The Eric Metaxas Show - #66 - Seth Dillon

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

The CEO of the Babylon Bee Seth Dillon joins the show to call out Tucker Carlson for platforming Nick Fuentes and whitewashing actual racism. Plus, Gerson Moreno-Riano shares how Cornerstone University is reviving traditional American education to teach the beauty of the Christian faith.

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So when the Babylon B first emerged, I thought, can this be? Is it possible that there are serious Christians with a conservative viewpoint who are doing humor at the top level? I have to tell you, it didn't seem possible to me. The fact that it is possible is a tremendous gift from God. and so it's my privilege now to bring back onto the program the CEO of the Babylon B, Seth Dillon. Seth, so grateful for you. I hope you can hear it in my tone. Very grateful. Of course. Thank you very much. That was a great introduction. We have to clip that and use that in the future.

Yeah, I mean, well, let me just say really quickly in response to something that you said, you know, about this, about Christians doing comedy. Is this even possible, you know, like, I, I think. think one of the things that was kind of front and center in terms of like what our mission was what we're trying to accomplish with the Babylon B was it kind of falls in line with something that C.S. Lewis said where he said, you know, we don't need more good books. We need more, I mean, we don't need more Christian books. We need more good books written by Christians. Don't want to watch that. And I think that's like a subtle but significant distinction, you know, It's this idea that you can write about your theology. You can lead with the message and try to beat people over the head with your Bible.

But you're going to actually have more of an impact if you slip under the door in some other way. And humor is an effective way of doing that. Creative storytelling is an effective way of doing that. Christians have generally struggled to do that well. And so I think the bee kind of just stands out as this example of being done well and actually having an impact. And so I couldn't be more honored and proud to be a part of it. Well, you and I, you know, have grown up, you're younger than I am, but we've grown up in a world that pretends like all the cool, smart, funny people are secular leftists. And we've had to live with that lie for decades. And when I came to faith and changed my political views, I was astonished at how many serious Christians politically conservative I knew who were hilarious and brilliant. And I thought, you know, you. you know, kind of we need to get together and do what we're doing.

And the fact that you guys have been doing that leading the way, it's just been spectacular. And it's important. And we need to say this up front. It's about truth telling, folks. You get to, you know, when you make fun of something, you're forcing people to think. Yeah.

Humor is a vehicle for truth delivery. There's a great quote by, I think he was a playwright, Harold Clerman. Frank Turek shared this with me. He said, make them laugh. And while their mouths are open, poor truth. I like that. I'm going to steal that.

And I'm going to coin that very phrase myself. And no one will know because I never heard of the other guy. No, that's, but the point is that that's so true, right? If you show somebody something beautiful, if you make someone laugh, music has that power. You open people up. And then when they're open, they're receptive, you can feed them something beautiful that they ordinarily wouldn't be interested in.

So, you know, it's kind of like just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. By the way, I also coined that phrase. I also coined the phrase to coin a phrase. People don't know that. All right, listen, we've got to get serious for a second, Seth. You and I were in Washington, D.C. at the Museum of the Bible recently, I have the privilege of serving on the president's commission on religious liberty. And the day we were together a few weeks ago, the particular subject of the day, it

was religious liberty centered around anti-Semitism. And so there were a number of people testifying. You were one of those people. And I was so glad you were there. And something happened while we were there. Somebody who's on the commission, Kerry Pre-Jean Baller, kind of hijacked things.

It was really awful. It was really awful to see somebody in a way, being willing to blow up the whole thing for their little agenda. And religious liberty is so important. It is so important that I thought it was really disgraceful and she was subsequently kicked off the commission. But you were there. And I was amazed at the interplay because you got into dialogue with her.

It was just fascinating. And I think I wanted to get you on at least to get some of your perspective on anti-Semitism and on that back and forth that day in D.C. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the things that when you talk about her hijacking the thing and what the personal agenda was, the personal agenda, from my perspective, really seems to be to defend anti-Semites and anti-Semitism against the charge of anti-Semitism. It was to deny that any of what we're hearing or seeing, you know, it's don't believe your eyes, don't believe your ears. This isn't anti-Semitism. This is all in good faith. And, and, and,

what she kept saying repeatedly throughout the hearing was, you know, so everyone's an anti-Semite, everyone's an anti-Semite, as if we're just blanketly calling everyone an anti-Semite. And no one at the commission was doing that. The people that were there that were testifying that day were giving very specific examples of their own experience. I talked a little bit about mine and my statement. And so, you know, there were specific examples and specific names that were given. It wasn't just, you know, everyone's an anti-Semite. And I think her problem isn't that we're, you know, blank, using this as a blanket term to cover everyone that we don't like, her problem is that we're using it at all and we're calling anyone an anti-Semite. And I actually had a brief dialogue with her backstage

afterwards where we were talking about this a little bit more. And she, and I asked her, I was like, you know, you don't think that some of the statements or the individuals that we've discussed qualify as anti-Semitism or anti-Semites. And so I just want to know, you know, is there anyone that you think is an anti-Semite? Is there anything you've ever heard anyone say that was anti-Semitic? And I brought up Nick Fuentes, for example. I was like, okay, he's pretty a notorious anti-Semite. What do you think of Nick Fuentes? Do you think he's anti-Semitic?

I mean, he literally says, I'm on team Hitler, and Hitler was right. And, you know, when we get into power, we're going to, you know, put to death all of these heretics and perfidious Jews and all these things. And so, and he said really awful things that are not like, they don't leave a lot of room for interpretation. It's explicit. And her response was to say she doesn't know much of it. about him. She doesn't have an opinion on whether he's an anti-Semite. And I'm like, okay, well, it's just clear what's going on here. You have a problem with us calling anyone anti-Semitic. Actually, but see, this is to me, like, if you don't know enough about Nick Fuentes

to understand that he's an anti-Semite, like an absolutely hateful, monstrous, bigoted, anti-Semite, if you don't know that, you should absolutely shut up on the whole subject. Like, if you don't know that, like, if you don't know the one plus one equal, too. Let's not have a math conversation. I think you're even being too charitable and assuming that it's actual, you know,

ignorance at play. I think it's dishonesty. But that's the point. Isn't that the point? If you can make that statement that you don't know, you don't, well, if you don't, you should not be saying one word.

You prove yourself to be either ignorant or dishonest. Exactly. Yes. Well, I mean, listen, we have to be clear too. I don't, you know, somebody can have different views than I. and that's okay.

But there are points at which you say, that's the third rail. You're dead if you say that or that. Let's be clear, there are limits here. Nick Fuentes has not only said extremely vile things against Jews, but against blacks. Like everyone in America, if you disagree with them, you're racist, you're a racist.

Nobody knows what a racist is. Let me tell you, that is an actual racist. He has said things horrifying actual things. People talk about our friend Charlie Kirk, like, oh, he said racist. Oh, no, ladies and gentlemen, believe me, he never did and never would. And shame on you for having such a sloppy definition of racism that you would say that. But Nick Fuentes actually is racist. Well, this is one of the ways that people run cover for Nick Fuentes is by saying, look, you know, they mischaracterized Charlie Kirk.

They're doing the same thing to Nick Fuentes. And so then he gets helpers in the media of Tucker Carl. for example, who will bring him on his show and try to whitewash his image and help him moderate a little bit and make himself appear a little bit more palatable and normal and mainstream. That's a deliberate effort to try to grow his reach and his audience by toning it down a little bit and getting a little help from the media. And I just find that to be inexcusable, unjustifiable, inexcusable. If you're going to, you know, Tucker bristles so much at the word platform. He doesn't like to anyone to say that he's platformed anyone. But if you use your platform

to amplify or whitewash a voice like that, then you haven't stewarded your platform well. You've, you've acted irresponsibly. You've done something that's actually morally wrong. And you should be using that platform to challenge people like that. And all that is, when someone says something like what I just said, that is criticism, not censorship. I'm criticizing Tucker's use of his own platform. I'm not saying that Tucker needs to be muzzled or taken off the air, you know, like put in a cell somewhere. I'm not calling for his censorship. I'm saying, you know, we should be allowed to criticize the way that he handled that situation. And it's important that we have that conversation because, again, you mentioned Charlie Kirk and people will try to do this. They will try to run that argument

that we're all just smeared as racist, we're not actually racist. And then you end up embracing some people who actually are. We still have to distinguish between there is real things such as racism. There is real bigotry. There is real anti-Semitism. And we can't allow these things to all bleed and run together. We have to do the hard and important and necessary work of distinguishing between the good actors and the bad actors. And if someone like Tucker isn't willing to do that, shame on him. At least we can. Hey there, folks. I'm in Nashville with Yasmin, who is with Magin David Adolm, not David, Magin David Adom. You have to tell my audience what you do.

Wow, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm a paramedic at McGen David Adom. I've been doing this as a volunteer since 15 years old. So I work as a volunteer in Nazare, Israel. Yeah, for a long time. MDA is my second home, is my second family. So I've been there for a while.

But people, people, some people, people are not going to be clear on what you're doing. You're like EMTs. You're saving lives. You go in when when bombs hit, you run in. So say a little bit about that because people don't know that. Yeah. So we are the first eight responders in Israel, in every spot, in every place, 24 hours, seven, we save lives. Also in the war, we were in the forefront of the war as well with the soldiers and other teams working together and also in many emergency cases. So saving lives is our goal and is our mission. And what is your website? You can visit Saving Lives in Israel.org to read more about it.

Saving Lives in Israel.org. Yasmin, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks. Hey, folks, before we get back to our guests, I just want to say a lot of people donate when there's a headline. But MDA, Magan David Adom, doesn't get to slow down when the news cycle moves on. is Israel's national EMS system.

That means emergencies don't stop today, tomorrow, next month. Heart attacks, accidents, trauma, surgeries, blood shortages, they're constant. Keeping that system strong requires ongoing support. When you give to the American friends of Magin David Adom, you're funding the basics that make everything else possible. Ambulances on the road, blood banks for trauma and surgery, training for first responders, and equipment that's used every single shift. This is not symbolic giving.

This is practical life-saving support. If you want your donation to have direct, measurable impact, this is one of the clearest ways to do it. Go to savinglifeisrael.org. That's savinglifeisrael.org. I have to say, I've been so shocked by Tucker that for him not to understand what a fathomlessly wicked thing he did in that episode with Nick Fuentes, so wicked. And one of the reasons it was wicked is that it put my friends at turning point in a horrible position because they, after the murder of Charlie, they have to not decide, do we have Tucker on? Because if we have him on, it's sort of like having Nick Fuentes on because he has, you know, treated Nick Fuentes like, well, you know, he's part of a continuum and we can disagree. It's like, no, no, there are people who say things that are so despicable. And by the way, Nick Fuentes, has said unbelievably despicable things about women. Despicable things.

I would punch him in the face if he said something like that in front of my wife. And so we have to draw a line. Yeah, but go figure he's single. That's kind of an important point to make, especially in his case, because if you have that kind of hateful view of women, and again, it's like Andrew Tate, we have to say, no, this is wrong.

I'm a Christian man. I'm an American. I don't have that view. and I will not tolerate that view. And so Tucker is playing a dirty, dangerous game, and I am mystified by it. I'm actually missing a game too when you look at how he handles different interviews

because, you know, he just had that interview with Ambassador Huckabee. What do we call him now? Governor Huckabee, Ambassador Huckabee, he's got so many titles. We have to say, your grace, your grace. Yeah. So his excellence, Huckabee, you know,

Tucker, if Tucker had been even 30% as hostile and aggressive with Fuentes as he was with Huckabee, it wouldn't have seemed, you know, as, as egregious as it was. But there's just a radical difference between when he sat down, you mentioned Andrew Tate, too. Tucker also interviewed Andrew Tate. It was a very friendly, let's adopt Andrews narrative and help him get his narrative out there and not push back on that narrative. Same thing he did with both of those guys. And then he sits down with a Ted Cruz or a Mike Huckabee.

and it's just so, you know, hostile and he's incredulous. When he has someone on who he really likes and he wants to promote their view, he's so, he's maximally gullible. He'll believe anything that they say and he'll take their opinions at face value. And then he has someone like Huckabee on and everything that he says has to be questioned and double questioned and triple questioned. And so it's just a very different approach. And that shows that it is a game that's being played.

You know, this is not journalism. Whatever it is, it's operating under the guise of journalism. But Seth, that's so cynical that it's hard for me to get my head around. Has Tucker become that cynical that for money or some reason he's willing to do this? I mean, I can't understand it. Yeah, I can't either. I don't know how to answer that question. But it's interesting to see, you know, all the responses, going back to that hearing that we were talking about, you know,

I'd be interested to get your take on this because you're on the commission. So you know who else is on the commission. One of the things that Carrie said that she was, the reason that she said that she was punished was because she stood up for her Catholic faith. Is that your view? Dumbest thing anyone has ever said. It's so despicable. Can you imagine that she would put out the, I mean,

she's been a Catholic for like 15 minutes. And so she's now speaking about standing up for Catholic faith and Christ and whatever. And then you have on the commission, ladies and gentlemen, Cardinal Dolan, I think he might outrank her. We have Bishop Barron. We had Ryan Anderson sitting next to me. We have these genuinely brilliant, serious Catholics who totally disagree with whatever was coming out of her mouth.

But she has the arrogance to dare to pretend to speak for Catholics. I mean, that is so wicked. And look, who else does that? Candice Owens does that? Nick Fuentes dares to do that. If that's Catholicism, that's of the devil folks. Okay, I've never been anti-Catholic. Whatever they're representing, I don't think it represents Catholicism.

And Catholics need to push back way harder than they've been doing, way harder. Because these people are not representing Catholicism. All they're doing is virtue signaling. But, I mean, it's so despicable. I mean, it takes my breath away that she would say. And then she'll also say, this is what, I mean, this is what Tucker does when he says about, it's not about censorship. when they talk about,

I will not bow the knee to Israel. And you're like, okay, is Seth or Eric, or is anybody here asking you to quote unquote bow the knee to Israel? We don't believe in making idols. We're trying to have a conversation,

but they make a caricature. They create this straw man. You're asking me to bow the knee to reject my faith and to bow the knee to Israel. No one's doing that. And they're so bold and brave in their resistance

and fighting against that. straw man they just constructed. Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty wild. It wasn't just the hearing that was hijacked, but the point that you're making, which I strongly agree with, is that it's not just the hearing that's been hijacked. The Christian faith, the Catholic faith, has been hijacked. There are bad actors, and this is something I've been trying to draw attention to for a long time. There are people who use Christian language and phrases to advance an ideology or a political agenda that really has nothing to do with promoting the faith or, you know, spreading a message of peace or love or forgiveness or grace or redemption in Jesus' name. It's really more about using Christ's

name to beat other people into submission and to appeal to that large voting block of people who identify as Christians. And so I can't think of anything. As a Christian myself, a lifelong Christian myself who grew up in the church, my dad was a pastor, you know, I spent my entire life in that world to see people wearing Christianity like a skin suit, you know, like putting it on like a costume that they can exploit is really reprehensible. It's really reprehensible. And it's not defensible.

And there's no, there's no, the heart of Paul, if you want to talk about, you know, what the Christian attitude should be towards Israel and the Jews is expressed so wonderfully in Romans. And, you know, this passage, Romans 9 that begins with Paul's anguish. His anguish is over the fact that his Jewish brothers are rejecting Christ. And he says that he himself would be cut off from Christ if it meant that it would

save his brothers, the Jews. And so he's willing to put him, he knows what it means to be redeemed and saved by Jesus. And he's saying, I'm willing to give that up if it means it would save them. Now, compare and contrast that attitude towards Jews, the people of Israel, with that of the people who are hijacking Catholicism today. And even, by the way, and it is a hijacking, as Ryan Anderson pointed out, because he took time to read from the Vatican 2 Proclamation, which I believe was, I don't know, it was put out in 1967 or something like that, which states very clearly and unequivocally that the Catholic Church does not hold the view that because Jews had a role to play in calling for Christ's death, that therefore

Jews today should be treated as Christ killers, the synagogue of Satan, condemned to hell, who we should hold nothing but disdain for. That's not the Catholic teaching. Well, it's not the Christian teaching. It's not the Catholic teaching. And I am, you know, I'm ignorant enough to kind of thought like we'd move past this. So that's why it's so shocking to me. And, you know, I came to faith seriously in my 20s and pretty much immediately got the memo, we love Israel, we love the Jewish people, whatever that means. It doesn't mean that I agree with everything or that I'm okay with people rejecting Jesus. But I just thought that idea, I mean, even writing my book on Bonhoeffer, I thought, you know, who doesn't know at this point that the right thing to do is to speak up for

the Jews? They've been persecuted. Have you heard of the Holocaust? But there are people somehow who don't get that. We haven't mentioned Candace Owens, another just astonishingly divisive, crazed figure, saying things. I mean, again, there's certain times, you know, you can say things and we can have a conversation. But when you say things like Candace Owens has done that imply that the widow of our dear friend Charlie Kirk was, maybe in on murdering him or that the people at TPUSA maybe were in on murder. I thought this is the moment where, you know, you say, have you no shame? Like what, how can someone go there and be allowed to have a voice in public life?

It's very disheartening to think that our cultural conversation has become that course, that we cannot stand against that. Well, there is fertile ground out there right now for radical conspiracyism, and there are people who are willing to exploit the distrust that a lot of, you know, especially young people have in the institutions themselves and the media, the so-called expert class. You know, there's there's so much justified distrust there that people are exploiting that to say that anything that you're told, any narrative that you're sold, automatically must be false. well at the same time assuming without evidence that the Jews must be behind it at every turn. And so you had, we actually know who shot Charlie Kirk. He was apprehended. He's on trial. And yet immediately, right after the shot was fired, there were people jumping to the conclusion,

which they already, you know, had baked into their own minds and hearts that this is where they were going to go, regardless of the evidence, that Israel had something to do with it. You know, Israel was taking Charlie out. You know, Charlie was a dear friend, the nation. of Israel and had a wonderful relationship with them and had been one of it, one of their strongest defenders in the suggestion that, you know, they took him out when there's actual evidence of who we, we know killed him and that person's on trial. And if the, if the jury poll isn't so tainted by all this radical conspiracism, he will be convicted of that crime. And so, you know,

there's just something sick at work here. You know, Candace, I saw a clip recently. I don't know if you saw this, but someone compiled all of the times that she said Jew or Jewish on her show in the last, like, several months or the last year. And it was like well over a thousand. It's just constant every episode, you know, Jews, Israel, Jews, Israel. These aren't, this isn't the thing that Americans are obsessed with. Americans have real issues that they prioritize in their lives. Why is this podcaster class, why are they broken-brained and have Israel derangement syndrome where all they can talk about is Israel and the Jews. Is this a political thing? Is it a spiritual thing? What do you think is the answer to that question? Well, you know it's a spiritual thing. I mean, if you want to know

know where the devil lives, all you have to do is look at rabid anti-Semitism. I mean, since the beginning of time, the devil hates what God loves. God prepared a people for himself to bring worship of him to the whole world through the Messiah, through Jesus. The devil hates them. And not only does the devil hate them by attacking them through anti-Semitism. He hates them by leading enough of them astray. I mean, the devil, just as the devil targets Christian pastors or whatever, has targeted Jews over the years to lead them astray into being secularist voices in the culture. So that it gives people ammunition. Well, the Jews are behind pornography or they're behind this or by the, you know, there's just enough truth to those things to give ammunition to rabid anti-Semites.

But there's no doubt that it is spiritual. When you think, I mean, what fascinates me, Seth, is like, when you think of the Holocaust, right, you think Hitler wanted to wipe them out. What's the logical explanation for that? There can be no logical explanation. It is a spiritual thing. Somehow he believed that he would be given demonic power by murdering the Jews. I mean, there's enough on that to, you know, because it doesn't make logical sense. You don't, if you're losing a war, you don't spend tremendous effort to murder women and children.

You spend your effort in trying to win the war. It's spiritual. People have to understand that's what this is. that's at the heart of it. Yeah, I agree. There's no, there's no rational explanation for any of it. And then, you know, Tucker will go and try to flip that on his head and suggest that he's the victim in this spiritual warfare because apparently he's so effective. The demons are coming to him in his sleep and scratching him. You know, I think, I mean, I believe in demonic attack. I know enough about that and no people who know about that, that I think it is perfectly plausible that that is actually what happened and that he didn't deal with that. because it seems to me that since then he's gone off the rails. And so it seems quite plausible to me that that's the spiritual explanation for what happened

to him. I don't know, but I would offer people I know who could pray for him and deal with this. Because this is very real. The demonic is real. Yeah, I see it operating at a different level. When I think of spiritual warfare, I think of something more along the lines of what you read about in screw tape letters, which is obviously. obviously, you know, a satirical fictional account.

But Lewis is trying to, trying to help us peer into that world and see what's kind of the war behind the war, what's actually going on behind the scenes and the war for the hearts and minds of people and this tug of war that's going on between good and evil. And it's, it is spiritual. It's, you know, the demons in that story

aren't physically manifesting and having physical altercations or influence over humans. they're trying to feed into their emotions and get them to focus on the wrong thing at the at the wrong time so that it takes their attention away from God and distracts them during their prayers and things like that. And so it's it's not this like overt like actual physical intervention that happens where, you know, there's a being taking a physical form and intervening. But anyway, we can we can have a whole debate about that. But that brings up the question. We do agree on the spiritual warfare.

But that's what brings up the question then, because my next guest will be Dinesh D'Souza. And he has argued that Tucker's making this up. And to me, that's even harder to believe. I mean, except it might be right. It might be correct, right? That he made that up. But it's hard for me to believe that Tucker Carlson would lie and make up a story that crazy.

I mean, has he become that cynical that he'll make stuff up? It is not hard for me to believe that Tucker Carlson. Carlson would lie. I'm sorry. I don't share your cynicism there. I find that very easy to believe. In fact, I've been the subject of some of his lies. He's lied about me, so I know he lies. If you don't mind, tell me, because I should hear this. Well, yeah, that, where it started with him was when he first had, what's his name, Daryl Cooper on his show, remember? Yes, yes. The guy who's essentially a Nazi apologist, he bends over backwards to try to recast and revise history to show that, you know, Churchill was, in fact, likely the chief villain of the war because he's the one who really wanted this conflict and Hitler really wanted peace.

And so he does a lot of work to try to reshape and revise that narrative. Tucker, of course, was all in on what Cooper was saying. And so I had chimed in and mocked Tucker for his handling of that interview, which was, you know, essentially going soft on a Hitler apologist. I wasn't calling Tucker a Nazi or anything. I was saying, you know, you kind of went soft on one, or at least one who apologizes for them. But I mocked him and, you know, he reached out to me by text and was very upset, wanted to know why I was smearing him and calling him a Nazi. And I'm like, that's not what I said. And so we had this kind of back and forth, this dialogue that didn't really go anywhere, but he was very condescending and rude and flippant throughout the conversation. And I tried to be respectful

in my replies. And then, and then he goes on, he actually went on, it was on Charlie Kirk's show. He was sitting down with Charlie Kirk and said that, you know, I had, I'm supposedly a free speech guy, but in this moment of deep hypocrisy, you know, I reached out to Tucker, outraged that he would platform Daryl Cooper,

what happened to free speech, why is he trying to censor behind the scenes? And that's not at all what happened. I, you know, Tucker can interview whoever he wants. I said that both publicly and privately. I think there's an expectation on the part of regular, reasonable people that if he does interview someone who's apologizing for Hitler and the Nazis,

that maybe he'll be a little bit hard on them and push back on them a little bit. And that's a reasonable expectation to have. But none of that criticism amounts to censorship. And I haven't called for anybody to be censored. I didn't tell him that he never should have talked to Daryl Cooper. So he lied about when somebody brings up quote unquote censorship. That's what, to me, it's the tell. It's like, you realize, okay, you're calling my criticism of that.

That censorship, you don't know what censorship is. It's when somebody says, oh, you're racist. You don't know what actual racism is. You are playing the game. You're throwing terms around and you're calling it censorship. Yeah, and they love to say that they're not allowed to have these conversations, even though it's literally all they talk about and it's how they get rich is by having these conversations.

So it's the silliest suggestion ever to say that it's not allowed. But the bottom line is the lie was that I'm a free speech hypocrite. I publicly stand for free speech, but privately behind the scenes. I pressure people like him to censor and to not speak to certain people. And that's not what happened. So that was my, that's my first story. Well, not only is that not what happened, but saying that is despicable. It's despicable.

That's despicable. And it's so grievous to hear this kind of stuff, but we have to deal with it. Seth, just so grateful for you, for your voice, for your firm stand on these things. Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon B. Thank you, Seth. Thank you, Eric. I don't like alarmism. I don't like fear-mongering.

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for the first time ever at Cornerstone, at a luncheon, and then again with this class, I did a reading from my book, Revolution. I've never done that before. It's kind of a funny thing for an author to read aloud to people what he's written because you don't know, how's this coming across or whatever?

I read the introduction to my book on the Revolution. So it was a great honor for me to be there. It was a great honor for me to talk about what we talked about. And to see, this is really what I want to say, you as president at Cornerstone, have been brave in the way that I always exhort people to be brave, to live out your faith and to be willing to fight the fight because not everybody agrees with us,

not everybody believes that we should be patriotic. not everybody understands that. They think, oh, no, no, no, I'm all about the kingdom. I don't care about America. That's unbiblical, but there are people that push that idea. That has been particularly true in so-called Christian universities and Christian colleges. And you understand this. You were born in Colombia.

So you come from a place, as my parents do, where they don't particularly have the values we have in America. uniquely positioned to appreciate the values of America. And around the campus, you had a plaque talking about the supercentennial and you have quotes from George Washington, linking faith and freedom, all this stuff, which used to be der rigger in American education, but that has gone away except for places, very, very few places like Cornerstone. So I just, it meant so much to me to be with you and to be with the community at Cornerstone and to see with my own eyes what is happening,

that you're raising up a generation of young people simply to know the truth about America and their faith. So congratulations on that. It was just very encouraging to me, I have to tell you. Eric, thank you. It was great to have you. It was a blessing to have you. And we continued to receive phenomenal feedback from your visit.

So thank you for all that you do. And it's a privilege, a beautiful thing we have. And our country is the greatest country in the world and history. And I spoke to our students in chapel this front. I'm sure with him. Look, we have to courageously be committed to protecting this beautiful country God has given to us and upholding it and defending it and speaking about the exceptional founding and principles and defending those articulence to the future and letting them,

and I told them it's for posterity as well. It's not just for you, but for the future of this country. We have to do that. If we don't, who will? And we have such a beautiful opportunity to do it. And at Cornerstone, we've taken that full, you know, full throat, as it were, and our team has. And frankly, we've seen our students come behind it. I think our students and young people today are looking for courageous moral leadership and people with courage to stand and do and speak and defend.

We've seen students come to us. We've seen read the plaques. We've had great conversation in Chapel and even thereafter about this. And so we're just, it's a great opportunity to speak about and defend our beautiful country. I've got to tell you, I was incensed over the weekend when I read that the Huffington Post that sent something out about how uncomfortable we should feel watching the Olympics because America's winning gold. And I was so, I was furious about that.

I'm grateful that many were too, the shamefulness of that. Most normal Americans, I mean, listen, I mean, not everybody knows this. You know this and I know this. That cultural elites are nuts, but they have the mouthpiece. You know, they've got the bullhorn, and they're on CNN, the Huffing Post, whatever, but ladies and gentlemen, don't be fooled. They're just like leftist lunatics. They don't appreciate any of this stuff.

They just rive in their own absurd white guilt or whatever it is. They really don't get it. And they seem to think they have responsibility to share their misery with the world and to invite us to be miserable with them. And we have to reject it. We have to stand firm and strong against. that. But I mean, what just happened with, you know, at the Olympics, it started out on that, you know, kind of confused, a leftist kind of, I'm sort of ashamed to be an American foot.

And it was, all of that changed. Most Americans are just, you know, inclined toward patriotism. And the hockey story, you know, it's kind of like the proverbial, you can't make it up. There it is. Yeah. It was fantastic. as they panned out, not just in the audience, but elsewhere throughout the U.S., little children cheering. USA, USA. It was just a beautiful moment and beautiful moment for the athletes to speak and say, this is about the country. We love our country. It's about our country. And so it's a beautiful opportunity, Carson, to do it for the future. We've seen students take it. And as I've shared

it with you, we even launched a curriculum last week, a new general education curriculum that will focus on the beauty of our faith, the beauty of the Christian worldview, and what it means to of that out, but also the beauty of America and the American experience and introducing our students to what we call the great canon of literature and works of the American experience. Having reached sermons and debates and speeches and the core texts of the founding so they can wrestle and think and incorporate these ideas into their thinking, not just for them novel, but for the future. It's a singular, I mean, it's a unique curriculum. We don't know of any other curriculum in the country that takes seriously the beauty of the Christian worldview and living that out, but also

the beauty of America and the beauty of the American experience and these foundational texts and bring these things together for students. So we're thrilled to have launched that for this coming fall. We're seeing a lot of interest. We've got some media interviews coming up. People want to talk about it, about my experience as an immigrant,

but also why we're doing this and how to this connect. So we're being giving a platform, it's humbling, but it's a great honor and a great opportunity for us, Eric. Well, I have to say, you know, when you talk about this new curriculum, when I was writing my book on The Revolution, I thought the book would be twice as long. I mean, it would be like 1,200 pages long

or 1,000 pages long. I wanted to include more, but I thought, you know, I wanted to be readable. But that's what colleges for. That's what, I mean, the beauty is that you can go in there. You have the time to go into the depth of what made America who we are. And the fact that you're doing that, again, this is vital.

You know this, and I mean, it's why we're friends. This is vital to the future of America and the future of the world that we teach this, that we understand this. And I hope my book will be used to some extent as a textbook. There are parts of it, I think, that can be used that way. But when you have an entire semester, it's such a beautiful thing that you're doing this, that you're showing them they can read with their own, where we get these ideas and they can understand or they can figure out themselves,

do I agree with these ideas? Are these good ideas? What other ideas are there? That's really what education is supposed to be. I did not get that kind of an education at Yale University. And most people going to universities, you know, in the last 40 years, you're not getting this stuff. And again, this is why I'm such a fan of Cornerstone.

But I want to talk more about the new curriculum. And so say more about this when you say you're launching a new curriculum. When are you launching it and what is it specifically? Sure, we're starting this fall as a new general education core curriculum. So every student comes to Korn and still will go through this core curriculum of courses. And we look at general education across the country, which is one of the great travesties, I think, of American higher ed, whether it's Christian or not. You know, general education is a tremendous opportunity for universities to introduce students to a core common conversation of the great ideas of the Western tradition. of America, the great existential questions of life, and educate students to think deeply about

those questions and answers. And it's a Christian university to grab opportunity for us, but so many universities don't do that. They have a buffet approach, take all these courses, select the ones you want, put them in these categories, or you select what you want. Brown University does this. There's no real core. UVAs tends to be the same way, University of Virginia. We looked at it and we thought this is a wasted opportunity. We have students who are contributing their hundred dollars with our families, harder on dollars for an education in what is true, beautiful, and good, we need to provide a core to them and engage them with these fundamental questions. And we started first and foremost with what we call the beauty of the Christian faith.

All the attacks on Christianity that have been going on recently in the last few decades, we want to introduce students that the Christian faith is a beautiful faith, the beautiful thing, the doctrines, the principles, the beliefs are beautiful and they answer the most fundamental questions we have about human life, human nature, and reality. So let's talk about those and engage those deeply. But then we also wanted to talk with them about the beauty of America and the American founding and the American history and the American experience. They're profound, and he knows this, there are profound conversations at the founding

and throughout American history about the nature of the true, the beautiful, and the good, and God and religion and Christianity and the human person. Let's talk about those and engage students there and see the continuity and the foundation of the Christian faith and what it did for our American country, the United States. So having students read a lot of original material, original literature is really important, engaging these fundamental questions.

Because we know that for the time that we have them, it's about formation, character formation, intellectual formation, spiritual formation, and once they leave, they leave, right? So we want to ensure that we're forming future leaders and Christian influences to think, deeply into engaged Christ and engaged the beautiful of our country. And I will tell you what really led us to do this.

I may have shared this with you before in a podcast, but I remember years ago being on a plane with a student who said next to me from St. John's, great books program. He was a senior graduating. He said next to me and he said to me, what do you do for a living? I told him I'm an academic. I'm a provost. He said, I'm so glad.

I've got a bunch of questions to ask you. I need your help. And he tells me, I'm graduating from St. John's. I've read all this great books and literature, but I am more confused and lost than I've ever been. I don't know what to do with my life. And I thought to myself, how is it possible that a quote-unquote premier university will lead a student to basic skepticism doubting moral confusion? And for two and a half hours, I laid out the beauty of Christ in the Christian faith.

And I'll never forget what he said to me at the end. He said, if you're right about Jesus Christ, it will turn the world. upside out. I need to think a lot about this. So that led me throughout my career to think deeply about what we do at universities and the course a great opportunity to focus students on the beautiful, the true and the good so they don't leave as skeptics or doubters, but they have something to chew on if I can put it that way. It has formed them and transformed them. Well, it's interesting because that's the role. Again, this gets to the secular left, the hand-wringing, self-hating,

now it's like the white guilt left. They don't know what they believe. They don't know that there is such a thing as truth. So they're writhing uncomfortably. Why? Because we are created by the God who is truth, to long for truth, to want truth, to want him.

And apart from that, we're lost. And so if you don't have that confidence that you know what is right and true and good, Now, we say this with humility because nobody knows everything, but we have responsibility to teach those who are younger than we are, who haven't had the privilege privileges that we have, hey, here's what's good, here's what's beautiful, here's what's true. We can't force you to believe it, but we're going to give you the benefit of what we know.

That as your elders, as professors, as teachers, we have responsibility, not just to kind of throw stuff at you and then say, well, make of it what you will, but to lead you, to help you. Now, there's a fine line between propagandizing people. We want to teach people how to think, not simply what to think, but even in teaching someone how to think, you have to lead them. Even that idea to teach someone how to think presupposes the idea that it's good to teach someone how to think.

So as we teach people what we believe, we're leading. them, we're guiding them, but they're people who have no confidence in what they believe. So they're like, I don't know anything. So who am I to teach young people? I'm just going to throw some stuff at them and let them figure it out. And it's like, no, you have a responsibility to know mostly what you believe and to help these young people. Otherwise, you're leading them like wolves to the slaughter. I mean, when I graduated Yale, I could not have been more lost. I was convinced that there's no such thing as truth. If there is a God, there may be, but we can't know him.

All religions are equal. I was so confused and miserable because I genuinely didn't know anything. And so the idea that we're supposed to abdicate this, if especially on the college level, but at every level, We're supposed to help guide young people to think about this is true, this is false. Let me explain it to you. Let me show you why Christian faith is true, why the Bible is true, why the American experiment is beautiful and it's unique in world history. You have to teach people that. And it's funny, while I was at Cornerstone, Gerson, I don't know if I got to tell you this.

but when I taught the class, in the class, there were a number of people there who are going to go into K-12 education. They wanted to be teachers. And I thought, I've got to tell them this story to show them how important it is to be a teacher. And it was when I was in fifth grade, I skipped the grade, so I was nine years old.

And in fifth grade, in Connecticut, in America, we teach American history. So in fifth grade after lunch, I would go to the sixth grade teacher. We would all go to the sixth grade teacher who would teach the American history period. And my teacher in 72, 73, when I was nine, was Mr. Robert F. McDevitt.

And I said this to the students at Cornerstone. I said, Mr. McDevitt had no idea what an effect he would have on me. That there was a nine-year-old in the class listening to him, talk about the American Revolution in a way that affected me for the rest of my life.

He planted seeds. He had no idea. He was simply being faithful and a great teacher of American history to a bunch of kids. And what he did haunts me to this day, the beautiful stories that he told about the American Revolution,

about Henry Knox, making the trip through the snow and ice to Taekondaroga to get the cannon to bring them 300 miles back to Boston. That stuff somehow, this is what amazes me, stuck with me and helped form me. And so that my book on the American Revolution today, more than 50 years later, is in part owing to the seeds that he planted. And so I say if that's true of a fifth grade, of a nine-year-old, how true is it going to be of kids in college who are paying all this money?

And we have the honor, you at Cornerstone, have the honor of helping them think, of exposing them to beautiful things they may, well, never be exposed to before, and teaching them about why this is beautiful and noble and true. it's at the very heart of what education is all about. And so talking to the young students at Cornerstone about my book, The Revolution, that was the first thing I talked to them about. I said that it was when I was nine years old, when a sixth grade teacher talking to fifth graders, he had no idea that there's a student sitting there who is being so deeply affected by this.

The 50 years in the future, he's going to write a book that's to, some extent an homage to what he's hearing now as a nine-year-old. That to me, I never really saw this until I was writing this book on The Revolution, the power that teachers have and what a noble thing it is. And so, again, it's one of the reasons that I'm so honored to be part of Cornerstone, what you're doing in Grand Rapids there. It's a big deal. And I want people to know about it. And of course, we want to encourage other colleges and universities to do the same thing to follow your lead. So Gerson, we're out of time, but just a privilege to be with you.

I hope folks will check out Cornerstone. Again, it's just amazing. You have an online curriculum. Maybe you can say a little bit about the mobile curriculum before we go. Thank you, Eric. And great story you told. Thank you. There are beautiful things, Eric.

Yes, we have a beautiful curriculum. We've launched called on a mobile platform, we call it SOAR. And one of the great things about it is that we're able to integrate a beautiful, sophisticated Christian role view in every course, and we offer three degrees on it. An associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, and now a master's degree in strategic business management or an organizational leadership. But the goal was to provide a beautiful streaming app model for a fully app credit degree at a fraction of the cost. for adult learners who can't come back to college and brick and water don't have the time, the ability provide them with this.

At a price point, that's radical. The entire bachelor's degree from zero to finishing the degree is about $24,000, a fraction of the cost. World class, we've used best in class technology, streaming apps, and faculty curriculum builders. We have close to, we're getting closer, closer to 300 students in the program. We've just launched it in September.

That I will tell you, Eric, it's humbling the feedback from students about the learning experience, the quality, the immediate impact and work and home outstanding. And maybe we're not believers and they're being, they're engaging the biblical worldview in a sophisticated way and it resonating with them. So we see as a beautiful opportunity. And I'm encouraging to be to check it out on our website, cornerstone.edu. You'll see their soul, S-O-A-R. Wonderful opportunity. Yeah, I was very excited to hear about this. This is kind of amazing what you guys are doing.

Dr. Gerson Moreno Riano, 12th president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids. Thank you so much. Eric, thank you. Blessings to you. Unlike some government programs, Medicare is not a handout. It's something you have earned. You worked for decades, paid your taxes, and contributed to a system that's supposed to serve you when you retire. So when it comes time to choose a Medicare plan, you deserve one that actually works for you,

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