The Eric Metaxas Show - Konstantin Kisin (Continued)

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Konstantin Kisin: Can Western Civilization Survive Without Free Speech?

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As most of you know, for 25 years, I have been doing a thing called Socrates in the city, where I have had some of the most glorious conversations ever with some of the most extraordinary guests ever. We normally do them, you know, in big venues in Manhattan. We're doing them all around the country with, you know, 200 people and it's a big thing. But we've also started doing Socrates in the studio events, which means we can do even more of them. I did a whole bunch in England where I think that's what we're airing today. I'm not sure. But we, I've done so many recently. I did a few in New York recently for Socrates in the studio. And these are, um, You know, it's kind of like a more of a PBS vibe, right?

But it's something that I feel very strongly about. The guests that we choose our guests very carefully. These are some brilliant people. They're not all on the same page as I am, theologically or politically, but who cares, right? That's not the point. The point is to explore the big questions, because I have this kind of crazy idea that if you're actually looking for truth,

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and also books of most of our guests because, again, this is, our idea behind Socrates in the city is to introduce you to a world of thinkers and writers. And again, I've been doing this for 25 years. So we have quite an archive. And I just want people to know about it. And I want to say, again, I would appreciate it if you share this with your friends because there are people all over the country, all around the world. I have been in Europe and people come up to me and say, thank you for Socrates in the city. And I think, what? I'm in Europe.

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of some of the best conversations I've had in the last 20 years. It's the book. It's the Socrates and City book. It's a beautifully printed book and produced book. But the conversations in it, I think of the one I had with Alice von Hildebrandt. She was 91 years old. These are some of the best conversations I've ever had. And if you're looking to deepen the life of the mind, that's a big part of what I hope to do,

to think about the big questions, what we always jokingly describe as life, God, and other small topics. Socrates and City, you know, it's meant to be the place where you get to do that and where there's no pressure to think a certain way. This is just to help people think about the big questions. And I keep saying I started Socrates and City 25 years ago because I thought, you know, we live in a world where you're not encouraged to think about the big questions. You're encouraged to think about shallow garbage. You go to news websites and they're just pushing whatever is sensational. Thinking about the big questions, taking the time to think about the big questions, it's important, folks.

We're very distracted. So that's what Socrates and cities meant to be. I should say part of the reason it's called Socrates and the city, it's not just because I'm Greek. But Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth. living. He said, it's important to think about the big questions. I agree with him on that. And I think that if you're honestly searching for truth, you're even asking, is there such a thing as truth? You're on the right path. And that's, that's really, really vital that you be encouraged to think about the big questions. Let's say you're already a person of faith. That doesn't mean you have it all

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That's the website, goisrael.com. I also want to mention HerzogFoundation.com. You know, if you listen to the program, what a big believer I am in homeschooling and in genuine classical Christian education, in genuinely Christ's centered K through 12 education. If you don't give your kids the truth about the basics, how can they think clearly about anything? It's really important that we understand that, you know, you used to be able to send your kid to the public schools like 100 years ago, and they would get the basics not happening anymore. And so if you're interested in homeschooling

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The larger topic for this season of Socrates in the city is what's the future of the West? Specifically today, I will be speaking. speaking with Constantine Kissen on the question, can Western civilization survive without free speech? Who you ask is Constantine Kissen? Some of you ask. He is a writer, a social commentator.

He's a comedian, so they say. He's the co-host of Triggernometry, which boasts a zillion, don't quote me, but I think it's literally a zillion.2 followers on YouTube. He's a regular on British and American TV and radio shows, including, for example, question time. Good morning, Britain, BBC Breakfast, Daily Politics, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, yada, yada, yada. His first book is titled An Immigrants Love Letter to the West. It was published in 22.

It's a Sunday Times bestseller. And now it falls to me to welcome. Constantine Kissen. Welcome. I've been excited to talk to you until now. I've gotten very used to the idea. No, I am excited to talk to you for many reasons, which is always challenging because I don't know where to start.

Let's start with this. I want to talk principally about free speech. So you've talked about this. You debated at the Oxford Union and your opening speech, short speech, but it seems to have gone viral. Would you agree with that? I would.

I mean, several hundred million views, yeah, pretty viral. Excuse me. Yeah. What? He got several hundred million views. I had people from like Kyrgyzstan emailing me. So, yeah. That's way.

I sound very uncharacteristically for a British guy showing offy, but that's just those are the facts of the matter. No, no, no, no, that's utterly astonishing. I mean, when somebody says viral, like about a 100th of that would be viral. That's really extraordinary. Okay, well, that's good because it, I think, points to the, to the quote. What was the title of that speech? How does it put? The title, the motion of the debate, as it's called, was this house believes that

wokeness has gone too far. Work culture has gone too far, something like that. Yeah. I debated at the Oxford Union something like 18 years ago. So I've been there. And I was really just fascinated to hear your speech on the subject. So, yeah, it was about wokeness. And at some point in it, you talk about free speech.

But why don't we start here? Let's say you're a comedian or you're many things. I used to be. But you, well, you're still funny. But there's a link between humor and truth-telling. and free speech. What is somebody asked you, if I ask you, what is free speech? What does free speech mean to you?

What is that term free speech? Because it's been, you know, attacked recently or generally. Well, it's the ability to speak without being put in prison or without having it restricted somehow. Or increasingly without, you know, as we move to a digital world, it's the opportunity to speak or write or publish or whatever without having that opportunity taken away from you too. and we've seen all of those things happening. But we are, Eric, I think if we broaden it out a little bit, we are in a very interesting moment because in recent days, J.D. Vance, the US vice president,

went to Europe, went to Munich, and he gave a speech about the importance of free speech. He chastised European leaders for restricting free speech for their citizens. And I couldn't help laughing when the response to that was the German politicians standing up and saying, Das is unacceptable! Now, are you kidding? No.

Wait a minute. A German politician, I think he was either the chancellor or the defense minister, stood up and basically said, you can't say this. Was he officially representing the Third Reich? So I think we're very different in Europe. I think there's a big difference more broadly between the way Europeans think and the way Americans think for all sorts of reasons. A lot of Americans think that the reason you have a lot more freedom around speeches that you have the First Amendment, I actually think that's wrong. The reason you have a lot more free speech is that you have a First Amendment culture. You have the amendment, but you also teach your citizens that it's a good thing to have this amendment, that it's a valuable thing.

And therefore, when people are having a discussion or a debate, they'll say, well, this is America. right whereas in Europe we don't really have that attitude and therefore we have a different attitude to risk

we have a different attitude to offend so a lot of people in this country in the UK in Britain and in Europe feel that

you know rather than being allowed to be free they would much rather be looked after they'd much rather be protected well this is a much rather be safe

and I can tell you you know you mentioned question time question time is the biggest political debate show we have in Britain. I've been on a few times. One or two times back when I was on it, they do a question they don't actually release. They don't publish the debate. It's like a warm up.

And at the time, the question was Donald Trump has just been unbanned from Facebook. Is this a good thing or whatever? And I was first and I made what I thought was the uncontroversial point that the president of the most powerful country in the world might want to have a voice on the digital to Public Square didn't really seem to land well in the room. But irrespective of that, the Labour Party politician who was on the program, when it came to her, left-wing party and major left-wing party in Britain, she went, we must have the safest internet in the world. And I thought, what's safer than North Korea, you know,

I think in Europe we have completely lost. And this is why I think what J.D. Vance said in that speech was incredibly important. and the one he gave to the AI summit, too, in which he talked about risk aversion. We have lost the sense that actually freedom comes with tradeoffs, comes with risks, comes with costs, and we pay them gladly. And in America, you still have that attitude across the country. You still have the belief that freedom is worth the risk. And the price you pay for that is self-reliance to a large extent, whether that, when that comes to running your household or making decisions about it, education or when it comes to managing your emotions.

Like it's your job to manage the emotions that you feel in respect of someone else's speech because you know that their freedom to say things you don't like is the price you pay for having the freedom to say things that they might not like. The JD Van, I don't want to date this interview, but this morning I watched the JD Van speech to the EU and I was astonished at his courage, at his, at how diplomatically he said these things which probably were hard for some of those folks to hear. Diplomatic by American standards in fairness. Well, yeah, but I mean, I don't know how else you could have said those things anymore.

I'm just messing with you. It is another difference between our cultures. We are a little bit more indirect about the way we say things. But I also have to say that those of us in Europe who are watching what the new administration is doing in the U.S., whether we are centrist like me or right-leaning or whatever, you just go, oh my God, this is what the world needs right now. Without any question. That's the point. So who cares, you know, who's doing it?

It's just whether it's good. I want the permanent bureaucracy to be, well, frankly, at this point, destroyed. I want efficiency. I want growth. I want end of net zero insanity. I want a civilization that believes in itself. I want freedom of expression, even for people I don't agree with. these are pretty basic things

and there's lots of things I disagree with the administration about on foreign policy and stuff like that but in terms of what they're doing for America oh my God we would all trade our right arm for someone like that people in America we say we

the people do the people have the right to self-government liberty freedom if they do then it's the politician's job to do what the people want within limits. Now that's what gets to the point.

Within limits, what are those limits? In the United States, it's the Constitution, you know. But let's go to this issue of, you said in at the Oxford Union, this is the woke idea that feelings matter more than truth. In other words, the limits of free speech are once it offends someone, we have to pull it back or what, you know, that's, historically, that's not really made much sense, but suddenly we've arrived at this point. So what do you make of that?

That's, Western civilization has come to a point where you have people saying feelings matter more than truth, whether they even believe in truth, I don't know. Yeah, I think we shouldn't over-idealize the past. There were very long periods of time in the history of the West when certain people weren't allowed to say certain things. Yeah, true. They were very, I mean, we had blasphemy laws in this country. until like 20 years ago, right?

So, and I, one of the reasons I find myself in a very weird position, Eric, is that I came into being in this conversation from a position of at that time being a stand-up comedian whose heroes as a young man were people like George Carlin and Bill Hicks. These were lefties, effectively, or certainly would be now, who were pushing back against the Christian right, who were saying, you can't say this, you can't do that. And, you know, George Carlin famously had the routine seven words you can't say on TV. Bill Hicks's last monologue on Letterman was censored and not published. I don't know if you knew this. And he was only released several decades later by Letterman who was like, I don't know why I didn't release it. But of course, when you watch it, it was offensive to religious people. My point is this.

Whoever has power is always going to try to censor those that speak against them one way or another. And that power can look different ways. I don't just mean political power. The progressive left in our societies hasn't been in power exactly, but what they've had is cultural power. They invented cancel culture or reinvented it, of course, cancel culture is not a new thing.

They use social media very effectively so that if three people with blue hair on Twitter said something about you, or your boss didn't want any trouble, so it was easier to fire you, etc. And so the point I'm trying to make is free speech is not, people say, oh, you must be a conservative.

You keep talking about free speech. And I keep saying free speech is not a conservative value. It's not a liberal value. It's a Western value. And we ought to all of us hang on to it for dear life, whether we're right wing or left wing or whatever. Well, let's talk about that for a minute. How is it a Western value?

What is the West and what's a Western value? Well, if you think about what the central difference between Western civilization and other major civilizations in existence in the rest of the world, one of which I come from. Russia is a very influential civilization in human history, the Chinese civilization, others too. I think a Russian civilization is being very different from Soviet, quote-unquote, civilization.

I mean, we were Soviet for 80 years, so it had an impact. It's part of our history. So what is the central difference between those two ways of looking at the world? the eastern world view is collectivist you are a cog in the machine you are a unit

and if I am the president of Russia and I need to send you to die it is your duty to die in the war in Ukraine and shut your trap if you don't like it and you have no free speech about it whatsoever it's a collectivist mindset you must you must sublimate yourself to the group you must you must and you see this and it has beautiful things about it

I don't know if you've ever been to Japan. No. If you go to Japan, you see the upside of this idea, because when you go on the tube, it's completely on the metro. Yeah. It's completely rammed, and yet no one's touching anyone. There is a culture of such consideration for others that people almost wear a different face when they're in public,

because there's a public thing, you know, we must show respect to others. We must have a cohesive system. There are positives to a collectivist worldview. But the Western worldview is one, that is centered on the idea of the sanctity of the individual, which comes from the idea, the Judeo-Christian idea of Imago-day, the idea that you are made in the image of God,

and therefore as an individual, you have certain rights that cannot be taken away from you. This is enshrined in your constitution in America. Now, if you have sanctity as an individual and you have certain rights, well, expressing your thoughts is, of course, going to be right at the top of that. And so I say it's a Western value,

because we, more than any other civilization, have made that freedom to speak your mind a core value of our society. But what happens, and this is my point, is every now and again you get a wave of authoritarian and they're going to look different to each generation who come along and say, oh, I can press this button and get you thrown in Twitter prison

or in real prison or in this or that. And of course, power is very seductive to those people. So it is a Western value, but each generation is going to face a challenge when it comes to that and it's going to look different for every generation, which is why the value must be preserved rather than thinking about it as a, well, you know, the left is like this and the right is like that. That's not going to last.

I mean, I guess it's one thing to call it a Western value, which, of course, it is, free speech and the sanctity of the individual. But I always want to ask the bigger question, is it true? Is it right? Or is it just different? Because if it's just different, then you can see how some people say, well, I don't like it. I want to go to the collectivist view or I want the state to have more power than the individual. Great.

I'll fund your ticket to North Korea. That's what you want. This is not the society in which you're going to get that. That's not what the society is for. It's not what it's built on. And we don't want you here. If you want to live in a collectivist society where I have to do what you say because there's more of you. That's not the society that we signed up for.

Well, but you understand these people want to change. the West into that kind of a world. That's fine, and we're going to argue very strongly against them, and we're going to win, because what they're trying to do is to change our society. What we are trying to do is to grow our society on the foundations that our ancestors have passed on to us, which we know work. Hey, get rhythm. When you get the blues, come on, get rhythm.

When you get the blues, get a rock and roll feeling in your bones, but taps on your toes and get gone. Look at the world. And you see millions of people risking their lives every year to come to our societies on small boats in our country, through the rear ground in your country, across the Timorsey in Australia, where I was last year. And no one's going the other way. Maybe there's something in that. Maybe we can say, actually, this seems to be making some kind of factually based point about what human beings seem to prefer. Right. Right.

So they are free to make those arguments, and I defend their right to do so, but they're wrong. You sound like me. You wouldn't know that because you don't know me, but it's just funny. Typically, when people have talked about the West, Europe, they've been talking about Christendom. That has fallen out of fashion. It's interesting to me that the European Union's constitution makes no reference. reference to God when the whole idea of Europe as an entity, it's inescapable historically that that's the identity. So in some ways what we're talking about is the secularization

fairly recently of Europe and the West, which leads to a different set of values. Because as you said before, the idea of the sanctity of the individual, you know, it doesn't come from the United States Constitution. The United States Constitution comes to from these ideas that have really filtered down through the centuries of Christendom because you don't get these ideas until the 18th century, you know, fully formed. But it's just interesting to me that I think the secularization of the West has led to this crisis. It's an argument that Jordan makes, Jordan Peterson. I was on tour with him last year about his book, which is about the God question.

I think he's undoubtedly right as you are. The question for me, though, is forward-focused, and that is in a secular society like the one we have, how do you deal with the reality that you have? Clearly, we're not going to get everyone going to church or back to religion. Now, that doesn't mean that some people won't see that as the path for them,

and I think that's great. You know, I'm someone who is, I don't go to church, but I also don't deny that that realm is valuable and important. You know, there's, I guess, a tension there that I have. But my question that I feel from that position is, what do we do? And the question that I'm kind of wondering all the time about is,

is there a way to maintain values without having the scripture from which they come? And I think there is, but I think it comes on an individual level. And the reason I say this is I grew up in the Soviet Union. And the values of the Soviet Union were very, very, very, very different to the values of my parents. And there are certain things that I don't do and would not do, not because there was a scripture in which I was told not to do,

but it's because my parents taught me that these are things that you do and these are things that you don't do. So I think that values can be passed on without necessarily having that, although it's easier if you have a scripture and a ritual and a practice and a community around that.

But being realistic about the starting position, I am in, look, the guard people are going to convert anyone who's open to that. I'm more interested in my role of talking to people who are more where I am. You know, I call my generation children of Dawkins. Actually, it's funny to bring up Dawkins because when you were talking about, you know, sort of like saying, I like this, and maybe it used to come from scripture or from religious

ideas, but I just like it, and it seems to work for me. And it reminds me of Dawkins a year or so ago made the comment. I mean, he's spoken about this before, that he loves the architecture. I just passed it in the Uber on my way. of St. Paul's cathedral, Christopher Wren's masterpiece. And he loves that. And he loves some of the trappings of English Christian culture. And so there really is a question, I think a very serious question, whether you can get,

whether one is being ultimately at least somewhat dishonest in saying, well, I like what you get from it, but I don't like where it comes from. Well, I don't even say that I don't like where it comes from. Look, I like Richard, we've had them on trigonometry a number of times. I think that that part of his thinking I am less persuaded by as I get older, frankly. I wrote a piece of my substack a while ago called The Atheist Delusion, we're very much talking about this. But in terms of the solution for people who are not prepared to make the leap,

I think Jordan has actually come the closest because when I was on tour with him, We traveled all over America, small towns, medium-sized towns, New York, et cetera. Radio City Music Hall. That was fun. I was there. Were you? Yes, I was. And I didn't know then who you were, but of course since then.

I figured it out. Just now. Well, one of the things that we got to over the course of the nine or ten dates that I did with him, because he really brought me on to argue with him, right? What I got for me was that the idea that he talks about Christianity, being the central idea of Christianity, as he puts it, is voluntary self-sacrifice, which is represented by Jesus on the cross, right? And his argument that works for me, at least, is an efficacy argument.

He says, when you live your life in this way, your life is better and the life of your community is better. And when I practice that, I observe that that's true. therefore I am being very sarcastic when I say this the bearded man in the sky it's a caricature and not the way that many religious people see it but the bearded man in the sky becomes a less of less of an issue because I know which values to follow do you see what I mean well because they work yes but what that does at least it seems to me that what that does is that it points to an antecedent I mean you can just say reality right you you start to discovered that the nature of reality is that this kind of behavior is better because it corresponds to what we call reality. Sure. And it's very easy to explain that from an evolutionary standpoint. You don't need God for that, which is where my...

I dare you to try. Well, you don't need to dare me. It's very easy. We are communal animals that evolved in small tribes. So the fact that cooperation works in that society, which people have longstanding links over lifetimes and generations would make perfect sense that we would evolve into the sorts of creatures for whom that way of being would be the most advantageous. Well, you could see somebody saying perhaps advantageous, but there's nothing right about it

and I don't like it. They certainly can say that. But see, the thing that lies underneath your challenge there is, you know, I want something that I can say, this is the way. and I'm saying this is the way that works, right? So ultimately, the certainty that you crave may not be available in my argument, but I don't crave that certainty. I crave the certainty of how do I live my life?

What's the best way to live my life? Do I forgive those who trespass against me? Seems to work better when I do. Do I give more of myself? But I think a woke person would forgive me. Sure, no, it's fine. You go ahead. No, it seems to me that a woke person would say that,

ultimately is self-serving. In other words, you say, well, self-sacrifice works for me. This kind of stuff works for me, works for me. And you could see, to play devil's ad, because somebody would say, well, that's just self-serving. It works for you. It doesn't make it right. I don't like it.

I don't claim that it's right. I've never made that claim. I'm just telling you my experience. If you want to be miserable and insert more things into your septum and whatever, that's fine. I'm not going to interfere in you doing that. You have the freedom to do that, right? What I'm saying is if you're interested, if you're talking to me, you're probably interested in my experience. My experience is that when I live my life in this way, it gets better.

If that's enough for you to try it out, brilliant. If you want to go back and dye your hair another color, do it. There's no problem with that. No, that's good. And that's what I feel, that's where I feel the hyper-religious people have got this wrong in the past. The over-prescription, the domineering idea of like, this is the way I'm. otherwise you burn in hell. I would argue that they are betraying their faith by behaving that way.

I'm sure that's an argument that can be made, but a lot of people would argue the other way and say, without that strong encouragement, people aren't going to be religious. You know, you need the fear and the invitation, both, right? I'm just saying, I think for my generation, maybe younger people, this thing has to be invitational rather than top-down hierarchical this is what you must do

and I have very little interest in arguing about whether God exists. None of us know. Actually, I do. You believe? Oh, without any doubt. Of course, but you don't know. Oh, no, I do. No, you believe.

No, I don't. You just said you believe. No, I know. I asked you if you believe, but you said I believe. I know that God exists. I want to talk to you about so much else but no I would say that I know that God exists Yeah, how

Well, when you have me on your podcast, I'll explain that Okay Because I would love to try I would love to try but no, there's so much I want to ask you about So forgive me You said I think at the Oxford Union That woke culture tries to undermine our confidence In Western values

I don't think I said it tries I think it does. I don't think it's intentional for most people. Yeah. No, I think you're right. But I want to talk about that because it's sort of a fascinating development fairly recently in the last, I don't know, four years. We've really seen woke values flower in a way that has shocked much of the world. I think it's why we're experiencing a backlash because it went so far that many people that didn't really have an opinion suddenly

had an opinion said we don't like this. Well, there's a lot to unpack that. First of all, I have heard people say Wokeness is Christianity taken to its logical conclusion. I'm not educated enough about Christianity to know if that's true or not. I mean, I would say it's not true, but the case can be made, and Tom Holland makes the case

in his book. I think that obviously there's a massive difference between the teachings of Jesus and the way the church has then implemented them. I think if you look at Wokeness as the teachings of Jesus taken to their logical conclusion, actually there's quite a lot of correlation,

but I don't want to get into that mess of an argument. I'm just saying people have made that argument and you bring it up with Tom. In terms of workness, the reason I say that it undermines the West is that I think it's very simple, Eric. I really don't, there's no complicated theory that's needed here.

Wokeness is fundamentally an ideology of self-loathing. It says our societies are based on wrong and bad and our history is wrong and bad.