The Eric Metaxas Show - Os Guinness

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Os Guinness drops by the studio straight from last night's Socrates in the City event and continues discussing the future of American freedom.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Ladies and gentlemen, buckle your seatbelts and keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times. Here comes Mr. Thrill Ride himself, Eric Mattaxas. Yowza, yowza. As the young people say. Oh, they say it all the time.

I'm shattered from last night. Oh, my goodness. Socrates in the city with Oz Guinness last night. Oh, boy, big event. It was a wonderful event. A million friends. Just extraordinary. Now, folks, we have Oz Guinness in the studio.

In about nine minutes, he will be here. Yeah. Sitting where I'm sitting. the very seat of Albin, ex-cathedra, speaking ex-cathedra from the seat of Albin. And we're going to continue the conversation from last night. Socrates in the city happened last night, December 6th. Of course, today is December 7th, a date which will live in infamy. You get that reference?

Yeah, yeah. We're in infamy right now, I think. But honestly, the conversation we had last night at Soxs and City was so important. We have had, and so we're going to continue the conversation with Oz now in a few minutes for both hours today. But I want to say that we haven't yet put online all of the Socrates events from this fall. We had Andrew Claven. Yes. We had James Tour prominently featured in my book, Is Atheism Dead.

we had David Berlinski, and then last night we had Oz Guinness. Now, the thing is with Oz Guinness, who's in the green room waiting to come in here right now, it was particularly special because, as I said last night in my opening remarks, without Oz Guinness, Socrates and City would not have happened. It's an amazing thing. And he so generously gave of himself, he spoke. for us multiple times in the beginning as we were getting started. And in a way helped me frame the idea of Socrates in the city.

So it was really special. And then to realize last night that it was 22 years since the first Socrates in the city with Oz Guinness in December of 2000. It's insane. Like really just madness. And my daughter who is running these events now was one year old. And she wasn't doing nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. Come on, get a job. But it really is just, it's just amazing. So I was so gratified and I'm so thrilled that I get to continue the conversation with Oz. And by the way, last night there were so many people there that are old friends that I haven't seen in a while. Dick Morris was there. And Jenna Ellis was there. And Jenna Ellis, by the way, will be on this program tomorrow.

Yes, she will. She's coming into the studio. I think today, because she's in New York, and we're going to record, and we'll air that tomorrow. But just so many friends, it was just, it was absolutely delightful. Yeah, it was a packed house last night. It was, and so I want to say to, just to the, to the audience here, folks, one thing that I noticed last night is there are a lot of people that showed up because I had reached out to them personally saying, listen, Oz Guinness is coming, you got to go. And they weren't, They weren't on the Socrates mailing list, and I realized, I should say on the air, we're going to be doing these events all around the country.

I was just talking the other day when I was in Seattle about doing an event in Seattle. We have done them. We just did one in Houston recently. But people keep mentioning this to me that why don't we do Socrates? And I have to say, I will be doing that in the year ahead. So if you're interested in knowing when we're doing these, please go to the website Socrates in the city.com and sign up for the newsletter. I mean, we don't send it out often.

We just send it out to once in a blue moon to let you know kind of what's coming up. But it's the only way we can let you know. And I want to say, I want everybody to know about it. Because even if you can't come, you can tell a friend or something. But it was so genuinely magical last night. I mean, that's the word that comes to mind. People keep saying that this was so, you know, people get very excited about it because there's something beautiful about it. And, you know, we always do them in beautiful venues and the conversation is scintillating.

So go to Socratesinthe city.com and we will be in touch with you about the future. And we also are going to do a subscription series where people can sign up for, you know, whatever it is per month. and I will I'll fill everybody in on that another time but go to Socratesandcity.com and sign up and of course this if you go to my personal website

Ericmetaxis.com that's been refurbished recently and we're still going to be continuing to refurbish it. It's kind of a redo but there's all kinds of information that we don't get to share on this program because our hands are tied because Salem Media won't allow us to talk about certain things You know, it's corporate.

It's corporate. Okay. Because I thought our new advertiser was like Balencio, whatever. Was what? Balenciaga, yeah. We can't talk about Belenciaga. Just kidding. No, but honestly, we hope you'll go to Ericmetaxis.com and sign up for my normal newsletters.

And then, of course, our radio website, metaxistalk.com. If you want to get Eric Mataxis show swag for Christmas, you better hurry up, but it's there. Go to Metaxistalk.com. You can get Albans books are signed. Hamster homes. There's all kinds of, you can get mugs and t-shirts and, oh, I don't know, patio umbrellas. We really should have patio umbrellas.

We don't. Be fun to mail those out. Before we get to Oz, Guinness, and again, tomorrow we got Jenna Ella, I'm so excited. This, on Friday, I'm right. recording Roger Stone. We won't air that probably till Monday, and we will have John Zmirak. I think finally we'll get him on Friday. Yeah, it's late. Smirak. You got to get a dose of Zmirak every week. Actually, before we get to Oz, let me remind folks, we're doing this campaign with Christian Solidarity International. And, you know, it is, it's an amazing thing. If you haven't done this yet,

this is a really special opportunity. I think a lot of times people are troubled. What do I get for a Christmas gift? Let me tell you something. I don't think you could do better than to tell someone I have literally freed a slave in your name. I mean, again, this is not 1820, this is not 1780. This is 2002. if you go to our radio website, metaxis talk.com, right at the top, there's a banner.

We're working with CSI to free slaves. These are Christians enslaved by Muslim radicals. Christian solidarity, international. These guys are heroes. And they have relationships on the ground in southern Sudan. And they go to bat. And they get this done. It's an amazing, it's almost incomprehensible that you, could do this, that you could just go to this website, and $250 is the price to free a slave and get them set up in a life of freedom. We've talked about this on the program in the past and the details of it, but you can literally buy their freedom. And now if you give $50 or $100, whoever gives anything, by the way, you're enrolled in our, we give away three grand prizes at the end of the month when we're done with this. And I want everyone to participate to give whatever you can. It's tax deductible, obviously.

But anybody you can give $250, I can't think of a more special gift on Christmas morning to say to somebody, we have freed a slave. You know, you print it out and you show it to them. We freed a slave in your name. Because this is transcendent stuff, folks. This isn't something that sits in the bottom of the closet. This is something that is almost incomprehensible that you and I could participate. in something as beautiful as freeing people from actual slavery.

Yeah, and some of these people have been enslaved for decades, not just years. Years is bad enough. Months is bad enough, but decades. Again, it's all incomprehensible, but I challenge you to try to comprehend it, at least to go to the website and do what you can. As we go out, before we get to us, I'm going to read the phone number. Folks, I'm asking you, do not miss this. Whatever you can give, some people can give a little bit.

Whatever you can do, this is, this is eternal stuff. It's just amazing. The phone number is 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. 888-253-35-25-25-25-25-25-25-22. And by the way, just right at the top of the page, very top of the page, brand new banner. Can't miss it. CSI Give Today. My Taxestalk.com. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have not. no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed, and when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes leading the prices of goods to rise.

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So you get the same great service while supporting a company that's fighting to preserve our God, given rights and freedoms. Just go to patriotmobile.com slash Eric or call their 100% US-based customer service team at 972 Patriot. If you're fed up with woke companies that don't care about your values, support a company that does. Make the switch today and get a free month of service plus free activation. Patriotmobile.com slash Eric. That's Patriotmobile.com slash Eric or call 972 Patriot. Hey folks, I warned you that the next time you heard my voice, it would not be Albin sitting in the seat of Albin. But it would be Oz Guinness. Os Guinness, my friend, welcome.

Thank you. Last night was, to use, it's becoming a cliche, it was magical because people keep saying that. It was just an extraordinary event, and I was telling my radio audience just before you came on that, without you,

Socrates in the city, I don't think, would have come into being. You were instrumental in it, but what's astonishing to me is that this is over 22 years ago. It really is. No, that is amazing. I remember the weekend when you were dreaming it up. Well, it was, I mean, we'd been dreaming up before that, but then you and I were together with our friend Jim Lane, and we went up to,

we went up to New Hampshire from Connecticut, and you and I were talking about this. And in any event, that was early in 2000. And then finally, I guess that fall, we had a couple events, and you spoke, I believe it was almost exactly now. It was like maybe December 11, of 2000 and suddenly 22 years ago and you were our guest last night it was the first time I'd interviewed you because we kind of shifted over from talks to interviews I don't know when we did that maybe a number of years ago but last night you talked about the subject of your two more recent books zero hour America and then the one before that the magna carta of humanity the subtitle is the Sinai Revolution and the Future of Freedom.

You are typically humble about taking credit for anything, but I just want to say, I want to challenge you a little bit in the sense that the thesis of your book, the Magna Carta of humanity, the Sinai Revolution and the future of freedom. You basically say, and just correct me if I'm wrong or from going off, that it was what we read in Exodus,

which amazingly happened something like 34 centuries ago, that was the first genuine revolution that paved the way for what we think of now as American-style self-government and the liberties that we have and cherish and all of this. I had never seen that connection made clearly the way you make it in the book, the Magna Carta of humanity. Well, put it like this, Eric.

I mean, if you look at the modern revolutions, there are five big ones, the English, the American, the Russian, sorry, the French, the Russian, and the Chinese. People say, well, the first two are different. The English failed, and the American, of course, succeeded. But actually the first two are very close, not just because they're English speaking, but they both come from the Bible. Okay, so even when you say there are five revolutions, I want to cut in and say, yes, two of them are from the pit of hell, the Russian, the Chinese, and the French, three of them. And then you have the English and the American, which were beautiful. and even when you say that the English revolution failed,

in one way it failed, but it also paved the way for the founders who were part of the American revolution in their thinking. But it failed in the sense the king came back. Yeah. And so you had a very different history. And many of the best, it was chaotic too. People like the levelers and the diggers and the monarchy men,

it was a firm end of chaos. You know, the best book on it is called The World Turned Upside Down. And that was the idea of a Christian view of revolution. But the best of it, of course, came across here. Now, I think that's important because you go to the average university. Where did freedom come from? Where did toleration come from? The Enlightenment, they say.

Rubbish. Historians would say, like Eric Nelson at Harvard, the 17th century was called the biblical sancter. century because it was fascinated with what they called the Hebrew Republic. In other words, through the Reformation, the notion of Soloscriptura back to the Bible, they rediscovered that Exodus, as Leon Kass puts it, is God's founding his nation. So even Thomas Hobbes, who's an atheist, explores Exodus and many other of the great thinkers of the time did.

So the ideas from Exodus are absolutely critical and Americans don't know it. This is a big thing. This is why your book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, The Sinai Revolution and the Future of Freedom, as has happened a number of times when I read your books, I am deeply embarrassed that I didn't know this because it seems so extremely central and seminal.

It's not just, oh, this is another idea that I can add on to my other day. It seems so central. So the idea that we haven't only forgotten our own founding and its roots, but the idea that that came out of the 17th century and that these ideas were known to come from the Bible, even people like Hobbs and Thomas Payne, who were atheists, nonetheless knew there's no way around it. That's where this comes from.

So the idea that we have Sloppily drifted into thinking This is something that came out of the Enlightenment and that everyone seems to think this is true and it's not It's an amazing thing At least for me I have to pause and to try To take in the

But it's very important today you think of people who are saying We've got to save democracy As you know the framers were very Cherry of democracy Because of all that Plato and others had warned would happen in democracy But the American experience is a republic, and that doesn't just mean you don't have a king. It was a republic based on the Hebrew

Republic, and so the Hebrew notion of covenant, that's the key idea, became constitution. And so you can see, as scholars point out, there are three simple ideas behind covenant that affect politics. One, it's based on freely chosen consent. The consent of the government comes from Exodus. But again, I mean, look, as you know, I'm a devotee of Homer. And so to think that we are talking about something, about ideas that came into the world, came into history, before the Trojan War ever was fought, in times that are practically ancient.

And yet these ideas, which are transcendent and are as fresh today as ever, came out of that world. It is really amazing to me. And I guess I still want to challenge you on where did you find, did you always know this or who has been writing about this? Because it strikes me as so important. And so when I read it in your more recent book, again, which is called the Magna Carta of Humanity,

I thought, why haven't I heard this moment? more. Well, I didn't always know it. And someone challenged me about 10 years ago, did you understand the roots of covenant? And suggested I read Daniel Elazar. And he's a Jewish scholar. Of course, you're Greek. We have an incalculable debt to the Greeks in all sorts of fronts. That's not minimized. But Elazar pointed out the Greek categories, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and their corrupt forms, tyranny and so on. They are all dealing with governments. Whereas another way of looking at is looking at how societies are formed.

And if you take that second question, you have three types, organic societies linked by blood kinship, like an African tribe or a Scottish clan. Or you have hierarchical societies that are based on power, empires, kingdoms, militaries. But the third type is covenantal, supremely the Jews, the Swiss, and the Americans. And people don't understand that. Now, of course, each of these systems has its weakness.

That's the genius of Plato. You know, monarchy, corrupted becomes tyranny. Well, you can see in the Bible the weakness of covenantalism. God keeps his word, his promise, and humans don't. and so that's always they need to be renewed or they break down. And that's what's happening in America today. Now, it was we the people should be an ongoing commitment and promise keeping by American citizens.

But for a hundred reasons, that promise keeping, that covenant has broken down. Well, we talked about that last night and I want to touch on that again because it's why we are where we are in America now, because we have forgotten what we need never to forget. In other words, and you write about this, of course, that we have to understand who we are and what it means to be who we are as a people. What does it mean to be American?

Those ideas have fallen on hard times. If they're spoken about, they're not spoken about widely, and you don't have a general cultural consensus, and we haven't, you know, for the last five or so decades, when we come back, I want to talk about that consensus and about those ideas. Folks, I'm talking to Oz Guinness. This is the Eric Metaxus show. Our website is Ericmetaxis.com.

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In fact, people are being enslaved for their faith. Some have been in bondage for 25 or 30 years. If you've been listening for any period of time, you know I'm passionate about the work of Christian's holidays, Derry International, a ministry that sets these captives free. There are hundreds of thousands persecuted and enslaved in the Middle East. Together, we can literally buy their freedom and save the lives of some precious brothers and sisters this Christmas, giving them the joy and hope that we celebrate freely. For only $250, you can provide life-saving aid this Christmas. You can buy a

believer's freedom and provide them with much-needed food, a goat, and other goods necessary for their very survival. These are brothers and sisters who are enslaved and fearing for their lives. Just $250. Maybe you can give more. Maybe a portion. Every gift helps. Imagine buying a fellow believers freedom. Call 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. Christian solidarity, providing life-saving resources for persecuted Christians for almost 40 years. 888-253-3522 or Metaxus.com and click on the Christian Solidarity banner. Give someone the gift of their freedom for Christmas. Thank you. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to Oz Guinness. Oz, you just said something. you know, again, I am sometimes flabbergasted. The idea that this idea of covenant,

we can trace it back to Sinai, to Exodus, to Moses, and then we see it again, of course, in 1776. That's a long stretch. It's an amazing thing that we would see this biblical idea. resurface in the United States of America, and that is why we are who we are. Well, that's the point. In other words, when the Christian faith became the official faith of Rome in AD 380, I think the church made a great mistake. It copied Roman structures uncritically. Roman structures hierarchical.

You had a Caesar, consuls, senators, and you had a pope, cardinals, and bishops. hierarchical. And you know, it was a Catholic layman, the great Lord Acton, who made the famous remark that all power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And he was commenting in that comment on his own church. He was criticizing it, because the Catholic church is hierarchical and say the corruptions of the Inquisition and so on all came out of that structure. The Reformation said, no, that's not biblical. Not so much Luther. but Calvin and then Zwingli and Bollinger, John Knox in Scotland. In England, Oliver Cromwell, for better or worse, said Exodus is the direct parallel to what I'm trying to do.

And of course, he failed. But you think of the Mayfair Compact is a covenant. John Winthrop's speech on the Arbella is all about a covenant. When John Adams writes the first written constitution, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he calls it not a constitution but a covenant. Well, we have to remember how close in tracing this, we have to talk about how close the things you just mentioned were to the Reformation. Obviously, the diet of worms is 1521,

and then we have these various figures that you just mentioned in the 16th century. So by the time you get to the Pilgrims, and then 10 years later, John Winthrop, it's really within shooting distance. It came, these ideas came out of the Reformation, which of course came from a re-appreciation of what the scriptures are saying, which leads to 1776. But I think, and it's part of what you're saying,

these ideas have to be remembered. We have to stop and say, wait a minute, we have to go back. we've lost the thread. We didn't think we needed to worry too much about keeping the thread because we thought everyone knows this, but eventually everyone doesn't know it, and it's why we are where we are today.

So you mentioned Daniel Elizar. Is he the first one to write at length about this in recent times? The first to write at great length, 10 or so books on it. But you have others from Michael Walzer, Princeton? or Eric Nelson at Harvard, they're all writing in the same area. So it's a matter of serious scholarship now. It's not some cranky idea. But think of the significance.

It means that America is a nation by intention and by ideas. And one of the implications of that you see from Exodus and Deuteronomy is that the leader is the servant of the people. Moses is the first great national leader described again and again and again as servant. Servant of the Lord, servant of his people. But here's the point. Moses becomes Moses, as the Jews put it, our teacher.

In other words, leaders of a nation by intention and by ideas, should be constantly calling their people back to it. That's what Lincoln did. He appealed to the better angel of the American nature. He believed in the declaration very profoundly. And you think today there are no, national leaders who are even describing what made America great in the first place and then calling America back. That's the great missing thing today. A leader who's a national teacher

and a national servant. It's not about the president. It's about the people. I don't know that those leaders need to be presidents or senators. I mean, really anyone could do it, and it's necessary that we do it. We're doing it right now, Oz. I mean, by talking about this here, we're helping people understand these things. By writing the books that you wrote, you helped me understand these things. I subsequently have written about it, and I speak about it all the time. I mean, it's a process that we may have to do an end run around the Lincoln who doesn't exist in our time. But at the end of the day, you know, you have a far bigger audience than I have. But at the end of day, even all our audiences together, a small compared with a president.

Well, of course. And in history, it's either been someone senator or higher or a charismatic leader with a small sea like a Martin Luther King. At the moment, there's no charismatic leader in America, calling America back. And sadly, there's no national leader either. Yeah. Well, there are many ways to skin a cat, and I think that we'll see. But I'm cautiously optimistic because I just think our discussing this here is vital.

Again, we discussed it last night at Socrates in the city. But I think once people are introduced to these ideas, it begins to get them thinking and talking along those lines. And so in some ways we're only just beginning. But it's so extremely important. So the book is The Magna Carta of Humanity, the Sinai Revolution and the future freedom. We'll keep talking about that. With Oz Guinness, don't go away. Go on, sneaking around smoky places all over town.

You go home. It's all over. Baby, you know, it's getting me down. Because we're one step. short of our heaven With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, lots of companies are coming out saying they'll pay for employee abortion travel and expenses.

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Click on the radio listener square. Use promo code Eric. These offers will not last long. They're known to sell quickly. So order now with promo code Eric at MyCillow. Mypillow.com, my pillow.com. Promo code, Eric. Welcome back. Talking to Oz Guinness.

Oz, there's so much here. The book we're discussing is the Magna Carta of Humanity, the Sinai Revolution, and the future of freedom. So I just want to say again, I'm amazed by the idea that what you describe as a covenantal, what, system? How do you put it? A covenantal political order. Okay.

That we see this only three times. times emerging in history. First, at Sinai in Exodus, 3,400 years ago, which is astonishing. I think we have to be clear that even if you don't believe the Bible is the word of God, you'd have to say, well, that's weird. That's very strange that out of nowhere in the desert this extraordinary idea would come out, which then eventually leads through the Reformation to what we call America. It's at least fascinating. historically. You mentioned, I don't want to skip over it entirely, but you mentioned the Swiss. I really don't know much about how their way of doing things came about. Can you touch on that for a moment?

I don't know the full details. And that goes back to the Articles of Confederation and so on, way back in the 1,200 or so. But they didn't put their stamp on anywhere else, whereas the American Constitution, covenant constitution, became a model for the whole world, but often without the underpinnings. It's important to say that the Hebrew covenant wasn't unique. You had Hittites and the Irish oath ceremonies and so on, but it was quite distinctive. It's the first time that God himself made a covenant with the people. And unlike the Hittite covenants where you had something very binding,

but a very narrow area, like a legal contract, the Hebrew covenant covers the whole of life and so you have something quite distinctive but not totally unique it's a adaptation based on my limited knowledge of the Hittites but it seems to me that that would have been more hierarchical by far than what you found

what you find it was called a suzerainty treaty in other words a sovereign power imposed it on some weak power yeah so not quite the same thing, in any event. And the key difference, the consent of the government. And if you think of that's quite extraordinary, that when the Lord of the universe puts forward a covenant,

it's not ratified until the people say three times in Exodus, all that the Lord says, we will do. That's the origin of the consent of the government. So how would the American covenant differ, from the Hebrew covenant? The American covenant is not a covenant with God, the Hebrew is. It is at best a covenant under God. In other words, we the people are covenanting with each other.

But it's not in any way a covenant with the Lord particularly. Now that becomes very important because under God used to be a very important idea. You can see how Lincoln brought that in. But under God means an awareness of God and an accountability to God. And now we've got sort of notions of God on our side, which is a very different sort of thing, an instrumental view of faith, that we can use religion to bolster the nation. And that's extremely dangerous and very wrong. And Lincoln was very clear of the difference between under God, which is right,

and God on our side, which is dangerous. I don't know where you're getting that idea from. In other words, when you say God on our side, it's very dangerous. I don't see that danger. What do you mean by that? Well, God on our side is the phrase, even you take Germany. God means us. Well, no, I mean, I'm familiar with the problem of people saying God is on my side,

but in our time, I don't see this as being... It almost inevitably becomes utilitarian, instrumental, you know, bishops, blessing, bombers, you know, and so on. In other words, the church becoming the chaplain to the status quo. That's very dangerous. Lincoln was clear. The status quo is cultural Marxism. Well, in parts of the country, certainly.

You know that in the centers of power, we are now dealing with that. And you know that I'm getting this as much from you as from anywhere, but that is what we're dealing with at present. That's the madness that we're dealing with. So the idea that, you know, something people call it Christian nationalism would be something to worry about. I think where in the world do you see that being an issue? I mean, I wish it were an issue and then I could rail against it, but I don't see that being an issue. No, this to me, somebody last night, and by the way, a lot of people listening don't know that after the Socrates event, we have these dinners,

the patrons dinners, a smaller group of people gather, and we had that last night. in the evening folks get to ask questions of the guest, which I'm the one doing the conversation, having the conversation in the principal event, but then afterward, if you come to the patron's dinner, you can ask questions. And one of the questions was, I guess, a couple of the questions were touching on this. One of them was about James Hunter's idea of faithful presence. And I think I don't want to muddy the waters, but this is related in my mind in the sense that I think it's about perspective that in in there are people probably James Hunter and

people like maybe Tim Keller and others. They don't, they don't, they, they seem to think that there is, well, comment on these ideas a little bit because there's a lot to pull out and I don't want to say everything up front. Well, both James and Tim are good friends, so I'm not attacking their ideas at all. But there's a lot of confused thinking. Start with your Christian nationalism. You know, George Orwell points out patriotism is good. If you take every human needs meaning, and belonging. And patriotism a matter of legitimate belonging. We all love a place.

And that's very important. Now, nationalism is when the place to which we belong, in this case the nation, is idolized and becomes an idle, right or wrong. That is very dangerous. I mean, I think some kinds of nationalism

are like that. I would argue that other kinds of nationalism can be healthy, and so the term, to me, is neutral in the sense that it... All world's term is a good one, though. We're patriots, but we're very wary of nationalism. Now, the term has come into vogue because of globalism.

In other words, in the old days, George Washington, for example, loved the notion of everyone living under their own vine and fiction. Now you're touching on a big idea. When we come back, we're going to hit pause. We'll be right back and we'll continue. I'm talking to Oz Guinness. And Oz, you just referred to. George Washington famously talking about each person sitting under his own fig tree and his own vine.

Please continue with those thoughts. Well, biblically speaking, freedom must begin in the heart. And that's why freedom of conscience is so important. But it's balanced by what you might call local freedom. And it's captured biblically by everyone living under their own vine and fig tree. and George Washington refers to it 49 times in his letters. But in the old days then you had local freedom, but then you had national freedom,

and in the old days the nation was often a threat to the local. Americans forget that the word federal comes from the Latin word for covenant. It was a covenant between the local, the town hall and Massachusetts and the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill. But federal today, the feds, it's become all national. But where we are now, the global is a threat to both the national and the local. Which is why I think a healthy sense of nationalism is a bulwark against globalism. Absolutely.

As long as the nationalism doesn't become. Yeah, well, that's right. In other words, you should. We're globalists as Christians. As the Lord says to. In the actual sense of the term globalism. In you, all the facts. families of the earth will be blessed.

So we should have the local, the national, and the global in balance. And that's the challenge. Whereas many of our younger Christians, they're globalists without being realizing it. So they criticize every patriot as a nationalist. And that's rubbish. I think it's just my sense that people who are either, maybe they tend to be politically liberal and they're overwary of right-leaning fringe groups. And they keep bringing it up as though it's a thing,

as though this is the threat. And I think to myself that those are extreme minorities routinely denounced by anyone who is a patriotic, conservative, Christian, American. There's a book I found it very unpleasant by Andy Stanley recently, in which he raises the specter of the Westboro Baptist, you know, and I think to myself, I don't know a soul who doesn't think that they aren't nuts who need to be run from and shunned, but he raises the specter, and I feel like folks like that, they're

setting up a straw man as though the threat from the right is equal to the threat from the left, which is just patently preposterous to me. And when someone does that, I immediately know they're not being honest about where we are. Now, I'm often asked, isn't the right as dangerous as the left? And of course, it can be wrong and ugly and sometimes evil on the right. You think of swastika waivers or people who are anti-semi? Well, we know of those who are definitely anti-semple. But I don't know anyone who wouldn't denounce them instantly.

Let me make my point, though. Yeah. The big difference between the right and the left, is in two words social location. Now, it was, where do they have power? Whereas the left is influential in the colleges, universities, in the press and the media,

in the bureaucracy, in the intelligence community, and going down the line. The left is far, far more dangerous in America because of its social location. Well, what you're really saying is because of its power, because of its cultural power. In a post-modern world,

everything's about power. Well, but I'm just saying it's the reality. If you want to know what to worry about, the people with tremendous power and who don't really seem even to have any ideological trouble about using that power to crush people or to crush freedom, well, you know what? We're out of time in this hour, but here's the good news, Oz. Good news for us that we're going to keep you into the second hour. So, folks, stick around.

We'll be right back. Thank you.