The Eric Metaxas Show - #76 - They Want A Religious Takeover

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric reflects on his time in Washington with the President’s Commission for Religious Liberty, talks with David Peters about the mission behind Ten Boom Coffee and the legacy of Corrie ten Boom, and then sits down with John Zmirak and James Lindsay for a wide ranging conversation on Catholic integralism, religious liberty, anti Israel rhetoric, and why they believe a growing movement on the right is deeply at odds with the American founding. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.

Top of the morning to you. Welcome to the Air from Texas show. I just got back from D.C. I flew up here. All my friends said, you should take the train, take the train. I flew and I'm in the studio here in New York City with Chris Himes. And Chris, we're both wearing green.

We are. It's the wearing of the green. Yeah, I have a bunch of kids. So if you wake up without green on, you basically get pinched to death. So that was, that's the rule in our. family. That's why I never have kids, never have kids, especially on St. Patrick's Day. But I just came into the city. There's terrible traffic. I thought, what is this? And then I realized, oh, guess what? It's St. Patrick's Day in New York City. So I'm wearing a green jacket. But the thing is, I was

wearing this jacket. People think I'm making this up. I was not thinking of St. Patrick's Day. I've been wearing this jacket lately. I preached in church in this on Sunday here at King's Church. I'm wearing these glasses which They're like blue light glasses And some people think they look cool Other people are worried about me So I think for now I think I should wear

My normal glasses look He's back I know yeah we should So you like to wait Well anyway There's a lot to share I really did just get back from D.C. I was there

for, I preached at King's Church on Sunday. This Sunday at King's Church here in New York City, my friend, Pastor David Englehart, will be preaching. I'm not sure if I will be there on Sunday, but I was there last Sunday, and I did preach, and we should get that sermon up online, but I then had to fly down to D.C. Because I'm on the president's commission

for religious liberty. And so yesterday we were there and there's nothing more important than religious liberty folks. It is so important. I don't think I'm going to talk about it right now. But when you hear the stories of people who usually under the Biden administration or under Obama or under the weaponized FBI suffered for their faith in this country, it is madness.

It is insane. It's infuriating. It's sickening. But God bless President Trump for creating a commission on religious liberty to look into this and to do something about it. So we on the commission are gathering all this information, listening to a ton of witnesses. Yesterday, Dennis Prager's brother, his elder brother was one of the witnesses. He is a doctor, a medical doctor at Columbia here in Manhattan. I didn't get a chance to meet him.

But he's tall. and you could guess that he might be Dennis's brother. I was guessing I thought it might be Dennis's brother. But anyway, it's just wonderful. Cardinal Dolan was there. Of course, all kinds of St. Patrick's Day jokes, because that's the Cardinal. So the whole thing was wonderful experience.

But I stayed over last night in D.C. Why? Because our friend Ian Yekaleck, he is the senior editor at the Epic Times. And I've had him on this program to talk about his book, killed to order. I have a copy here of the book. Rob Schneider, the comedian, interviewed Jan last night at the Kennedy

Trump Kennedy Center. So I've never been at the Trump Kennedy Center before. It was pretty extraordinary, but I guess they're closing it down in a few months for some big, I don't know, what they're going to do. They're going to refurbish it. I don't know, Chris, if you've read about this, it's uh it's uh it's unclear to me what they're doing i think it i think um yeah they're refurbishing it it's right on the river there so i would imagine maybe it gets a lot of water i don't know it has a

60s kind of modernist communist feel um in some ways it's nice uh and in some ways i could see how trump wants to gild the whole thing i don't know what's going to happen but anyway we were there last night for this event and again it was a comedian rob schneider and he interviewed yon about the book. And I've interviewed Yon on this program about the book. The book is killed to order. This is the face of communist atheism where they murder people systematically and harvest, nice word, their organs, your organs, your son's organs, your daughter's organs. They murder you if you're a political prisoner. If you remember the fallen gong religion or if you remember you're a Uyghur Muslim or a Christian and they don't like you, they put you in a way.

It's almost incomprehensible, but it's very important. And I want to interview him for Socrates in the studio to talk about this again and in more in depth. But here's my ticket for the Kennedy Center for last night. I saw so many people there that hadn't seen in a long time. It was just wonderful to bump into them. Also yesterday, while I was at the Religious Liberty Commission, I was asked by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to speak at the end

because, well, in my book on the American Revolution, which will be out June 2nd, in which I hope you'll pre-order, it is now available for pre-order, and you will get the lowest price between now and June 2nd. That's a real thing. That's like I always tell people, please pre-order the book, please,

because you will get the lowest price between now and June 2nd, and the price will drop significantly. How significantly? I don't know, but it will be significant, whether it drops 30% or 45%, I don't know, but it will drop significantly. I would say at least 30%. But in the book, I mentioned how in May, sorry, in March of 1776, as the British are chased out of Boston finally, because of the guns of Henry Knox, which is, is a great story, which I'll tell at another time.

But Congress declares May 17th, 1776, will be a day, national day of prayer, fasting, and humiliation. It's a big deal. And on the 250th anniversary of that, which is this May 17th, there will be a big event on the mall in Washington, D.C. I know I will be involved. I will be there on May 17th. There's a lot of other stuff that I want to share, but I'm very excited about that.

And yesterday at the end of our session on the Commission of Religious Liberty, I spoke about this, and I read part of this declaration, and it's a long enough declaration that I won't read it now because we don't really have the time. But I guess I ought to read this in the days ahead to you. And I'm going to be sharing a lot from the book on this program, just because I'm excited to share tidbits and pieces of information that I think are interesting or that would enlighten you. But we'll leave it there for now.

Chris, am I forgetting anything where we have? We have a friend, David, from Ten Boom Coffee coming on the show. Right. One of our sponsors is Ten Boom Coffee, as in Corey Ten Boom. So we'll be talking to him.

I think I'm going to be talking to John Zmirak. Yeah. And James Lindsay. This is a great week. We have Kathy Lee, Hamry, Walt. Kathy Lee Gifford. Naomi Wolf Yep

Zanzia Rob Pesienza from Coral Ridge Church in Fort Laudel I'll be speaking there at the end of the month but lots going on anyway we'll leave it there

we'll be right back unlike some government programs Medicare is not a handout it's something you have earned you work for decades paid your taxes and contributed to a system that's supposed to serve you

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on health care costs. Their help is honest. It's free and it's fast. They can review your options in under 20 minutes. So if you're on Medicare or will be soon, call chapter at 571, 421, 12, 553. You paid into Medicare and you deserve guidance. You can trust. Call chapter at 571, 421, 12, 253. Hey, the folks, welcome back. I don't know about you, but sometimes they just get excited, but always for a good reason. For example, some of you have read my book seven women. You're familiar with the story of Corey Ten Boom. You probably, many of you have not read my book, seven women, and you know the story of Corey Ten Boom from the hiding place.

It's an amazing story of a woman who, because of her Christian faith, her whole family, because their Christian faith, protected the Jews in Holland during the war. It's just a great story. Then I get even more excited when I find out that somebody, named David Peters has created a product called Ten Boom Coffee, which is a mission-driven brand inspired by the faith and legacy of Corey Ten Boom. Corey Ten Boom is such a hero.

And David Peters, welcome to the program. God bless you for what you're doing. You know how excited I am about ideas like this. This is just a great idea. Thank you. It's so good to be here. And grateful to be on here. It was so good running into you just a few weeks to go.

really NRB and glad just to continue conversations here together. I want to make sure that my audience understands 10 Boom Coffee is a sponsor on this program, but I'm not talking with David because 10 Boom Coffee is a sponsor on the program. 10 Boom Coffee is a sponsor on the program because I met David and I heard about this

and I'm excited about the concept. And by the way, if you go to 10 boom uh what is the website 10 boom dot coffee 10 boom dot coffee are you kidding 10 boom dot coffee yeah we're in this new age we get that dot coffee these days so we had to have fun with it and you're not making that up 10 boom dot coffee is the website 10 boom dot coffee okay you got to use the code eric to say 15 but i didn't want to start out with the commercial your story where are you where did you grow up And how in the world did you become the kind of an entrepreneur that creates a company based around this hero, Corey Ten Boom? Yeah, man, it's been a journey in the making.

So I was born and raised here in Nashville, Tennessee. That's where me and my wife live and our son. We both met each other here because our family's met. But our journey with Corey really starts in Virginia. So if your listeners remember Corey's story, she was the only surviving tin boom after the events of the Holocaust. She had her Peter von Warden, which was one of her nephews survive and some of their descendants. But it didn't stop Corey from making family.

So she was traveling around the U.S. with Billy Graham and sharing her just incredible testimony and message. And met my wife's mom of Fran and Papa Mike in Virginia. And they became very close friends, called each other brother and sisters, and then our family moved down to Destin, Florida, and Corey would go and stay and live in their house there. When did she pass away? She died in 1983, and it's actually amazing because she died on her birthday,

which is considered just a huge honor to die on your birthday. You know, I got half of that. I was actually born on my birthday, and what are the odds of that? You know what I'm saying? Just think about it. What are the odds of that? But it's true.

I was born on my birthday. All right. So your in-laws new Corey 10 Boom. I don't remember that part of the story. That's amazing. And when did you decide, you know, you want to go to the coffee business and name it after Corey 10 Boom? Yeah.

I tell people it was truly just a vision from God. My heart and where I was is I just wanted to connect business, you know, the skills and the cross-smanship God's giving me with the kingdom and the gospel. and I was just praying through it, God, like, how do you want to use me? What I want to do? And literally, I was going out to ride our family horse and just felt this instant download from the Lord. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You have a family horse? We do. His name is Nazarino. I tell people, if you're a Lord of the Rings fan, if you think of Shadow Fax, he's that same horse, just beautiful, beautiful horse. And so I was going to ride him and God just gave me this download instant. of using a coffee to really just build bridges around the world. You know, it's the second most consumed drink in the world behind water.

It's a second most treated commodity in the world. What's number three? A bitch it's vodka. Yeah, I don't know. Probably that or wine or something. Nowadays, I'm sure it's energy drinks with how many people drink those. Red Bull is number four. Okay, seriously, so seriously, everybody drinks. Listen, I love coffee. I only have it. in the morning, but it has to be strong. It has to be good.

You know, whatever. I really do love coffee. So it is, it is a cool idea that you had, but you're telling me that you were riding the family horse. When you got this idea. Yeah. And I was literally, I was driving to go to a horse. And I was like killing Siri, just all these things that felt like God downloading,

hey, you need to reach out to this person. You need to do this. Oh, you need to name it around the Tim Boom family. and those values and that story and that heritage that shared a day. And I was just giving voice memos in Syria into my notes. While you're driving the family car to the family horse. Yes, exactly. And then from there it was just one step at a time.

And just God really just directing my steps to here we are today. I ride the family subway to the family car, but we don't have a family horse. Wow. You're missing out. Okay. So you really had to have a family. I love the idea that you call it the family horse. Like I was going to just let that go.

Like, yeah, we've all got family. We've all got family horses, yeah. We all love him. Was a Nazarino? He was there when I proposed to my wife. He was there. Was he supposed to be there? Or was he just there kind of in a creepy way?

He was supposed to be there. We dressed him all up. He was there when we had her gender reveal for his son. He's been a big part of our family. And so we love him. I guess this shouldn't be, this wouldn't be the good time for me to tell you that I'm wearing a horsehair wig.

That's a joke. I'm not wearing a horse hair wig. Okay, so Ten Boom Coffee. Going into the coffee business, it's not a small thing. I mean, I have other friends that have done that. You know, how did that work that you said, because I know you're committed to the quality. This is not just a gimmick.

So how does that work? Yeah. Man, when you feel something that God's place on your heart, you'll do anything to get there. And that's what I felt. I felt this to the core, like, this is from the Lord. And I just instantly, it was literally one step at the time. It's funny, I didn't even know coffee had to be roasted when I first started off.

And here I am on a regular basis, roasting on one of the nicest coffee roasters in the world and roasting hundreds of pounds of day. And so really, it was just a long journey of refining and building our message and our story. And really the biggest moment was how do we source our coffee? you know, what makes us different from everyone else out there, the product. You know, people have coffee with the causes and all that. That's pretty common. But what makes our product different?

And I just pray to prayer. I was like, God, it'll be a miracle if our coffee was connected with the land, with Israel somehow. Like, that would just be such a cool component and complete that story, you know, with Corey and who she was and loving your Jewish friends. Israel's not known for coffee. if you've been, it's like their Roma, it's like Starbucks. It's a little behind when it comes to specialty coffee like Canada States. And Godmer actually connected to me with this man named Hanan,

who is doing amazing things at the farm level, boosting coffee harvest by over 60% increasing the quality in the lives of the farmers themselves. It's all organically grown, mold-free, toxin-free. And I was just blown away. He just telling me what they do. And he's like, yeah, we want to grow in the U.S., but we don't have the bandwidth. We don't have the infrastructure. We need a partner.

And I came to him, shared with him everything about Tim Boom in our hearts and what we felt got laid on us. And he's like, David, I want to stop you right there. I feel this in my heart right now. I want to offer you anything and everything. And it started our relationship. And to me, it really completed the circle of the company of like, hey, this is amazing message and story and vision that God's given us. But you also have to have an exceptional product and what you're wanting to offer. You want to embody your values even in the product you're offering.

Just like the Tim Booms were craftsmen with making watches, we want to show that same craftsmanship with our coffee. And so God really just led us into that amazing relationship and completed that for us. And it's been so amazing. Well, we're at a time, but I just want to tell my audience, you know, folks, I said that I wrote about Corey Ten Boom in my book, Seven Women. If you want to watch the movie, it's called The Hiding Place with Julie Harris,

one of the great actresses. Oh my gosh. It's the hiding place. It's important that we know these stories, very important. So the website is 10Bomb.comffee. David Peters, you're the founder. Congratulations. 10Bom.comfi, if you use the code Eric, you save 15%.

Folks, please check it out. 10Bomb.comffee. Use Eric to save. 15%. And David Peters, congratulations. God bless you. Thanks for doing what you do. Thank you. Appreciate it. Hey there, folks. I want to tell you about a coffee company. I genuinely admire 10 boom coffee inspired by the faith and courage of the 10 boom family. This isn't just great coffee. It's coffee with a mission. Ethically sourced, expertly roasted and rooted in Christian values. If you care about what you consume and who it supports, this is coffee you can feel good about. Go to 10boomcoffee.com.com.

use promo code Eric for 15% off your order. That's 10 Boomcoffee.com code Eric. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Listen, I've changed my clothes. I don't care if it's St. Patrick's Day. I just don't look good in that green jacket. So, and I don't plan to win the Masters, so I'm going to go with Navy. I have as my guests right now two people, and I don't know if I like having them both

together because I want more time with each of them, but we're just going to go with this today. One of these people is my friend John Smirak, and the other is my friend James Lindsay. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you very much, Eric. Okay, I'm going to ask an easy question.

Maybe answering it is hard, but if you know the answer, it'll be easy. Do we know who insurrection Barbie is? Because on X, I have been thrilled. And I'm sure both of you would mostly agree with me. To read what Insurrection Barbie has been posting on X, I'm very impressed with it. And I guess I'm wondering if either of you is figure.

I thought it was a Dallas real estate woman. And now I'm thinking maybe I got that wrong. It's not clear to me. Does either of you know? I do not know who she is. I know that she's anonymous, that she is an evangelical Christian. seems to be confirmed by a few people I've talked to who actually know her.

There can be no doubt about that from what she's writing, if it is, in fact, a she. Yes, in fact, I agree with that. And, I mean, I hear things that she is a she and that she is a wife and a mother from people who actually do know her. But I've never met her, so I don't know for sure. I've been quite impressed with some of the stuff that she's been putting out in the past few weeks in particular, but even for a little while longer than that. So she's really been bringing this fight against the anti-Israel crowd, even the anti-Semitic crowd pretty strongly for a while. And, you know, she's pretty clear-eyed about this integralist threat that has been working its way, not into Catholicism, but through American Catholics as kind of a, you know, wolf and sheep's clothing. Okay, and this is a little complicated.

So I just want to say that what she writes is, it seems dead on. It's amazing to me. And I was going to joke that it's probably Mark Felt or somebody, but we don't know. But John Zmir, I mean, because there's a lot of pieces to this. John Zmirak, you've done this for me. Can you do this for my audience and describe briefly what Catholic integralism is, Sure. You and I are both against Catholic integralism. You are a Catholic. Tell us what it is. Sure. I first identified this back in 2013, and I wrote an article called Illiberal Catholicism.

Illiberal Catholicism, you can look it up. I warned everything that's happening now with the division between Catholics and Protestants, with the hostility towards Israel and the conspiratorial madness, the splintering of the pro-life movement and the pro-family movement. I warned about all of it back in 2013 in this article, Illiberal Catholicism. I can make the Integralist Movement pretty simple. It's Catholic Sharia. That's it.

Catholic Sharia. Now, let's unpack that. For decades, the pro-life, pro-family movement has been ecumenical. Catholic, Protestants, some Orthodox Jews, I remember being Operation Rescue with these wonderful Orthodox Jews outside abortion clinics in Manhattan. That's how I spent the 90s with Operation Rescue. What we basically agreed on was the American founding did not establish one given church, but it did propose to base our positive laws on natural law.

Natural law is the truths, the moral truths, that we can know by reason alone. lot of it's echoed in the Bible. Most of the Ten Commandments are natural law. Natural law is something that you can be known by reasonable law. Abortion is wrong. Same-sex marriage is wrong. There are two sexes. Just count them two. Children should obey their parents. All the basic principles, Thomas Aquinas wrote that all positive law should be based on natural law. Martin Luther King made this same argument. The Nuremberg trials were based on the principle that just because Germany passed a law saying Jews didn't get citizenship and marriage between Jews and Gentiles was wrong. Those laws were null and void because they violated natural law. The law God wrote on the human heart, which St. Paul said he put there so that the Gentiles would be without excuse.

The pro-life movement, the pro-family movement, the marriage movement was all based on natural law. and Catholics, we kind of pioneered most of the natural law arguments. Gradually, evangelicals started to follow us, and instead of quoting the Bible to make a point, they would make natural law arguments from reason alone. What the Catholic integralists want to do, they want to base positive laws on dogma, on divine revelation, on statements by the Pope, the Pope interpreting the Bible. That is crossing the line. That is creating the kind of system that the Puritans fled England to get away from. That's creating the kind of system that the

Catholic Church itself renounced in 1965 at Vatican 2. The church said religious liberty is fundamentally human right that religious liberty is part of the natural law. That laws impinging on people's religious freedom are actually sinful in themselves. This was a big admission for the church because the early church supported religious liberty right up until after Constantine converted the Roman Empire to Christianity, his successor, Theodosius, went a step further and banned pagan religion and punished Jews and made Catholicism mandatory. Okay, just to be clear, so people are tracking, the word for what we're talking about,

essentially, ladies and gentlemen, is Theochical. Right? Theocracy means that you, and this is what the secular left accuses Christians of that, oh, you want to impose your beliefs on others. And those of us who are Christians say, no, we don't want to impose our beliefs. We believe in religious liberty. I believe what I believe is true, but it doesn't mean that I want to impose it. There's certain things I can impose. Murder is. wrong. I'm not going to ask you your opinion on that, but there are many other things that we have to be liberal about in the best sense of liberal. And the way to draw the line, can you make the arguments for this based on natural law, based on reason? You can prove that slavery is wrong based on natural law. You can prove that men and women are only eligible for marriage to each other based on natural law. You can quote the Bible if you want to, but you're not going to persuade non-believers. So what you need to do is make these arguments based on human nature, human

flourishing. These are the ways we can keep a moral society without getting into religious civil war. And there are signs of religious civil war out there. On the one hand, these Catholic integralists, one of them is Scott Hahn, this very popular Catholic, popular theologian, Adrian Vermeul, a professor at Harvard, Patrick Deneen, a professor at Notre Dame. They want the government to back the one true religion. And some of them want to outlaw Protestant churches. Okay. And I just want to say what we're talking about is fundamentally un-American. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, okay? If you want to know what George Washington would have to say, or what Ben Franklin or any of the founders would say, they would disagree with this. This is

fundamentally un-American. This is actual theocracy. They admit that. Patrick Teneen said America was badly founded on false principles and it needs to be refounded on older principles of Catholic theology. And Adrian Vermeel wants an authoritarian government ruled by Catholics who worm their way into power. Okay, now how, and I don't know, maybe James wants to jump in, how in the world, because we are now talking about so much, and folks, forgive me, because there's a lot here, right? but we're talking about this this phenomenon of folks like Candice Owens and Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson

and Kerry Baller really being openly anti-Semitic blaming everything or most things on the Jews that just emerges that emerges from this religious supremacist triumphalist view And some Protestants are adopting it.

Doug Wilson, who I usually like, has come out saying that Catholics shouldn't be allowed to parade with statues of Mary and the Eucharist through the streets because that's idolatry. So you see, there's Protestant pushback. The coalition is tearing itself apart. And I think this is spiritual warfare. I said back in 2013, in an illiberal Caucasism, I think this is from the pit of hell. This has the smell of brimstone about it. why are Catholics some, a tiny 1%.

There are more furries in America than there are Catholic integralists. There are more bronies. Grown men who are into my little pony, there are more of them than there are Catholic integralists. And I have maybe more respect for them. But I'd rather hang out with bronies. So, you know, I've hung out with indigo. So there's so few of these people, but they've got loud voices and big platforms and they're doing tremendous harm.

The enemies of the pro-life movement, the enemies of America want to broadcast these people, just the way Republicans would make more of Louis Farrakhan than he ever deserved just in order to hurt the Democrats. Think about this. Patrick Deneen, who wrote the book, Why Liberalism Fail, Promote, Basically, Starting This Movement, he worked for Bill Clinton. He's a lifelong Democrat, and his book was blurred by Barack Obama. why would, if this book is so great for the conservative movement, why did Barack Obama endorse it? It's as if we found some black pastor to put out a book saying voting is gay. Black men shouldn't vote.

And Republicans would be buying that book up and handing it out outside of black churches. That's Patrick Denny. He did the book, Voting is for pucks. Yeah. By Reverend Euston Washington. I mean, it's fine. Patrick actually got his kind of political. Like, his moment of awakening was in, like, the early 2000s, and he decided that we had hit peak oil.

And this was, like, the greatest geopolitical crisis ever. The peak oil was upon us. So now we have to basically reorder the entire world. He got shown to be a bit of a fool on that. But he stuck to all of his conclusions about the way the country was misordered as a result. It's sort of funny. It's sort of sad. I don't know.

But, Eric, to address how you, how do you get to the Jew hatred here? John's absolutely right. You don't actually have to have anti-Semitism or Jew hatred or anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism or any of this written even into the Catholic theology. It can all come secondarily. Once you decide about this, that you have this view of religious supremacy and that the common good depends on believing your religion and having only public expressions of your religion. So even when you see Doug Wilson saying he'll ban, you know, processions of Mary or processions of the Eucharist, because, they upset the Protestant order, the Catholic integralist view, is that anything that promotes anything outside of Catholicism in public upsets the Catholic order. So that means Jews being Jews interferes with the common good. That's a position that it naturally lends to anti-Semitism. And then what you start doing because it's being promoted by the church is people will start backwards, working backwards to figure out the theological justifications, the so-called biblical justifications for that. And it just takes on a life of its own and becomes a monster. And John was

dead on again. The reason this is such a big deal, despite these guys being, frankly, a relatively small cabal of weirdos, like you mentioned a couple, Adrian Vermeel, Patrick Deneen, Scott Hahn, but you know, you've got maybe Gladden Papp and Chad Pecknold, RR. Reno, Kevin Roberts, and now you're kind of just out of names. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Kevin Roberts, the head of heritage is a Catholic integralist. I've got bad news for you here, Eric. He's certainly promoting them. He's hiring them.

R.R. Reno. Yes. The publisher, the editor of First Things Magazine is a Catholic integral. He certainly promotes them. Yeah, I left out Sarabomari as well. An unbelievably vile article about the Bonhofer film and me. And this is like last year sometime. I mean, I was flabbergasted, so you're telling me first things has also gone over to the dark side.

I feel like that's a pretty good way to put that. Yeah. But like I said, you can retrofit the anti-Semitism to justify the fact that you have a religious supremacy movement. Because public expressions of Judaism itself, wearing a Kippa or a Yamaka in public even, could be construed eventually as upsetting to the public order. I'd like to get to the motives for this because I think it's important. I did a piece at the stream called Integralism is the opiate of the Catholics, where I explain that integralism emerged after like eight years of Pope Francis dragging the church through the sewer, aligning with communist China, going to communist, sending a bishop to,

Maca Communist China to praise their organ harvesting program at a meeting of the organ harvesters who steal organs from Uighurs and sell them on the black market, Pope Francis and his right man hand man, Bishop Serrondo, there to praise them. Pope Francis demanded Catholics take the dead baby vaccine, regardless of its origins in abortion. Pope Francis promoted population controllers and just all sorts of things that are utterly incompatible with natural law, much less Catholic theology. The sets of use crisis was never really resolved. The bishops who covered it up were never punished.

The Catholic bishops basically exists now as an open borders lobby to human traffic, more people in handy love with cartels, into America to fill up the pews so they got $3 billion from the federal government for their immigration trafficking in the last 15 years. Okay, so because they've done all this horrible stuff, The equally sick reaction is this. Because the apparent authority of the papacy seemed to collapse, they look for something to take its place.

The way in the Muslim world, with the caliphate, sort of the papacy for Islam, that was abolished in 1922. In response, a bunch of Muslim intellectuals started something called the Muslim Brotherhood, which was there to revive real, hardcore Islam, not going to be corrupted by majority, It's not going to be liberal.

It's not going to be cosmopolitan. So with the collapse of the authority of the papacy under Pope Francis, Catholics did a Muslim Brotherhood. We're going to be a bunch of layman and we're going to restore true Catholicism, the way the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to restore true Islam. So that's what I think this is. Catholic Sharia by a Catholic Muslim Brotherhood, a small band of angry, embittered, discredited people whose beliefs seem to have been discredited by events.

Like the papacy, what we ate what we thought it was if it can ally with communist China and impose an abortion-based vaccine on Mukfaithful. So going back to the radical roots. But James, Lindsay, you lifted up a book a moment ago. The book is milestones. What is that? This is the intellectual engine of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the book that was written in 1964 to justify using Lenthal's. model in what is to be done that he wrote in 1902 to explain how the Bolsheviks would take power for the communists. This book by Saeed Kutpo was written for the Muslim Brotherhood to explain how to use

the same logic, the exact same framework. The world of false consciousness, or as the Muslim world calls it Jahiliah, the world of ignorance, is going to be overcome by the true light here of Islam, as opposed to the true light of socialism or communism. Okay. And we're going to be a vanguard, blah, blah, blah, for me. Catholics are doing the same thing. That's the point. This small group of angry Catholic radicals is imitating the Muslim Brotherhood. That's what ties into. Okay. And somehow this is at the heart of this excrescence, I don't know if I've ever used that word on this program before, of anti-Semitism,

groiperism, all of this stuff that's really threatening the MAGA movement. But Tucker, of course, is not Catholic. But they're all helping each other. I was very disturbed yesterday to discover that there is this, you know, very kind of creepy event that builds itself as Catholics for Catholics. That's giving an award to Candace Owens, probably to Carrie Baller. And General Flynn, whom I have always admired and loved, who's been on this program many times, he is going to be there. He got sucked into this.

So is Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh is going to be there. It's bizarre. Are they wittingly guilty of, like, I'm just now I'm really lost. At this point, yes. Here's, if I could give you a little bit of my theory of how it became so anti-Israel, for a long time, support for Israel was sort of the Shibileth on the right. Everybody had to support Israel, it was make or break.

You could be pro-abortion, you could be pro-gay marriage, you could be anti-gun rights, you could be anything, but you couldn't be anti-Israel. That was the third rail that would destroy you. And I was critical of that. I was a Pap Buchanan delegate to the 1996 Republican Convention. I didn't like seeing the neocons take over the GOP. This is a reaction against the neocons. The neocons were bullies and kind of thuggish and domineering and they were backstabbing. they were horrible. So now that the neocons are out, you've got people imitating them. Okay,

we're going to make opposition to Israel, the litmus test. You can believe anything you want, as long as you're against Israel. So it's just a sheet mirror image of the old corrupt GOP of David Frum and William Crystal. They're just flipping it. Instead of making support for Israel to make a break, now hatred for Israel is the make or break. I guess, my question. My question is, and either of you can answer this, is Steve Bannon ally himself with Marjorie Taylor Green as being true MAGA and saying that Trump has deviated for MAGAS, does it go to Steve Bannon? I'm just lost here.

I'll give you my opinion, James can give his. I think Steve is trying to hold Trump to his promises. I think Steve is trying to keep Trump honest. I don't believe the part of Insurrection Barbie's article that said that Steve Bannon is a follower of Alexander Dugan and he's diabolical in a call. I don't buy that. Steve Bannon is trying to hold Trump to his campaign promises because Trump tends to be distracted by the next shiny object that's waived in front of him. So, I, I, Bannon's show has had people who are for and against the Iran war. It's been pretty even-handed in its coverage.

So I would not lump Steve Bannon in with these integralists and these rabid anti-semis. I think he's had a much more careful, nuanced position, because he wants to continue to have influence in American politics. He's not just trying to get clicks. I'm a little more skeptical of Steve than that. His ties to Alexander Dugan have been pretty well documented. I mean, when Trump kicked him out of the White House and 18, the first guy he goes to meet with in Rome secretly is Dugan for many hours. So there is a connection there. I'm not sure what that connection is. I know that he fired Jane Zirkle for going to Israel a few months ago. Just outright said, you are not, she travels. You're not allowed to go there. If you go there, I'll fire you. She went there. He fired her, which seems a little bit odd. And that, you know, you're right that they're having people on both sides of the issue on his show, as far as I've seen. But there's a pretty steady drumbeat from Steve and kind of the core cast of characters that is, this is not our war. Trump's Dragon. against into foreign wars, et cetera, that's pretty concerning.

You can take that position. That's not inherently any Semitic. I mean, I don't want boots on the ground in Iran. I think that would be catastrophic. That would be really stupid. I think if there are going to be boots on the ground, they should be Israeli boots. And I will cheer for those Israelis as they take down the Iranian regime.

But putting American troops into Iran, it's a direct betrayal of what Trump promised in 2016 when he did that foreign policy debate. and he talked about the Iraq war. That's what made Trump. That's what won him the nomination was we are not going to be nation building. If we can break it, it doesn't mean we bought it. So I think if Trump sticks to just bombing the Iranians, kill one leader until another until another,

until we killed enough until we get one who's acceptable to us, and it remains an air campaign, I think that could save his presidency. But I think if he does the Iraq War 2.0 in Iran, But who actually thinks he would do that, John? I mean, I think that I'm just shocked that people seem to think he would do that. He has been such a vocal critic of the... He has talked about putting American troops in the Strait of Formuz.

He's going to talk about anything because that's the art of the deal. We have to make sure it remains to know. Because, or us, we're going to lose the Democrats. And then we're all going to be in gulags. And we can all enjoy fish suits head suit together. Well, I'm going to add some color to this. rather than talking about Steve Bannon, I want to add some color to this integralism thing, which is that, like John said, you know, this reaction to Pope Francis, there's also this reaction to a lack of control. Integralism arose in the 19th century in the first place in the wake of things like the Paris commune and these revolts across Europe, a lot of which were communist. And it was kind of stated as a Catholic anti-communist doctrine from the beginning. And so the same lack of control, so to reframe back to integralism, as kind of a sort of Catholic Sharia,

this lack of control breeds in people a desire to regain control. And so the common hatred is, as John said, not just of Israel, but also of these neoconses, Republicans that they believe, have been too weak and have caused us to lose control

of our country, lose control of our circumstances, including these so-called forever wars, like the Iraq-conflare wars and the Afghanistan war. So what you have is a lot of these guys, a lot of them are younger guys, a lot of them are newly Catholic. Some of them have been Catholic longer, but a lot of them are new converts who are looking for stability and

control. And here you have this philosophy that's saying, there is a common good. There is a temporal order and there is a spiritual order. And when the temporal order is not being oriented toward the fulfillment of the spiritual order, chaos reigns. And this is the central premise of integralism is that the Catholic Church is the key holder of the keys to the spiritual order so that the political order, the temporal order of the world has to be ordered to achieve those highest ends of man, meaning the concerns of his soul. And so they're looking for that, that control. Well, I sort of agree with that, but I come at it from a Reformation, Protestant American founding view, you know, whatever, covenant theology in a way that,

But what's interesting to me is that all of what you're talking about strikes me as fundamentally un-American. And John, you quoted, you mentioned Patrick Deneen. They are not, they don't believe the founding was a good thing. I know that Candace Owens has said similar things. They call Americanism a heresy. In the 19th century, reactionary Catholics got Pope Leo the 13th to write a document condemning some of the more extreme statements of American Catholics. But actually the document is kind of a nothing burger.

But they like to make a big deal on it. They like to say that religious freedom is a heresy. And the problem with that is Vatican II taught religious freedom. So they are having not just Vatican II, but every pope since then. So they are in the... I think the New Testament teaches religious liberty. Otherwise, I would not be for religious liberty. Right.

I can give you from Federalist 51, which got invoked in this debate on Acts earlier today. I can actually give you what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton had to say about it. Speaking of the American founding, this was them and Federalist 51. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. Sure, in a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests and then the other in the multiplicity of sects.

The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects, and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country in a number of people comprehended under the same government. So this is where when we look at whether it's Doug Wilson pushing it about his particular take on Protestantism, or whether it's these Catholic integralists saying that it's the Holy Catholic Church that's going to be the one sect that basically has the power to rule them all to order the public affairs. This is a direct refutation of what Madison and Hamilton wrote in Federalist 51. It's un-American. It's un-American. It's also one Catholic. There is not a single bishop or cardinal on the face of the earth who teaches this. The Vatican doesn't teach this. It's not in the catechism of the Catholic Church.

These people are going to old documents that have been overturned. So it's like quoting Dred Scott and claiming that that's the law of the land. No, I'm sorry, that decision has been overturned, something called the 13th Amendment. Vatican II overturned this medieval idea, but it went deep, Eric. Medieval Catholics really were taught that the Pope of a given time had the same authority over all Christians that Moses had over the Israelites when he was ruling them directly as a theocrat. That was the medieval theory of the papacy. It was discarded at Vatican II.

These people are reactionaries. They reject everything taught by the current Vatican and the bishop. I don't think I've ever been more excited about my new book called Revolution, the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world. I have to tell you, we have to continue this conversation another time. But at the heart of what we're discussing, this is all fundamentally un-American. It is wrong. Religious liberty is central.

These folks don't believe that. We'll have to unpack this more another time, but just so grateful for both of you, James Lindsay, Johns Mearek. Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Hi, everyone. If you were injured in an accident, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions.

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