable. We don't think that you can, kill someone because you disagree with them. This is not a war. This is not, but the people on the left don't believe that. They don't believe that. And what's interesting, John, is it does make logical sense.

If you don't believe we're created in God's image, if you don't believe, you know, the Bible is the word of God. And you have a different set of values. And your values are power. We want to win. If we have to kill, we'll kill. It's a completely different set of values. And they're being logically consistent in the same way that Hitler was.

being logically consistent. If those people are subhuman, I can kill them. Why can't I kill them? The Communist Party in China, they don't believe that we're made in God's image. They don't believe in God. So if there's a group of people messing with the state,

we can kill them. If we can profit off of their organs, why wouldn't we do that? This is the logic of the Marxist, Godless less. But our side isn't even working within the law. Just Friday night, John Thune in an empty chamber allowed the funding bill that defunds ICE, defunds Homeland Security.

And he is supposedly a conservative Republican from South Dakota. For a long time, I've said that the rhinos have internalized the mission statement of the Washington generals, go out there and lose to the Harlem Globetrotters gracefully every single night. The problem is we're not playing against the Harlem Globetrotters. We're playing against the Black Panthers. So imagine the Washington generals against armed Black Panther terrorists. That is the battle between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

When one guy dressed up as a rodeo clown and made fun of Barack Obama, they ruined his entire life. We are seeing repeated assassination attempts, and I don't think it's being taken seriously enough. somebody dressed up as a rodeo clown back when Obama was in president was president a guy dressed up as a rodeo clown dressed up as Obama and made fun of him and his life was destroyed I don't I don't

I guess his life was so thoroughly destroyed that I've never heard of him or this incident but I get the point we're going to go to break folks I'm talking to John Zmirak I want to remind you if you have not preordered my book if you go to my website ericanttaxas.com and pre-order the book

we will send you a PDF of the book. You can read it immediately. Take us up on that. Folks, this is important. If Medicare has you confused, if you've got questions, we understand, and this is why we recommend our friends at Chapter, they're there to help you, to kind of talk you through what might work best for you. This is very important that you get it right.

You can call them at 571-421-1253. These are our friends at Chapter 571, 421, 1253. Welcome back. We're talking to John Zmirak. Yes, yes. John Zmirak himself is on the program. So, John, you were saying that the security was horribly lax at the event. I just want to, I haven't talked about it on the program the last few days.

But whenever something like this happens, you try to get the details and you never really do. I mean, for example, everything that happened happened on a floor above the ballroom. So it's not like it happened right outside the door of the ballroom. So he didn't get that close. I mean, I'm not trying to make apologies for the lack of security or the lax security, but he was on another floor. It's very, the whole thing is very strange. He was trying to get down to the ballroom level. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine, the defender, Octa, is taking on the Dakar rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca.

Square knows that in hospitality, efficiency is everything. That's why their system lets you take payments. Track sales, handle inventory, manage staff, send invoices, and keep up with finances all in one place. Fly through orders with zero mistakes. Get the data you need and keep everything working. working together. So you're ready for whatever's next. Learn more about their customized little plans that's screw up.com. He was staying in the hotel and had a long rifle, a sniper rifle and a shotgun. How do you get to stay in the hotel where the president's giving a speech with large military

weapons? Well, look, no, that's one level of stupid. I mean, there's no doubt that that's, that's insane. But I'm still saying that he didn't get. near. He didn't get close. He didn't get to, you know, he was on another floor. It was the floor above the ballroom level. I've been to this Washington Hilton many times. I gave my big speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2012. I, you know, I spoke from that stage. It's a huge, huge room. And there are many levels to get down to that room and so on and so forth. And so I get a I'm a little confused as to what his actual plan was. You know, it's one thing to say, oh, I got close.

I had some weapons, but he did not get close to the president. So, Eric, I don't, I've never been to this ballroom. Let me ask you this. If instead of a sniper rifle and a shotgun, he had had a hand grenade that he was willing to throw, could he have hit the, the dais with all the cabinet? No. No? Okay.

No, no, I mean, he's on another floor. This is what I'm saying. He's on another floor. So it's, this is what I find fascinating is with news stories in general. They don't break it down so that you really understand what the heck's going on. They just talk. And he was running down an unguarded stairwell. He was running down an unguarded stairwell and he got to within one floor where the cabinet was.

I know. But I mean, one floor, like there's all kinds of security. So it's just, I mean, I can see both sides of the argument. argument about security because it seems like there were many mistakes, but it's not like he got, you know, to the very door of the ballroom. He didn't seem to get near that. Again, maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I understand. Let's shift ears here a little bit to the reactions to it. Have you ever heard of a professor named John Milbank in Britain? No. He leaves a movement that calls itself radical orthodoxy.

They claim to be Orthodox Christians, but they like Marxism. And they're viciously anti-capitalist and anti-Western, but they're always quoting the church fathers to give themselves political cover. I regularly see weird Catholics and evangelicals

quoting John Milbank and citing radical orthodoxy when they're arguing for open borders or gun control or other issues where the left is trying to prevail. Well, I just saw something on X. John Milbank compared this terrorist you tried to wipe out the cabinet

to Dietrich Bonhofer. I'm not surprised somebody hasn't done that before. I mean, I was actually thinking of it. I was, excuse me, interviewing a few people before you. And I was thinking, for sure, that is what some of these folks are thinking. They're thinking, Trump is Hitler. What did Bonhofer do?

He got involved in the plot to kill Hitler. We've got to kill Hitler. We don't know the details. We just know we've got to stop Hitler. There are people. They may be wrong. They are wrong. But they somehow believe they've they've whipped themselves up into this frenzy where they actually believe that Trump is a fascist, you know, killing millions of Jews or something.

I don't know what they think. There was a congressman, a black woman congressman quite elderly. I don't remember her name. It wasn't Shirley Chisholm. No, no. And that was the first thing that came to mind, but she's not with this anymore. Maxine Waters called ICE, the Gestapo,

and said that deporting illegals was ethnic cleansing. Now, when you have members of Congress saying things like that, you're starting that Dietrich Bonhoeffer fantasy in the minds of thousands of people around the country. Definitely. That's like Bishop in West Richard. A Catholic bishop in West Virginia said it was it was just to frustrate and defy ice the way it was to defy the slave catchers under the Fugitive Slave Act and the Nazis committing generous. Listen, I know they actually believe this and they're so sloppy. We'll be right back talking to John's Mirac.

I don't like alarmism. I don't like fearmongering. I especially don't like people who profit from panic. But I do believe in telling the truth, especially when the markets are reminding us how fragile things are. Over the last few weeks, we've all watched the volatility, stock swinging, confidence shaking, long-estanding assumptions, suddenly looking less solid. Many economists are calling this moment the everything bubble, where nearly every asset class has been inflated at the same time by years of cheap money and reckless global policy. This isn't political. It's not partisan. It's math. And when confidence erodes, history shows us what tends to happen next.

That's why I've taken time to educate myself on one of the oldest ways people have protected wealth during uncertainty. Physical gold and silver. I've partnered with Genesis Gold Group, a faith-based, values-driven company offering clear information, no hype, no pressure. They've put together a free financial survival report explaining what's happening why multiple markets can fall together and what prudent steps families can consider now. I encourage you to read it and decide for yourself. Please go to metaxis gold IRA.com. That's metaxis gold IRA.com. You don't need to panic, but you do need to be informed in times like these. Wisdom matters more than optimism. Welcome back talking to John Smirak. So John, what we're talking about is how the left has

convinced themselves. And let's face it, they really believe that, that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler, that his supporters are fascists, and the only way you can win is, you know, through violence. They have convinced themselves to this. And let's just be clear, the only way it's possible for them to convince themselves of this is you have to be either stupid or ignorant or uneducated. Because if you know the fact, you can't come to these conclusions. You can still be upset. but they don't know what America is, what our laws are, they don't know history. So this is very sloppy parallels that you're making.

This guy was a Caltech graduate. You and I couldn't pass the minimal math requirements for Caltech, you know? Remember the SATs? I get that math score up. Let me take it one more time. This guy's not ignorant. He's not stupid. Lenin and Stalin were not ignorant and stupid.

Hitler and Goebbels were not ignorant or stupid. It's evil. It's demonic. That's the key thing. These are demonic ideas that are being echoed and that are being amplified. Hang on a second. I think you can be ignorant or stupid and demonic. In other words, I think that evil works through ignorance.

In other words, if you know the truth, you can be, I mean, I actually posted this on X that this guy's IQ is through the roof. He's brilliant. Yeah. But he is tremendously foolish. In other words, you can be very smart and tremendously foolish. Obviously, Satan has an IQ higher than ours, barely, but he does. And he is the definition of foolishness to go against God.

That's what we're dealing with here. And if you had been taught as a, because it's both, right, John, if you're taught as a kid, why America is exceptional. And if you're taught why we should love America, what I talk about in my book, if you can keep it, which you will know. if you're taught that, it's harder to have an open door for evil to get in. But if you don't know that,

if you're ignorant of all that stuff, there's a door open for evil to get in and to twist you. I totally agree that it's important to train young people and vulnerable people to inoculate them against these intellectual viruses, to give them antioxidant against these moral cancers. Right. But at some point, if they are going to pretend that Donald Trump is Hitler and that violent attacks on him and his supporters are justified, we have to accept the fact that these people are as dangerous as any communists who ever walk the earth. They are Paul Pot.

They're a Moutsy tongue. They're Lenin. They're Stalin. They are, in fact, trying to impose an ideology that I've heard. called race communism, where instead of the bourgeoisie being the source of all evil, white people in Western culture are the source of all evil. And they've developed a genocidal hatred of the West and of Israel. And a lot of the anti-Semitism just comes because the left has finally decided the Jews are

white too. In fact, they're the ultimate white people. And the Palestinians are the oppressed minority. They're just like the illegal immigrants. They're just like the homeless. These people are the victims, and we must righteously fight, literally fight, on behalf of these people who are being subjected to genocide. And by genocide, they mean sending drug dealers who snuck into the country back to Ecuador. That's genocide.

That's ethnic cleansing. That's not just stupid. That's demonically, willfully ignorant. I want to remind people of Dostoevsky's famous novel, The Possessed or The Devils. It's all about intellectuals who purposely prostitute their God-given intellects to the pursuit of hatred, and it leaves to chaos and destruction of the kind we saw

during the George Floyd riots. It's a great novel. It's kind of thick, but I found there's an adaptation of it available on Amazon, called The Possessed. It's like a five-episode thing. If you don't want to sit down and read a 400-page Russian novel, stream it on Amazon.

I'm planning out watching it this week and writing something about it. Wait, somebody made a TV series based on Dostoevsky's The Possessed? The Possessed. Yep. In English. No, no, I think it's subtitled. And I'm going to make my poor girlfriend watch it with me.

And the title is The Possessed or the Devils? Which one did they go with? I think it's the Possessed. Okay. And when did this come out? You say it's on Amazon Prime. A few years ago. Amazing.

Yeah. I'm just to make such a thing exists. People need to see it. Well, we're going to go to a break. We're going to go to a break. But, John, this is, it's important that we talk about this. So, folks, we'll be right back. Let me remind you, please, to pre-order my book.

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I just before we went to the new segment was reminding my audience that if they go to my website, Ericxas.com, and pre-order the book, which will be delivered to your house in January 2nd, sorry, June 2nd. We will send you a PDF so you can read the book, right now. Very few people have read the book right now. Almost no one has, but one of those people who has read the book is John Zmirak. John Zemirak, the fact that you like the book as much as you did, according to what you said to me, means so much to me. I was really thrilled, and I'm glad that you have read the book. Oh, it was great fun. As I said in my blurb, it's an earnest

patriotic Christian scholarly look at the origins of the American. American Revolution stuffed with cringe anecdotes and Ripley's believe it or not factoids and embarrassing outtakes of especially the sort of degenerate depraved British aristocrats who were the opponents of the revolution. And I want to say, I want to thank you for writing the first book that convinced me to side with the colonists against the British. Now, you're sort of not kidding. But I think I'm sort of not kidding because

as a conservative I tend to see revolutions is a bad thing. As a Catholic, I tend to see hierarchy as a good thing. The fact that so much in the American revolution was based on sort of

evangelical Protestantism. No kings, no popes, no bishops. It made me sort of sympathetic to the Tories. And I thought, you know, these people were just being loyal to the government they'd grown up with. And they were just upset about some, about a tax ride, a tax raise. Should we overthrow the government when the Democrats raise our taxes? No. So my instincts, despite loving this country, have always been to think maybe the American Revolution did not

meet the criteria for just war. And I've, you know, that's something that I'm kind of struggled with. astonished to think that my book would have convinced you otherwise. I mean, I'm, I'm, I guess I couldn't be prouder of, of my effort if that's the case, because I do think, I mean, listen, I told you this. When I went into writing the book, I did not know half of this stuff. I mean, it really, in the research, it comes out and you think, we need, I need to tell the world what I've discovered here, because it's not being taught in schools. Most Americans don't know this stuff. So, yes, tell us why my book convinced you. So.

Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flame thrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Yeah, because going in, I had like seen the Sons of Liberty TV series, and Sons of Liberty

just made me think, you know, these guys are like Antifa. These are like the French Revolution. They make it seem like the French Revolution. And we know that that does not, that was not a Christian revolution. Right. So what you showed is that the American colonists were actually the conservatives. They had had these institutions of self-fuscaries. government for hundreds of years.

And the British had not been directly ruling them, had not been directly taxing them. So they were trying to conserve the status quo, the working, healthy, patriotic, Christian country that they had inherited. And the British were coming in and trying to change things. They were acting like the Biden administration going after the January 6th protesters. They were like the FBI shutting down pro-lifeers or destroying the Tea Party movement. They were, in other words, there was a new authoritarian strain in British government that was trying to turn the screws on people who had governed themselves successfully for hundreds of years. And this new British elite, and this is what I really learned for your book, were profoundly secular, cynical,

post-Christian. They were like Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein sitting on the island. They were like George Soros and Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. They were a global secular elite trying to crack down on what they regarded as ignorant Bible thumping peasants who cling to their guns than Bibles, as Obama said scornfully about Americans. So your book helped me to see the Tories and the British as being like the blue state elites, the people at the Atlantic Monthly and Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations. They were cynical. They thought Christianity was cute.

They liked the forms. They thought it, they liked it the way the female lesbian Archbishop of Canterbury thinks it's fun to play dress-up in the same vestments that St. Thomas Beckett once wore. But they've hollowed that Christianity out to be a skin suit, and they can do live action role-playing in it. But the real Christians and the real conservatives and the real patriots were the colonists who were clinging to core biblical Christianity and defending principles of self-government that they had enjoyed for hundreds of years and which worked. I'm so thrilled that my book communicated these things to you. I really couldn't be more happy, John,

because it wasn't really my goal in a way to do that. I just wanted to tell the story of the revolution. You know, just tell the story, the big, fun, crazy story, which is a story of many stories. But in the course of doing that, all of this stuff came out at me. And I mean, I knew a little bit about the decadence of the Georgian era elites from my Wilberforce book, but it really does come out

that they are a different tribe of people than the American colonists. I mean, there's just no way around it. The decadence, the elitism, basically, that the sneering at, you know, these Bible-faced Yankees, as somebody called them, I forget who, in my book,

but that really does come out. Can you tell us about Champagne Charlie? Champagne Charlie. It's the best part of the book. I know it's so funny, right? My problem when I write a book is like I'll stumble on something and I go, oh, that's so weird and cool and interesting. And I just want to like, you know, write about that because it's so crazy.

And in the book, there are a number of these decadent British figures who are so entertaining that even when they're bad, They're entertaining. They're entertaining because they're so bad. And one of them is Charles Townshend, after whom the Townshend acts are named. And he's one of these figures that you couldn't make them up. Like if you had to, if you're going to have a film version, maybe we'll do a TV series based on this someday, who would play Champagne Charlie? I mean, you've got to get somebody.

John Goodman. John Goodman. John Goodman? No. No, no. No. I don't know. It would have to be somebody,

first of all, have to be somebody much younger because Champagne Charlie was he died when he was only 42. But the point is that these are these entitled British elites. He's given a seat in parliament. He's 21 years old.

And he's famous for drinking and carousing. And he is brilliantly witty. And, but anyway, just so people understand who he was, he was the person who I guess it was when Pitt when William Pitt becomes the

finally becomes Prime Minister he kind of says okay William Pitt's one of the good guys but he says listen we need to deal with we've got to get some revenue from the colonies we want to do it in the right way so William Pet was really a hero but

he makes the mistake of appointing Charles Townshend to kind of deal with this. And Pitt had a lot of health issues. And so he has a lapse in health. He had gout and depression and all kinds of stuff. And in the midst of one of these episodes where he's really not on the scene, Champagne Charlie leaps to seize the tiller of the nation.

And he rams through four acts, the Townshend acts, which were taxes on the colonies. This is after the Stamp Act. So the Stamp Act is this big thing in 1765, which gets defeated. And the Americans think, okay, it's all done. Everything is good. And so now Champagne Charlie comes in and you have the Townshend Act. And this was really bad. And the whole, I don't know where to go.

This guy who loses the colonies for England essentially, right? Why did they call him? Champagne, Charlie. Tell us about the famous speech. Well, yeah, the famous, I wish I could read it, actually. I like to read from my book, but I don't have a copy of the book here. But basically, he gives a speech in Parliament, and then he goes off to have dinner. And at dinner, he drinks, like, a ton of champagne and other spirits. It was pretty clear. And he comes back to Parliament. So you can just picture this. It's like 10 or 11 o'clock at night. Parliament meets like 3 a.m. and he gives a wild drunken speech

that everyone was transfixed by the comic genius of it and all everyone talks about for days and days after is like, did you hear the speech of Champagne Charlie? He became known as Champagne Charlie after that basically.

And it was a completely nonsensical speech where he was just making fun of people and he did it for hours. And nobody interrupted because it was so entertaining. Exactly. And Horace Walpole.

Kind of reminds me of Senator Kennedy from Louisiana who gets up there and does that foghorn leghorn impression. I do declare that we need to fund ass fully. Something like that. Yeah. Well, Champagne, Charlie, there's a lot of that stuff in the book, just like really fun, crazy characters that make it all more interesting. We'll be right back talking to John Smirak.

Folks, do not forget. If you have questions about gold, For Silver, we recommend, highly recommend, Genesis Gold. They'll answer your questions. We trust them. We believe in them. And you can find them at metaxis gold IRA.com. Metaxusgoldirra.com. Hey there, folks. I've been saying that 2026 must be the year of accountability. Whether talking about government spending or the way we steward our own families, we have a moral duty to seek the truth. But let's be honest, in the world of Medicare, truth is often the first casualty. Seniors, like my 91-year-old mom, are bombarded with mailers and pushy phone calls that feel more like propaganda than helpful guidance. This is why I value my partners at Chapter. They operate on a different principle, independence.

Chapter is the only national advisor that reviews every single plan available to ensure you have the coverage that actually fits your needs. They've helped people find clarity and on average have historically helped members save an average of $1,100 a year on health care costs. Their support is completely free and takes under 20 minutes. If you have questions about your Medicare or want to ensure you're a good steward of your resources, please call Chapter at 571-421-1-2-5-3. That's Chapter at 571-4-21-125. Talk to a real person and get the honest answers you do. deserve. Welcome back talking to John Zmirak. John, you wanted to talk about my book. It's a little

embarrassing because I'm supposed to be interviewing you about the news of the day, but since you just read the book, it is relevant to the news of the day, okay? Because what you and I are defending are the fundamental sane, virtuous Christian biblical principles of self-government, natural law, rights granted by God, man is the image of God. These are all the things the colonists were fighting for. And the people who are the rebel today are fighting against that. They believe that we are accidental byproducts, a genetic mutation in a universe that came about purely by accident. That's one of billions of multiverse universes, which mean nothing.

And when we die, our souls drop like a match in Darwin's toilet. And so in the absence of a genuine biblical faith in the divinity of Christ and providence backing up history, they grab pieces of Christian morality and cobbled them together into kind of a Frankenstein monster of anti-racism and diversity and inclusion. I mean, if they really were consistent Darwinian materialists, they would see that there's no biological test that shows you that racism is wrong or that people are equal or that life is sacred. None of that makes sense if you're a scientific materialist. But they're grabbing, they're creating kind of a cargo cult or Frankenstein fake Christianity. And I'm thinking my next book might be on white guilt as the new gospel of Antichrist.

White guilt is the elite view that white people are held to a certain high standards of inclusivism. We have to have open borders. We have to have affirmative action. We have to kind of hate ourselves for our privilege. But everybody else can act like a tribalist, can unify according to their race, can have racial grievances. Everybody else is held to this lower standard. we alone are held at this higher standard, somehow they don't see how racist this is, that they're treating every other group as whole to a lower, in their view, subhuman standard.

They're like British colonials in Pithelmets sneering at the natives, and yet they're congratulating themselves on how virtuous and inclusive and tolerant they are. And again, this is just them grabbing bits and pieces to try to find some meaning in their futile, ridiculous lives. Actually, I mean, it is interesting that, you know, when I think about what was going on in the revolution, it really is, it is a case of the British elites had lost touch with what they supposedly believed in. They had drifted away from it.

And the Americans are trying to hold their feet to the fire and saying, no, no, no, no, remember John Locke, remember our rights come from God, remember all this stuff that you theoretically had established in the 17th century, you're forgetting it now, and they were forgetting it. They were deliberately forgetting it. They were smacking it away and saying, we can't be bothered with that. I mean, except for people like William Pitt and Edmund Burke

and a handful of others. Right. So in my blurb, I said that in addition to all the pleasure and interest, one thing I took away from your book was the feeling of having dodged a bullet. And on that bullet was written, end up like Canada. Now, without the American Revolution.

I burst out loud when I read that. But excuse me, but you, just to be clear, so you wrote this endorsement for my book. And at the end of it, you said just what you said, but just to be clear, that when you read of how America came into being, you get this creepy feeling like we could have ended up. Like, if this hadn't happened, if the revolution hadn't happened, we would have ended up just like Canada. And then you said, and I said, Canada, which is now euthanizing people for back pain. and they really are. Like 1% of the population in Canada has been euthanized in the last 10 years.

I mean, more Canadians have been killed by you, maybe, no, I'm sorry, it's the third leading cause of death. That's what it is. More Canadians have been killed by euthanasia than died fighting in World War II. Think about that. It's like a Normandy beach up there.

I mean, I knew it was possible, but you're telling me that that's really, staggering, those statistics. That's frightening. But anyway, I guess that the point is that it was all done in the name. It was all done in the name of dignity and compassion, dignity and compassion. Because these people, their lives are unbearable. So they would point to like some extreme case of someone with Lou Gehrig's disease in constant pain. Sarah Palin, of all people, warned where that led. She said it's going to lead to debt panels because they have socialized medicine and they want to save money.

Now, literally a woman just a couple weeks ago went into the doctor in Canada with severe lasting back pain and the first thing they offered her was euthanasia. We will be right back with John Smirik.

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Call for a free case review and find out how much your case is potentially worth. Thanks, Vernon. You heard the man. Call now to find out how much money you qualify for. Welcome back talking to John Zamirak. That's his real name. John, you have seen the film, the theory of everything. Our friend Stephen Meyer, who I've interviewed many times for Socrates and City.

he figures prominently in my book is atheism dead he and the folks at Discovery Institute have made a great film called The Theory of Everything and you've written about it at Chronicles magazine so that's right

tell us about this yeah I've got a piece and it's entitled uh sorry looking up a film that could change a student's life

now we're talking about how Darwinian materialism hollowed out Christian faith and how there are all these young people running around joining Antifa, Black Lives Matter, transgender furry groups, or going to the radical fringe right

and becoming anti-Semitic fanatics or are looking for conspiracies everywhere, suggesting that Charlie Kirk shot himself. I mean, I don't know what the latest craziness is, but this is happening, this is what happens to people when you tell them their life has no meaning. Their thoughts are not their own. They're just the biological side effects of neurons firing.

They don't have free will. There is no life after death. There is no less judgment. The universe is a blank, pitiless ant farm with no creator behind it. You tell people that, the emptiness in their soul, they have to fill it with something. And so they fill it with nonsense, gibberish, like anti-racism or transgenderism. The human soul is like a vacuum.

It needs something to fill it. And if the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't fill it, then it will be filled with Islam or anti-Semitic fanaticism or transgender lunacy or anti-racist open borders, white guilt self masochism it will be filled by something people need a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives and dark the pseudoscience the expired outdated science of darwinian materialism is what creates the vacuum and makes it seem impossible and ignorant to believe in the that god directly created man that jesus became man died and rose from the dead and we will be raised the perception that science has somehow debunked all this is a very powerful driver of all the madness

that we're seeing around us. And the film, the story of everything by our friends of the Discovery Institute is opening in like a week. And what it does is debunk the fake science of Darwinian materialism all the way back to the origin of the universe, to the Big Bang, to the fine-tuning that made it possible that any life would emerge in the universe, to the conditions on Earth that would allow complex life to arise, to the origin of life from dead chemicals sitting on a cooling planet, somehow lightning strikes a pool full of chemicals and turns those chemicals into the complex nanotechnology factory that is the most primitive cell. And then the development of man from lower animals. At every stage, the 19th century Victorian scientific materialism falls apart.

It can't answer the questions. We have to make the case because folks, believing that insane myth that life emerges out of non-life by accident, it is an insane myth. And it's very embarrassing that people believe this. I mean, people, we've been catechized to think that's embarrassing to believe Jesus rose from the dead. The Bible is true. God created the universe. We should be embarrassed not to believe that. We should be embarrassed to believe this materialist myth.

It is insane. It's now demonstrably insane. In my book, Is Atheism Dead, which we're turning into a TV series, we deal with that. But the theory, the story of everything, which is this film deals with that brilliantly. And we need more and more. and more of this kind of teaching so that people can say, oh, I didn't know this before. I didn't hear this in school.

Especially for young people who are in high school, heading off to college, they're about to be indoctrinated by this nihilist madness that will open them up to all sorts of crazy radical ideologies. And good people at Discovery are offering free tickets for students. Go to Fandango and they have a promo code story student. and college students, a limited number, can get free tickets to the story of everything.

And people can read it in your article, which is what's the website for Chronicles? Chronicles Magazine. It's the best conservative magazine in America. I've been writing there since 1992, and I've got a column about it over at Chronicles. Everybody should be subscribing to Chronicles magazine, and I posted it on X.

We're out of time. John Zmirak, thank you very much. Thank you.