The Eric Metaxas Show - #129 - James Lindsay

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with James Lindsay about America’s identity crisis, the launch of Revolution, and why false ideologies rush in when a nation forgets who it is. They discuss Nazism, Marxism, eugenics, Darwinism, the French Revolution, Charlie Kirk’s question about what it means to be an American, rising antisemitism on the left and right, the Sinai covenant, and why recovering America’s founding story may be essential to keeping the republic. 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/0ir3Nlap

The 26 Chevrolet Tracks is the stylish SUV for those on the move. And with the standard Chevy safety assist package, you have the backup to handle every turn with confidence. The 26 tracks, start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Hey there, folks, welcome to the show. Welcome to the week. It falls to me to welcome you to the week itself. I don't know how I got that job, but I got it.

And I'm going to go with it. Welcome to Monday. Tomorrow, this is a big week for me. that's almost an understatement because tomorrow, the book, Revolution, the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world, comes out officially tomorrow. So I'm going to be doing a ton of media and all kinds of stuff,

and then I'm traveling like a lunatic. I'll be in Houston preaching in a church on Sunday. I'll be in California at Greg Lorry's church, the following Sunday, and on and on it goes, just more than anything I've ever done around a book. But I think it's because there's something so central to what I write about in this book. It's not about me or the fact that I wrote the book,

but the ideas of it are what is America? What is our story? How did we come into being? What are these values? Do you know these values? Do you know where our rights come from? Have you thought about that? Kind of important.

So I will push you to take that seriously in this our 250th super centennial year. Please read the book. I don't care if you steal it. Why not steal it? Steal it from Barnes & Noble or from wherever fine books are sold and read it and share it because we have to know this story. And I thought today it would be fun to talk to somebody who kind of does know what America

is and what our values are and where they come from and what liberty is. And his name, of course, is James Lindsay. James Lindsay, welcome back. Just encouraging just to see your face. Thanks for coming on. You know, it's true of you as well, Eric. And, you know, I like this, welcoming people to the week. Shavua Tov. A lot of people don't know about the Shavutov. After Shabbat or Sabbath ends in Hebrew-speaking countries like Israel, they all greet each other with good week. Shavuatov is what that means. So, you know, the rest is over. The week is about to begin. You have this weird evening after Shabbat.

It's called Mose Shabbat, the leaving of Shabbat, the exit of Shabbat. And they greet each other with good week to remind each other that six good days are coming. And, you know, you got this book coming up, Eric. I've seen your propaganda on Instagram, and I've got to tell you it's great. I've watched a bunch of these clips. I think they're fantastic. And I think what you, not to shill your book for you, because obviously I wasn't intending to do that. And I didn't realize it was coming out this.

quickly when you invited me on. But the fact is you are tapping into exactly what I've been thinking about for a number of weeks now, which is that I think the crisis that we find in America, particularly when we look at the millennial and the Gen Z and even the younger generations in that, is that we have kind of this deracinated American identity. We don't know who we are. Our young people in particular, like I got, I got raised on Founding Father's Propaganda in the early 80s. But as we go forward schooling from the 90s after Howard Zinn kind of becomes a mainstay in the schools into the 2000s when everything went intersectional and woke. These younger people have not learned who they are as Americans and they're searching for an American identity. And my reading

right now is all about the Nazis. And I feel like when we look at the Nazis in the 1920s going into the early 1930s and we read their mythology like Alfred Rosenberg, his myth of the 20th century, or we read Mein Kampf in Hitler's. anger. What we see is a Germany that had lost its identity as well, and it was searching for it, and it found it in this evil ideology. And this threat is present in America as well. So your book about revolution, telling the story of America, reminding especially young people, who we are as a people, I think is exactly the remedy we need right now. This is exactly the message the world needs is to tell our, especially again, young people, but our older people can mentor the younger people,

so they need to know it too, who we really are, where we really came from, what we really stand for, so we can have a deeply rooted American identity that can't get blown around in these ideological wins. So thank you so much for your book. Very excited to see it coming. Well, listen, I, that's very kind of you. And I have to say, no kidding. You know, I've said it many times, but I never dreamt that I would write a book in the American Revolution. I mean, even two years ago, before I made the decision, if somebody's

He said, do you think you write a book on the American Revolution? I'd be like, I've never even thought of that. I've never even thought of that. And my friend Seth Ward, I mentioned him in the acknowledgments page. He said, he read my chapter on George Washington in my book Seven Men. And it hit him so hard. He said, Eric, you need to write the whole story. And I thought, wow, the story of the revolution, that's a monster thing.

And I have to say, and I think many people who listen to this program would understand, I believe it's God's providence in my own life, that God called me to write this book now, Christians say for such a time as this, because frankly, we've never needed to know it more than now, partially because we've forgotten it. You just said, I mean, with Howard Zinn coming in, I mean, I caught the tail end in the 70s in grade school of people who loved America and are teaching this. I caught the tail end to that. It went out of the culture. After the bicentennial, it just goes out of the culture. and you're not taught merely not taught not to love America.

You're taught to be skeptical or to hate America. And that has been part of the oxygen we've been breathing. And it is unbelievably harmful. It is so harmful and it has brought us to this existential crisis. I mean, under the Biden administration, we just about lost the nation, folks. We just about lost the nation because you have enough people that don't know how important this stuff is. and if ever there were a time for us to refresh ourselves

or to learn this stuff, I, you know, again, in retrospect, I could see that I'm glad, of course I'm glad I wrote my book because you can just go here, read this and you'll get it. It's all here. It's not part of the story. This is the whole story. But the vital importance of it at this moment, James.

I mean, when you talk about the Nazis, obviously I wrote about that in my Bonhofer book, but when people don't know, the truth, because we're made in the image of God, whether we acknowledge it or not, we're looking for truth. We're looking for answers. And you will find answers, whether they're the wrong, diabolical answers or the right answers. And if it's the diabolical answers that you find, you'll ride that tiger until it eats you. And then you'll discover, oh, this was bad. That is kind of where we are. There are people that are banking on, you know, Marxism or whatever ideology

we have to assert the truth that our rights come from God, or even if you don't believe that, that's what our founders believed. And because they believed that and we're willing to risk their lives for that, we got this thing called America, which has been pretty wonderful. So it's kind of crazy, James, to think that there are so many Americans that don't know this, but it's even crazier to think that we have major people in journalism at CNN, major senators, Diane Feinstein or whoever else,

or Tala Rico who wants to be a senator, they don't get this. And you think, is it possible that in America you could have leaders that would not understand this? Is it possible? Yes, it's possible. Here we are. Yeah. I mean, it's like, like I said, I've been reading all this stuff, the myth of the 20th century

from Alfred Rosenberg stands out. And I'm like, why did this guy think this stuff? You know, this Nazi ideology is so crazy. It's all rooted in mysticism and all this really strange stuff. The deep hatred, he has an entire chapter, but is deep hatred of Christianity. and what it did to Europe by transforming Europe from an honor culture to a love and pity and charity and whatever else weak society. He has this entire worldview. And I'm thinking, well, why did he think this?

And we look at the changes that were happening in the world. This is 1930. He publishes this. So what's been going on in the world, you know, historically? What, what you had was the 19th century comes and goes. I like to say that the entirety of the 19th century was a mistake. But one of the things that happened in the 19th century was. was that science started to mature.

You have, whether it's, you know, the biological sciences are now going in the Darwinian direction. You have electromagnetism completely upending classical physics. You have the, by 1906, 1908, you have Einstein publishing relativity. So you have this complete transformation of the sciences, which is displacing the way that people thought about the world before that. So now you have people who don't know how to think about themselves. The stories they told themselves about themselves aren't sticking with. people the way that they did before. And they've latched on to all this pseudoscience, this racial eugenics program was one of the big, I mean, whether it's the Nazis, obviously, or the progressives

across every country, every Western country got latched into this progressive, theosophical, you know, eugenics type belief, whether it's Margaret Sanger starting Planned Parenthood, whether it's, you know, just the progressive movement in the U.S. or in Europe, eugenics or the Fabian Socialists. This was hot stuff. So these people are searching. Then what you have is World War I, this giant war, nobody understands exactly why it happened. It's a very confusing thing, and the Germans are insulted that they lost because they thought they were invincible. They didn't start the war, as a matter of fact. They kind of got dragged into it like everybody else, and then they lose, and they lose bad.

And then the whole of Europe turns against them and blames them for it. And America blames them for it. Everybody blames them for it. The Treaty of Versailles comes. They have this terrible economy. The U.S. is like, that's unsustainable, starts lending them huge amounts of money. to stabilize their economy. It actually works. And then we get hit with the Great Depression here in the U.S.

And wham, 1929, the German economy is over for a second time in a decade. Everybody's lost. And then you have this, like you said, diabolical answer for who the Germans really are that gets introduced on the back of all the pseudoscience. And I just, when I read this, Eric, I bring it up because I just see parallel after parallel after parallel to the way our young people today, you know, whether it's AI, whether it's social media, whether it's the Internet, whether it's, you know, the Marxist incursion in our education system or in society, they're just pushed off of their roots. I'm going to cut you off. We're going to be right back much more on this.

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That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome back. I'm talking to my friend James Lindsay,

who is a great encouragement to me, and I hope he can be to you as well. James, you know, you're talking about how when there is like a truth vacuum, something will come in to fill it, something evil. And when you talk about the Nazis, I mean, you were just talking about the run-up

of how we get to a place in 1930 where Alfred Rosenberg is writing these lunatic screeds about things and eugenics. And I just want to go back and say that, you know, folks, this is the problem with Darwinism, right? Darwinism says there's no God and life just popped into being by itself. Now, cells are so complicated that that alone is the stupidest thing.

But science said, like, oh, yeah, it happened. Life just pops up. There's water. Life pops up. That is insane. But they believed it. And in 1859, Darwin writes his thing and says, oh, yeah. And then life just evolved.

And here we are. Life has no meaning. We're just here. And there's no God. That, if you believe that, leads to some nasty stuff. And one of those things, which you just mentioned, James, eugenics. So you think, okay, Darwinism, so we just evolve.

So maybe as human beings, we can work with that. We can weed out those groups that are not so evolved. You know, the darker races, we don't like them. They're not as evolved. We believe in evolution. We don't believe in everybody being equal. They're less equal. And so let's work with that.

And that's what the Nazis do. They basically say this race is superior. The Japanese did the same thing. This race is superior. Those races are inferior. The superior races should subjugate, should enslave or wipe out the inferior races. Follows perfectly Darwinian logic. If there's no God, there's no right, no wrong.

Why shouldn't we do it? It's the future. Margaret Sanger and others buy into this. And everybody says, well, this is just science. This is the science. It's the science that this group will rule over this group. In America, taking our views from the Bible, we say, sorry, that's wrong. We believe we're all created equal because God created us equal.

Because God created us equal. That leads to a radically different set of values. And what's amazing to me, James, is how many people, because they didn't really believe the biblical view. They didn't believe they were actually created equal by God. They went with the quote unquote scientific view, which of course is bad science, which is fake science. But they created a hell, a living hell, you know, whether it's in the death camps of Europe or in the gulag of the Soviet Union. It's, if you don't believe ideas have consequences, ladies and gentlemen, all you need to do is read history. And that's basically, James, what you're taking us through.

Yeah, that's right. So I read these Nazis. I'm so, I feel so blessed to have come up in America rather than in Europe when I read this. And part of the reason is, you know, like I said, they're having these identity crises and they have this pseudoscience and they latch their identity onto the pseudoscience. The Germans convinced themselves that they were of a superior racial stock and that the future of humanity depended upon finding and purifying that racial stock and unleashing it in the world. And therefore, they were completely justified. But the story they were, they were. were telling themselves is that this is what made them better than other people because they had lost their ability to believe that. And then the communist, it's the same thing. It's the same spiritual eugenics in a different form. They didn't feel like we had had some identity crisis and lost who we were. They felt like the powers that be, the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, or whoever were displacing us from our true social nature that was lost underneath and that if we could reassert who we really are through weeding out everybody who doesn't buy into it by killing them, by putting them in gulags, re-educating them, and murdering them, or starving them, then we could have a glorious utopian future. And in both cases, what you actually have is not just physical eugenics, like a pseudoscience, but a spiritual eugenics where only the people who believe correctly are allowed to survive. And that's why both of these ideologies rejected Judaism and Christianity so fundamentally. And Alfred Rosenberg is very clear. It is in fact that universal claim to justice and dignity that is man being made in the image of God, that he's specifically

rejecting. That's not true. He says that the man makes the belief, not the belief makes the man. He says that explicitly in the second chapter of the myth of the 20th century. So the man, his racial character, who he is, makes what he believes, and therefore Germans are superior, etc., etc. And we know what were that. He says, the future will tell us whether we're right. in the future told them World War II and a Holocaust, the Holocaust. So it's a horrifying error. And like I said, I read this. I read mine conf, Hitler criticizing parliaments as a weak form of government with all these problems.

And I'm reading it. And I'm like, well, Hitler's kind of right about parliaments. And he's pretty good analysis here. And I'm laughing to myself. And I'm thinking, my God, thank goodness for the founders, setting up a separate executive in legislature, setting up divided powers, setting up a split two-chamber legislature. So brilliant. Another hard break. We will pick up right there with James Lindsay. Folks, before we go, I want to recommend to you, in case you want to do something crazy and beautiful, we are doing another campaign with our friends at CSI. These folks are heroes. If you want to free a slave, literally, this is what CSI does. Every $250 sets one captive free and puts them into a life of freedom sets them up. This is important.

help us do this go to ericmetaxis.com click on the banner couldn't be easier please go to ericmetaxis com click on the banner very important welcome back i'm speaking to james lindsay james you were just making so many important points but you were finishing on this idea that you know listen the the devil uh or diabolical voices like hittlers they're not all wrong that's the whole idea is that they will take some true things and twist them. And so Hitler is saying like, yeah, parliaments, you know, cause trouble. And, you know, we need a strong leader, a furor. Well, the Americans in the 1770s and 1780s, they were thinking about this stuff, too.

What would a good government look like? They came up with a different view of things. They had a complete, they had different fundamental views of who we are as human beings. where our liberties come from, even the concept of liberty. And so it's fascinating because these problems come up over and over. And if you don't come up with the right answer,

you will come up with the wrong answer. And the wrong answer will hurt a lot of people, and that's putting it mildly. Yeah, that's exactly right, Eric. You picked up exactly what I was laying down there. I read this analysis of the parliament, being a weak form of government. He says hilarious things, actually, in Mink, like, it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than an election to find an honest man or something like this.

And just absolutely hilarious things. And, but he's got this dead to rights. But what he explains is what's necessary is effectively a dictatorship. What you need is a leader principle, what they called in German the Fuhrer principle. You need this leader dictatorship principle in order to replace the weakness and the corruption of parliaments. But our founders thought completely differently. If you read Federalist 51, which was either by Madison probably or Hamilton, maybe, you read Federalist 51. And it's talking about how the crucial issue is to divide the powers one from another and then to set various factions and their own interests against each other. You want senators to fill the Senate who have different interests from one another personally and for their constituents so that their own private interests will conflict with one another, cause a debate, and therefore. you don't get this weird factionalism. And they talk about the necessity of dividing the powers, but also keeping the nation unified under one large federal vision. And you see John Jay and

Federalist too talking about how important it is that we recognize ourselves as a cohesive people who have a common vision for what we want in this same context. And this is, he says, you know, it's by providence that we have similar people occupying a similar land with similar vision and therefore being able to create something like the world is never seen. And this is all rooted deeply on these Judeo-Christian principles. The fact that each person is made in the image of God is a image bearer of God and therefore has an equal claim to justice and dignity before the law and before God himself. And this is a absolutely complete rejection of the entire Nazi framework. And we see what happened, 250 years of peace, prosperity,

success, growth, well-being, and then in the United States, and then we look over to Nazi Germany, 12 years of calamity ending in utter catastrophe like the world has never seen. It's such a poignant story to tell. And so it's just wonderful to know that the story of our war for independence is being told in the hands of such a creative writer as yourself. Well, thank you. It is, funny though because I always I know I've said this many times but I when I started writing the story I thought I just want to tell the story of the birth of America for the 250th we need to know how it happened the story of the revolution and people kept asking me Eric what's your angle and I said I don't I don't have an angle I just want to tell the story because frankly you know there's all

these books but I want one book that tells the whole story and in the course of doing the research a lot of research I can't kept seeing things, I thought, wow, I guess I do have an angle because when you tell the story, these themes emerge, that they're inescapable, that everyone involved had this view that our rights come from God. That's why we're willing to die because we will not, we will not allow ourselves to be enslaved by Great Britain who tell us pay the tax or will harm you. It's like, that's bullying, that is evil. Like, no, we don't believe that you have the right to tax us. And We actually have principles.

And all this stuff kind of bubbles up and you realize, wow, we as Americans need to know this stuff. We need to know the nature of the British in that where they were barbaric. I didn't know that. And the Americans were profoundly Christian. It's completely inescapable. And they all were self-conscious about this idea that we're returning to the Sinai covenant. We're going to govern ourselves as the Israelites did without a king. because we're going to be under God.

We take that seriously. In the French Revolution, they didn't care about God, and it turns into a bloodbath. And so all this stuff is related, and it is actually very important that we understand this, folks. This is on the test.

This is important. We'll be right back talking to James Lindsay. 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.

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please call Chapter at 571-421-1-1253. That's chapter at 571, 421-1-2-5-3. Talk to a real person and get the honest answers you deserve. Welcome back talking to James Lindsay. James, we're talking about a lot of big stuff here. And I was saying, you know, before that I was amazed in the course of writing my book on The Revolution how basic these ideas are and how everybody used to understand this. And if you don't understand what,

they understood. Our rights come from God. And we really believe that we're made in God's image. So we're created equal. If you don't believe that, you're going to believe some dark stuff. And that dark stuff is going to take you into some dark places. And you already see that in the French Revolution that they said, yeah, we don't want a king. We agree with the Americans. Yeah, we want liberty. We agree with the Americans. But what they didn't do, what the Americans did, is they didn't say we have no king so we appeal to God and we're under God's authority we're one nation under God we get our rights from God

the French didn't do that so the French said well we'll see how it goes and how it went is it descends into an absolute bloodbath anarchy terror chaos and then a dictator emperor so you got rid of the king and now you got a dictator emperor I mean it's just this is why

why people need to study history and nobody knows this better than you do because you see these patterns. It's not like who knows. We can know. We can see over and over and over again. These are the good ideas. These are the bad ideas. The good ideas lead this way. The bad ideas lead this way. So if ever Americans needed to reaffirm our commitment to these good ideas, this would be it. We almost lost everything under the Biden administration. Folks, If you don't believe that, you're missing it. I know that this is the moment, Eric, because I hear this is the discussion. I mean, our friend, Charlie Kirk and I were having this debate just before we died.

The question is, what is an American? How central is this to what's happening right now? How is it going to be discussed? How is it going to be debated? He and I were going back and forth about, you know, well, is America a people in a place? Is it a idea, a proposition? Is it what, you know, Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg address that we're committed to this particular proposition that all men are created equal laid out in the declaration,

or are we something different? Has time changed and forced us to look at ourselves in a different way? And this is the time where Americans are lost. They've been, as I said, pulled up from their roots. A lot of the younger people have never learned who we really are as Americans and what has made America so great. And it's time that they learn it. And then we get back to those kinds of answers. People are searching for this. This is an absolute necessity. So you have this confluence. of demand and need and interest all hitting at exactly this, you know, 250th anniversary celebration, our quarter millennium, you know, a major milestone in the history of our country. And it's just, you know, almost providential that it all comes together this way.

I'm very excited that we're going to have these conversations and that people like you were providing tools to have them better. Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to to tell you that Twizzlers, keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte, but twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzler sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little palate cleanser for whatever's queued up, which, by the way, should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going.

Well, it's funny, too, because I wasn't thinking about this when I started writing the book two years ago, I wasn't thinking like, wow, all I thought is, like, you know what, we've not done a good job. at telling the story. Because I kept thinking, you know, if I'm going to write a book, I think, well, is there a book out there that's already doing this? And I thought there's not. It's kind of wild that there are zillions of books on the revolution. But where's the book that you'd say, like, here, read this. It's all in here.

You know, there's books about parts of it. There's books about Bunker Hill and there's books about, you know, pieces of it. I mean, Dave McCuller, write 1776. That's just about one year. What is the lead up to that year? What are the ideas that lead us to Lexington and Conco? all of that stuff, I kind of thought, there isn't really a book. And then I realized, oh, Ken Burns is putting out a PBS documentary on the revolution,

12 hours of the revolution. And in that 12 hours, he manages to recycle the canard, which is a polite word for lie, that our founders were deists and God and all that stuff doesn't really have anything to do with anything, like whatever. And I thought, this is. crazy. This is, I mean, I, the good news is that when, when you watch the PBS Ken Burns thing, you probably won't finish it because it's kind of boring. Because if you tell the story without that, it's kind of boring. It's kind of like, eh, like America doesn't seem that exciting or special, and it doesn't seem like this heroic thing that we succeeded against the British. But I didn't,

I didn't know when I was, you know, starting to write my book like that, that there isn't, there aren't alternatives. There aren't, you know, people that are, or I should say, I didn't realize, I guess I didn't realize that it would be this important. And I now feel like, you know, having written the book, I'm so grateful that I got it done because it is important. If we don't know this, we cease to be functioning. We cease. You cannot have liberty. You cannot keep the republic unless you have enough of the citizenry that understand this and buy into these ideas that obviously the famous quote by Adams, you know, the Constitution, it's useless without a virtuous and religious populace. Like basically, if the people don't get this, it doesn't really matter what that piece of paper says.

And I've never, I guess I just never thought about what a serious moment this is because we are being so challenged by these false ideologies as you have been amazing in exposing. No, this recollection to Sinai that the founders, the covenant to Sinai, that the founders set as kind of the cornerstone of our project here, the American experiment. Of course, there were Enlightenment ideas, there were Greek ideas, there were Roman ideas, there were British common law ideas as well. But the cornerstone was really this covenant at Sinai, this so-called Judeo-Christian. Some people don't like that phrase, but it's a brilliantly correct phrase foundation. And it's so important because, like you said, they didn't have this in the French Revolution, half of of the country, the left, has decided that the French Revolution's model basically had it right. And they have lost what actually has made America work, which is this commitment to individual responsibility and righteousness. It's a covenant. Our covenant is with God, but our covenant is also with this idea of liberty that we might secure the blessings of liberty. And our end of the covenant is not keeping the 613 mitzvote of Sinai, but rather to keep personal responsibility

and self-governance, which is that virtuous nature, that moral and religious character that's necessary in order to be responsible people. Meanwhile, we have on the right people that are seeing everything go crazy and they think, you know what, the European dictators, whether it's Napoleon, whether it's Franco, whether it's Hitler, whether it's Mussolini, they had something right, which is that you need an executive who can make decisions, who can clamp down on all of this chaos and restore us to order. They can give us the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes and take us. our wild human nature because it's not to be trusted. And again, Americans were like, and the founding were like, hold on. No, no, no. This is not how it is. And they looked to Sinai and they said the ancient Israelites had the right idea because they were making the right covenant. And they were making the right covenant with, if you want to call it an idea or if you want to call it God, they're making their covenant with the right entity. And so that became this foundation and the left and the right are both losing their minds because they aren't able to focus back on what made us who we are and how we organized ourselves, not just with the brilliance of Madison

realizing the division of factions and individual interests competing with one another and divided powers, but also this idea of a kingless state that would be governed by responsible people with virtue at the center of their self-governance project, thus necessitating a minimal government or allowing for a minimal government. People don't need to be controlled if they're controlling themselves. And that's the magic of the American experiment because then you can unleash people

to do what they do, to be creative, to build, to make, and to sell. And you raise prosperity, you raise wealth, you raise abundance, and you set a new course for the world like it's never seen before. And we're at risk, like you said, of losing it. It's just such an important message

at such an important time. And it's amazing to me, too, that when you think of it, I would say this is clearly God's will for people, that he wants us to flourish, to thrive, to create wealth, to come up with ideas, to have the time for leisure and thinking.

And that's God's will. And you have had that in America for 250 years, where we put men on the moon literally. We have invented, you know, light bulbs, I mean, the whole thing is so magical. And the whole world, even if they can't give you chapter and verse on how it works, they know looking at America. My parents, you know, living in Europe said, can we go to America?

Could we become Americans? There's a reason people want to come here. And it goes back to John Winthrop, quoting Jesus, to be a shining city on a hill, that people will look at it and say, whatever they got, can I get that? How do they get that? We need to know how we got it. Do you know what he said about that too, John Winthrop? What's up?

In that meditation or that prayer he gave in 1630 at the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he said that we will know we're doing it right because the God of Israel is with us because we'll be able to withstand hosts 10 times our size. So he specifically says that when we're keeping our covenant, the God of Israel will be with us. That's specifically what he says in that shining city on a hill meditation that he gave as a blessing to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to Boston and to the entirety of

the United States as it would come to be, that it would be the example for the world because it would keep its righteousness and thus would invite God to dwell, the God of Israel specifically, to dwell among us. Well, beautifully put, and again, folks,

this was all known, and this was known, even if not entirely explicitly, for 200 plus years, most Americans kind of understood this. even if they couldn't quote, you know, a blessed is that nation whose God is the Lord, even if they didn't get that,

they could kind of sense that this is this compact we've made, this covenant we've made with each other. And this is how we function. This is the way it works. And if we don't do it this way, it goes bad. We'll be right back talking to James Lindsay. While the corrupt federal elites have been quietly building wealth through cryptocurrency,

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Trump Crusade Financial Revolution that's finally giving forgotten Americans access to the greatest crypto wealth opportunity in history. For a limited time, they're offering my viewers up to 25 hundred dollars in bonus crypto when you open an account. Crypto created 80,000 new millionaires last year under Trump's phenomenal economic leadership. Why not you next? Welcome back talking to James Lindsay. This is a very exciting day for me because at midnight tonight, not only do I not turn into a pumpkin, but my book, Revolution is officially out.

And if you haven't got a copy, I say shamelessly, folks, please get a copy. The first week is monumentally important. And getting out the narrative, the true story of how America came into being. There's a lot of false narratives out there. We've been talking about in this show. There's a lot of bad ideas. We need to know our story. And we need to know the stories within the story and the characters within the story.

and the characters within the story. And James, I know you know, you know all this stuff, but I think my favorite part of my book or one of my favorite parts of the book is when I came to the moment of independence in 1776 where, you know, they decide that, oh, we need a declaration of independence. And people sometimes make a bigger deal

of the declaration than they should. Independence is independence. The declaration of independence is like, well, we just need to write this down. So we have an official, here's why, we're doing what we're doing, but they're doing it anyway, whether the official thing, they did it before the declaration existed, folks, before they approved it and everything. They already declared in Pins, they already knew all this stuff, but they needed to get it down.

So Jefferson writes the first draft and, you know, they kind of monkey with it. And they don't sign it officially till August 2nd. But on August 1st, Samuel Adams gives a speech where I will be repeating this forever. he says we have restored the sovereign. We have decided to declare independence from the false sovereign, who is King George the third, and we are now declaring dependence on the capital S sovereign, God in heaven, just as they did at Sinai. This is so seminal.

And I think most Americans don't know that story. So I'm actually glad I didn't somehow leave it out because I wanted to put in everything that's important, but it doesn't get more important than that idea. There's this transaction where they say our ideology comes out of the reformation, comes out of the Bible, comes out of puritan thinking. We want to make a covenant with God. We know that if we don't do that, we won't succeed. And they all understood it.

George Washington understood it. They all understood this idea and we need to understand this idea. So it doesn't really get more seminal than this. But the funny thing is, James, that, you know, you and I have been. in the center of watching the anti-Semitic voices rise around us at the very time, if ever we needed to know what America stands for. America stands for a return to the Sinai Covenant. I mean, I learned that from Oz Guinness.

I can't pretend I came up with that on my own. But it's kind of interesting, let's put it that way, that we are rediscovering the truth of who America is and where we start at a time when these voices of anti-Semitism. And I won't mention Tucker and Candace by name that they're coming out at this time. And that's crucially important. I mean, this is what you just said is, by the way, the good news is even if you do turn into a pumpkin tonight and midnight, the book will still go out and the message will still make it, even without you. And pumpkin pie is on the menu for the rest of the week.

But, no, this message about restoring the sovereign, the experiment of America, the so-called American experiment boils down to, the king, King George, whoever that guy is, is a guy who farts. And he farts. He's profane. He is mundane. He is worldly. He is not the thing that we set or corers by. He doesn't actually have the American experiment is that guy who calls himself the king does not actually have the authority to govern our affairs. We can only have somebody who governs our affairs and a just government when we consent to how we are being governed. We ourselves are sovereign. in the world and we have our sovereign with a capital S that we point our heads and our eyes to in order to make sense of how we should be. And that's the covenantal project of America that some guy doesn't get to tell you what to do unless you said, you know what, Eric, you're pretty wise. You can tell me what to do today. And it's a voluntary consent on my part to do so. That's the message. And so the whole idea is that some guy out there, be it King George,

Donald Trump, King Abdullah or whatever, it doesn't have the power to tell you. people how to order their lives, how to believe what to do, when to do it, or how to how to arrange their affairs or their relationship with their sovereign. That is an individual affair and an individual called a righteousness just like you said was the deal of the covenant at Sinai. And so this is a crucial message. We have anti-Semites running wild right now, left and right. Of course, that's mostly because Muslims have taken over social media and everybody's pandering to them in the last few years. We have lots of psychological operations, I'm sure, happening.

But this is a crucial time to remember where the foundation of America is and why that thing would be being attacked. That idea of the Sinai covenant being attacked is because it's what we're made out of. Very important. Got to stop there. James, thank you so much. Folks, stick around one final message you need to hear. Don't go away.

Folks, before we go for the day, my book is coming out. officially Tuesday. This is, once again, my heartfelt, shameless plea to you. If you have not ordered the book, I'm asking you, please order the book, please. The opening day of the book, the opening days of the book are everything in the launch of a book. So if you think you're like when a movie, yeah, movies coming out, you know, opening weekend, you want to have a big box office number. Otherwise, people will start saying it's a loser book, right?

Yeah. Well, it's not just that. It's just that they will, they won't, it won't be in theaters. And that's the same with a book. It won't be carried in stores. It won't be. And so if you think you're going to buy it for Father's Day, please buy it now.

Please, folks. And again, I think I can't think of a better Father's Day gift because it's a mainstream, I would say fun, very readable retelling of the birth of the nation. It's for everybody. This is not a Christian book. This is a history book, American history book. So please, please, if you can, please pre-order it today. Highly appreciated. Also, CSI, we're extending our campaign. If you have not yet participated in freeing a slave, go to my website, ericmetaxis.com. You'll see all the information there. This is an amazing opportunity. If you've not yet participated, this is an opportunity to do something for God, to do something beautiful and almost amazing that we get to do it, to actually

participate in freeing slaves. You imagine this. So we're at a time, but folks, I abjure you. You like that word? A, B, J-U-R-E, I abjure you. Please join us in this. C-S-S-E. These guys are heroes. The website, just to use my website, Eric Metaxis.com, you will see the information on CSI, all the details, but we want everybody to be involved.

It doesn't matter what you can do. As long as you do something, everybody, please pitch in. God bless you. God bless you as you give. We are very grateful to those of you already have. Thank you.

I just decided I want to write a book on the American Revolution because this is extremely important. Unless Americans know our story, we cannot possibly continue to keep the Republic.